by Robert Inman
Since then, nothing. And now, in the absence of a sign -- something more than Palmer’s hope and Sidney’s asking -- he was at a loss.
But more than what ? or how ? was why ?
There was Palmer, of course -- a good reason, but good enough? Easy for Palmer to want his parents back together, but then Palmer wasn’t the one who had to transact the messy business, and whether it worked or not, he would go on about his life. Palmer might suspect how the marriage had come unglued, but he didn’t know everything -- how the ground had cracked and the crack had widened so slowly but inexorably that neither of them had really seen how it was growing until it was suddenly a Grand Canyon of a thing. But when she had seen it, she had rejected him so suddenly and utterly that it had riven him with pain and humiliation. Hell yes, he was pissed off. And he would have to get control of that before he could even think of doing something, even if it was wrong.
So, for a good number of days, he did nothing. And he and Palmer didn’t talk about it. They just mowed grass.
*****
The air conditioner broke. It was a small window unit that he installed in the bedroom of the apartment, a used one that he had found in the classified section of the News and Observer. Will came home one evening about seven to find it blowing tepid air, the apartment stifling. He opened all the windows and borrowed a fan from Dahlia, but even by ten the place was still unbearable.
So he went for a walk.
Lights were still on in most of the houses along Dahlia’s street and its surrounding neighborhood, a warm glow across lawns and sidewalks. Through windows that weren’t shade-drawn he could see an occasional person moving about, the dancing colors of a television set. In his years at Channel Seven he had often wondered, as he drove back to the station at mid-evening, what people did with their nights, how they transacted the ordinary commerce of their private lives -- homework, sex, talk, fights, the drone of conversation competing with the music from a kid’s stereo, sitcoms, telemarketers. Of course there were other people like him who worked odd hours, who drove the streets at mid-evening and midnight, who lived slightly out-of-sync with the rest of the world. And there were a fair number who boarded planes at the Raleigh-Durham airport on Monday morning and didn’t return until Friday night. They, too, no doubt felt out-of-sync. But most people, he thought, created an existence out of the quite ordinary. He had occasionally wondered what it would be like to be ordinary, to be one of those people on the other side of the lighted windows. But then, there had been no use dwelling on things like that. He hadn’t been ordinary for a great long while.
But he was, even now, he thought to himself as he walked, anything but ordinary. He was an oddity, a man with a career gone suddenly and spectacularly belly-up, a failed ex-celebrity taking refuge behind a beard and glasses, and -- most oddly, to his mind -- a man alone. All of that separated him from those ordinary people muddling by in their ordinary lives, as much as his past celebrity had. He just couldn’t seem to get past those lighted windows, no matter what.
He walked for a long time, block after block stretching out until, he realized, he was in his old neighborhood and wondered how and why he had got there.
It was almost eleven when he turned onto LeGrand. He passed his house with only a glance, brief enough to see that Clarice’s car -- and only hers -- was in the driveway and that a lamp was on in the upstairs bedroom window, slivers of yellow through the plantation shutters Clarice had recently installed. Will had always insisted on blinds that would keep out the early sun so he could get a full night’s sleep. But Clarice rose early and went forth into the real estate world. Plantation shutters would suit her just fine.
He continued down the block to the intersection with Barden. He stood for awhile on the corner, started several times to cross the street, but then finally turned back and retraced his steps. He was on his fourth pass of the house when he saw the light in the upstairs window go off. He hesitated for a moment, then turned down the driveway and started toward the back yard.
The smell and sound of it almost overpowered him -- the gurgle and splash of the fountain, the sweet aroma of flowering things. Clarice had left the fountain undisturbed, but in the soft light of a half moon he could see that she had expanded and rearranged the flower beds. And she had ripped out all of the lariope that had made such a neat green border for the old beds.
