“Sounds like brainwashing,” Attalee remarked.
“It’s utterly harmless,” Mrs. Tobias said.
“All the same, you’d better keep that young’un away from Kool-Aid,” Attalee said.
Mrs. Tobias touched me lightly on the shoulder. “What did you think of Timothy, Elizabeth?”
“He’s very handsome,” I said. “Although he does seem a little shy.”
“He’s not used to being in the real world,” Mrs. Tobias said. “And Elizabeth, I believe you’re just the person to get him re-acclimated.”
“That’s a dear thing to say,” I said. “I’ll be glad to help.”
“Good,” Mrs. Tobias said. She pulled on her driving gloves. “I’ll have him contact you as soon as his vow of silence is over.”
A week later I decided to give my dog, Maybelline, a flea dip. (I named her Maybelline because she’s slick, black, and streaky, like mascara.) I was wrestling with her when the phone rang. It distracted me a minute, giving her a chance to slip out of my arms and hop up on the bed and rub flea dip all over my brand-new bedspread. I nearly shouted “hello” because I was so aggravated with Maybelline, and the line went quiet.
“Hello, hello,” I demanded.
“May I speak with Elizabeth Polk?”
I am nobody’s fool. I know when folks use your full name on the phone, they are generally trying to sell you something.
“Now, mister, I know that you’re hard at work in your cubicle, trying to scratch out a living, and I respect that. But the fact is, if I want to buy something, I go to the store and get it. I don’t like to be pestered in my home. Besides, if you knew how few nickels I have to rub together, you wouldn’t waste your time trying to sell me replacement windows or a cruise to the Caribbean.”
The line remained silent. The caller wasn’t much of a telemarketer. The good ones usually squeak in their sales pitch the second a person pauses to take a breath.
“This is Timothy Hollingsworth. My grandmother...”
A blush heated up my cheeks. “My goodness, am I ever sorry. Mrs. Tobias told me that you’d be calling. I didn’t mean to be rude, but Maybelline escaped and was rubbing her dirty belly all over my nice, new bedclothes. And I thought you were one of those telemarketers.”
“Maybelline?”
“She’s my dog. She’s a good dog most of the time, except when she pees the bed.”
Timothy didn’t have much to say about that, or anything else, for that matter. He was stingy with his words like he was paying for every syllable, but I figured he was just out of practice. And, if the truth were known, some people are a bit too talky anyway.
He asked me if I’d join him for a mineral water the next night. He said he drank only water, because he was following something called “precepts,” which meant he couldn’t ingest substances like coffee or alcohol. After he asked for directions to my house, he told me he’d be picking me up around five o’clock since he went to bed very early. I said that it all sounded fine to me, only I was a little worried about the mineral water. Most places around here get their water straight out of the tap.
Feeling nervous about going out with a near stranger, I hung up the phone. I noticed a wet, black nose sticking out from under the dust ruffle of my bed. Armed with a bath towel, I called Maybelline. She crept out on her belly and looked up at me with pleading, dark eyes. Her tail made one cautious thump on the braided bedside rug.
“Get over here, girl,” I said in a soothing voice. She darted across the floor and just before she reached me, she shook herself, sending a flurry of hair and water droplets into the air. I gathered her up in the towel like she was a baby and started drying her.
My gaze settled on my open closet, reminding me I didn’t have much to wear for an evening out. I willed my eyes to skip over the pristine wedding dress encased in plastic. No luck there.
I set Maybelline down and went to inspect the dress. I unzipped the plastic bag and put the silky fabric next to my cheek as I had done on and off for two months, ever since Clip broke off our engagement. I closed my eyes, imagining Clip squeezing me close and whispering into my ear how much he loved me and how he’d stay with me forever.
The image used to be so vivid to me—all of Clip’s features crisp and clear, like a glossy photograph on a magazine cover. But now, although I remembered parts of him—eyes dark like plums, a sharp, stubborn chin—I couldn’t put them together in my mind anymore. I had brought out his memory so often that it was wearing out, like a design on a T-shirt that fades with too many washings.
