by Terry Kay
I admitted I had never heard of it.
“It’s the state of being mendacious, and mendacious means deceit, or falsehoods, but not always intended as deceit or falsehoods,” she recited as though from a dictionary. She smiled. “People who run on at the mouth, telling such outlandish tales other people don’t know whether to believe them or not. You, Cole Bishop. You’re just full of mendacity.”
“Well, I’m glad to know somebody’s finally got me all figured out,” I said.
“Want to play that game, Cole?”
The thought of it caused a smile to grow unexpectedly. “I don’t know,” I said.
She leaned her head back on the headrest of the seat. “I think it would be fun.”
“You mad at me?” I asked.
“About what?”
“The talk. The dare.”
“Why should I be?” she said. “I’m out with the prize, the catch of this poor backward county. I don’t care what you say about it. Tell them anything you want. I’ll have my own story to tell and, Cole, they’re going to love what I have to say. Believe me, by next Monday afternoon, I’m going to be the most popular girl at Overton High School. They’ll be wanting to rename the drugstore after me. Talk about mendacity, I’m going to be spreading it like the plague.” She whirled in the seat and pulled close to me. “Don’t you know? I’m crazy. Everybody says so.”
“Are you?” I asked. “Crazy, I mean?”
Marie laughed. Her eyes brightened. “Oh, God, no,” she exclaimed. “I’m smart, Cole Bishop. Smarter than you. And a lot braver.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I know what I’m doing, which is more than I can say for you. That’s why I’m always talking to myself in class. Why I get up and walk out. Everybody thinks it’s just crazy little Marie. Everybody else stays in those God-awful classes and thinks I’m crazy. But I’m not. I’m outside, swinging, enjoying myself. Who’s crazy, Cole Bishop?”
“You putting me on?” I asked.
“No,” she replied. She pushed back against her seat. “And that’s honest. It really is. Sometimes being the odd person has great advantages.”
I looked at her. “Well, you’re odd. I’ll give you that,” I said after a moment.
She smiled happily. “You’re going to be very famous, Cole Bishop. I know that and you don’t. God, you need me. You’ll always need me. I think we should start planning our wedding.”
“And I think I should take you home,” I said.
EIGHT
In his years of marriage, he had developed an interest in cooking, realizing early that Holly, his wife, had no liking for the kitchen. It was, to him, a pleasant escape from the classroom and from the demands of administration expected of him as chairman of the department of English. A cookbook was not complicated. Read the recipe, follow it with patience and, remarkably, something eatable would likely come of the effort. He did not understand it until his divorce, but the cooking was also a way of avoiding conflict. Sautéed shrimp with roasted asparagus was a better way of muting disagreement than the unbearable weight of silence.
The dinner he prepared for himself after a day of writing was simple: an omelet of mushrooms and bell peppers. Grits, also, since he had purchased a package for Grace Webster’s surprise birthday party. His guests had laughed, had tasted them tentatively, and then had pushed them aside. His guests had asked if grits were made of sawdust.
After eating, he took his cup of coffee, brewed purposely strong, and opened his front door and stood on his porch, taking in the cold and the scent of snow. It was the first time he had been outside all day and the realization startled him. He could not remember when he had stayed inside for a full day.
He went back into the house. He had turned on his radio for the presence of sound while eating his omelet and grits and the music was of Christmas, of angels singing of a newborn King, of a holy night with stars brightly shining, of a drummer boy with his rum-a-tum-tum, and he realized there was nothing of Christmas in his home—no tree, no blinking lights, no ornaments, no miniature manger scene with hand-carved shepherds and wise men and animals crowding around the hand-carved family of Joseph and Mary and the child named Jesus.
A great sense of melancholy struck him. It was two days until Christmas, yet there was no sign of it in his home. Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow, I will buy a tree and put it up.
