Tea and Primroses

by Tess Thompson

  My job, essentially, was to comment on the ordinary lives of ordinary people in Greeley, Vermont. I loved the work for the simplicity of my task. What was better than reporting on the latest dance at the high school or Aunt Mabel winning the grand prize craft award at the county fair or the annual cheese festival? The people of Greeley loved their cheese, which as far as I could see was quite similar to how we felt about our oysters back home.

  Daily I received letters at the newspaper office thanking me for my column.

  Is there any way you could write more? It just brightens my day to read your words.

  Did I mention I have a cousin raising goats and now he’s making goat cheese? Goat cheese! Really, is there anything stranger or more exotic? Wouldn’t it be a great piece for your column?

  My grandmother’s turning 90 on Saturday and we’re having a party for her down at the Grange. Will you come and maybe write a little something?

  My boy was just accepted to Boston College with a scholarship. Sure would give us a thrill to have you write something up about it.

  I always said yes.

  I lived in a rented studio apartment owned by an older dairy farm couple named Rosemary and William Williams. Yes, his name was William Williams, which might have explained why everyone called him Bill. They’d built a studio in the attic of one of their barns for their youngest son, who then decided to move away to the city.

  During the day I worked at the paper; in the evenings and early mornings, I wrote. At night the characters awakened me, wanting out, wanting life. How dare you leave us in here? they shouted. Just wait, be patient, I whispered back to them. I won’t leave you behind.

  I existed on crackers, cans of tuna and tea—my salary was a pittance—and worked on my novel between columns and long walks and meeting local friends at the pub for a beer. I belonged in Greeley like I’d lived there all my life.

  And then, on an ordinary autumn afternoon, everything changed. You cannot see it in the moment, of course, time being what it is. Only later, you say, ah, yes, then, right then, was the moment.

  I was at my desk at the newspaper office, typing up my latest column, when John Teller, editor-in-chief of the Greeley Tribune, came in the door, bringing the scent of the outdoors and greasy donuts. When John interviewed me over the phone he laughed when I mentioned how appropriate his last name was to his profession. “Destiny, kid, that’s all there is to it.”

  Today John carried a brown paper bag, grease spots scattered on the front. “I brought you some donuts. They’re day old but you need fattening up.” He took off his jacket, draping it over the chair, digging into the bag. “I might just indulge in one myself. Don’t tell my wife.” He took out an old-fashioned and bit into it, making an appreciative grunting sound. “These are my favorite.” His mouth was still full as he spoke. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. John had even features and light brown eyes that reminded me of a gentle animal, but his hair was thinning, making his forehead seem too large for the rest of his face. He was tall and moved awkwardly, like the kid who grew faster than his nervous system could keep up with. And he had thin, gangly arms and legs, sloped shoulders, and a potbelly that could have been better disguised if he’d bothered to choose his clothing more carefully. But he dressed like a slob, wearing loose jeans with a plain brown belt that sat just under his belly and always a flannel shirt so similar to the day’s before it took a discerning eye to see the difference. He never tucked his shirt in and he often had a bit of something from his last meal in the same spot on his chest.

  I chuckled, not looking up from my work. “I won’t utter a word, I promise.”

  “Hey, so I ran into an old friend just now. Patrick Waters. He’s all grown up now but he used to work for me here when he was in high school. He’s older than you by about five years, I’d guess. Anyway, he married into the Templeton family—huge publishing family, as I’m sure you know. He works now as a fiction editor in New York. He said he’s back in Greeley for a while—living out at his dad’s old place. The old man passed away about five years ago, if I remember correctly.” He took a maple bar from the bag and sniffed it before taking a bite. “Not bad for day old.”

  “Templetons?” I asked. This was the extent of my naiveté. I did not know who Maurice Templeton was. I should have known, as he was the most powerful man in publishing at the time.

  John looked at me and shook his head. “What’s the matter with you?”

  I shrugged and grinned. “So many things.”

