The Sheep Walker's Daughter

by Sydney Avey

  “Yes, well, I made a promise to your mother that I would never try to see either one of you. She needed to make a new life for the two of you. I understood that.”

  I wait for him to go on.

  “But she’s gone now.” He sounded sorrowful and hopeful at the same time.

  “So, would you be willing to see me?”

  “I would welcome the opportunity.”

  This is more than I had hoped for. I don’t want to say anything to cause him to change his mind, so I offer to come to him. He seems genuinely pleased and suggests Memorial Day weekend. That seems a bit far out to me, but he says something about doctor appointments and a Basque festival.

  After the call, it’s time to dress for my weekly dinner date with Roger. I’m shimmying into a black slip, fastening my stockings underneath and rehearsing the feel of his fingers against the back of my neck as he helps me into my coat. This is the first time I’ve admitted to myself that dating is what Roger and I are doing. Of course, I don’t know what he thinks we’re doing. Maybe he’s just being uncommonly nice to a coworker who’s standing on the precipice of unemployment. But I’d bet good money he feels the same tug in his gut that I do when he lays his arm across my lap reaching for a map in the glove compartment without apologizing.

  Office gossip has it that he isn’t married. He lives in the town where he grew up, Redwood City, in the house he grew up in. That raised my suspicions until he mentioned that his mother and father were buried in Union Cemetery and that he’d moved into the family home to fix it up for sale. He’s been at GE since he graduated from Cal Berkeley, except for time served in the South Pacific on an aircraft carrier. He’s forty-four, two years younger than I am, a shameless fan of the San Francisco Seals baseball team, and a private pilot—he flies a little Ercoupe that he’s been trying to get me up in for weeks now. He’s never mentioned any women in his life except a sister on the East Coast, who is the mother of a niece and nephew he’s very fond of. If he were a pedigreed puppy, I would adopt him and take him home. But grown men are a little harder to accommodate into your life.

  At dinner I tell Roger about my plans to drive to Bakersfield in May.

  “Dee,” he says, with barely contained excitement, “let me fly you there!”

  I start to sputter.

  “No, listen.” He pulls out a ballpoint pen and begins to draw a map on his napkin. “We can fly east over the Coyote Hills through the Sunol Pass, over the Altamont Hills and down the Central Valley. It’s a two-hour flight.”

  I open my mouth to protest.

  “An old college roommate of mine owns a ranch in Bakersfield. He has plenty of room to put us up.” I raise an eyebrow, but he keeps going. “And he can lend us a car.”

  “How do you think this would play back at the office if it got out?” As it is, we’ve been careful not to discuss our dinner dates within earshot of anyone in the department. He deflates like a cheap balloon. My vocal chords tighten. I raise my hand to my throat and run my fingers over the soft skin under my chin. This man has just offered me champagne and I’ve ignored the crystal flute and headed for the water cooler.

  Go after something you want. I want this man. I shake my head, reach for my wine glass, and raise it slowly and deliberately to my lips. Then I shoot Roger a sexy look over my cabernet. “Let’s do it.”

  We discuss the trip all through dinner. Back in the car, Roger reaches for something in the backseat and drops it in my lap.

  “I have a present for you.”

  “Roger,” I protest, tearing into the brown-paper wrapping. “Roger!”

  “It’s the Canon IIB.” And then he launches into a discussion of viewfinders and interchangeable lenses.

  I’m speechless. The words I can’t accept this gift enter my mind, but only for the briefest of moments. This is something I never would have bought for myself, although after finding the cash bundled in the back of Leora’s closet, I certainly could have. I’m still trying to work out why my mother maintained the charade that she had no money when she had thousands of dollars shoved in purses and stacked in shoe boxes.

  I measure the weight of the camera as I turn it over in my hands. “If I can master this, it will take me new places in my artwork.”

