Going to Bend

by Diane Hammond

  Even so many years later, Petie could remember word for word the conversation between the hospital administrator and Eula Coolbaugh that morning at Sawyer Samaritan after Old Man had his stroke. The hospital administrator had dialed the phone, briefly introduced herself and described Petie’s situation. It was only seven o’clock in the morning, but Eula Coolbaugh gave no indication that she was taken aback either by the early hour or the astonishing nature of the call. The administrator handed the phone to Petie.

  “Hi, Petie,” Eula had said, as though they spoke all the time instead of just once, years before. “I was hoping I’d have a reason to come to Sawyer today. Now I do. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, hon. Is that okay with you?”

  To her eternal mortification, Petie started to cry, nodding as though Eula could see her over the telephone.

  “Hon? Look, you just sit right there in the lobby. I’ve got my car keys in my hand. You watch for me, and before you know it I’ll be there.” And she had been. Like an avenging angel she had descended on Sawyer Samaritan Hospital, folded Petie in her substantial wings and lifted her up to heaven.

  A room of her own, with clean linens and a handmade quilt.

  A closet.

  A bathroom with running water.

  “Why don’t we go pick up your things, hon, once you’ve had some breakfast,” Eula had said while Petie sat at her kitchen table for the first time, wolfing cereal.

  “I don’t have any things.”

  “You must have clothes.”

  “A few. My friend Rose’s mother lets me keep them in the closet at her house.”

  “Hairbrush, toothbrush?”

  “I keep them in my backpack.” Petie could feel Eula Coolbaugh watching her as she drank the dregs of cereal milk from her bowl.

  “More?” Eula asked her.

  “Yes. Yes, please.”

  Eula had set the cereal box and jug of milk in front of Petie and stroked her hair, just once, as though it wasn’t skunk-colored, poorly cut and not quite clean; softly, the way Paula had once done. Petie had forgotten about that. She hoped Eula would do it again, but Eula had gone back to the sink and was washing dishes. Then Petie heard footsteps on the stairs.

  “That’ll be Eddie,” Eula said. “Running late like he always does.”

  Eddie came into the room tucking in his shirt, apparently unsurprised to find Petie Tyler sitting at his kitchen table. “Morning, sweetie,” Eula said to him. “Petie Tyler’s going to be staying with us for a while. Her dad is sick.”

  Eddie nodded, but his attention was entirely on his breakfast.

  “Hon,” she said to Petie, “I’m assuming you won’t want to go to school today, since you were up most of the night with your dad and all.”

  “Oh, I always go to school.” Petie hadn’t missed a day of school in three years, mainly because it was warm and dry at school, and there was food at lunchtime—Rose’s extras, if she’d brought enough, cafeteria leftovers if not, scavenged for her by Dooley Burden, who was the school custodian then and who knew Old Man from way back when they were growing up together.

  “Well, you go if you want to, hon,” Eula said, surprised. “But I think it would do you good to stay home.”

  “Home?”

  “Here.”

  “Oh.” And so she had, staying warm and dry in Eula Coolbaugh’s kitchen for the next four years. Now she sat at Eula’s table in her own kitchen, looking hard at a basket holding six lemons, two limes and a tangerine. At Gordon’s suggestion she was trying pen and ink with a watercolor wash, a technique that was as new to her as it was unforgiving. On the floor beneath her chair were five discarded attempts, soon to be joined by a sixth as, with a small roar, she lost control of her brush again. At the same moment Eddie Coolbaugh threw open the kitchen door and blew inside on the shoulders of the wind.

  “Jesus!” he said, slapping his Pepsi cap against his hand to knock off the rain. “Coast Guard’s put up storm warnings again.”

  Petie pushed her watercolors and paper aside. “They closing the bar?” she said. A sandbar at the mouth of the bay made passing into the open ocean dangerous even on a good day. On a bad one, it could sink a fishing boat in minutes.

