Tea and Primroses

by Tess Thompson

  I told my parents over dinner in our dining room with the faded rose-patterned wallpaper. It was a Wednesday. On Wednesdays we had meatloaf, made of ground beef and stale breadcrumbs, with ketchup dousing the top. My mother was an angry cook. In her thin and angular body that seemed to need no nourishment other than rage, she slammed and shoved and slapped meals together. Her food reflected this. The meatloaf was dry and crumbled on our forks before we could get it into our mouths; the ketchup was charred and tasted of bitterness; the peas from the freezer were cold no matter how long they boiled on the stove; the baked potatoes were slightly undercooked, with the texture of something cold and unyielding. But my father and I knew better than to pick at our dinner or move it around our plates. My mother had eyesight that noticed every small movement, immediately interpreted them as slights and catalogued them for combat use later.

  “I was offered a job today.” Using my fingers, I scooped three peas onto my fork. The light was dim in our dining room, making the peas appear gray instead of green. When I was little, I used to think of everything in terms of our family unit. Mother, Daddy, Me: three peas.

  My father, habitually quiet at dinner, exhausted by this time, having risen at dawn and worked in the cold sea air down at the docks, gazed at me in the way he had all my life—with a subdued pride. “What’s that, Sweets?” He held his fork in midair. His hands were dry and cracked from his work; I was forever rubbing lotion into them at night. “A new job?”

  “A columnist at the Greeley Tribune. In Greeley, Vermont.”

  “A columnist. Well, that sounds real good.” My father’s eyes, light blue like mine, were alive suddenly, the evidence of his physical exhaustion hidden for the moment. “Vermont. I always wanted to go to Vermont.”

  “You already have a job,” said my mother. “A good one, considering your major.” My mother had no need for books. She was the calculating sort, endlessly scratching in the household ledger, skimping and saving whatever my father brought home. No one can run a house cheaper than I can, she had said to me just last week. Your father should be more appreciative.

  Daddy glanced at Mother with a slight smile. “Remember how I used to talk about Vermont? Got so your mother had to tell me to shut up about it.”

  She didn’t respond to him. Her eyes remained on me and her voice was cold, her pinched face even tighter than usual. “What about Miller?”

  “You could come visit me, Daddy,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t that be something?” His fork was still midair and, seeming to notice it, he set it down next to his plate.

  “Miller wants to marry you, Connie,” said my mother.

  “I don’t want to marry him.” I paused, pushing my remaining three peas under a flap of potato skin with my fork. “I don’t want to marry anyone.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”

  “Now, Mary—” my father said.

  My mother talked over him. “You leave, you don’t come back. We’re not a hotel.” She pushed out from the table. “You hear that?” And then she was gone from the room. There was the sound of her heavy footsteps going up the stairs and then stomping into the bedroom, which was directly over the dining room. I lifted the flap of potato skin with my fork. The three peas were still nestled there. I squished one with my fork.

  “This meatloaf’s worse than usual,” said my father. “What’s the word I’m looking for, Sweets?”

  “Inedible,” I said automatically. This was a game we often played.

  Slapping the table, he laughed, loud, almost manically. “That’ll do.”

  “Daddy, be quiet.” I spoke in a whisper, stifling a laugh. “She’ll hear you.”

  “Oh, be damned. I don’t care if she hears me or not.” But his laughter turned silent, his broad shoulders shaking.

  “Daddy, stop.” A giggle escaped, and then I was lost to it as well. We laughed in silence until the tears streamed down our cheeks.

  From upstairs, we heard the slam of the bedroom door. That sobered us for a moment but then we started in again, until we were worn out and we sat there grinning foolishly at one another.

  Daddy got up from the table and began clearing the dishes. “Come on, Sweets, help me clean up and then I’ll take you to ice cream.”

  “Really, Daddy?”

  “I have a hidden stash of cash for just this occasion. And I have a hankering for some rum raisin.” Holding dishes in both hands, he leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “My girl. So smart.” Taking the dishes with him, he headed toward the kitchen. “Vermont. Think of it!”

