“You got peanut butter?”
“I do. You like strawberry jam?”
“Yeah! That’s my favorite.”
Lee set the bread on the counter and pulled the peanut butter from the fridge. Her fingers fumbled with the plastic fastener of the package of bread, dropping it on the floor. She ignored it and put two pieces of bread on a plate, then plunged a spoon into the peanut butter and plopped a cold, stiff dollop on one of the pieces of bread. Alder’s eyes were wide. “My mom only puts this much on.” He held up his fingers to show half as much.
“You’ll have extra today.” She tried to spread the peanut butter on the bread but instead of smearing it made a hole in the soft bread.
Alder came to the counter. “You ever done this before?”
“I hate peanut butter. It was on sale.”
“You’re not supposed to keep it in the fridge.”
“Everything goes in the fridge.” She spread the jam on the other piece and put it on top of its lumpy partner. “I’m afraid of bugs.” She handed him the plate.
He sat at the table, taking a big bite and talking with his mouth full. “You got any milk?”
“Sure.” Lee poured him a glass of milk and sat down across from him. Annie’s voice wafted in from the other room. “No. Don’t be ridiculous. Just forget it.”
Alder stopped eating. He looked down at his plate, poking what was left of his sandwich. Lee cleared her throat. “You want some fruit?”
“No thanks.”
“Hey, I’ve got pie.”
Alder looked up and smiled. “My mom doesn’t let me eat dessert very much.”
“This is homemade pie, so it can’t hurt you.” Lee went to the refrigerator and took out the latest pie from Ellen and cut him a big piece. “It has berries. Those are healthy.”
Alder took a huge bite, eyes round. “Man, this is good stuff.”
They heard Annie’s voice yelling in the other room. “Leave Alder out of this!”
Alder chewed another bite of pie, gazing at the edge of his plate with a glazed look in his eyes. “My mom’s boyfriend’s a real asshole.”
Lee looked at him, shocked. “That’s not a word for a little boy.”
His eyes shifted to her face and his voice was flat. “But it’s true.”
Lee sat down, put her chin in her hand and wiped a spot off the table with her finger. “Does he live with you?”
“No, he just comes for sleepovers.”
Annie came into the kitchen, eyes red.
Lee stood up, ready to apologize. “I gave him some pie.”
Annie nodded and said in a small voice like she wasn’t listening. “Sure, it’s fine.” She sat and stared at a spot on the table.
“Would you like a piece?” Lee asked.
“No...” She looked at the pie, brushing her tight blond curls from her forehead and pinching her soft middle section. “I’m trying to lose weight.” Her smooth pink skin reminded Lee of a ripe succulent peach.
“Can I give you guys a lift somewhere?” said Lee.
Alder sat up in his chair. “That’d be great ‘cause I don’t want to walk anymore and it sounds like asshole isn’t gonna pick us up.”
Annie snapped her head. “Alder! I told you not to say that word.”
Alder looked down at his plate. “Sorry, Mom.”
Annie swept her hair back from her forehead. “You know what? I will have a piece of pie.”
No one spoke while Lee cut another piece and put it in front of Annie. She took a small bite and then picked up the crust with her fingers and examined it. “This crust is well done. You make this?”
Lee shook her head. “No, I don’t cook. A neighbor up the road.”
“My mom’s a real good cook,” said Alder.
“I went to chef school.” Annie rested her arms on the table top and Lee noticed burn scars on the top of her hands and bruises on her forearms. “Not that it matters anymore.”
“Where did you study?”
“My mother had an Italian boyfriend who was a chef and we moved to Tuscany to live with him when I was in high school. He taught me everything he knew. But then my mother broke up with him and we came home. After high school I went to culinary school but I couldn’t afford anywhere decent. I knew more than the teachers because of Franco.”
“Are you cooking at a restaurant in town here?”
“Hardly. I’m a checker at the market. But, I can’t get to work with a broken truck.”
