I knew that it touched Laverne that I had thought to use a Miss Virginia recipe. “It was one of Mother’s,” I replied.
“Which one?”
“Tried and True Southern, I think.”
“That’s one of her best. I used to serve the layered salad to my women’s circle from the church when they would come for lunch. It was always a hit,” she said.
“Did you ever meet her?” I asked.
“Miss Virginia? No, she was much too old and ill to travel when I won the scholarship. I think she died the year after. I did get a card with her name on it and her signature, though. I saved it. I will show it to you the next time you come.”
“I heard she was a drinker.”
“Well, you never know a person’s life unless you are on the inside of it. But speaking of the scholarship, I do have something for you.”
“An autographed Miss Virginia.”
“Nothing so extravagant I’m afraid.” She handed me a small, unwrapped gift box. “But I did get this at the reception when I received my prize.”
I opened the box. Inside was a delicate, ornately decorated teacup and saucer. I lifted it out to examine the intricate pattern of flowers: pink chrysanthemums, white dogwood blossoms, red geraniums, deep blue hyacinth.
“It’s lovely,” I said.
“I don’t know that it is worth much,” she said. “But I thought you would enjoy it. I think it must have belonged to Miss Winifred Bramble. Her sister gave it to me.”
“Now there was a horror,” I said, and Laverne laughed with me.
“The reception was held out at the Bramble Farm. All the ladies from town were there. It was very fancy. Mama had bought me a new dress, of course. I had my hair pulled back with a ribbon. Miss Jewel was there. It was before she was taken away, but she must have been in her dotage because she thought I was someone she knew from years and years before. And then, she went into the kitchen and came back with this. She said, ‘Freddie would have wanted you to have this.’ I tried to refuse, but she insisted.”
“It’s an antique,” I said.
“But aren’t we all?” Laverne said. “Yes, like I said, I doubt that it is worth anything, but I have kept it all these years just the same. I thought that you might enjoy it—because of the flowers.”
“Yes,” I said. “I will certainly treasure it.”
Then she said something very curious. “You know, M.R., that Roger will be lost when I am gone.”
I thought about lying and saying she wasn’t going anywhere but a cruise to the Caribbean when she recuperated and got her hair grown in again, but knew I couldn’t. “You will be missed by many people,” I said.
“He will have the worst of it, though.” She took a moment, then continued. “He will need friends. I hope that you will be a friend to him.”
“I will do my best, Laverne,” I promised. I meant it, too. In another time, another place, I might have courted Roger after her death. I won’t say that a home at the entrance to the country club, cruises to the Caribbean, and hosting parties for the local elite were not without their appeal. He and I were certainly compatible, even if I didn’t find him desirable. That isn’t unlike a great many couples who live long and happy lives together. However, by the time Laverne passed, I had taken up with Lonnie, was consumed with him day and night, so Roger Simmons’s happiness wasn’t the uppermost of my concerns. As a tribute to Laverne, however, I did some of my best work for her funeral spray—a blanket of ivory and lavender roses with just a touch of Lunaria for drama. Christ the Shepherd Methodist church was packed for her service, and when I saw Roger at the front, he did indeed look like a man lost in the mist, unsure of his footing, as if the landscape of the world had come unstable, unfixed, unglued. I stood at the back with the gentlemen from Haywood Family Mortuary Services while Roger was guided to his seat by Laverne’s sister and her husband. He reminded me of an untethered dirigible, pilotless—left to the generosity of those below to hold the ropes and guide him to safety. On the way out of the church, he saw me and smiled—a faraway, vacant cast to his eyes. I realized he was either taking pills or had been drinking.
It was only a few weeks before my suspicions were confirmed. He showed up at the shop to thank me for the funeral flowers, and I could smell the bourbon on him. It didn’t take him long, however, to get to the real purpose of the visit.
“What do you say, M.R., that you and me go on a trip somewhere. Close up the shop for a few weeks and we can go down to Key West. Get a bungalow. Cut loose. Waste away in Margaritaville.”
“It’s not a good time for me to leave, Roger,” I said. “I have clients—and homecoming is just around the corner. I will have corsages to make for the queen and her court.”
“Fuck fucking homecoming. They can go over to Whiteville to get their fucking corsages.”
“Roger, it doesn’t work like that. If you want to go to Key West, then go. There will be many people down there who would be happy to spend time with you—to have you buy them a drink, take them to dinner if you are lonely.”
“But you are my friend, M.R.—it wouldn’t be the same.”
“People would talk. It would be a scandal. It would ruin your business.”
“I don’t give a shit about what people might say. I have lived my whole life doing what I was supposed to do. I was a big kid, so I played football. I don’t even like football. I married Laverne because she was the first girl who ever let me kiss her. And everyone in town said we were made for each other.”
“You had a good life with her, Roger. You know that.”
“I’m not saying I didn’t. I just wonder whose life I’ve been living all this time, because it sure as hell doesn’t seem like mine. When I married Laverne, it was a different time. Men married women. So what if I fooled around with the boys in the locker room—it was just boys having fun. And then it was the same thing at Wofford in the fraternity. But I married Laverne because it was what I was supposed to do. And you know what, M.R.—she knew about the men. She told me at the end that I needed to find someone who could make me happy. I told her that she was the only girl for me and would always be. You know what she said to that?”