  “You can bring it along on our trip and we’ll play with it.” Roger gives me a wink and a crooked smile as he places his hand over mine and gives it a squeeze. What else does he want to play with on our trip? I thought our relationship was going to grow slowly. He’s only ever given me a respectful kiss goodnight. It’s a camera, I tell myself, not lacy black lingerie.

  Tonight Roger doesn’t wait for a kiss at my front door. He pulls me over next to him in the car and kisses me slowly and deeply, lips parted, his mouth traveling down my neck, his fingers playing across my collarbone and straying just to the top of my breasts. I’m wearing a push-up bra that has positioned my breasts to receive this attention with enthusiasm. His breathing deepens. I look up into those deep-set brown eyes. His black curly hair is loosening from the bit of Brylcreem he uses to keep it in place. Nothing is in its usual place tonight. If I don’t put a stop to this right now, Mr. Roger Russell is going to get it all—right here and right now—for the price of a camera. To my surprise, he stops first.

  “Let’s not do this in a car in your driveway,” he murmurs softly into my ear. I’m slightly offended that he assumes that I was about to throw myself into the backseat of his car like a teenager. We both sit up and adjust our clothing.

  “This feels like being back in high school,” I say, “not that I did a lot of this sort of thing in high school.”

  “Me either, but that’s a conversation for another time. It’s late and I need to get going and let you get some sleep.” He gets out of the car and comes around to open the door for me while I gather up my purse and my new camera. I thank him for dinner and the gift, give him a quick kiss goodnight, and send him on his way.

  I had not imagined I would ever have to puzzle out the politics of sex again. I was what they call these days a “technical virgin” when I married Henry. We’d done everything but. We were faithful to each other. During the Depression and the war, the long separations and the short times we lived together, our energy was consumed with getting through the bad stretches.

  After Henry died, I figured that this part of my life was over. But it’s the fifties and things are different. There is such hope in this country now. People have done without so much for so long that they are eager to rebuild their lives and enjoy all the new gadgets science is developing for our modern society. Tonight has shown me that this part of my life is not over. Still, I’m a woman living alone, thinking more about God, and I need to be cautious about what I do.

  Sunday morning I go to church. Before this, I never saw the point of going regularly. The few times Leora made any reference to God, she spoke of “the man upstairs.” That gave me the feeling that God is someone who will have to be reckoned with at the appropriate time. He’s keeping the books on my life and someday he will reconcile my account.

  When I was a teenager, I sometimes went to Catholic Mass with my girlfriend Betty. She religiously took confession every Saturday morning and topped it off by attending Sunday morning Mass to atone for what she did on Saturday nights with her boyfriend. We ate lunch at her house afterward, and she would share the thrilling details of what she and her boyfriend had done. There is nothing I read in True Confessions that I didn’t hear from Betty first.

  I’m not sure what to expect at St. Matthew’s. I want to sit in the back of the church and let the liturgy find its way through my scattered thoughts. Iban Moraga, Pilar Ibarra, and Roger Russell tumble over one another in my head. Father Mike proceeds down the aisle waving a censer this way and that. The sweet smell of incense fills the air and calms me. The words blessed, peace, grace, mercy and love echo in my heart, and Iban, Pilar, Roger, and even Leora take a comfortable seat somewhere in the back region of my brain. We sing hymns that call to mind
the Psalms I have been reading.

  Even confessing my sins brings me peace. I am beginning to discover that I have a lot of sins to confess, and it has nothing to do with what Roger and I did in his car last night. It has everything to do with the lifetime of grievances I have nurtured against Leora for her subterfuge and her lies. Even her protestations of poverty—Henry and I bought her a house when we couldn’t think of buying one for ourselves because we thought she had no money. I laughed and laughed when I found that small fortune in her closet. Then I sorted and counted the bills, and deposited them in the bank.

  I have spent so much time trying to imagine what she was hiding all those years about my father’s family. But I think I’m ready to let it go. Let something go and get something you want. Uncle Iban will have a story to tell me. I will let what he tells me fill in the missing pieces of my life and I will be satisfied. I don’t want to spend any more time poring over old census documents and newspaper records in the genealogy library trying to figure it all out.