  “The way I see it is I can ask Patrick to read your manuscript. He’ll do it since we go way back. Practically grew up here at the paper. His old man was one of the greatest men I ever knew, but he didn’t know a thing about books or writing and practically begged me to hire the kid. ‘Don’t want him to be a grease-monger like me,’ he said to me. He was a crack mechanic, now, don’t you doubt it for a second. Best around and fair as the day is long. But I digress. Main thing is you need to get your book over to him.” I’d actually let John read my finished manuscript. After making a crack about girl books, he professed to enjoying it and since then had been encouraging me to submit it to literary agents in New York.

  Now, he said, “You’re gifted, little gal. You need to get this in front of someone who can make things happen.” He’d said this more than once but I always had a hundred excuses about why I couldn’t possibly, the most common of which was that I didn’t feel sure it was ready.

  John leaned back in his chair, resting his hands on his belly. “And Patrick’s an editor in the commercial fiction department. He’s married to Sigourney—she’s the second daughter out of four—the most beautiful of all of them and a handful from what I hear. Margie’s sister’s daughter went to prep school with her.”

  Margie was John’s wife, a lovely, quiet woman from a wealthy New York family. How she’d ended up married to John and raising four children on a small newspaperman’s salary in Vermont I wasn’t sure. Her home smelled of apple pie and pine-scented cleaning product. Her children were successful and well adjusted. My mother would have begrudgingly admired her.

  “You know Margie’s people are from all that high-society New York City type. Most pretentious people you ever met, according to her. But Patrick’s the same good kid he always was.”

  It was my turn to shake my head. “John, that isn’t how it works. People like him don’t just read a manuscript from someone like me.”

  He raised his eyebrows, then scratched behind his ear. “The problem with you is you have no imagination.”

  I laughed. “The problem with me is that I have too much.”

  “You need to learn to use your looks to your advantage, Constance.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know a pretty woman when I see her.”

  I glanced down at my lap, self-conscious, thinking of my small stature and white skin. People said I looked like I was from another time, with my hourglass figure and the way I wore my blond hair chin length and wavy, instead of the feathered hair so popular then.

  “Come on, Oregon girl, I know you’re brave enough to do this.”

  I was homesick next, the way it came then, in a rush that overwhelmed me, made me small and afraid and ready to say, enough. I am too young and inexperienced, too vulnerable. There is not enough talent to make this life I want so very much, an echo between my ears. I felt my heart thump and beat at the pulse in my neck.

  John and I were interrupted when the phone in his office rang. He went to answer it, leaving his door open. I could hear the murmur of his voice as I turned back to my work. Despite my intentions to put it out of my mind, for all that day and into the next, I thought about Patrick Waters and John’s offer. Did I have the courage to give him my manuscript? Every time I thought of doing so, my mother’s voice was loud in my mind. Pipe dream. Things like this don’t happen to people like us. Be grateful you have a job writing, most people don’t get that.

  The next
day, I sat at the counter of Doris’s diner in the late afternoon sipping weak coffee and working on my newspaper column as I often did. I found the background noise of the other diners and the banter between Doris and the cook, Frank, who happened to be her husband, soothing and somehow appropriate for inspiring philosophical musings about small town life. I wrote longhand in those days in a dime-store notebook and then typed it at the office when I finished.

  Doris was my first friend in Greeley. I spent many afternoons sitting in the same spot at her counter, writing my column. She was about fifteen years older than my mother, I guessed, although when I asked her she told me a lady never revealed her age. She wasn’t plump but was thick, with a large bosom straining against her light blue waitress uniform. She had no children; I wasn’t sure why and never asked her, afraid to hear the answer.

  “Do you know who Patrick Waters is?” I asked her, opening a packet of saltines she’d slid over the counter.

  “Sure. Sweet boy. Grew up eating Frank’s French fries at this very counter. Smartest kid we ever had in this town. Until you, that is.” Doris wore her dyed black hair short, getting it set every week at the local beauty shop into fluffy curls on top of her head.