I picked up the dress and studied it. It didn’t even look like my sort of style anymore. The neckline was tight and prissy and the skirt had too many layers. It was time for the dress to go up into the attic.
Eight
I Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim is Getting Better
~ Selection F-7 on the jukebox at the Tuff Luck Tavern
The knock at the door was so soft I might have missed it altogether if Maybelline hadn’t barked.
I flung open the door and there stood Timothy Hollingsworth, dressed not in his flowing robe, but wearing a robin’s-egg blue button-down shirt and a freshly pressed pair of khakis. I noticed his scalp was no longer completely bald. Little bristles of growth made his head looked like a hard-boiled egg covered in pepper.
“Hey there. Come on in,” I said with a grin.
He took his time wiping his feet on the doormat, although his loafers looked clean and the ground was dry.
He looked up at me with nervous, blinking eyes, but stood stock still. He had a square jaw and a large Adam’s apple that rested above the top button of his shirt.
I gave him wide berth to come in the house and he took one baby step inside. Maybelline chose that moment to streak past me and hump Timothy’s leg.
“Stop that right now, Maybelline! You hear me? Get down. You are a nasty young lady!”
Maybelline reluctantly let loose her prize. She plopped on her back and lolled on the carpet like a Playboy bunny. Timothy went pale, expect for the tips of his ears, which turned bright red.
“Excuse my dog. She doesn’t have a lot of manners.”
He swayed like he might topple over headfirst onto the carpet.
I scooped up Maybelline and stashed her in the bedroom. “Are you all right? Can I get you some water?”
Timothy didn’t reply. Instead he glanced around the room. His eyes swept over the glass shoe collection on my knickknack shelf, which had been passed down to me by my mama. He took in the two-toned shag carpet and my big ugly couch—the color of orange marmalade—that I’d bought at the Rock of Ages Baptist Church’s annual attic sale.
“It’s not much, I know, but it’s home to me,” I said.
His eyes abruptly dropped to his shoes and he stood in the middle of my room as motionless as a magnolia tree.
“Did you have a mind of what you wanted to do?” I asked, slipping into a light jacket. “I can’t think of anyplace around here that has mineral water.”
He was breathing slowly and deliberately.
“We could eat,” he finally said in a voice barely louder than a whisper.
“There’s the Wagon Wheel just a few blocks from here. We could walk even,” I suggested.
“A wagon wheel,” he repeated, like I’d said something in a foreign language.
“It’s a steak restaurant, but it’s also home of the fifteen-foot Mega Bar.”
He glanced up from his shoes. “When I was in San Diego, sometimes I would eat only a bowl of rice, the entire day. I would sit and chew each grain. It would take hours.”
It was the longest string of words I’d ever heard him speak. He looked winded from the effort.
“They got rice at the Wagon Wheel,” I said. “Well, rice and gravy.”
&n
bsp; He didn’t reply. He strode to the door and I followed behind him, down the rickety wooden steps. Out on the sidewalk, Timothy was still breathing heavily, like he could use a snort from an asthma inhaler.
“You okay? Sounds like the ragweed might be getting to you,” I asked.
“I’m just keeping track of my breathing,” he replied.
Far as I knew, breathing was one of the few things in this world we didn’t have to keep up with. But I wasn’t arguing with him. We walked a little farther in silence. It wasn’t an easy, friendly silence. It was like a big plate glass window. You just wanted to pick up a rock and break it.
“I know that Buddhists meditate, but what do you meditate about?” I said.
Timothy stopped for a moment, as if stymied by the challenge of talking and walking at the same time.
“I often meditate on my own impermanence. I imagine my flesh pulling back from my cheeks to reveal my skull. I see my skin rotting away and my bones turning to dust.”
I was beginning to think that silence wasn’t such a terrible thing, after all.