  ***

  The next morning, I walked to Louise’s house. She lived with her mother, Aggie, in the oldest house in Legley Bay, a Victorian perched on top of a hill. On a clear day, you could see the ocean from their front porch. Louise had been my best friend since kindergarten, when on the first day of school I’d pummeled a boy in the face when he told Louise her dress was ugly. Since then, I’d been the lucky recipient of her undying loyalty. When Louise loved a person, she did it with her whole body. We’d gone off to the University of Oregon together after high school, along with her boyfriend, Tim Ball. Tim had a scholarship playing football. Louise majored in Home Economics, and although she was extremely intelligent and it mildly annoyed me that she wasn’t pursuing a more academically demanding degree, I kept it to myself. She learned to sew beautiful dresses, some of which she made for me, and delicious meals on a budget, and how to take care of a home properly. We were opposites, needless to say. But we loved one another fiercely, and without petty jealousies or small cruelties. I considered myself lucky to be her friend; she was a better person than I in every way. Perhaps it was our differences that allowed the other to be a supporter instead of a competitor. Louise was the first reader of all my stories, starting in second grade when I wrote about an orphan named Priscilla who opened her own pizza restaurant (she illustrated it for me, beautifully). Now, we were twenty-four years old and she was marrying “the love of her life” in just a few weeks. Which, honestly, had me worried. Tim Ball hadn’t been the same since he’d injured his knee playing USC at Oregon, blowing all chances to be drafted into the NFL. We’d all assumed it was his future. I’d imagined and hoped for it for Louise, knowing that she of all people would enjoy all the beautiful things that came from wealth. And because it would be so nice for her—she’d grown up poor with Aggie scrimping and saving and the two of them living on bean soup after her father died. I wanted Louise to have it easy. I wanted her to get out. But instead Tim had decided to become a cop and settle back in Legley Bay.

  I found Louise and Aggie in the kitchen. Louise was sewing sequins onto her veil. Aggie was reading the newspaper. They both looked up and smiled when I came in without knocking. This was my second home. Actually, I felt more comfortable here than I did in my own. Aggie put aside her paper and stood, holding out her arms. “Vermont,” she said. “Well done.”

  I let myself be cradled against her scrawny chest. Aggie was built like a board, flat and long. “My mother’s beside herself,” I said.

  Aggie stiffened. “Well, don’t pay that any mind. You kids have to go live your lives.” I breathed in, hoping some of Aggie’s spirit would enter me, sustain me in times of doubt. She smelled of lavender. “You want some bean soup?” She took me by the shoulders, scrutinizing my face. “Just made a fresh batch.”

  I smiled. Aggie was forever making a new batch of pinto bean soup. I knew it was partly financial – bags of beans were cheap – and partly that she hated cooking. Aggie preferred to spend her time reading or working in her garden. She was the only person I knew then or since who read four newspapers, including the New York Times, every day. “No, thanks, Aggie. Louise and I are going to take a walk on the beach. We need to talk through how I’m going to tell Miller.”

  “Well, shoot, that poor boy should know he wasn’t made to keep up with you.”

  “Mom, that’s unkind,” said Louise. She set down the veil and put h
er sewing needle in the pincushion that looked like a strawberry.

  Aggie, seeming not to hear her daughter, continued speaking, moving away from me to the stove, where she took the lid off the pot of beans and stirred them with a wooden spoon.

  “I want you to cut out every article you write and send it to us,” said Aggie. “I mean it, now.”

  A few minutes later, Louise and I set out in Aggie’s old truck to drive ten miles south of town to a stretch of beach that was great for walking. There were houses scattered on the cliff overlooking the stretch of beach, the first of many to come of terribly expensive second or third homes of wealthy people from Seattle and Portland. We parked in a turnoff and made our way down the public walking path, careful not to slip on the wet stones and sand. It was low tide. We walked on wet sand, our arms linked. “Oh, I’m going to miss you terribly,” Louise said.

  “Me too.”

  “You’ll write to me, won’t you? Tell me all the details?”