She had hated the lariope, the way it ran its tendrils underground and popped up in the middle of the bed, choking out the flowers she had planted. They had argued about the lariope when he had first sprigged it years ago. He wanted neatness and order, some definition to the yard where the beds bordered his turf. One morning not long after the sprigging was done, he had come down to breakfast to find Palmer -- perhaps three or four at the time -- standing on a chair, gazing enraptured out the kitchen window. Will stood just behind and followed his gaze. A rabbit was nibbling on the tender lariope shoots, jaws working, great brown eyes darting furtively, ears alert.
He had opened his mouth to bellow when Clarice barked, “Will!” And he turned to see lightning bolts in her eyes. Say a word and you die.
Palmer looked up at Will. “Dad. See the bunny?”
“Yes, son. I see the bunny.”
“He’s having breakfast.”
So now Palmer was grown and the lariope was gone and the rabbit was no doubt long passed on to wherever good rabbits went. And Clarice had remade the back yard in her own image, unfettered by his obtuseness. With the beds expanded, there was considerably less grass. And she had planted a fair-sized tree of some kind -- apple or pear? -- next to the goldfish pond. It would eventually shade the small slate patio and the two adirondack chairs she had added.
And what was that over there beyond the goldfish pond? A bird feeder, for God’s sake, a metal contraption with a cantilevered perch, the kind that was supposed to be squirrel-proof. Even in the palest of light he could see that the grass underneath it was already becoming ragged and broken. He knew from experience how it happened. Birds perched on the feeder and pecked busily through the sunflower seeds, tossing three aside for every one they ate. They worked furiously with their beaks, extracting the meat and then dropping the shells, which clotted the turf and smothered the grass. And then chipmunks burrowed busily from below to feed on the uneaten seeds the birds had discarded. Before long, the ground beneath the feeder would look like the mostly-bald pate of a man who had undergone a disastrous attempt at hair transplant. But Clarice wouldn’t mind. She liked birds and flowering things.
He wandered about the yard for awile, examining all the changes she had made, and then he took a seat in one of the adirondack chairs. It faced the rear of the house, dark now. But with the half-moon there was enough light to see that the Christian Renovators had finished their work. What had been the breakfast room and kitchen now extended a good ten feet beyond the original. Wide steps led from the yard to a new and larger deck. The rear of the addition was a double glass door and a row of tall windows -- a different style from those on the rest of the house, but complementary. If he remembered the plans correctly, the kitchen was much bigger and included a more spacious breakfast nook and small seating area. There would be gleaming appliances, new cabinets and countertops, tile splashbacks, all of it color-coordinated in deep reds and off-whites.
The addition was well and admirably done. The Christian Renovators had cleaned up nicely after themselves. What was left of the back yard was both compact and transformed. A cozier place. A few short months ago it would have made him uncomfortable -- cramped and riot with green, growing things. But now, after mornings and evenings by the open window overlooking Dahlia Spence’s back yard, his perception had changed. This place was no longer his own, not in fact nor in feel. But it occurred to him that he could, if given the chance, be at peace with it.
A light came on in the kitchen. He froze, heart in his throat. He felt suddenly like a sneak thief, a peeping tom, a trespasser. Light splayed across the back yard. He would be cl
early visible from the house if Clarice glanced out the window as she moved across the kitchen. But she didn’t. She went instead to the counter and busied herself, and he realized after a moment that she was making a cup of tea, no doubt the herbal kind she liked, boiling a cup of water in the microwave, steeping the tea bag in a tall mug. The mug would be her favorite, of course, one that Palmer had given her for a birthday years before with WORLD’S GREATEST MOM imprinted on it. She was wearing a robe he hadn’t seen before -- dark blue with white piping around the lapels and sleeves. A good color. Clarice had always looked good in dark blue.
