Tied to the Tracks

by Rosina Lippi

  “I ran into Win Walker out in the parking lot,” he said.

  In her surprise Angie turned her head, and found he was so close that her hair brushed his face. He smelled of the sun on skin, of perspiration and wine, of soap, and of whatever it was that made John himself. It brought a flood of memories with it, associations that came to her in half images and bright colors and tastes and ripples that skittered over her skin like ants, made her want to jump up and run away.

  “What about Win Walker?” Her voice was small and creaky and unwilling, but she forced the words out.

  “Did you tell Win Walker we broke up that summer because I didn’t love you?”

  “Damn it,” Angie said, pulling away sharply. “Can’t a person have a private conversation in this town?”

  “Sometimes,” John said calmly. “This conversation, for example, is completely private.”

  Angie spun around and saw that the nurse had left the desk, that all the chairs in the waiting room were empty, and outside the windows the lights had gone on in the parking lot, and that was empty, too.

  She inhaled noisily. With her eyes closed she said, “This is a dangerous game you’re playing.”

  “Angie,” he said, his voice a little harder now. “I’ll ask you again. Did you tell Win Walker—”

  She cut him off with a short sound and then forced herself to look him in the eye. “I said that, yes.”

  He went very still. “I understand the need to explain things away, but, Angie, that’s too much. There were things we couldn’t get past—”

  “Like what?”

  He sat back. “You couldn’t get comfortable, I couldn’t figure out how to fix that. Maybe you didn’t want me to. But you can’t say that I didn’t love you.”

  Those words in John Grant’s voice, at a low whisper. Her whole body shook with it and her mouth was so dry, so very dry, that when she tried to speak, her voice whispered and cracked. But she swallowed and swallowed again until she could make herself understood.

  “Not enough,” she said. “Or you wouldn’t have let me walk away.”

  He had turned his face toward the wall. She could see him struggling, with disappointment, with anger, with resolution; she had no idea what he was thinking. Then he swung back toward her and Angie saw that under his tan he was pale.

  “Okay,” he said. “I don’t think it’s so simple, but I’ll let it go.”

  “You’ll let it go?”

  “I’ll concede the point, for now.”

  “And?” she said, suddenly very tired and unsettled.

  “And, I’ve got some things to straighten out before we can take this conversation any further. Before I can make you any promises.”

  Angie got up so fast that the chair rocked in place. She felt herself first flushing and then all the color draining out of her face, and all along her arms nerves were jumping. “What makes you think I want promises from you, you arrogant prick?”

  He stood, too, caught her wrist and pressed his fingers to her wrist. Then he gave her a grim smile.

  She pulled away from him. “Oh, please.”

  “You want me.”

  “Maybe I do,” Angie said, anger pushing up and out. “But that’s nothing an hour in bed wouldn’t satisfy.”

  “No,” he said, his expression utterly calm. “That wouldn’t be enough, and you know it. This isn’t about sex.”

  “So what is it about?” Angie said. “Just so we’re clear, you tell me exactly what this is about.”

  His expression went still, and she recognized something in the way he tilted his head: John struggling for footing in a conversation that was spinning out of control, looking for logic in turmoil, for reason in the chaos of what he was feeling. Now he would take a deep breath and collect himself, and then he would apologize to her for this outburst, this completely unreasonable and uncharacteristic outburst, and he would walk away to find Caroline.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her, but the embarrassment she was expecting to see wasn’t there. He looked resolute and calm, a man who has made a decision.

  John said, “I’m afraid, too, Angie. I’m scared out of my head. But I’m not going to let this get away from me, not again. Because this is our last chance, and I won’t screw it up again.”

  The anger in her belly flowed away from her, as hot as blood, and was gone, just that simply. A muscle in her cheek was fluttering. She blinked at him and then she nodded, because she could not have spoken at that moment, not a word.

  He managed a small smile. “Good. So I have some things to take care of, and then you and I will talk this through.”

  “Caroline.”

  He flinched. “I have to talk to Caroline. Yes.”

  Angie made fists of her hands and locked them by her sides, to keep herself from touching him. “John, listen to me. I can’t promise you anything, not on the basis of this conversation. Remember that before you . . . before you do things that can’t be undone.”

  “Too late,” he said, and caught her face between his hands to kiss her.

  She pulled back, a hand over her mouth.

  “What?” he said. “What?”

  “I’ve got chili breath.”

  He said, “I like chili.”

  She struggled a little at first, unsure suddenly of what she had wanted so badly just a few minutes ago. What she had wanted for the days and weeks since she had looked up to see him walking around the corner at Old Roses. Then the taste of him filled her mouth and her senses and he made a sound in his throat, a welcoming sound, a Come to me sound, and she gave up thinking completely.