  “Of course.” We walked until we reached the big rock at the end of the beach. We stood together, facing the tide, arm in arm, watching the waves come in and go out. “You sure about Tim? About the wedding?” I paused, putting my head on her shoulder. “I need to know you’re sure before I leave.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I wanted you to get out of here.”

  Louise squeezed my arm. “Constance, that’s your dream, not mine. I love this town. And I loved Tim when I thought he’d have a football career and I love him now. I just want to have a little house and some babies and to be a good wife. I’m proud of him, for picking up and moving on, going to the police academy and all.”

  I smiled, hiding my worries. I didn’t trust Tim Ball. I wished I did, but I didn’t. “I want every dream of yours to come true. You know that.”

  “I do,” she said. “I surely do.”

  “Do you ever think about being a teacher, like you used to talk about?”

  She shook her head. “No, that was just when we were kids. Now I just want to be a wife and mother.” She paused. “Mom’s right, you know. You’re too big for Miller. He’s the only one who doesn’t know that.” She pointed up to the houses speckled along the coast. “See those places up there? Someday you’re going to be so famous and rich from your novels, you’ll be able to buy one and live there. We’ll have tea on your deck and watch the sunsets.”

  I smiled, letting the daydream come into my mind as well. “I could have a writing desk that looked out to the sea. Can you imagine?”

  “I can.” She turned to look at me. “Promise you won’t forget me when you’ve outgrown me and this town?”

  “Louise, it’s impossible to forget your best friend, no matter how far away you move from them. You ever need me to pummel someone for you, I’m only a phone call away.”

  “Long distance calls are so expensive, though.”

  I laughed. “Now you sound like my mother. Don’t you worry, we’ll always have the post office.”

  All the way back to her house, we talked compatibly of nothing and everything, as we’d done most of our lives.

  An hour later, with Aggie and Louise’s encouraging words rumbling around in my head, I set out to see Miller. It was just before lunchtime and raining. I pulled my rain hood over my head as I walked over to Miller’s family’s hardware store. The store was quiet, empty but for a man looking at paint samples and Miller’s mother. She was at the counter, reading a magazine, dressed in her usual uniform of a sweet cotton dress and cardigan sweater, both in the colors of an Easter egg. Today it was a light pink dress and soft yellow sweater. Blond and pretty, she’d been the head cheerleader in high school (my mother hated her) and had married Miller’s father before she turned twenty. They had three sons; Miller was their baby and the only offspring interested in working at the hardware store and continuing to live in Legley Bay. The other two were, in the words of Mrs. Byrd, living Godless in Seattle and Chicago. “I always have Miller to console me,” she said to me one night when I joined them for Sunday dinner.

  “Hi, Mrs. Bryd. Is Miller here?”

  “Hello, dear. He’s in the back.” Mrs. Bryd was polite to me, always, but there was an inspective, suspicious quality about the way she looked at me, hidden behind her perfect manners. She made me feel immediately like a wild and wicked girl, prone to lascivious sex acts and skipping church to smoke in the alley. Of course, I did none of these things. But some people just made a person feel guilty. Mrs. Byrd was one of them.

  Although I was never really sweet on Miller, I continued to date him for reasons I attributed to boredom and my inability to hurt him by ending it. He was just always there, asking me to dinner or walks on the beach. I was fond of him and in the spirit of the time, had allowed him to have sex with me on a regular basis during the last year. That was my mistake. Once you let a boy like Miller touch your bare skin on a blanket under the stars, he thinks you belong to him.

  I knocked lightly on his office door, not wanting to disturb him if he was on the phone, but he said to come in. “Hey, doll. What a surprise.” His eyes went from my face down my body and back again. “You look delicious enough to eat, as always. Just give me a minute here. I’m ordering another batch of nails.” The office was chilly. I pulled my raincoat tighter. Miller wore his letterman’s jacket from high school with the sleeves pulled up to his elbows. His blond hair was combed neatly and his slightly pink skin freshly shaven. He waved an order form at me. “Not as easy as it looks.”

