Going to Bend

by Diane Hammond

  Petie sat on the sleeping platform.

  “What are you staring at?” Old Man said. “You and her, you’re both always staring at me like I’m some piece of trash someone drug in. Don’t you go staring at me, girl.”

  Petie dropped her eyes. “Is there food?”

  Old Man pointed his beer bottle towards an old Igloo cooler and, on top of it, a beat-up camp stove like the one Petie had seen at Camp Twelve. She moved it to the floor and lifted the cooler lid. Inside were six bottles of beer, a package of hot dogs and a package of American cheese. “You do all the cooking now,” Old Man told her. “Your mama must have taught you something about it, not that she could cook worth a damn—God almighty but that woman could not cook. I never had worse food in my life. Hell, it’s probably what gave her that cancer. First woman on earth to die of her own cooking. What d’you think?”

  Old Man snorted at his own little joke, taking a long pull on the beer that Petie judged to be his third or fourth bottle. Fewer than that and he didn’t ask questions; more than that and he didn’t want answers, though Petie generally had them in her head. For instance, she knew that her mother’s cooking was bad because you can’t make good food when you’re in a sustained state of terror. Old Man was always ugliest to her at mealtimes, baiting her, bumping her so she’d put her hand on the hot pans to keep from falling. The finest cream would curdle in a kitchen like that. Petie knew this as surely as she knew that Old Man had put her mama in hell. It wasn’t just that he’d had her cremated. It was that he’d told her, over and over, “Paula, you will never get away from me, not even in your deepest dreams. You’re mine in this world and I’ll see you in hell when it’s done.” That’s what Petie hadn’t told Eula Coolbaugh back there in the old house. “I’m onto you, Paula,” she’d heard him hiss. “I can read your thoughts, I can see clear into your mind. You will burn in hell forever and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.”

  Old Man tossed a few crumpled dollars in her direction. “Tomorrow you take this and go to the store, buy what we need. You have to make that last. Don’t be expecting me to give you money all the time, because I won’t.”

  Petie tucked the money into the pocket of her jeans and felt the forgotten slip of paper on which Eula Coolbaugh had written her phone number. Eula Coolbaugh had had a kind face, a good face, the face of a lesser angel. Petie wadded the slip of paper into a ball, lit the stove and fed it to the sickly flame.

  NADINE SAT in her car at the Sawyer airfield and chewed a hangnail. Gordon was supposed to have arrived already, and in the rain, of course; the coastal rain she’d come to take personally, dripping and blowing without end like a bad cold. He had been gone for five days, and good God, how she’d missed him. In his absence she saw them as they truly were: a forty-one-year-old woman who fifty years earlier would have been called a spinster lady, and a forty-one-year-old bachelor known for keeping to himself except on the rare occasions when he was seen with attractive young men in the city.

  Ten years ago each of them had had a good life, a life each had every reason to expect would last forever. Nadine, with her master’s in English literature, managed a bookstore, a small shop specializing in important literature and select first editions. She had few friends, but those she did have, she loved. Gordon had just met Johnny and when they were together the two of them glowed like the sunrise. Shy Gordon, shy Johnny, avowed lovers for keeps, lovers forever, only who knew that forever could possibly end so soon? It was still a good time to be a gay man in love. No one was dying, no one had died, no one feared the prospect of death. Old age still meant your seventies, not your thirties. It seemed like such an impossibly long time ago. Nadine and Gordon, smart and kind and to whom the easy way never seemed to apply. Johnny would die in Gordon’s arms, just as Gordon would one day die in Nadine’s. And here they were, waiting, brother and sister clinging together in the hell-blast of terminal illness and irrelevant dreams.

  The airplane appeared at last, a tiny thing fighting its way free of clouds as sticky as cotton candy. As Nadine watched, the plane seemed to be simultaneously blown sideways and down, making heart-stopping contact with the runway. Nadine whispered quiet thanks to whatever deity might be listening inside her car and turned up the heat.