She came now to the breakfast table and sat, presenting her profile to the window. She cradled the mug in her slender fingers and brought it to her lips. He could almost feel the warmth of it. In the summer months, she liked to keep the house just barely above what would be uncomfortably cool at night. It was always something of a shock to him, coming in after midnight from Raleigh’s muggy warmth. He shivered as he undressed, and occasionally he complained, but to no avail. The house was hers and Palmer’s during the evenings while he was away at work, and after Palmer had gone off to college, it was just hers. So she kept the thermostat turned down and warmed her hands with a ritual cup of herbal tea just before she went to bed. He would find the cup in the sink when he came home. Always there, just the one cup and still-soggy tea bag. Everything else in the kitchen would be neatly put away in cabinets, cupboard, refrigerator, dishwasher. And Clarice would be burrowed down in the bed like a small animal, sheet and light blanket pulled up to her chin against the chill.
She drank again from the mug, and then she set it aside and spread open a newspaper on the breakfast table. She bent over it, hair falling about her face, studying it intently. The classified ads, of course -- people’s lives represented by the things they sought to buy and sell, the services they offerered or needed, the personal messages they broadcast hopefully to a nameless and faceless world.
He was struck suddenly by a sense of remorse so profound that he half-rose in the adirondack chair. He reached to her with everything in his being. He hung there in mid-reach, levitating, fingers stretching. But then he settled back with a slump as if a great icy hand had shoved him in the chest. He knew, as certainly as he had ever known anything, that he could not reach her.
This is what I lost. This, not all the other. And I went about losing it for a long time before it was suddenly gone.
He sat there for a long time watching her. After awhile she closed the newspaper, rose and took the cup to the sink. She turned to the doorway, her hand on the light switch, then hesitated for a moment and stared at the windows that looked out over the back yard. Did she sense his presence out here, could she feel the exquisite vibrations of his pain? He felt a sound rise in his throat, then catch and die as she flipped off the light, plunging the kitchen and breakfast room into darkness. Here in the back yard his eyes adjusted slowly to the return of moonlight. Just enough light to see the outline of the house that held the thing he had squandered. After awhile he rose and, though his heart could barely stand the strain of movement, went slowly into the night.
*****
Several days later, he spied her car in the parking lot of a wine shop. It was, unmistakably, hers -- Duke decal on the rear window, R for Realtor sticker on the bumper.
It was a Saturday afternoon. Palmer had gone to Hickory to see what of his relationship with Anna he could rescue. He had bumped into her in a supermarket in Chapel Hill. They had talked. She was wary, but she hadn’t objected when he asked if he could visit on the weekend. Palmer didn’t reveal much, but he sounded hopeful.
Will was by himself in the truck, headed back to the apartment after visiting Abner Dinkins, who was recovering from triple bypass surgery. He had taken a day off from work to be at the hospital for the operation. Dinkins had at first said he wouldn’t go through with the operation. Just let nature take its course, as Barfield Simpson had done. “The hell you say,” Will had said. “I don’t know anybody else who plays cribbage.” Dinkins had taught him the game and they played one night a week at Dinkins’ home or Will’s apartment. A couple of times, when they met at Will’s, Dahlia Spence had joined them. “It’s nice that you have your evenings to do things like this,” Dinkins had said the last time they played, the evening before the bypass operation.
It was Clarice’s car, all right. It was parked in the small lot just to the right of the wine shop. As Will’s truck drew even with the shop he saw the two of them through the big front window -- Clarice and Fincher Snively. They were in earnest conversation over a bottle of wine, which Fincher held up to the light. He said something, turning to smile to her. She laughed.
Will jammed on the brakes and made an abrupt turn into the parking lot, drawing an angry bleat of horn from the station wagon just behind him. He passed Clarice’s car and kept going to the rear of the parking area, wheeled into an open space, and killed the engine.
He sat there for a minute or so, wondering what the hell he was up to. He seemed to be on some kind of autopilot. He might get out of the truck and go into the wine shop and break a bottle of beaujolais over Fincher Sniveley’s head. What was it Palmer had said just a few days ago about Wingfoot and Peachy? “If he loves her, he ought to fight for her.” But how? How do you engage the enemy when the true enemy is you? And why, when the battle is long over? Fight for her? Easy for Palmer to say. He hoped Palmer had better prospects in Hickory.