  Right. Nails came in a lot of sizes. We’d discussed this before. I sat in the rickety wooden chair next to his desk and waited, fussing with my fingernails. I was prone to bite them, especially when I was nervous. Miller’s brow was creased and his lips moved silently as he worked through the order.

  When he was done, he set the form aside and wheeled his chair closer to me. “You come by for lunch? Mama packed mine but I can save it for tomorrow.”

  “No. I have some news.”

  “Good news?” He smiled wide and touched my shoulder.

  “I think it is.”

  “You sure you don’t want to tell me over lunch? I’ll take you to get a hamburger.”

  I took a deep breath. “I was offered a job in Vermont. At a newspaper.”

  His hazel eyes were at first blank and then confused like when one is awakened from a deep sleep. He scooted the chair back an inch or so and picked up a pencil from the desk and tapped the rubber eraser on his knee. The muscle in his forearm twitched. “A job?”

  “And I’m going to take it,” I added, as if that weren’t obvious.

  “What do you mean? Move there?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what about us?”

  “I want to see some things besides the view from this hardware store.”

  He placed the pencil on the desk, steadying it with two fingers, and then crossed his arms over his chest. “But I thought we were getting married.”

  “I don’t know what gave you that idea.”

  His face turned red. “But we’ve been having sex.” He lowered his voice at the word sex.

  “That didn’t mean I wanted to marry you.” I said this in a gentle tone, not wanting to hurt his feelings. But really, what era did he think we were living in?

  “Of course it does.” He rose to his feet. The back of the chair smacked the wall.

  “It’s 1981, Miller, not 1881.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I get to do what I want, with or without a man, including what job I take and where I live.” I was still speaking softly, trying not to hurt him further by showing my impatience with him.

  “I can wait for you.” He plopped back in the chair, moving it close to me again. “Until you come to your senses.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend that.”

  “Well, like you, I get to decide things for myself. If I want to wait until you see that everything you need is right here, that’s my business.” He paused, his eyes pained, lik
e a puppy just hit with a newspaper for reasons he couldn’t possibly fathom. “You want to get a hamburger?”

  I sighed. “Sure. Thanks.”

  ***

  When I returned home from lunch with Miller, my father was sitting out on the porch, sanding a piece of wood. Our house was built in the 1940s, a typical bungalow style that at one time had probably been quietly handsome. But the sea air had done its damage, year after year, making all the houses gray. Our house was no exception.

  “Hi, Daddy. What’re you making?”

  His eyes twinkled at me. “A letter opener for you. That way you won’t have any excuse not to read my letters.”

  “I’ll rip them open the minute I get them whether I have an opener or not.” I laughed. “Promise me you’ll write?”

  “As long as you don’t judge my grammar.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Anyway, you’re the one who taught me how to be a writer no matter what you think of your grammar skills.”

  “How’s that, Sweets?”

  “By showing me how to look at the world with my heart, not my head.”

  “Now don’t go making your old man cry.”

  “Daddy, I’m going to miss you.”

  “Me too, Sweets. Something terrible.”

  I kissed him on the cheek and then sat on the steps, looking up at him, pulling my jacket tighter. The spring air was chilly. There were several dark clouds overhead that looked like they would dump rain at any moment. “I told Miller.”

  He nodded, continuing to sand his piece of wood.

  “It didn’t go that well.”

  “I ‘spect it didn’t.” He looked up at me, his expression firm. “I don’t want you married to someone you don’t love. No matter what happens, you remember that.”

  “Thanks, Daddy.” Several drops of rain speckled the steps. I looked up at the sky, holding out my hand. “Rain.”

  “Yep.”

  I moved onto the porch, sitting in the chair next to him. “Why is Mother so mad at me all the time?”

  He stopped sanding and wrinkled his brow. In the way he had of searching for the right words, he hesitated before speaking. “She takes how you’re so different from her as a judgment against her life, her choices. Against her. Like a rejection, I guess is what you’d call it. If you don’t choose the same life she did, then somehow her life doesn’t seem to matter.”