The melancholy followed him to his office, guided him to his desk and to the drawer of letters from Marie Fitzpatrick. He pulled one from the stack, opened it, read:
Dearest Cole Bishop,
Well, I did it, my poor, backward friend. It. You know. The sex thing. The deed. Yes, I did. It’s 1958, and I am 20 years old, and I did it. His name is Noel. He’s still in my bed, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, wearing a silly, little-boy smile. (Do you smile after sex, Cole? I think you must. I know you would if you were with me. I would make sure you did.)
We met two days ago in a bookstore, where he works. I thought at first he was you, the way he was making a fool of himself with customers. It made me want to see you.
I won’t go into what happened at the store, but you should know that I put him in his place, smashed his arrogance like cheap crystal, and he was so impressed he asked me for a date. I wouldn’t have agreed, but he’s from England (Bath, which is a city and not the Saturday night scrubbing you used to give yourself), and he has this accent that has more power than musk. I knew we would make love, and I’ve never wanted to make love to anyone but you and Burt Lancaster. (You didn’t know about Burt, did you?)
I liked it, Cole. I liked the feel of his body and I liked touching his (don’t blush) erection. I liked the way it swept against my body—blunt and hot and fleshy. It did hurt slightly when he penetrated me, but the kind of hurt that is both pleasure and pain. I could easily get used to it, or obsessed by it. Mostly, I liked his tenderness. (He didn’t ask, but I’m sure he knew it was my first time.) He held me gently after we finished, then he went to sleep. I couldn’t, of course—couldn’t sleep. Being there, in bed with him, with his arm across me, I began to think of you, and that was as pleasant as the sex had been. I pried myself from Noel and came here, to the kitchen. I wanted to call you, but that would have been unfair to Noel. Me, in the middle of the night, trying to find an old boyfriend. (You were that in truth, weren’t you, Cole? You were my boyfriend. I couldn’t stand it if you thought we were just friend-friends, just classroom showoffs.)
Are you jealous? Just a little, I hope.
Making love to Noel also made me realize how much I would like to be a mother. Problem is, I don’t really care to be married. I think being married was what turned my mother into Greta Garbo. I’ve thought about this before, as you would suspect, and it makes perfect sense to me to have a baby, but not marry. Especially someone like Noel. What in the name of God could a man who works in a bookstore offer me? That’s why I would never marry you, even if you flew to Boston tonight and begged me from your knees. What in the name of God could a man who believes in dreaming offer me?
But I do love you, Cole Bishop. I do. In a good way.
By the way, can you tell me: What happens next? Is it dangerous, this getting involved? Should I pull him from the bed and insist that he dress and take his British accent out the door and out of my life?
There are some answers I don’t have, Cole.
But, then, I don’t think you do, either.
Go dream, my lovely, dear friend.
Go dream of me.
Believe you are Noel.
At his desk, he checked his incoming email, found one from Tanya. I didn’t get anything from you. Why? Did you waste the day? And, no, you can’t bring anything for Christmas.
He answered: I decided to wait until I have more to send. Maybe tonight, maybe not. Tomorrow, I’m going to find a Christmas tree, a small one. This place seems drab and I’m beginning to feel Scrooge-ish. Also, I plan to start roasting a goose for your Christmas dinner.
Otherwise I know we’ll be served bologna sandwiches.
He switched off the internet connection and opened the document he had titled MARIE, and he began to write.
December 22, night
I did not try to stop the talk about my date with Marie. It would have been impossible, like trying to swat back a tidal wave with a tennis racquet. The talk was a hailstorm of words that pummeled both of us on Monday, and Marie, to everyone’s surprise, seemed to glow in the heat of the gossip. She even appeared at school dressed as though she had spent the day shopping with Sally Dylan—penny loafers, a skirt with crinolines, a cardigan sweater over a white button-up blouse. I could see the girls inching closer to her with each class, surrounding her like insects, timidly asking questions, and I knew that Marie’s answers pleased them from the way their faces brightened into blushes.
I did not want to know what she said.