  When the airplane door opened, Gordon didn’t so much step out of the plane as bore his way into the solid face of oncoming rain and wind. Nadine dashed out to meet him, wrapped a raincoat around him and hurried him back to the car. She hurled his bag into the trunk and, panting, the two of them slammed their doors in unison.

  “Jesus,” Gordon said. “Did it stop raining at all while I was gone?”

  Nadine shot him a baleful look.

  “Did you know that it’s actually not raining someplace in the world?” Gordon extended a bag of bagels, the single thing she’d asked him to bring back from Los Angeles.

  “I’ve heard, but I don’t believe it.” Nadine dug into the bagel bag as she swung out onto the coastal highway. “Tell me everything.”

  There had been movies and sunshine and good food eaten in the presence of pleasant company. There were the greetings extended to her by acquaintances and former neighbors. Nadine listened to it all, chewing thoughtfully until he’d finished. “And Paul?” He hadn’t said a word about Local Flavor.

  Gordon looked out the window, milking the moment but failing to suppress a grin. “He liked the book. No. He loved the book. Apparently the press has been kicking around the idea of starting a line of Pacific Northwest books for a long time—travel, history, field guides, lighthouses, that kind of thing.”

  “And cooking,” Nadine guessed.

  “And cooking.”

  “Was he willing to commit to the manuscript?”

  “Yes, and here’s the thing: he wasn’t the only one. His whole editorial board has bought in. They love Rose’s voice. They’re willing to give her a decent advance and pay me to edit the rest of the manuscript. They like what we’ve got, but they want about half again as many recipes.”

  “Can she come up with them, do you think?”

  “I think between her and Petie they can. If not, we’ll revive the rest of the contest recipes. Oh, and they want the book illustrated. Pen-and-ink drawings, watercolor washes, maybe woodcuts, of bread, vegetables. Folk art, primitives. They’re leaving it open until we’ve found an artist.”

  “Will they look for someone in L.A.?”

  “They’d prefer to hire someone up here so the writer/illustrator team are really from the Pacific Northwest. Publishing integrity and all that. I agree with them.”

  “We could run another contest, just around here to see what we come up with,” Nadine said doubtfully.

  “I thought I’d ask Rose. She already knows everyone within a hundred-mile radius.”

  Nadine chuckled. He was right, of course. How she loved him, her last remaining family, her greatest fan and supporter, the one person alive who loved her unconditionally. She reached over, squeezed his forearm and piloted their tiny ship into the less than safe harbor that was Hubbard. Although she parked in front of Souperior’s and turned off the car, she made no effort to get out. “Is Paul doing all right?”

  Gordon sighed. “He’s holding his own. He had Pneumocystis a few months ago, but they pulled him out of it. You’ll enjoy this. He says HIV has made him a professional maverick, a guerrilla editor. ‘Baby,’ he said to me, ‘I back what I believe in now. What the hell can happen to me if I’m wrong? And here’s the thing: I never am wrong now. God must reserve a special privilege for the dying.’ ”

  “Well, they could fire him,” Nadine said.

  “That’s not what he meant.”

  “I know it’s not what he meant.”

  Nadine drove in silence for a moment before asking the question they had been avoiding since leaving the airfield. “What about you?” Gordon had seen his doctor while he was away.

  “I seem to be okay.”

  “No new lesions?”

 
“No.”

  “T cells?”

  Gordon shrugged. “A few less. Not many.”

  Nadine scrutinized him. He was telling the truth.

  “Okay?” he said.

  “Okay.”

  They went into Souperior’s together, two and a half months to the day after Gordon had imposed his own exile. At the kitchen door Nadine could feel him draw a deep breath and let it out the way a connoisseur might reluctantly part with the smoke from a prized cigar. Rose was checking on a pot of soup—chicken and wild rice with tarragon. The minute she saw them she put down her spoon and gave Gordon a hug.