  I will use Leora’s life savings to get the things I want. It turns out that I am like Leora in more ways than I thought. I will find a new career. I will seek out adventures. Unlike Leora, I’ll seek adventure in love.

  The service is over. I can’t tell Father Mike I enjoyed his sermon. I didn’t even hear it. I do shake his hand at the door and tell him I enjoyed the experience. He gives me a hearty pat on the back and moves me in the direction of the coffee and cookies. Today I found a sanctuary, a place to reflect. I leave, more in command of my spirit than when I came. I will come again.

  I’m in the process of moving out of the front room everything that doesn’t support my artistic endeavors. First to go was the telephone table and its central distraction, the telephone. I gave the table to a thrift store and plopped the telephone down on my kitchen table. The only furniture besides the piano I’ve left in this room is the davenport. I love to stretch out on its roomy cushions and lean back into the pillows I’ve piled at each end. When the days warm up, I can loop one leg over the low back and set my other leg on the floor to let the breeze from the open door cool my thighs.

  I wheeled the TV into what used to be Leora’s bedroom. It is now my sitting room, my reading room, and my TV room. I’ve never lived in a place that I could decorate solely to my own taste. What a jolt to discover that, like my mother, I have made no accommodations for guests.

  The piano broods in the corner. It hasn’t been played in years, not since Valerie practiced on it when she visited her grandmother. I have nowhere to move it though, and no desire to make a decision about its next life. It does make a handy place to display my sketches and collages.

  I am engaged in sorting through photos to place in a collage when a sharp rap on the screen door startles me. I look up and see a woman about my age wearing smart red capris and a candy striped crop top. She calls to me through the screen.

  “I am so sorry to bother you. I’m collecting in the neighborhood for the American Heart Association.” She laughs. “I’m the one who couldn’t figure out how to say no when they called. A dollar would be fine.” I invite her in and go to get my purse.

  “I should introduce myself,” she says as she takes my dollar and hands me an envelope to fill out. “I’m Laura McMillan. We just moved into the old Ghirardelli place on the corner.”

  All the houses in this neighborhood below the golf course were built as weekend cottages for people in the city to get away from the fog and enjoy a summer picnic by the creek. That particular house was the vacation home for the ten Ghirardelli children. They even had a pony. Now that the commuter train stops at the corner crossing, people are moving down from San Francisco and staying all year. Farm animals aren’t as numerous, although the occasional rooster still runs in the road.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Laura laughs. “We must have a passel of kids to want a house that big, but we don’t.” She offers no further explanation. “Say, is this an art studio?”

  Mrs. McMillan is what my mother would have called a bit forward, but there is something refreshing about her. I follow her as she walks around the living room admiring everything she sees.

  “Oh, just look at this.” She stands in front of a series of collages I have arranged on top of the piano. “They are beautiful.” I detect just the slightest southern accent in her speech. North Carolina, I’m betting.

  “And what a sweet piano!”

  This gives me an opportunity to hold up my end of the conversation. “Do you play?”

  “I used to, but I don’t get much chance to anymore. I had to leave mine in Raleigh when Fred took a job at IBM.”

  “Well, this piano never gets played and it is probably badly in need of tuning, but if you ever want to come down and play it, I’d enjoy hearing the music.”

  “Really?” She looks as if I have just offered her the moon. “Oh, that is so nice of you. I would just love that. I brought all my music with me. I have some George Gershwin tunes I was working on. Do you like him?”

  “You can play Gershwin? You are welcome anytime.” We make arrangements for her to practice at my house on Tuesdays and Thursdays, right after I get home from work.

  “Do you happen to play bridge?” she asks. “

  As a matter of fact, I do, but it’s been awhile.”

  “I have a bridge group that meets on Wednesday afternoons at my house. We’re adding a second table and we need a fourth. Oh, but you work, don’t you.” She gives her short blond bob an imperceptible shake.