“No.”
“She said, ‘I didn’t say it had to be a woman.’ She knew. She knew all the time.”
If only I had said yes to him then. If I had said, “Let me pack a bag and we will drive all night till we get to Key West. We will raise hell and drink rainbow-colored cocktails till we pass out. I will give you dollar bills to stuff into the underpants of dancing boys.” But Roger Simmons was a fat man, and I did not desire him. I had a young, strong mechanic who came to me when he wanted, and I was crazy for the very idea of him, crazy that if I was out of town (even to comfort an old friend) that it might disrupt, destroy my connection to Lonnie. I was selfish that way. I thought, Roger, you have made your bed. Now you must lie in it. You took all the sweetness that life has to give, the golden fruit, and now you must pay the piper. This is my chance to have what you have had, and I will not let you take that from me.
So, I sent Roger home that day alone, and when Lonnie showed up at my house late in the evening, I did not even give him time to take a shower before I pulled his pants off and laid him back on the bed. When I was done, there was a big oil stain on the sheet from his clothes. Black, treacherous, unrepentant.
It wasn’t long before people in town began to talk about Roger and the change in him. People noticed that he was drinking more. He often wouldn’t return to the office after lunch at the country club. Some days he did not open the office at all. Clients began to complain their affairs were not being tended to. There was a rumor that he had been pulled over for driving while intoxicated, but only given a warning when the officer saw who it was and understood Roger’s situation. There were times at night when the phone would ring and I was sure it was Roger, but I never answered. Then, one night, he showed up at my back door. It was early December, and he had a small gift for me: a bottle of
Kahlúa. It was unexpected and alarming, not just because he had never done anything like that before—he typically dropped by the shop during business hours— but because Lonnie was there, and Roger saw him, and he made the fatal mistake of recognizing Lonnie.
Lonnie was eating dinner at the kitchen table, wearing only a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, when I heard Roger’s knock on the screen door. Lonnie looked over his shoulder as if to say what the fuck is this nonsense, and I knew I had best keep whoever it was out of the house, and since the back porch separated the kitchen from the yard, I thought I might be able to do just that. But I had forgotten to latch the screen door that night when Lonnie came over, and before I could get to the porch, Roger was already lumbering inside.
Roger wasn’t stupid, and it didn’t take him long to figure out the “what’s what” of the situation.
“Oh,” he said, handing me the package. “I thought you might want to have a drink in honor of the season. But I see you are previously engaged.”
Lonnie didn’t say anything, didn’t acknowledge Roger’s existence.
“Roger,” I said, trying to step in between the two of them and back Roger out the door. “Why don’t you come by the shop tomorrow and we can talk. You shouldn’t just walk in people’s houses unannounced.”
“No, I guess not,” he said. I saw that he was embarrassed, humiliated by his intrusion.
“So, tomorrow then . . .”
And then, ever so slightly, the light came into his eyes. I knew what was coming but could not stop it.
“I know you,” he said. “You work down at Joe Boggs’s place. I’ve seen you there. Lon—that’s your name, right? I’m Roger. Roger Simmons.” Roger extended his hand to Lonnie.
Lon scooted his chair back so hard that I thought the legs would dig into the linoleum. “Well, I really don’t know who you are, mister, and you are interrupting my supper, so if you have half a brain, you will get the fuck out of here right now before I smash your face in.”
I could see that Lonnie had scared Roger, who didn’t need to be told twice to leave. “I’m sorry, M.R., I didn’t mean to intrude. I just . . .”
I turned Roger out the door and eased him down the steps. “Now, you run along,” I told him. “And you forget that you even came over here tonight. And I will call you tomorrow.”
The night was black without even the sound of a cricket to lift the darkness as Roger pulled out of the driveway. When I walked back into the house, Lonnie was standing with the door to the refrigerator open pulling a beer from the shelf, his back to me. I went to clear his plate from the table, but he stepped out, blocking my way.
“I guess you and me need to have us a talk,” he said.
I scraped what was left on his plate into the trash, dropped the plate into the sink, and sat down at the table to prepare myself for what was about to come.
It was well after dark when we pulled around to the back of Roger’s house. A small sliver of a new moon hovered far overhead, and there was a chill in the air that accented the Christmas displays on the homes we passed on the drive over. Perhaps it was just nerves, but every Santa, every Frosty, every Wise Man seemed more clearly articulated, more brightly illuminated. In contrast, I couldn’t help but notice the entrance to Roger and Laverne’s house was unadorned with even so much as a wreath or sprig of holly.
I had called Roger that afternoon as promised and arranged to meet with him later that night. I told him that I had a white poinsettia for his living room, and I told him that we would have a good long visit. What I didn’t tell him was how Lonnie had questioned me on so many details about Roger. Some of them were expected. Did Roger live alone? Yes. Did people know he was a queer? No. Some of them frightened me. How close was the next house? Maybe a quarter mile away. Did Roger keep money at the house? I didn’t know. Did Roger own a gun? Probably. Most everyone in town owned a gun. Even my mother had had a small pistol that she kept next to the bed beside her Bible. “Jesus can only help you so much,” she would say.
