Duet for Three

by Joan Barfoot

  “Jesus, I better get going, I’m getting behind on my route,” he exclaimed, checking his watch.

  But the next morning, and the next, he paused for a cup of tea and a biscuit or a muffin. Every morning then, except for weekends — so easily it became a custom, to be depended on.

  June frowned unhappily, coming down to breakfast and finding him there. Whatever did she think was going on while she was still asleep? Lusty tumbles on the kitchen floor while bread loaves rose? But what Aggie appreciated about him was not his passion, but his dispassion. The cool ear with which he listened, his remoteness from a sense of judgment, his capacity to listen seriously as well as talk, and to see the absurd and funny side of certain events.

  What did they talk about? More or less everything, she thought, although she could not really tell, from his point of view, if it went that far. There was a gradual loosening in her kitchen for them both, a putting up of feet. Sometimes literally. They would sit on chairs pulled into the kitchen from the dining room, their feet hoisted with considerable difficulty onto the cash-register counter, companionable once the effort was accomplished. “Never mind, June,” Aggie told her disapproving daughter, “it gets the blood moving to the brain. So we can be as clever as we think we are.” She and Barney grinned at each other, and June sighed her way off to school.

  Like her, Barney spent time reading, although without her keenness, more for entertainment. He liked English novels best, he said: found their quality of dry wit appealing.

  “I was in awful trouble when I quit the shoe store. Boy, my wife was mad.” He sounded, however, proud.

  “Well, she would be, wouldn’t she, with children to support. I’d have been pretty unhappy, too, if my husband came home and said he’d upped and quit teaching. What would I have done?”

  “Started a bakery. Just what you did.”

  “Not likely. He wouldn’t have allowed it. He’d have said it was demeaning or some such.”

  “Alice didn’t think that, but she was sure as hell mad.” It was obvious from the way his face softened, however, that his marriage was based on fondness. His body drew energy, it seemed, from mentioning his wife.

  “The shoe store was bad enough all by itself, but it was being inside all the time, too. I missed being outdoors more. And at least this job has that, and a connection with farming, selling things that come from a farm. Anyway,” he laughed, “I get to meet so many women.”

  “I bet.” But Aggie knew that he did not stop elsewhere on his route.

  She also understood that they were friends, which was a new and interesting experience, and not at all the same as a husband, even the one she might have imagined.

  Barney talked about his courtship, and getting married, and it sounded much like Aggie and the teacher, except of course for the outcome. “We were both farm kids,” he said. “Gosh, she was pretty. I could never think why she’d agree to marry me, but she did. And then she didn’t say a word except yes when I said let’s move to town. I wasn’t much interested in farming, and anyway I had two older brothers and there wasn’t going to be much left for me there, so I thought, okay, we’ll have a whole new life, try something different. And she always went along, except for being so mad when I quit the store.”

  “Do you miss the farm? I do, sometimes.”

  “Sure, I always have. But I notice neither of us has missed it enough to go back, have we?”

  She could, she thought, tell him just about anything: even the teacher, although she stumbled a little, trying to find words to describe his distaste for her body. “And you know,” she said, “I didn’t look like this then. There was nothing wrong with me. I think I was even attractive, maybe.”

  “He sounds nuts to me.” Scrutinizing her features, dwarfed now by surrounding flesh, he said, “I bet you were pretty. Actually, you know, you’re pretty anyway. You have a nice face. You’d be a knockout if you lost weight.”

  Now, why could she take that from Barney without a flicker, but lash out at June for a similar suggestion? Because, she supposed, June seemed to have a selfish stake in her appearance, while Barney’s interest was detached: a mere assessment that didn’t signify much, one way or another.

  So she could say, without any undercurrent or hidden meaning, “I don’t trust any more. Things didn’t turn out to be what they seemed. So I could never have married again, even if there’d been some prospect of it, which is none too likely anyway.”

  “Why isn’t it likely?”

  “For one thing, who’d want all this?” patting herself. “And then, I’m a bit prickly with it. Anyway, I never meet any men.”

  “Thanks very much,” but it was a joke.

  She did wonder, though, if something had been disconnected in her body by the teacher, killing desire. She could look at Barney and feel no attraction of that sort at all, no warmings or stirrings except toward his presence, his gesturing hands, and the sound of his voice.

  But no, she could feel her body away inside now, still wanting, and could imagine a man who might draw her that way. It just wasn’t Barney. And those small desires weren’t urgent at all. She was quite used to unresolved wanting, it wasn’t important any more.

  She could even talk to him about that: the lack of desire for him. “I know,” he said, “it’s interesting, isn’t it? I’m the same. But there’s still something different about talking to you than to a fellow. It’s easier with you, in a way, and we talk about more things. It’s sharper, you know what I mean?”

  She thought that, yes, there was more spice in this friendship with a man than there might have been with a woman. Maybe because so much was unknown. Talking with the women in the shop later in the day, there was a kind of code, an underline of shared knowledge, even if experiences might be different. There was a common language that left a great many things assumed but unsaid.