“What’re you going to do?”
Annie sighed, her face crumpling. “I don’t know. I don’t have any money to get it towed or fixed.” She wiped tears from her cheeks.
Alder jumped up and put his arm on his mother’s back. “I can walk. I don’t mind.”
Lee, eyes stinging, picked up Alder’s plate and put it in the sink.
Annie wiped her face and hugged Alder. “Don’t worry, I always figure something out.” She took a shaky breath and headed to the sink with the other dishes. “Alder, why don’t you run outside and look at Lee’s yard.” She turned on the faucet and added some dish soap.
He skipped down the back steps, calling out to Lee, “I always miss the good stuff.”
The women laughed. Annie blew her nose into a napkin. “I’m sorry. We’re a mess.”
“It’s alright. I understand.”
Annie wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. “I doubt it.”
Lee watched Alder running back and forth across the lawn. She thought about Linus and how much she missed him. She needed a friend here, a real friend. She turned to Annie. “You might be surprised. How’s this? My husband killed himself. And I’m pregnant.”
Annie stopped washing. “Oh, shit. That how come you’re here?”
Lee peered into the soapy water. “I probably won’t stay long.”
“I followed a guy here. Had one quarter of chef school to go, and chucked it all for a man. I was pregnant too.” Annie washed the last glass. “I’m always so broke I can’t leave.” She sighed. “This is my life now.”
“What’s with your boyfriend? Why won’t he pick you up?” said Lee.
“I don’t know. He’s a selfish prick.” She dried a dish and put it in the cupboard. “I’m going to break up with him. I just kept thinking he’d change. Turn into a good guy all of a sudden. I don’t know why I keep thinking that will happen. It’s always the same.”
Alder came bounding up the stairs. “Mom, I saw a bunch of slugs out there.” Skin flushed, he jumped up and down. “Lee, can I put salt on them? That’s the best way to get rid of them.”
“We’d need a big salt shaker to get rid of all the slugs we know,” said Annie.
They laughed and Alder looked back and forth between them. “I don’t get it.”
“Never mind.” Annie motioned towards the door. “We’ve got to go now.”
“But it’s fun here.”
Lee smiled at him. “You can come back soon.”
* * *
Lee drove slower than normal, the curves of the country road unexpected and Alder chirping from the backseat. Everywhere she looked there were shades of green: grasses in small meadows just beyond the road, proud firs and pines jutting into the brilliant blue of the afternoon sky. A slight breeze rustled the new leaves of maples and dogwoods. After several miles, Annie said to turn left onto a dirt road. They rambled along, bumping through muddy puddles, Alder bouncing up and down with the car. After a few moments, Annie told her to stop in front of a sagging mobile home. In front of the house was a car up on blocks, a child’s rusted bicycle with only one wheel, and several lawn chairs overturned and covered with mildew. Lee felt Annie shift in the seat and looked over to see the woman’s face flushed with what Lee intuitively knew was shame.
“It’s not much, I know,” said Annie.
Lee smiled, glancing back at Alder. “Looks like you have tons of room to run. You’re lucky.”
Alder looked at her, solemn, but his big brown eyes portrayed
the unflinching honesty of the young. “I can’t invite any friends here. I don’t want them to see where I live. Do you still like us?”
Lee reached into the backseat to touch Alder’s face for a moment. “Where you live doesn’t matter one bit to me. I’ve had a little trouble myself lately. When you’re friends it doesn’t matter where you live or what kind of things you have. You understand?”
“I guess,” he said, smiling and jumping from his open door to the damp ground.
Annie looked at Lee, touching her arm. “Thank you.”
“He’s a great boy. You’re obviously a good mother. Maybe you can give me some tips.” Lee gave Annie a slip of paper with her phone number. “Give me a call if you need a lift to your truck or anything.”
Annie gestured at Lee’s stomach. “You let me know if you need anything.”