So instead of fighting, he might walk into the wine shop and buy a bottle of beaujolais himself and pay for it at the counter and never give the slightest hint that he had seen Clarice and Fincher, just let them stare at him while he paid for his purchase and walked out and got back in his truck and left. Or he might do absolutely nothing. What he really should do, of course, was just leave, and do it as unobtrusively as possible so that neither of them saw him and there was no possibility of an awkward moment. That’s what he should do.
He got out of the truck and walked over to Clarice’s car. Her keys were in the ignition, all of them -- car, house, business, along with a tiny red Swiss Army knife Palmer had given her for Christmas several years ago -- all of it on an ASK A REALTOR key ring. One bad habit she hadn’t broken. She might have got rid of him, but she still left her keys in the car.
*****
He was sitting in Clarice’s den, watching a baseball game on television and drinking a beer, when he heard the doorbell ring. He let it ring a couple of more times. Maddox was pitching for the Braves. He had his fastball working well and his slider was downright wicked. It was just the fifth inning, but he had already struck out nine. He smoked another one past a Dodger batter, retiring the side. Will heaved himself off the couch and headed for the front hall. But he didn’t open the door, not yet.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
From the other side: “You know damned well who it is, Wilbur. Let me in.” “Don’t you have your keys?”
“Open the door!” she commanded.
He opened the door. She stood there on the stoop, eyes flashing. “I could have you arrested for automobile theft.”
“The phone,” he pointed, “is back there in the kitchen. By the way, nice job on the kitchen. I really like the new cabinets and countertops.”
He looked out at the driveway where Fincher Sniveley’s Jaguar was idling behind Clarice’s car. Fincher peered through the windshield. Will leaned out the door and waved to him. Fincher kept peering. Clarice finally waved him away and he put the Jag into gear and backed out into LeGrand. Clarice glared at Will for another moment, then pushed impatiently past him into the house. Will closed the door.
She turned on him. “You know that I’ve reported my car stolen.”
“No,” he said, “I didn’t know that. Have they put out an all points bulletin?”
She gave a little aggravated sound and headed for the kitchen. He went back to the den, picked up his beer bottle, and sat down on the couch. The Braves were at bat, nobody out and Chi
pper Jones on second. A double? Or a single and a stolen base? Chipper could run pretty well, at least for a white man. It might well be a stolen base.
She stood in the doorway. “You don’t watch baseball and you don’t drink beer.”
He held up his beer bottle. “I am a changed man, Clarice. With my altered circumstances, I’ve discovered the joys of idleness and dissipation. I’ve even learned to play cribbage. It is, by the way, pretty good beer. I tend toward the cheap stuff myself. But I see that someone has introduced you to the joys of a nice import. Next thing you know you’ll be driving a Saab. Like Morris.” He could have said ‘Jaguar,’ he thought. Like Fincher, he thought. But he didn’t.
She shook her head, then turned off the television set with an angry punch of finger and flounced down in a chair, well away from him. He finished the beer and set the bottle on the coffee table, being careful to wipe the bottom on his pants leg to make sure there was no moisture to make a ring. It was a nice new mahogany coffee table, a low, squarish thing with an open shelf underneath for books and magazines. It matched the nice new end tables and the nice mahogany cabinet of the big new television set. The sofa and chairs, upholstered in a rich nubby-weave red plaid, had mahogany trim. The old den furnishings had been oak. He had liked oak, solid and reassuring. But Clarice was more a mahogany sort of person and she had finally got her way about the den.
There was a soft, comfortable, Saturday afternoon silence about the house. If you listened carefully you could hear the soft whoosh of the air conditioning, the faint drone of a lawnmower over on the next block, the muted splash of the fountain out in the back yard.
“That was a ridiculous thing you did,” Clarice said. She sat primly in the chair, knees close together, hands clasped in front of her. She was wearing a smart khaki skirt and a loose-fitting cotton shirt, a paisley sort of thing. Her face was flushed, the color high in her cheeks. God, she looked smashing.