  “Oh, welcome home!” she said, holding him by the elbows for a minute to get a look at him. Whatever she saw apparently satisfied her. She took up her spoon again and stirred. “Did you have a good trip?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I’m glad.” She stirred, sipped, added a bit of pepper, stirred, sipped again and covered the pot.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me anything?” Gordon said.

  “I did.”

  “I mean anything else.”

  Rose wiped her hands on her apron. “I assumed it was private.”

  “Private?” Gordon said.

  “Your doctor visit. I hope they had good news for you.”

  “Oh! No, that’s not what I was thinking. I mean, yes, my doctor had relatively good news for me—I’m doing okay. But I was thinking about the book. I thought you’d want to know what the publisher said about the book.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Sit.” Gordon led her to a booth in the empty restaurant. “Nadine, do you want coffee?”

  “I’ll get it. You two talk.” Nadine disappeared into the kitchen.

  Rose regarded Gordon mildly. “Well? What did your friend say?”

  How could the woman be so serene? The source of such equanimity must be genetic—there was simply no other explanation. They watched a couple come in and find a table near the windows overlooking the bay. Nadine, hearing them, came from the kitchen, set mugs of coffee in front of Rose and Gordon, and handed menus to the couple. Gordon had missed the place, missed the atmosphere of quiet purpose these women had created.

  “He wants to publish your book, Rose.”

  “Oh.” She raised her hands to her mouth. “Oh!”

  Gordon reached over and pressed her wrist with both hands. “He loved it. He loved your voice—the way you talk through your writing. His whole staff did. They want the book to come out next fall. Which will be a push, I’m warning you, because there’s a lot of work left to do. But they’ve sent me back with a contract. Two, really—one for me as editor of the book, the other for you as its writer.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I hope they haven’t made a mistake. I’m no writer, Gordon, you know that. I’m not even a cook. Petie and me, we’ve been making soup for years because it’s what you make when you don’t have any money and there won’t be any coming in till the end of the week. You’ve got to give your kids something. You and Nadine treat it like it’s gourmet food but it’s not.”

  “Sometimes the ones who aren’t writers are the best of all,” Gordon said. “Your voice comes through like a clear bell. But since you won’t believe me, let’s talk about your contract instead.” Gordon reviewed the terms, the amount Rose would receive as an advance, what rights they were buying and which ones Rose retained, what percentage of each sale she would receive and how many additional recipes they wanted her to come up with.

  “And Rose, there’s one more thing. They want the book illustrated,” Gordon said when he was done. “Would you happen to know anyone? They’ll want one cover illustration, eight or so large illustrations and a couple dozen small accent drawings—a bunch of carrots, a bowl and whisk, that sort of thing. There won’t be much money in it, but he’ll have quite a bit of artistic freedom. It will be a beautiful book.”

  Rose immediately said, “I know—and oh, it’ll be perfect!”

  “You know someone? Of course you know someone. I never cease to marvel. Who is it?”

  “Petie, Gordon! Petie could do it.”

  “Petie?” Gordon said doubtfully.

  “Oh, I’m so sure of it. You probably haven’t ever seen her drawings.”

  “No,” Gordon said with growing alarm.

  “Well, she doesn’t show her things to people.”

  “Then what makes you think she’d draw for us, for this book?”

  “She needs the money.”

  “Ah.” Gordon sighed. “Look, isn’t there someone else who might be more, ah, more reliable? Someone who’s had experience?”

  “No,” Rose said flatly.

  Gordon watched her for a long minute. She fairly vibrated with conviction.

  “Look,” he said. “Go ahead and talk to her about it, and if she’s interested bring me some samples of her work. But I can’t make any promises, Rose. You’ll both need to understand that. I don’t want any of us to be put in an awkward position, but I can’t compromise my judgment.”

  “Well, you’re already in an awkward position, aren’t you,” Rose said, smiling gently. “I know you, I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that Petie can’t draw but I don’t know it, or that I do know it but hope you won’t. It’s not like that, Gordon. She’s good. She’s very good. It’s very personal for her, though, very private. I’m not sure she’ll even let me bring you anything, but if she does I want you to consider her. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “Fair enough.” The cafe door was thrown open and a family blew in with the rain. Rose stood to greet them and fetch menus. As she left, she touched his wrist, where the little purple lesion was still faintly visible. “Gordon,” she said.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Thank you.”