Lee smiled. “Will do.” She waved at Alder. “Bye, Alder. I’ll see you again soon.”
“Bye, Lee.” He ran up to their front door.
As she backed out of the driveway, she saw Alder at the window waving, his hand like a flutter of a bird’s wing. She waved back and rested her hand on her stomach. She wondered for the first time about this place she used to call home and if there was something more, some new way she should look at it. There was Tommy and this attraction between them. And this feeling that she wanted to unburden it all, to tell and show him every detail of her life. None of which made sense because she was haunted by Dan’s death and this vacillation between anger, sadness, and guilt that followed her everywhere she went.
And now to meet Annie and learn she was a chef. Was it a turn of fate or coincidence or whatever Thomas Hardy used to call it? Was it like Clive, did it mean something? She thought about the restaurant and the town and how much potential there was. Mike was right. It was breathtakingly beautiful. The rivers and mountains offered many possibilities for rich tourists if there were any decent-caliber restaurants and inns. She wondered about Annie and what kind of talent was inside her. Something about the way Annie’s face looked when she crumbled the crust between her fingers gave Lee the feeling that she was good. With a real chef, they could have a real restaurant. She turned down her dirt driveway, her mind spinning with ideas.
* * *
It was midnight and Lee tossed in her bed, thinking of Tommy on the steps, the way the light hit his face and his full mouth with his big white teeth. What was wrong with her? This attraction she felt for him must be false, just a way for her mind to twist all the fear and pain about her life onto another track—the ultimate distraction. She wondered what it might feel like to kiss him. Would it be as she imagined, all lust and passion, or would it just be a mouth with saliva and intruding tongue and gnashing teeth?
She should be thinking about the restaurant and how to make it a success, not about the muscles in Tommy’s legs she had spotted under his jeans. She threw off the covers and traipsed downstairs, made a cup of peppermint tea, and sat on the back steps. She gazed at the stars sparkling against their black backdrop and remembered as a child counting them and wondering why the Milky Way had the same name as a chocolate bar. The night sky was brilliant without city lights diminishing their brightness. She’d forgotten the stars.
An owl hooted and the breeze rustled in the fir trees. She ran her hand along the wooden railing and thought about her grandfather, building this house from nothing but the trees in these woods. Something out of nothing. She sipped her tea, sighing. The air was chilly but smelled of lilacs, evergreens’ new growth, and cut grass. She shivered, pulling her sweater tighter and kicking the grass with her foot.
What would she tell the child about his or her father? Her mother told her nothing of her own father and she sometimes even now wondered if he was out there in the world. Did he know about her? Did he ever think of her? The one time Lee had the courage to ask her mother about him, the response was, “Long gone.” Lee surmised he was a man who passed through town for a brief time, or someone her mother met the one and only year she went to college. As a child she convinced herself he didn’t know of her, because the thought of his rejection was unbearable. The fantasies about him started when she was about six and, other than details—sometimes he was a prince, sometimes a teacher—the basic story was the same. He learned of her through a series of fate-like coincidences and then moved heaven and earth to find her, rescuing her from the clutches of her angry mother and taking her away with him.
She shivered and went inside to find a blanket. She pulled the throw off her bed, wrapped it around her shoulders, and went back to the steps. Lee left her teacup on the steps and lay on the grass. The ground smelled of wet dirt and spring grass. She spotted Orion and the Bear in the constellation, which made her think of Clive and her cubs and of Annie and Alder, how they were the same, bonded through naked primal love for one another—a mother and her babies. The stars felt so close they might swallow her and she floated and breathed the night into her chest. She looked for a falling star but there were none and she remembered they showed in August, one after the other plummeting through space, exploding somewhere light years away, never to be seen again. She felt like one of those shooting stars. She’d been a vibrant light in the sky until the big fall, the descent to earth where she exploded, never to be seen again.