I had my own questions to endure, questions I chose to answer with a crooked smile—the look that mischievous boys learn to use in defense. I was fascinated that those who asked about the date—mostly my teammates—shook their head in wonder, as though they understood every syllable of the silence.
In typing class, Marie whispered to me, “Just enjoy it.”
“Guess we should,” I told her.
Marie had been right, of course. Together, we had the power to manipulate Overton High School as smoothly as magicians pulling rabbits from empty top hats, and before the day was over, we were playing to on-lookers like vaudevillians strolling under spotlights.
“A few more dates, Cole, and we’ll have them bowing at our feet,” she predicted.
“Could be,” I said.
That week, Marie and I were seen together constantly, not hand-holding as other couples, but together still. We perfected the impression that we were joyously happy. Marie’s behavior in class changed. She seldom argued, seldom volunteered to answer even the simplest of questions. She did not leave class abruptly. She sat, gazing at me, pretending to blush when I looked at her, and I learned quickly that she was far more clever than I. Our dates that week—for she insisted we needed to be seen as inseparable—were alleged dates, for we never left her home, and at her home we studied from a curriculum she had prepared as attentively as she had prepared her reading exercises for Jovita’s children. I was stunned by her knowledge and by my own yearning to discover what she knew.
Yet, we both understood that our court of on-lookers at Overton High School wanted adventure, mystery, visions of night-covered passion, and Marie provided it with remarkably inventive suggestions, telling whispered stories of my tenderness and passion, pledging her awed listeners to absolute secrecy.
“Of course,” her listeners said.
“Promise.”
“Cross my heart.”
“Trust us.”
Those vows of secrecy were shattered like dropped crystal within minutes of the telling, and the stories spewed in wildfire speed and in wildfire heat throughout Overton High School, tumbled into Bell’s Drugstore for afternoon tittle-tattle, circled the dance floor at Kilmer’s Recreation Hall on Friday nights, and eventually made their way to me in a flapping of tongues. I merely smiled when asked about them, and my smile became confirmation.
In those small daily dramas of imagination, with a chorus of whispering, unsuspecting players richly adding to the comedic splendor of our theatrics, the ad-libbed performances Marie and I offered were as grand as any story I had ever read. And, surprisingly, there was no torture from the football team or from anyone else. Everyone believed I had provided a balance for Marie’s delicately unpredictable nature, that my presence calmed her, and they believed also that Marie was making a realist of me. Teachers blushed with pride: the two brightest students in Overton High School were together, and that was good. Marie’s essay on the South, a deliberate propaganda piece written with the acid pen of sarcasm about an outsider being captivated by the grandeur of her new surroundings, won a competition sponsored by the newspaper. I recognized the sarcasm, found it deadly. My own entry, a humorous account of the culture of high school football, won second place. Only Marie recognized the humor.
“As principal, I predict great things from both these fine students,” O. J. Mayfield said in an assembly program before the entire high school. “Yes, I do.”
Marie and I ruled, commanded.
And every day was a day of possibility, a day of daring.
One morning, before class, she said to me, “Let’s do something spectacular today.”
“Let me think about it,” I told her.
During English, a dragging, tiresome discussion about Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, I committed the most foolish, childish act of my life, and as I think of it now, I believe it is a good account of how juvenile we were in those days.
It was a scene that could have been on the television program of the 1970s and early 1980s called Happy Days, the one with Ron Howard as Richie and with Henry Winkler playing the Fonz.
I asked Marilyn Pender if I could make an announcement.
“Why, of course, Cole,” she said sweetly.
I stood and walked to Marie’s desk. A hollow silence fell over the room.
“I just got to thinking about it, listening to Mrs. Pender talk about Shakespeare,” I said. I paused for the drama of the pause, cleared my throat. “That night we went out for the first time—when we were driving—I looked over at you, and I remembered that line out of Romeo and Juliet, the one about the light and Juliet being the sun.”