  “I’m not a kid, Doris.”

  “You are but you’re still too young to realize you are.”

  “He’s back in town, according to John.”

  “That right?” Doris looked surprised. “But he lives in New York with that fancy wife of his, last I heard.”

  “John says he’ll ask him to read my manuscript, if I want. Makes me sick to my stomach thinking about it.” I spoke in a quiet voice, even though the diner was quiet this time of day. The lunch crowd was gone and it was a weekday so the hordes of tourists who came to see the autumn leaves were at their jobs in the cities.

  Doris nodded, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. “Good idea. He’s a big shot now.”

  “But I don’t know if it’s good enough. A lot of people have their first manuscript in the drawer forever.”

  “Well, those folks aren’t as talented as you are.”

  “You haven’t even read it.”

  “I read your column. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I know a storyteller when I see one.” She moved behind the counter as we talked, refilling ketchup bottles, saltshakers, and napkin holders. “But Patrick Waters, you best be careful around him. The man’s so good looking he’s dangerous.”

  “I’m impervious to charm and good looks.” I laughed, as I so often did in those days. “Especially married ones.”

  “Good girl.” Doris chuckled and patted me on the head. “Anyway, don’t you have a boy in Oregon?” She said Oregon like Or-gawn, like it rhymed with “yawn.” Native Oregonians pronounced it Or-gin with the “r” sound clear back in our throats. I shook my head, feeling the pang of guilt that always accompanied thoughts of Miller. “He’s a friend.” Just that morning I’d gotten my weekly letter from him. He never said much, just how sales were going at the shop, or the latest with some of our old friends from high school.

  “You need a real man. Vermont raised,” said Doris.

  I smiled, tapping my pen on my notebook. “Honestly, Doris, I’m not interested in dating anyone. I like my life the way it is.” I went back to my column, rearranging a sentence for the second draft.

  Not twenty minutes later, just as I was finishing my column, Patrick Waters walked in the door of the diner. I did not recognize him, of course, having heard of him in name only, but Doris did.

  “Holy mackerel, that’s him. Don’t look.” She slapped my hand.

  “Who?” I rubbed my hand. “That hurt.”

  “Patrick Waters.”

  For some reason, my heart thumped. I darted my eyes, stealthy, gazing out from under my reading glasses, to take a look at him. Goodness. Doris was correct about his appearance. He had an olive complexion and intelligent green eyes. Lean and tall, with floppy brown hair, he was dressed ruggedly in jeans and a flannel shirt, like the locals, only he wore a leather jacket over them, making him look like a movie star, the type who’d play a powerful politician or writer or professor. He was utterly, devastatingly handsome. My heart flipped over in my chest. I never knew that was a real thing. I made a mental note to add that into my next book. He sat at the counter just one stool away from me even though it was empty but for me. I would have thought he’d sit down at the opposite end. That’s what I would have done, anyway. But he didn’t seem to notice I was there, just plopped onto the stool and immediately began spinning a spoon in a circle.

  Doris wiped an already clean counter with a towel. I bowed my head over my notebook, pretending not to watch them but peering up from a half-lidded gaze. “Patrick Waters. Long time no see. You get sick of those city phonies and decide to come home?”

  “Something like that.” He smiled wide. “Jeez, it’s good to see you Doris. You haven’t aged a bit.”

  Doris blushed, a feat I didn’t think was possible. “Oh, now, stop it. You want coffee?”

  He grimaced and tugged on his ear, shifting on the stool as if it were uncomfortable. I looked down at his feet—cowboy boots under his jeans. “You have anything stronger?”

  Doris patted her hair. “Not for sale.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a flask. “But I keep a little under the counter here in case anyone needs a little nip. Including myself.”

  Frank called from the back, “None for you! You have to go home and make my supper.”

  She shook her head. “After twenty years that man still thinks he’s the boss of me.” Reaching under the counter, she pulled out two small glasses and poured a three-finger amount into each. “There’s more than one bar in this town, you know,” she said to Patrick.