August, what was it about August that nagged her? The baby would come in September. The new restaurant could open in August. She watched the stars for many minutes as pieces and ideas stacked together, one by one, until she saw it in its entirety. She said a silent prayer, fastening her eyes to the constancy of Orion’s belt, “Please, God, let Annie be able to cook. Give me the strength to want to shine again. Fill me with light.”
* * *
The next morning rain pelted the hood of her old raincoat and boots she’d found in the hall closet as she trudged through the field looking for the path from her daily walks twenty years before. Each day, no matter the weather, she had dropped her school books in the hallway, grabbed an apple, and ran all the way to her ‘studio’ to lose herself for hours in her art projects. But the path was gone. The light green grasses were wet and came to her hips, pressing against her and soaking her pants as she slogged along, even as she sweated underneath the plastic raincoat. After several minutes she came upon the shed, the siding gray and decayed. The one-sided roof sagged. Lee pulled on the rustic door handle, carved and assembled long ago from her grandfather’s tools. Inside, besides smelling of mildew and decaying wood, it was just as she’d left it. There was an easel by the window. Old paint tubes and colored pencils were organized neatly on the shelf. She fingered a tray of pastels, their hued dust staining her skin.
She opened one of several boxes underneath the crude table and found it stacked with papers, the corners of which were curled and covered with mildew. She flipped through landscapes of the rivers and the mountains. She paused at a self portrait, an assignment from high school art class. On the canvas was her small white face with empty holes where the eyes should have been. Around the neck was a band of red, like a scarf or a noose.
At the bottom of the box was a painting of her mother, also an assignment. The painting was an image of a twisted body, the face hidden by an arm, and a billow of gray smoke floating around the head. Lee touched her fingers over the brush strokes of oil paint on the canvas, trying to remember the girl she’d been when she painted them. She could still remember what it felt like to paint that way, the release of emotion onto the canvas. She wondered where the girl was, the one that thought art would be her life work. Maybe she disappeared under the reality of tuition loans, rent, and the fear her talent was imagined and wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny. Maybe she lost the reason for doing it amongst the critiques and competition of art school and the realization that it was a business with no profit potential instead of an expression of her unique point of view.
Lee stuffed the paintings back in the box and shoved it under the table. She rummaged through a box labeled ‘supplies’ and found a bla
nk sheet of mildewed watercolor paper. She tucked the paper, a bag of pastels, and a small portable easel under her arm and opened the door to the outside. The rain had stopped while she was inside. Overhead, large rain clouds drifted north, letting the sun cascade down on the wet land. She walked along until she came to a spot along the river where water splashed over large rocks as mild rapids. She sat on a boulder near the water and propped the easel in her lap. She sketched images that leapt to her mind for the restaurant with the pastels: pear green for the walls, a bar and tables in dark brown, a blue awning facing the street. The water gurgled through the rocks and she began to think of it as a song in accompaniment to her drawing. The river had its own song, she mused, like Tommy. The song of the river. The river’s song. Riversong. She would call the restaurant Riversong. She wrote Riversong in the left hand corner of the paper with black letters and then closed her eyes to better hear the river’s voice.
* * *
The oatmeal sat cold and crusted over on the table as Lee’s fingers flew over the computer. The business plan, corresponding financial spreadsheets, and a slide presentation for Mike were nearly completed. Her back ached and she realized she hadn’t gone to the bathroom in hours. Her legs were stiff as she rose to her feet, stomach growling.
There was a rustle at the back door and she saw Ellen on the stairs with a basket in her arms. Lee opened the door for her, pleased to see her. She breathed in the aroma of butter and cinnamon and it felt like medicine to her aching spirit.
Ellen’s eyes took in the laptop and her eyebrows knit in surprise. “You working on something?”
“The plan for the restaurant.”
Ellen opened the basket, pulling out a cinnamon roll and plopping in a chair. “Let’s hear it.”
The River Valley Series Page 13