  “Not for much longer, I don’t think.” I promise to let her know when I’m available and she gives me a hug.

  “I’m so glad to have met you. We seem to have so much in common.” And then she’s out the door to finish her canvass of the neighborhood.

  Have I been a little too quick to let the likes of Laura McMillan into my life? But a woman friend outside of work might be just what I need. My probation is up tomorrow. I am due in Mr. Bradley’s office at eight AM.

  9 — Dolores, Stops and Starts

  H Dolores I

  9

  Stops and Starts

  I ’m standing outside Mr. Bradley’s door waiting to be summoned. Elaine looks up and gives me a broad smile.

  “So what’s this I hear about you and our very attractive Mr. Russell?”

  Elaine poses as harmless, but she has a nasty bite. She curls in her corner, watching the web she has spun. She sucks the juices out of her unsuspecting victims, snaring tasty bits of gossip that she turns into poison and shares with the chosen members of her A list. Mr. Bradley is at the top of that list.

  “I don’t know Elaine, what are you hearing?”

  She laughs. “Oh, I’m hearing about intimate dinners for two, expensive gifts …”

  “I can’t imagine how you are hearing that. Is Mr. Bradley about ready for me?” I turn my back on her and move to the window. I focus on trying to pick my car out in the parking lot several stories below. My face is burning.

  “You know, dear, you might want to take a little advice from someone who has your best interests at heart.” She rises from behind her desk and an assassin’s breath prickles the hairs on the back of my neck. “Office romance is against company policy.” She is standing behind me now.

  Mr. Bradley’s door opens. “I’m ready for you now, Dee.”

  I walk through the door. Whatever Elaine thinks she knows, she has shared it with her boss.

  I look at that devil of a chair waiting to swallow me up and move instead to the small conference table in the corner. I drag a smaller chair over to his desk and perch on it. He looks annoyed but says nothing. He makes a show of looking at my file.

  “I understand that you have trained Sally and that she has taken well to the duties of accounts payable. Good. Good.” He snaps my file shut and levels a look at me from his hooded eyes. “However, I don’t see anything in your personnel file that indicates you have taken any of the classes I suggested.”

  “Tha
t’s because I haven’t.” “And why haven’t you?”

  I say the words I’ve been preparing to say for months now. “Mr. Bradley, I’ve thought about what you said, and you are right. I’m in the wrong line of work.”

  This catches him off guard. It isn’t what he expected or what he’s used to hearing from intimidated employees. He rises to his feet and paces by his window.

  “Well, Dee, you understand that we are not trying to push you out of the company. Not at all.” He gives me a horsey smile, showing his perfect white teeth and a little gum. “We want to groom you for a bigger position.”

  I hate that image. It’s as if someone were slapping me with a stiff brush and braiding my tail. I rise from my chair as well. It’s time to negotiate.

  “Mr. Bradley, I can give you as much notice as you would like, but I’d like a good letter of reference from you. I performed the job I was hired to do well, and I think I deserve that. I can write it myself, if you wish, and give it to you for your signature.”

  His smile disappears. “That may be, Mrs. Carter, but there is the matter of violating company policy.”

  Here it comes.

  “On the other hand, if you choose to fire me, I can collect unemployment and that will work for me also.”

  Mr. Bradley shakes his head slowly and walks around the desk to stand beside me. He places a hand on my shoulder, looks down at me, and gives me that gummy smile again.

  “Well, Dee, if you are determined to leave us, I can only wish you well in your next venture. I’ll have Elaine prepare a letter of recommendation for you and let’s say two weeks’ notice, shall we?”

  “That will be fine.” A mix of terror and relief shudders through me like an earthquake; terror at what destruction may have just occurred and relief that it is over and done.

  As I am leaving, he adds, “Mr. Russell and I will miss seeing you in the office, Dee. It may not be your line of work, but you are good with figures.” He looks me up and down. I let that go.