  She and Barney, though, had to spell things out for each other, which required care and concentration. The detail needed, the effort at recollection, had a clarifying effect. During his morning visits, which lengthened to an hour some days, she stepped with severe attention through what she knew of her life so far. The most difficult subject was June. It was hard, admitting a failure of maternity. “She’s a lot like her father,” she said, hoping that would explain a great deal.

  But it didn’t, apparently. “How?” he asked, so she showed him photographs and tried to express the character of thin dryness she felt her husband and her daughter shared.

  He showed her pictures of his three big sons and of his plump and beaming wife. “That’s Ben, the oldest, then John and young Bob.” The boys surrounded and towered over Barney’s wife. She looked like a happy hen, protected by these unlikely large chicks she had managed to raise.

  “Oh, how nice,” Aggie said. “What a nice family you have,” and it never occurred to her to resent this, or to be envious.

  “They are nice,” he agreed. “Good kids. But they’re boys, you know, they’re trouble all the time, one thing or another. Just scrapes, thank God, never anything serious. It’s more mischief and awkwardness, not badness.”

  “Just be glad,” Aggie grinned, “that you don’t have to live with goodness.”

  “She does seem to be pretty straight and narrow, your girl. Sure doesn’t like seeing me here, anyway.”

  Well, yes, no doubt; but Aggie was surprised by a twinge of irritation. One thing for her to criticize her daughter, another for him. A friend was one thing, but when it came down to it, there were only she and June, and he was an outsider in that, after all.

  The day she turned forty-two, he arrived with a birthday cake. “Coals to Newcastle, I know,” he said, “but I didn’t want you making your own. Happy birthday.” It became a custom, then, each year. For his birthdays, she baked him something special, although not necessarily a cake, since he’d have that later with his family. Sometimes a candle stuck i
n an oatmeal cookie or a muffin.

  He always caught her at a good time of day, when she was winding up the first round of labors, the bread-kneading and batter-mixing and popping things into the oven, and not ready yet for the next round, when the shop would open. Sometimes they’d get talking and he’d say, “Damn, I hate to leave already but I have to. Remember, so we can pick it up tomorrow.” But, to be honest, it was a good thing he couldn’t hang around, had to leave and get on with his job. Otherwise they might have gone on too long, and he might have gotten in her way. Sometimes that happened with women who weren’t in any particular hurry, and they’d stay on and on, keeping her from her work, or a book she was trying to finish.

  Another good thing was that their lives, hers and Barney’s, did not overlap. His wife did not shop at Aggie’s bakery, and Aggie was not invited to his home. All they had was an hour every morning, like a jewel in a glass box. Within that transparent case they sustained attachment; a fondness that, she thought, was sturdier than any romance.

  When Herb arrived on the scene, she discussed him with Barney, and her surprise that the eye of such a man would light on her daughter. “Do you think she’s pretty? It’s so hard for a mother to tell.”

  “I don’t know about pretty, exactly, but sure, I can see she’s attractive in a way. Me, I like a woman with more meat on her bones, but plenty of men wouldn’t agree.”

  “I worry, you know. She’s had no experience.”

  Barney only heard about Herb, never met him. Aggie tried to describe a man who told jokes he’d heard on the road, sometimes not especially nice ones, although that was neither here nor there, but followed them by slapping not only at his own thigh, but at June’s, or her own. A man who liked his pleasures shared. So what did he see when he looked at June?

  Aggie was afraid he saw virtue. For all that Herb was charming enough, she never thought he was particularly bright. He might well be one of those men who married virtue, whatever their own diversions. She hoped he didn’t see June as someone he could mold.

  “It’s nice,” she told Barney during the courtship, “how happy she looks sometimes. Maybe she’s mellowing.” Aggie thought there were possibilities in the way June leaned toward Herb when they sat together on the front-room couch, or the way her arm might touch his shoulder when she poured his tea.

  Equally, however, there might be portents in her tiny frowns when he swore, or the little sighs and pursings when he made drinks for Aggie and himself. June had a habit of spreading her disapproval around, like a deodorizing household spray.

  Maybe Herb didn’t notice. Maybe he thought that someone wound so tightly would unwind dramatically, given the licence. Really, though, Aggie couldn’t see it. “What do you think, Barney? Should I say something to her?”

  “Would she listen?”

  “Not likely.” He spread his hands and shrugged.

  Nevertheless, she baked a wedding cake and invited guests and, hoping for the best, kept her hands occupied during Barney’s visits, stitching for June a nightgown that, if she were so inclined, should invite passion. Barney held up the material and whistled at the sheerness.

  “I know,” Aggie said, “but you won’t be able to see through it really, when it’s falling in folds properly.”

  “I”, he laughed, “don’t expect to be able to see through it under any circumstances.”

  Some time later, when she asked June why she married such an unlikely man, June snapped, “To get away from you.” But that wasn’t true, she could have left at any time. Herb might just have been the first to pay attention, and Aggie could certainly understand how that might happen.