  Angie put her hands over John’s where they cradled her face and ran them up his arms and twined them around his neck and kissed him back, openmouthed and deep and true. He held her so tightly that for a moment she couldn’t breathe, and then he held her away from him to look into her face and she still couldn’t breathe, didn’t know if she would ever remember how to breathe. He pushed her hair out of her face, and then he smiled.

  He said, “It won’t be easy, the next few days. But I’ll come to you when I’ve sorted things through. Maybe tomorrow I’ll drive Caroline up to the lake; Miss Junie will need to know about Tab. That would be a good opportunity”—he swallowed hard—“that would be the right opportunity to talk to her.”

  “I’m not holding you to anything,” Angie said. “I have no expectations. You could walk out of here and change your mind.”

  “Not going to happen,” John said. “You may not be around when I get back, but I am coming back. And this time I won’t let you run off until we know for sure, one way or the other.”

  Angie closed her eyes, and when she opened them Tony was standing a few feet away. It wasn’t often that she saw Tony without a smirk on his face, and just now that sight was unsettling.

  “Hey, John.”

  John ran a hand through his hair, cupped the crown of his head. “Tony. You in one piece?”

  “I signed myself out. Angeline,” he said. “Let’s blow this Popsicle stand, what do you say? Cab’s on its way.” He held up his cell phone.

  “I’ll be in touch,” John said. He touched her hand, ran a finger down her palm so that her muscles jumped. “Just as soon as I have news.”

  TWELVE

  There are many interesting folks here in Ogilvie, war heroes and politicians and men noted for their erudition and knowledge of our long and distinguished history. I hope you will not depend exclusively on sensational rumors and tall tales you must be hearing from the Liars (the name they claim with misplaced pride) who’ve got nothing better to do than sit outside the barbershop all day while their betters are working.

  Your name: A concerned citizen.

  Though she meant to sleep for most of Sunday, Angie found she was doomed to wakefulness, simply because her last conversation with John in the bright lights of the emergency room kept replaying itself in her mind, and as far as she could tell, there was no way to stop it. It was clear that she would hav
e to find another way to distract herself through the rest of the weekend and, if she could not put John Grant out of her mind, at least minimize his presence.

  Work, Angie told herself, was answer. She wrote long lists of things to do; she searched out her pens and color-coded and cross-referenced each item. First on her agenda was to organize all the materials that had been piling up on the kitchen table. On a raft made of paper she could float for a few days at least.

  “This is serious,” said Rivera when she came downstairs at three in the afternoon. “You bought a label maker.”

  Angie was sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by neat piles. She said, “Don’t step on anything.”

  Rivera tiptoed her way across the kitchen to the coffeemaker, boosted herself up on the counter, and sat there looking over what Angie had wrought. She wished, now, that she had picked another place for this project.

  “Where’d you go for your office-supply fix?”

  “Don’t yell,” Angie said. “Wal-Mart. I was desperate.”

  “I guess you were, to go thirty miles for paper and pencils and—oooh, nice paper clips.”

  “You’ll be glad when I’m done; you won’t have to go scrounging when you need something.”

  Rivera was fiddling with the filter. “I’m not complaining. An office-supply fix is better than getting drunk, any day.” She began to scoop coffee, yawning while she counted under her breath.

  Angie continued to work, but mostly she was anticipating Rivera’s next question, which would be aimed at the very heart of the things she least wanted to talk about. She would ask about last night, and Angie’s choices would be limited. She could refuse to talk about it, which was a kind of admission of its own that something big was going on, or she could spill the beans. She never had been able to lie to Rivera successfully.

  Rivera turned the machine on, and when it began to hiss she slid off the counter. Her bare feet hit the linoleum with a thump. Then she sat down and reached for a pile of paper and began to look through it. “Hand me a couple file folders,” Rivera said. “And the label maker, too, while you’re at it.”

  They worked together for a few hours, stopping to make coffee or grab something out of the refrigerator. Angie was surprised, and then relieved, and then pleased. It was a comfort to sit like this with Rivera.

  They talked very little, and when they did, it was work or Tony, who was still in bed nursing his concussion.

  “Who is this again?” Rivera asked, holding out a dog-eared black-and-white photo.

  “Mr. Reston from Reston’s Appliances.”

  “And he’s important to us how?”

  Angie picked up a pile of paper and looked through it. “I went to see him because of his entry in the memory book. ‘If you are going to go digging up old stories best left buried, I hope you’ll listen to both sides. If that’s not too much to ask.’ ”

  “Sounds promising,” Rivera said, perking up.