“You deliberately think about stuff like that?”
“Yes, humans are like dead plant matter.” He toed a pile of leaves with his shoe. “We have our season and then we perish.”
We started walking again. I looked up at the pine trees. Hundreds of chattering birds rose from the branches in a dark wave.
My shoes made a hollow sound on the pavement. I decided to cut through Hank Bryson’s yard when I remembered too late that he lived one house over from Jonelle. On the clothesline in Jonelle’s yard hung tiny black lace panties for all the world to see. They twitched in the breeze like frilly little flags. I flinched at the mental pictures they brought to mind.
“When I was a little girl I thought death would show me a loophole,” I said. “I was sure it wasn’t going to happen to me. Does meditating on death make it less scary?”
“Fear is just a mind state,” Timothy replied curtly.
“Buddhism must be some kind of powerful religion if the people who believe in it never get scared.”
He strode slightly ahead of me, his arms as stiff as planks. He glanced back at me and said, “It isn’t that you aren’t scared of anything anymore, it’s just when your fear arises, you observe the nature of it, thereby robbing it of its power. My teacher had us practice with troublesome mind states like fear.”
I quickened my pace to keep up with his long legs. “What kind of things did he have you do?”
“I’ve always feared the dark, so he made me meditate amongst the tombstones in a nearby cemetery.”
“That’s awful. Weren’t you scared?”
Timothy stopped walking again. “Maybe a little. But I impersonally watched my fear. It started out like the distant rumbling of thunder. If something would rustle in the leaves or I thought I heard approaching footsteps, it built to this enormous crescendo, beseeching me to become caught up in its maelstrom, but I was like the Buddha under the Bodhi tree; I resisted. Finally it disappeared.”
Timothy’s eyes flashed as he spoke; talking about Buddhism made him come alive. He was nice company, as long as he didn’t talk any more about his skin rotting off.
The breeze picked up, causing a piece of my hair to fly into my mouth. Dried-out leaves scraped across the pavement.
“The Wagon Wheel is just around the corner.” I gestured with my head.
Cayboo Creek’s commercial area consisted of Main Street and Mule Pen Road, which was home to the vacant Pig. Next to the empty Pig was a patch of field (soon to be the site of the dreaded Super Saver Dollar Store), the diner called the Chat ‘N’ Chew, the bowling alley, the Tuff Luck Tavern, Dun Woo’s House of Noodles, and the Wagon Wheel. As Timothy and I crossed Mule Pen Road, several cars honked and I waved in response.
When we walked inside the restaurant, Hank Williams Junior was crooning “I Got a Tear in My Beer” on the jukebox.
We filled our plates at the Mega Bar. I took a slab of meatloaf, some fried onion rings, a square of cornbread, and a piece of corn on the cob, dripping with butter. Timothy seemed stymied by all the choices, but eventually settled for some plain rice, vegetables, and a helping of salad. I steered him away from the okra (Maynard, the head cook, boils it too long and it has a tendency to be slimy) and talked him into a made-from-scratch helping of peach cobbler. With our plates heaped high (mine considerably higher than his), we sat down at a red, padded booth. Our waitress was Chiffon. She wore a button pinned to her uniform that said, “Ask me about our all-you-can-eat catfish nuggets.”
“Hey there, Elizabeth. How’s your meemaw?” She cut her eyes at Timothy and I knew she was dying to know who he was.
“Feisty as ever. How’s the young’uns and Lonnie?” I asked, even though I’d just talked to her on the phone two hours ago.
“Emily stuck a pinto bean up her nose just before I was leaving for work, but luckily she sneezed it right out,” Chiffon answered. She jotted our drink orders on her pad. “Y’all need anything else?” she asked.
“That ought to do it,” I said, knowing that Chiffon would see to it that everyone in Cayboo Creek knew that I’d been spotted in the Wagon Wheel with a mysterious man with hardly any hair.