  Sometimes after the wedding, on a Saturday night when Herb was home, she was invited for supper. She could see that June no longer leaned over him to pour his tea, but not much else. She didn’t feel sparks between them, but then thought that the electricity she might have recognized would be the silent, shooting type of her own time with the teacher, and she wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

  There was in any case little point in worrying — or time. She had her own business, her books and stories, facts and speculations, quite a few grey hairs, and, in recent years, a friend. She got bigger and bigger. She felt, sometimes, as if her strong and rolling body might contain whole towns and cities, countries and continents, of characters: her own and others that she learned about. Memories as well: the child she had dreamed of still inside her, and a tiny figure of the teacher. Certain smells lingered. Her time to herself was in the very early morning, before Barney came rolling up, in a small truck now instead of behind the horse, and in the evenings. In the early morning, she was busy getting ready for the day. At nights she read, and soaked in the bathtub with a book and perhaps a rye, now that Herb had introduced her to that pleasure. She no longer felt especially uneasy at such a relatively calm and comforting life. Barney seemed to have made that difference, rounding it out. The trick, however, was not to fall into mere habit; to keep alert to possibilities, and the continuing need to weigh them.

  If her life bore some resemblance to a cocoon, well, it was an extremely busy one; and did she not deserve a certain amount of pampering? Anyway, who knew what might emerge at some point, a new creature struggling free.

  The new creature turned out to be Frances; struggling so hard to be free that June, for whom, Aggie sighed, nothing went smoothly, had to be opened with a knife.

  And Aggie discovered love, an abrupt and puzzling emotion.

  She tried to describe it to Barney. “I had tears in my eyes, real tears, when I saw her at the hospital. I can’t think when anything like that has happened before.”

  “I know. I felt something like that when the boys were born.”

  “Did you make promises? It sounds ridiculous, but I stood there thinking about making sure she’d never come to grief, that I’d love her so much she’d never be hurt. Is that silly?”

  “Not silly. But not very likely, either.”

  He was right, of course. There is no such thing as perfect protection, and no one could have kept Frances behind glass.

  Aggie’s love came unexpectedly only to her, took only her breath away. Frances, never knowing any different, took it entirely for granted. And June was understandably a little bitter. Was this not what Aggie should have felt, looking down at her own daughter at her breast? She might claim to have loved June then, but she couldn’t deny it was nothing like this. And, further back, when she had thought she might love the strange and knowing teacher, it had only been a shadow, something hunched in the dark. This love, now, was in full light, a clear, distinct, distinguishable form, piercing, sharp, and occasionally painful.

  She happily sacrificed some of her hours of quiet solitude to baby-sit when Herb was out of town and June wanted to go to church. In June’s absence, she whispered pledges of love, wise advice, an unjudging ear, to Frances. She imagined this as something like an addiction, to something even stronger than food: a powerful, illicit craving. She trembled at the thought of never having enough. She bored, and knew she bored, her customers and even patient Barney, showing pictures of Frances, but couldn’t help it. She was amazed at something she couldn’t help.

  She thought she could now discern the difference between individual days filled with small but significant pleasures, and being able to make out a future. She looked at Frances and saw someone who would, with luck, see this century turn into the next. She herself, born not so long after this century began, would be gone by then. June linked the centre. Aggie saw them stretching on and on. It put things in a different light, a series of lights.

  She wanted not only different circumstances for Frances, freer than her own and with a universe of choices, but also that Frances herself should be different: more refined and alert, braver and lighter.

  Even the ants and the bees, scurrying in their preparations for generations that would scurry in their preparations
for the same end, made more sense than they used to. It was, she told Barney, a point of view that had a certain amount to be said for it, and he laughed.

  Worried that she might forget, she was determined to pay attention: to burn pictures into her memory so vividly that they would never turn brown and fade, like real ones. To see the particular shade of dusty blue of a small pair of overalls, or the embroidered flowers across the narrow child-chest. The pleased concentration and determination as Frances’s arm pumped, up and down, up and down, faster and faster, the handle of a top, so that the circus figures painted on the side whirled, blurring. A laughing face, tempting playful eyes glinting above a mouth ringed with Sunday breakfast porridge. Warmth and softness in a small body curled into a lap, light and limp with trust. Sitting on the back step, bent over, earnestly picking rolls of black dirt from between her toes, rubbing at the skin until it was pink and raw. A plump tummy in the bath, and an inquisitive finger exploring the belly button and diving into mysterious places between the legs. Instants of pain: on her tricycle, hair flying, turning to wave back proudly, running smack into a curb. Frances always looked more startled than hurt when she fell down, or touched a cake pan that hadn’t cooled from the oven. Pain seemed to surprise her.

  These pictures, as handy as a photo album, were also better. There was motion in them, a leading up to and a falling away from, with the instant of clear picture, unposed, in the centre. But while they did not fade or turn brown, time still curled them around the edges, turning them into more a memory than an event.

  “You spoil her,” June accused. “You have to say no sometimes.”

  Let other people say no.

  Looking into Frances’s eyes, Aggie saw her own. She remembered Frances’s dark and curly hair from pictures of herself. She admired the child’s appetite, and her curiosity. Aggie, free to be foolish, took her out to build a snowman, and found pieces of coal for the eyes and mouth and a carrot for the nose.

  They played. “You count, Grandma, and I’ll hide.”