  “Yeah, I know. They depress me.”

  Doris nodded knowingly. “Nothing but our town drunks in those bars this time of day, that’s a fact.” She shook her head sadly, as if the two of them weren’t currently imbibing at four in the afternoon. “It’s a shame.” Pausing, she surveyed him with her hand on her hip. “What’s got you back here? Something the matter?”

  “You could say that.” He sighed and pushed his glass back over to her, presumably for a refill. “Most important decision you ever make is who you marry. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yep.” Doris looked over at me. “You want a nip, Oregon-girl?”

  I shook my head, pretending to be engrossed by something in my notebook.

  Patrick Waters glanced over at me, just a skirt of his glittering green eyes and then back to the drink Doris had set in front of him. He downed the entire pour in one gulp and swiped the corners of his mouth with his index finger and thumb. My eyes lingered on his mouth, wondering for the briefest of moments what it would feel like to brush my fingers there.

  He moved his eyes back to me. “Wouldn’t you agree, Oregon?”

  I averted my eyes. My mouth opened and closed. What was he asking me?

  Doris rescued me. “This is Constance Mansfield, Patrick. She writes for John at the paper.”

  He put his hand out. “Nice to meet you, Oregon.” He pronounced it like a newscaster might. Or-eh-gen. It sounded lovely. It made my heart flutter like a schoolgirl’s again. I was already making myself sick practically swooning over this man. Doris was right. He was dangerous.

  I reached out and shook his hand, which was twice the size as mine. There were calluses on his palms, like my father’s and Reggie’s. Did he work outside? How was this possible for a New York City editor?

  “What? You just write instead of speak?” he asked me, his eyebrows furrowed.

  “Nah, she can talk,” said Doris. “Oregon accent and all.”

  “We don’t have accents,” I said, my voice barely out of hiding at the back of my throat, in obvious rebellion at my blatant lie. “You guys do.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” said Patrick, moving his glass in a circular motion, just as he’d done earlier with the spoon. He turned on h
is stool to look at me, his long legs stretched out so they were only inches from mine. “Wouldn’t you agree that who you marry is the most important decision of your life, Oregon?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m never getting married.” I said this with a hint of haughtiness, fully believing my own story.

  “That right?” He looked amused and cocked his head to the side, like he was observing some kind of rare bird.

  Doris, taking a sip of her drink before hiding it under the counter, leaned on her elbows, looking at Patrick. “You want something to eat? We close in a half hour so it’s now or never.”

  “No, Doris, I mostly certainly do not want something to eat. I want, instead, to sit here and drink your life-giving whiskey and gaze at beautiful Oregon in an attempt to forget about my wreck of a life.”

  Both Doris and I stared at him.

  “What? Do I surprise you ladies with my candor? Someone telling the truth? Hell, if I can’t do it with you two, then who?”

  Doris laughed—loud enough that Frank stuck his head in the kitchen window for a moment and, apparently assured that all was well, disappeared again. Frank looked like Mr. Rogers, except he wore a T-shirt and an apron rather than a sweater.

  “Well, then, Patrick Waters, by all means don’t let us stop you from either telling the truth or drinking yourself into oblivion. I’ve done both many times myself. The bad news is that when you wake up from your stupor, the demons still hover about.” Doris pulled the flask out from under the bar and filled his glass to the halfway mark. “You want ice?”

  “No, ma’am, I do not want ice. I want it to burn my throat. I want it to hurt going down.” He took another sip of whiskey. “You know what else?”

  “Pray tell,” said Doris.

  “Clowns scare the hell out of me.”

  I laughed, despite my attempt to remain aloof and detached.

  “Ah ha, she can laugh,” said Patrick, slamming the counter with his hand. “I can rest easier now. Someone so pretty should always be laughing.” He moved the glass in a circle again. “Doris, you want to know the best decision I ever made?”