Roger responded immediately to my knock, turning on lights as he ambled to the back door through the darkened kitchen. When he saw Lonnie standing behind me, his face turned from anticipation to apprehension, and as he ushered us into the house, I could see he had some chips and dip open on the counter. It struck me as woefully sad, suddenly, that he would have gone to any trouble in preparing for my visit. Roger was dressed in his robe and pajama bottoms, his soft, pink flesh framed against the blue satin lapels of the robe. I wondered if he had meant that as a tease. If he had, it wouldn’t have done the trick. There are few things more unattractive to me than the piggish flesh of a fat man. Hairy men can get away with a few extra pounds. Hairless men look like swollen hot dogs steamed too long.
“I’m afraid I am pitifully underdressed,” he said. “M.R. didn’t tell me he was bringing a friend. I can offer you a drink if you want. I usually drink bourbon.” Roger gestured toward the liquor cabinet, an antique sideboard that Laverne had had refurbished as a bar.
Lonnie nodded. “Bourbon will do for me.”
I shook my head. Liquor was the last thing I wanted.
We took our places, Roger and I on the couch like awkward teenagers on a blind date, Lonnie leaning against the fireplace. He had showered for the longest time when he arrived at my house, refusing any offer of sex, refusing dinner as well, saying he would eat later. He had groomed himself meticulously, scrubbing all the dirt from his cuticles and from underneath his nails. Lonnie wore a pair of jeans that I had bought for him and his tight-fitting “Far from Finished” Dale Earnhardt T-shirt. His hair shimmered in the lamplight of Roger’s living room, and when I glanced at Roger, I could see that he was trying hard not to stare too intently at Lonnie. But I could also see that Lonnie was posing, posturing for him, wanting Roger to look. I recognized this stance—it was the same way Lonnie had moved about in the shop the first afternoon. I realized, a sudden sickening in my stomach, that he was posing for Roger. Was this some attempt to seduce him? Roger seemed just as confused as I. After what seemed an eternity of awkward silence, Roger offered the snacks we had seen in the kitchen.
“I ain’t hungry,” Lonnie said, “but you go ahead and eat if you want, M.R. I was thinking that Roger here might show me around the house.”
“I guess. If you want,” Roger replied. He appeared hesitant of what to do next.
“I do,” said Lonnie. “Since you want to be in my bidness so much, I thought it might be a good idea for me to see what all you’ens is up to. M.R., you can stay here.”
Roger rose from the couch, a bit unsteady on his feet. I wondered how much he had had to drink before our arrival or if it was just his nerves. “Where do you want to begin the tour?” he asked, a thin smile on his lips.
“Bedroom will do,” said Lonnie. And with that, Roger led Lonnie out of the living room and down the carpeted hallway. I could hear the bedroom door close, and I was left alone with only the ghostly footprints in the thick pile of the carpet, like a shadow in damp sand. I decided to have a drink after all and poured myself a tumbler of straight bourbon. I thought about tiptoeing down the hall to see if I could hear what was going on in Roger’s bedroom, but decided against it. Lonnie had told me to stay put, and put I needed to stay.
There are few things I hate more than a closed door. What lives behind it exists only in the imagination, and I tried hard not to envision what was happening back there. There were a few heavy thumps like furniture being moved. Was that a slap? A punch? Was he hitting him? Beating him? As bad as that idea was, it was actually a relief, since my chief fear was that Lonnie had taken Roger to the bedroom to make love. But how could he? It would make no sense. Or did he plan to have sex with Roger and then hold that knowledge over him as a way to blackmail him? Or even worse, would he expect me to share him with Roger?
I tried to divert my thoughts by studying the living room. For Laverne, decorating meant covering every square inch of space with a picture, a fabric, a flounce. Sh
e had used a neutral backdrop—plush, Saxony beige carpet, off-white, satin-on-twill brocade for furniture upholstery. She had accented the room with gilt frames and shining brass lamps, and over the fireplace hung the requisite family portrait: an oil painting of Laverne and Roger reproduced from a photo they had taken for the Methodist Church Directory. Laverne told me how she had seen it advertised on Home Shopping. All she had to do was send in the photo and the size painting she wanted and “Zap!” she had an original piece of art. Of course, it was all done by a computer, but still, it was totally customized. I looked at how the painting had washed age and care from their faces, and instead of a photographer’s backdrop, the painter had placed them in a rose-covered arbor. Even the flowers were golden yellow and a soft white light radiated from behind them. A hummingbird hovered over Laverne’s shoulder as if ready to burst into a spirited rendition of “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” I wondered if Laverne had made those choices as part of the custom job, and what other locations were available? What if I were to have a photo of Lonnie taken with me and then made into a painting? Could we escape together to a courtyard in Italy or a dew-covered meadow by a stream? Would we sit together under an arbor bathed in light?
Lovesick Page 27