  Angie said, “His father was the one who kept turning Miss Zula and Miss Maddie away when they first tried to register to vote. He told me the story himself. Worried about how his father will look.”

  “He’s willing to go on the record?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Angie said.

  Rivera disappeared again to check on Tony, and came back with the news that he was awake and cranky.

  “On the mend,” she said. She went back to sorting through photos: a river baptism, a picnic, a pile of watermelons with a baby perched on top, Miss Zula with a small white dog, Miss Maddie with an elegant woman wearing a long mink coat. John Grant on the cusp of puberty, his face bland with boredom on a Sunday-afternoon visit, Rob next to him, his eyes crossed and his tongue hanging from the corner of his mouth. A woman standing behind them, dark haired and light eyed, her hand on John’s head.

  “John’s mother?”

  “Yup. That would be Miss Lucy.” And: “I’m taking this box out to the van.”

  She had been trying very hard to keep John out of her thoughts, mostly because Rivera could read sexual desire and frustration as easily as she could a fortune cookie. But then Rivera seemed fairly distracted herself. She was thinking about this, about how tired and strained Rivera looked, whether that came from last night’s party or if something else was wrong, and how likely that seemed, given her long silence, when the phone rang. They both jumped, and then Rivera reached over to hit the speaker button.

  “This is Win Walker. Is that Angie or Rivera?”

  “Both of us,” Rivera said. “You’re on the speaker.”

  “Hey,” Angie said, trying to sound friendly.

  “Harriet asked me to call you to let you know that Tab is still in the hospital, and he’ll be here for a few days at least. They’re talking about bypass surgery. But the Rose girls want to make sure everybody knows that the wedding is still on for Saturday, as long as Tab is on the mend.”

  Angie dropped her head. There was a swipe of dried mustard on the cuff of her jeans. How that had got there, she had no idea. She studied it with great interest while Win Walker went on with his report. She fought the urge to ask him whether he didn’t have other, more important phone calls to make, because she certainly had better things to do with her time.

  “Okay,” Rivera said finally. “Thanks for letting us know. Is the whole clan down there?”

  “Pretty much,” Win said. “Miss Maddie and Father Bruce are sitting with Harriet and the boys. Caroline and John went up to the lake to tell Miss Junie in person—”

  Angie let out a small sound, one that Rivera caught. She shot her a questioning look, which Angie pretended not to see.

  “—and Miss Zula has gone with them. You never know how Miss Junie will take the news.”

  Angie made another small sound; she couldn’t help herself.

  “Well, thanks again,” Rivera said, still looking at Angie very hard.

  “Hold on a minute, Miss Maddie wants to talk to you.”

  There was a scuffling and then Miss Maddie’s high, wavering voice came over the speaker.

  “Rivera? I wanted to remind you about our appointment, sugar. We need to get started with the picnic baskets. I hope you’re still planning on coming over to help? I’m going to drag Harriet out of the hospital. She needs a little time away.”

  “Of course,” Rivera said, pulling a face at Angie.

  “We’ll be there,” Angie said. She leaned over and turned off the speaker.

  For a long moment the only sound in the kitchen was the flutter of papers as the fan moved in its arc through the room.

  “Did you know about Caroline and John going up to the lake?”

  Angie busied herself with paper. “And if I did?”

  “Angeline,” said Rivera, lowering her chin in a gesture that meant she was ready to go to war.

  “Okay.” Angie let out a strangled laugh as she collapsed back to the floor. She looked around herself at the piles of file folders with their neat labels, photos clipped together by subject and year, a legal pad bristling with sticky notes, her index in a half dozen different colors, the logbook riffling in the breeze. She closed her eyes and counted to ten.

  She had imagined John and Caroline deep in conversation as the countryside flashed by, but now she had to give that up. Instead she saw Miss Zula sitting straight backed beside John, the head of her cane between her gloved hands and Louie at her feet. Caroline would be in the backseat, and what could the three of them possibly talk about? English department business? Grant deadlines? Tab Darling’s medical condition? The fact that Harriet had left him?

  She opened her eyes and saw that Rivera was still looking at her. She said, “You can’t make me disappear by closing your eyes, so you might as well tell me what’s going on.”

  “Everything,” Angie said. “Nothing.” Then she took another deep breath, and told Rivera what there was to tell.

  When she was finished, the story seemed outrageous, simplistic, laughable, but Rivera looked neither upset nor surprised
. For a moment she rocked herself, her chin pressed to her chest, and then she looked up.

  She said, “I suppose it was inevitable.”

  Angie blinked. She had been expecting hard questions about John, and what Angie wanted from John, and why she thought she might be able to get those things. She was only half prepared to answer such questions, and that made her nervous, because if she couldn’t make Rivera understand, she was lost.