Chiffon brought ice water for Timothy and sweet tea for me and then left the table. Timothy leaned forward and said in a low voice, “There is something that scares me and meditation isn’t helping.”
“What’s that?”
He whispered, “Surfing.”
“Shoot, I don’t blame you for that. Those big waves? Maybe getting bitten clean in half by a shark? It’s pretty terrifying. Did you have a bad scare out there in California?”
Timothy smiled. At first it looked something like a scowl, as if his muscles were out of practice, but then the corners of his mouth turned up into a full-fledged grin.
“Actually, I was talking about surfing the Internet.”
I snickered. “Of course. I guess since you came from California, I thought you meant...”
He was still smiling, and then he let loose a dry bark that sounded like he was either choking on a chicken bone or trying to laugh.
“I’m sorry. It’s been a long time since I’ve been amused. Zen Buddhists don’t laugh much.”
“Well, I guess it’s hard to laugh when you sit around thinking of rotting and dying all day,” I said.
Timothy shook his head. “I apologize. I’ve made Buddhism sound grim when it really isn’t. It can actually be quite joyful at times.”
He paused to squeeze some lemon into his water. “But it also kept me away from the modern world. For the last ten years, I’ve begged for alms, chopped wood, and meditated. I haven’t been on a computer in years. I start a computer skills course next week, but when I report to work at my family’s company, I won’t even know how to look up our Web site.”
“Shoot. I have a PC at home. I could give you a few lessons after we eat.”
Timothy leaned back into the booth. “Would you do that for me?”
“Of course.”
He balanced his fork on the edge of his plate. “I’m a little nervous about going to work tomorrow. The employees are bound to think I’m odd. My mother says I should tell everyone I’ve been in the Peace Corps. She says people in Augusta won’t understand about my being Buddhist.”
“She might have a point. There’re really only two accepted religions around here, Baptist and NASCAR.” I chuckled at my own joke.
Timothy’s face went blank. “NASCAR?”
“Lord, you have been away from the real world.”
He swiped at his mouth with his napkin. “I learned more from watching my teacher chop carrots than I could learn from a hundred books or sermons.”
I was pleased to see Timothy relaxing a little. He wasn’t pantin
g like a dog anymore and he was talking louder.
“So you learned something from a man just by watching him chop carrots, did you?” I asked.
I was reminded of my old Sunday-school teacher, Miss Dolynick, who I thought was an angel in disguise because her lips were as shiny as a Red Delicious apple, and she smelled like honeysuckle. She led us in the song “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” and her big blue eyes would fill with tears of love for Christ. Then one day after Sunday school, I was in the church parking lot and I saw her scratch her key along a brand-new Honda Civic. She didn’t know I’d seen her do it. Later I found out the Honda belonged to Sonny Hotchkiss, her ex-boyfriend. I, too, learned a lot from Miss Dolynick that day.
“My teacher was an amazing man,” Timothy said in between bites of coleslaw. “If it weren’t for him, I’d have turned right around after a week of sleeping on the ground and walking barefoot on the cold cobblestones. But then I met him, and just by looking at him, I could see there was a whole other way to be.”
Timothy’s eyes were as lively as flames in a gas burner. “Those years in the monastery were the most content I’ve ever known,” he said.
“Then why did you leave?”
Timothy ran his finger along the rim of his water glass.
“As you probably know, my father died a few months ago. After the funeral, my mother expected me to come home. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t want to return to Augusta, but my teacher gave me no choice. He said I belonged with my family. He feared I was using the monastery as a refuge.”
We were silent for a moment. Chiffon padded over to our table in white shoes with spongy bottoms. She filled my tea glass to the brim and asked Timothy if he wanted some more water, which he turned down.
After she left, Timothy inhaled sharply. “So now instead of solving koans, I’ll be running a company and learning to live all over again. The biggest koan of all.”
Bet Your Bottom Dollar (The Bottom Dollar Series Book 1) Page 6