Sally, who was sitting behind Marie, giggled. Wormy whispered, “You idiot. What’re you doing?”
“Wormy, be quiet,” Marilyn Pender warned. “Go on, Cole.”
I reached for Marie’s hand and tugged her from her seat. She stood close to me, gazing tenderly into my eyes.
“Everybody’s got to have their sun, I think,” I said. “You’re mine. I want to give you this.”
I slipped my class ring from my finger and presented it to Marie. She held it in the palm of her hand, staring at it. Tears welled in her eyes. She lifted her face and kissed me tenderly on the cheek, then she turned and ran from the classroom. I could hear Marilyn Pender sigh.
“Cole, you fool,” Wormy whispered.
The class applauded.
That night, when I appeared at her house to study, Marie danced gleefully around me.
“That was great, Cole, great,” she cried. “Better than anything I’ve ever thought of. Did you listen? They didn’t make a sound when you gave me your ring. Not one. They didn’t even breathe. God, I thought old lady Pender was going to faint, or start crying, or have an orgasm or something. You were great. Maybe you should be an actor.”
“You weren’t bad yourself,” I told her.
“Did you like the tears?” she asked.
“Good touch.”
“I can do that anytime I want to. Always could,” she said triumphantly.
“Where’s my ring?” I asked.
“Here,” she said. She touched a soft spot on her sweater, low between her breasts. “It’s on a chain. I’ve got to keep it for a while, you know.” She smiled and cooed, “It’s in a safe place, Cole. A nice, warm place. But anytime you want it, all you’ve got to do is reach in and get it.”
“Come on, Marie, stop that,” I said irritably. “All right, you can keep it, but just for a few weeks.”
She laughed and dropped to the floor of her living room, in a circle of books and papers. “I’ll bet we could make the breaking up even better,” she said.
As absurd as we must have seemed in public, Marie and I were mostly quiet when we were alone, like library patrons pausing in long spells of reading for whispered questions across a desk. To me, Marie was the first person to give advice I wanted to hear, wanted to think about, wanted to heed. She believed absolutely in the power of a person to accomplish whatever that person wanted to accomplish, provided he or she had the discipline to work for it and the good sense to understand limita
tions. Everything else was foolish, a kind of hopscotch exercise of spending time. It amused Marie that people believed the stories she told of our relationship. Such people were as playable as paper dolls.
“Do you know, Cole Bishop, we’ll never meet such people again,” she said to me on Thursday night before the final football game of the season. “Nobody will ever eat out of our hands like this, and, God, I’ll miss that. Anytime I want to make Sally Dylan green with envy, I just drop a hint that you and I may have been talking about getting married.”
We were sitting in the kitchen at Marie’s house, drinking hot sassafras-root tea sweetened with honey, a brew taken from Jovita. The sound of television played dully from the living room, and an occasional muffled laugh could be heard from Marie’s parents. I glanced in horror toward the closed door. “Look,” I said fretfully, “you can’t go around saying that. There’ll be all kinds of talk. My mama and daddy would have a fit if they heard that.”
“Oh, Cole, it’s just a game. Sally stuffs toilet paper in her bras. She likes things like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like us getting married.”
“But it’s not true.”
“Cole, of course not. But Sally will never have anything in her narrow little world of lipstick and stuffed bras that even comes close to as much excitement as I’m giving her. Let her enjoy it, Cole. Let her talk about it when she’s fifty and fat and her hair’s dyed orange and she can’t get over being fifteen. She’ll need something, Cole. God knows, there’ll be nothing else. Maybe some snot-nosed grandkids. I feel sorry for her. She’ll need to remember us.”
“You don’t like anything about this place, do you?” I asked.
Marie tilted her head and thought about the question. She said lightly, “No, no I don’t. It’s amusing, but I don’t like it. If I didn’t have you around, I’d be bored to death.”
“Wait a minute,” I complained. “You’re talking about me like I’m Sally Dylan.”