  “Not yet. I heard there’s another front coming in after this one, too.” Eddie slouched against the doorjamb between the kitchen and living room, listing slightly with the uneven pitch of the floor. “How many of those things do you still have to do?” he said, nodding towards her still life.

  “I don’t know. Seven maybe, maybe more, depending on whether I can get it right or not. I’ve only got eight that are keepers, maybe six others I could live with if Gordon can.”

  “The money’s good, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You hear anything from Marge?”

  “No, not yet.” Marge had been down in Tempe with DeeDee ever since the day after they held a memorial service for Larry at the First Church of God. Marge and Larry’s children had wanted to have the service in the Valley, but Marge said Hubbard was their home and the people there were like family, so three weeks ago more than two hundred people had crammed into the little church to say goodbye. Marge had held up pretty well, all in all. Afterwards she’d whispered to Petie, Honey, I’d be screaming right now if it wasn’t for the drugs they’re giving me. The motel was closed indefinitely. It didn’t make any money in winter, anyway.

  “So I talked to Schiff today,” Eddie said.

  “Did you?”

  “I laid it out for him, about how I could be a real good assistant manager if he’d train me. I told him I wanted to move up in the company, you know, and I’d do whatever he thought it would take.”

  “So what did he say?”

  “He was interested. He said that right now it would mean keeping me out of Sawyer and Hubbard more, so I could learn all the territory, not just up north. I might go to Portland, too, to regional meetings in Schiff’s place sometimes. I’m telling you, it was like he’d already thought about some of this stuff, I mean without my having brought it up.”

  “You know Schiff,” Petie said. “He’s always looking for the angles.”

  “Well, and he likes me, I know he does. He trusts me to not fuck up, you know? Sales on my route are up twenty percent since I started, did I tell you that? No shit. Twenty percent.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  “Damn right. I tell you, I’ve got a future with this company. I could be big—hell, bigger than Schiff, maybe. I mean, you know how he pisses people off. I get along with everyone; I know how to make people comfortable—well, you know how I do. I’m no fuckup.”

  “Good thing, too, because I’m going to be unemployed again as soon as I finish these drawings. I don’t see Marge ever coming back here, do you?”

  “Why not?”

  “Without Larry? Come on.”

  Eddie shrugged. “Well sure, she’d need someone to handle the maintenance part, but she could probably hire Dooley cheap.”

  Petie snorted. “Dooley can’t hammer a nail straight.”

  “Yeah, well, she’d have to watch him.”

  “Anyway, that’s not what I meant. They did everything together. I think she’ll miss him too much.”

  “Tell you the truth, I don’t know how two people could spend so much time together.”

  “I thought it was sweet,” Petie said.

  “Admit it. If we spent that much time together we’d kill each other.”

  “So what does that say about us?”

  “We’re independent.”

  “We don’t have anything in common,” Petie said.

  “What? We have two kids, that’s about as in common as you can get.

  We go camping in the summer and, you know, like that.”

  “What else?”

  “What do you mean, what else?” Eddie said. “There are the holidays, Christmas and Thanksgiving and shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, okay then.” Having proven his point
, Eddie went into the living room and turned on the television. Petie set a fresh piece of paper in front of her and picked up her brush.

  “Wait,” Eddie yelled from the other room. “There’s also coffee. We both like coffee.”

  “Yeah,” Petie said, and she thought again what she’d been thinking since that day at the hospital with Marge: that she was going to make a great widow. It would be real tough on the kids if Eddie were to die before they were grown, and there would be times when she would miss him, too. But all in all, she doubted her heart would skip too many beats. She had mentioned this to Rose a couple of days ago, and Rose said it was the worst thing she’d ever heard, worse even than anything she’d had to say about Pogo. Petie didn’t think so. She thought the worst thing she’d ever heard was what Old Man had said about Paula after her death. I could’ve saved twenty-five thousand dollars, maybe, if someone had just told me there was a damned hospice near here.

  Petie took up her pen and ink again, but it was hopeless—her hand simply could not find its place on the paper. She put the basket of fruit in the refrigerator and yelled to Eddie that she was going to Rose’s house to pick up the boys. Carissa had been baby-sitting them for a few hours so Petie could draw. Not that it had amounted to anything.