  · · ·

  HUMP DAY SOUP

  We like to make this soup on Hump Day, Wednesday, to celebrate half the week being over with. It is a cheerful meal and kids like it a lot, or at least ours do. Think of macaroni and cheese, only soupier. Start with a block of cheddar cheese if you can afford one, or the cheese pack from boxed macaroni and cheese if you can’t—it will be good either way.

  Rose stopped reading aloud from a yellow legal tablet and sipped ruminatively at her diet cola. “Do you think we can use it?” she asked Petie, who was up to her elbows in flour and yeast. “I mean, do you think anyone but us would ever want to make it?”

  “We made it, didn’t we? Hell, Ryan and Loose still ask for it sometimes.”

  “I know, but they’re kids, they don’t know any better. Would someone want it who’d actually pay for a cookbook?”

  “We’ve bought cookbooks. Hell, I know for a fact that I once bought a cookbook for a quarter at Connie Neary’s yard sale. I’ll probably be getting around to reading it soon. In my free time, which I don’t have any of.”

  “I think I’m going to leave it out.”

  “Don’t leave it out.”

  “It’s out.” Rose tore the recipe in half, and in half again. “I want to ask you about something.”

  “I did not drink three beers at the Wayside last Friday, if that’s what you want to know. Did Schiff tell you I did? He wasn’t even there most of the time.”

  “You were at the Wayside last Friday with Schiff?”

  “No, I was at the Wayside last Friday with Eddie. Schiff showed up, Eddie took off before I’d finished my second beer, so Schiff gave me a ride home.”

  “You better be careful,” Rose warned. “You know how Carla is. Remember that time when she thought Lee Ann Hafner was trying to start something with Schiff, so she ran Lee Ann off the road at the state park and made her swear on a Bible that she wouldn’t ever again so much as look at Schiff, so help her, okay, God? It scared the crap out of her, and all she’d been doing was talking to him about getting Pepsi at a discount for the Cub Scout jamboree.”

  Petie snorted. “Don’t you just wonder what Carla was doing with that Bible in her car in the fi
rst place? She’s the most unholy person I know, honest to God. So, what? Does she pray on the Bible for a lucky streak at video poker? Maybe she reads psalms over her fourth wine cooler. Shit, Carla Schiffen’s nothing but spare parts and she has been for years.”

  “Well, you ought to be scared of her,” Rose said. “Hell, even Schiff’s scared of her. She’s one of the most vengeful people I’ve ever heard of. I’m just saying you need to be careful.”

  Petie scowled.

  “All right, we’ll talk about that another time. What I wanted to ask you about has to do with the book.”

  “They’re not paying you enough. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.”

  “They’re paying me plenty, Petie, for God’s sake. I have no idea what I’m doing, half the recipes aren’t really ours and the other half we made up out of leftovers. But I don’t want to talk about the money.”

  “Do you need me to test the last couple of recipes?”

  “No—”

  “Because I’m not going to test Jeannie Fontaineau’s beef barley, I haven’t changed my mind about that.”

  “Will you shut up? My God you’re twitchy. Anyway, this isn’t even about soup. They want someone to draw pictures to go with the book. I think it should be you.”

  Petie stopped kneading. “What?”

  “I want you to illustrate the book. Gordon said they need someone to do a drawing for the cover and a bunch of smaller things for inside.”

  “What makes you think I can do it?”

  “I know you can do it. What I don’t know is whether you will do it. Think about it—us, you and me, making a book. Wouldn’t that just be something, though?”

  Petie slapped a ball of flabby dough onto the breadboard.

  “Listen,” Rose said. “You know Gordon’s sick. Well, his friend who’s going to publish the book has AIDS, too. I don’t think they have a lot of time. We’re going to have to work pretty fast.”