  She drove the ten blocks to Rose’s house in her sleep, thinking about Marge and being left behind in a cold and empty place. She hadn’t mourned for Paula, or for Old Man, or for herself as one and then the other left her behind. Eula’s passing had been different, awful, like surgery without anesthetic where the pain went on and on. But it hadn’t been what Marge was experiencing; nothing Petie could imagine could equal what Marge must be experiencing. Petie shuddered as she turned into Rose’s driveway. Christie’s truck was gone, and so was Rose’s newly spiffed-up Ford, the family’s main Christmas present from Christie.

  “Helloooo!” Petie hollered as she let herself in Rose’s front door. The boys made shushing and hiding noises Petie wasn’t supposed to hear in a game nearly as old as they were. Petie clapped her hand over her eyes and played along, searching the house until one by one they gave themselves away by giggling or, in Ryan’s case, shivering in nervous anticipation so strong it shook the hangers in the closet where he was hiding. Once Petie had found all three, they bunched up together in the front hall.

  “Where’s your mom?” Petie asked Carissa.

  “Work.”

  “Where’s Jim?”

  Carissa shrugged. “Dunno. He goes out a lot anymore. He doesn’t tell us where.”

  “The Wayside, probably,” Petie said.

  “Nah, he always tells us when he’s going there, in case Mom wants to meet him when she’s done working.”

  Petie put one arm around the shoulders of each boy. “So where else could he go? There’s no place else to go to. Well, the Anchor, maybe.”

  Carissa looked away. “Oh, I think he has someplace he goes to when he wants to be by himself.”

  “What, a cave?” Petie teased. “There isn’t anyplace you can go in Hubbard and be by yourself.”

  Carissa lifted her shoulders. “Well, there might be someplace.” Like Rose, she would have pretty breasts one day. Petie could already see Rose’s lovely bones, the full, creamy chest. Every time Petie saw her, the girl seemed to have aged another year, but she still had her same sweet face.

  “Well, thanks for looking after the boys,” Petie said. “Now that you’re over in Sawyer every day, we miss seeing you.”

  “Yeah,” Carissa said.

  “C’mon, guys,” Petie said, shepherding them to the door. “Daddy’s waiting for his dinner.”

  “Bye, ’rissa,” the boys bellowed as they went out the door, in another old ritual.

  “Do you want to come back with us?” Petie asked. “You don’t have to stay here by yourself.”

  “Oh, no thanks,” Carissa said, coloring deeply. “I’ll be fine here. There’s stuff on TV.”

  “Okay. But you call if you need anything,” Petie said, and backed out quickly into the rain.

  THIS TIME Carissa waited to hear Petie’s noisy little car disappear down the hill before rooting around in the coat closet again and pulling out one of Rose’s slickers, her own rubber boots and a big flashlight. She took a plate of sandwiches out of the refrigerator, and from a cabinet brought out a Tupperware container of homemade chocolate chip cookies she had strong-armed the boys into helping her make right after school. She quickly stowed all these things in a water-proof backpack.

  She had debated all day whether to ride her bicycle or walk the twelve blocks, finally deciding to walk because she wanted to look good when she arrived. She had braided her hair into a thick, glossy plait that hung straight down her back, and had changed into a new pair of jeans while the cookies were baking. Now she zipped her slicker up to her throat, lifted her hood into place, slung the backpack over one arm and stepped out into the wet blackness that was nighttime on the Oregon coast in winter.

  By her calculations, she had two hours before Rose would get home from work. The walk to the top of Chollum Road took fifteen minutes. When she got there she saw Jim Christie’s truck parked beside the hunchbacked trailer. A faint light glowed through the little window.

  She walked right up to the door and rattled the handle. She could hear a sudden scuffle of boots, and the thump of something being dropped. Christie opened the door and Carissa hopped up and inside.

  “It’s so cold,” she said to him, hugging herself.

  “What are you doing here, girl?” Christie looked angry, but Carissa had been prepared for that. She lifted the plate of sandwiches and the cookies out of her pack. “I thought you might be hungry. I brought you dinner.” She looked around and saw that what Christie had dropped was a large hardbound book. He’d been sitting in a folding camp chair, reading by the light of the same Coleman lantern he’d brought the last time she was here. The air was fusty and sweet with the smell of a pipe he’d been smoking, now burning feebly in an ashtray beside the lantern.

  “I didn’t know you smoked a pipe,” she said brightly. “Do you like it better than cigarettes?” She took off her slicker and folded it carefully, laying it on the floor. The trailer was warmer than it had been outside. All the mold was gone from the walls, and a new floor had been laid down.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Christie said, still standing.

  “It’s okay,” she assured him.

  “It isn’t.”

  “Well, at least eat something before I go. It took me fifteen minutes to walk here, and I made the cookies just for you.”

  Christie took a sandwich with a shaking hand and, still standing, ate it in four bites. Carissa watched, crestfallen. “Why are you so angry all the time? Last summer you used to talk to me but now you don’t. You’re hardly ever at the house anymore.”

  “You’re real young,” Christie said.

  “I’ll be fourteen next month.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s not young.”

  “It’s young,” he said harshly, and then softened his voice. “You could get in trouble here, girl. You could get me in trouble.”

  “How?”

  “Put your coat on. I’ll take you home.”

  “I don’t want to go home. No one’s there.” Carissa began to cry. “I made these sandwiches and cookies and I thought you’d be glad to see me. I’ve been looking forward to it all day. Why are you like this? You’re not like this with Mom.”

  “Me and your mother are different.” Christie took up the lantern and, stooping carefully, stepped out the trailer door. Carissa flung on her coat and followed, sniffling. “Don’t you like me?”

  “You need to leave me alone,” Christie said.

  “I think you’re awful,” Carissa said, and ran out of the woods onto Chollum Road.

  IT TOOK a block and a half for Christie to persuade the girl to get in the truck so he could drive her home. By the time he reached across the seat to shove her door open, his shirt was soa
ked with sweat. He’d felt safer in full-force storms at sea. Her face, when she climbed in, was all pink and white like a rosebud, and clouded with unhappiness.

  “You hate me.”

  Christie tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “That’s not it.”

  “You’d rather be in that crummy trailer than at home with me.”

  He pulled into their driveway. Rose wasn’t home yet.

  “Well, I think there’s something wrong with you,” Carissa said, slamming her door.

  “Maybe so,” said Christie, though Carissa had already disappeared inside the house. “Maybe so.”

  · · ·

  HALIBUT LEEK AND POTATO

  We are very fond of halibut, a fish that goes well with everything from tomatoes to heavy cream. Its sturdy meat keeps to itself instead of falling to pieces and disappearing into the body of a soup the way sole or flounder do. We like using it with leeks and potatoes, which are other modest foods that do well in team efforts.

  It had been a desperately quiet night at Souperior’s—one couple and a small family, and that was it, total take under forty dollars—but Rose had been able to write. She had five recipes still to go, and barely a week in which to write them. She’d used up all of her and Petie’s soups, and now she was either adapting other contestants’ recipes or making them up herself. Cheddar shrimp with broccoli. Potato corn chowder. Scallop and oyster stew with biscuits.

  She checked her watch and was stunned to find it was seven forty-five, nearly closing time. The kitchen wouldn’t take much cleanup. After closing she’d promised to swing by Petie’s to see her latest illustrations. Petie had been in a very odd frame of mind lately, and Rose was worried about her. She disappeared sometimes during the day, and she was even more distracted and short than normal. Rose wanted to have a talk with her, but somehow they were never alone together anymore. It looked like this evening would be no different. When she arrived at Petie’s house the boys were arguing about which TV channel to watch and Eddie was yelling at both of them to shut up, goddamn it. Petie rolled her eyes and put a bottle of beer in front of Rose at the table.