Going to Bend

by Diane Hammond

“Has she?”

  “Well, Jim left.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad, honey. Why, I thought he’d marry that gal for sure, he looked at her like she’d hung the moon, her and that little daughter of hers.”

  “I guess things didn’t work out, at least not for this year. We’re hoping he’ll come home after the season.” Petie pulled into the Sea View. She could feel Marge shiver.

  “Look, do you want me to go in with you?”

  Marge gave a thin, eerie wail. “Oh! Oh, honey, I keep expecting him to come out the door, you know how he knew the sound of every car. In all the years we lived here I never had to carry a single grocery bag in by myself, he was that thoughtful. And now he’s not here,” Marge cried. “He’s not here at all.”

  The power of her misery was almost unbearable. The only thing Petie could think to do was to hold Marge’s arm firmly in her hand, as though in her grief Marge might fly away instead of sitting arrested and bereft in the passenger seat, her legs out the open door. Marge finally took some deep, shuddering breaths and quieted down. She patted Petie’s hand blindly. “I’m okay, honey.”

  “Bullshit,” Petie said. “You aren’t okay, you shouldn’t be okay, no one expects you to be okay, so stop trying to spare me. Just stop.”

  Marge nodded blindly, mopping at her eyes and nose. “All right, honey.”

  Petie brought Marge’s suitcase up to the apartment she and Larry had built above the office. Marge seemed to have forgotten Petie was there, so she let herself out, saying, “Come over whenever you’re ready. Or call me, if you want me to come get you.”

  The woman looked about as fit to drive as a blind man.

  ROSE CAME first, with soup—potato leek, one of her best, in Petie’s opinion. Eddie had taken off with Loose to go look at a wrecked dirt bike they were thinking of fixing up, so it was just Ryan and Carissa and the women. Marge would be there any time.

  Rose set her pot on the stove and said, “You know, if I’d known it was just going to be us, I’d have invited Nadine, too. They’re leaving the day after tomorrow, I can hardly believe it.”

  “Why don’t you call her? Maybe Gordon can close up.”

  “You know, I think I will—it would be a nice way to say thank you for everything she’s done for us, don’t you think?” Rose turned on a low heat under the soup pot and smoothed her skirt, a pretty one she’d bought with some of her book-advance money.

  Petie handed her the wall phone. “Do you know her number?”

  “By heart.”

  Petie watched Rose cradle the phone between her chin and shoulder. Her hair had silver threads already—her mother had been snow white by thirty-five—and her profile had softened and filled out lately. Petie thought Eve must have looked just like Rose, walking through her garden in Eden humming quietly to herself and snipping a blossom here and there, tidying up a little, doing light housework for the Lord. But Rose would never have fallen for the snake. Rose had a sort of built-in goodness meter that would have picked out the serpent’s insincerity in under a minute flat.

  “You know how to get here, don’t you?” Rose was saying. “Yes, take that last right. We’ll wait dinner for you. No, it’s not a big deal. Okay? Okay.” She hung up the phone. “She’ll be here in half an hour,” she told Petie. “She was so pleased to be asked. We really could have been nicer to her.”

  “We were nice to her,” Petie protested. “You’re always nice to her, and sometimes I was, too.”

  “We were okay,” Rose countered. “Okay is not the same as nice. Anyway Gordon said he’d finish up and close early. They’ve only had a few customers, anyway.”

  “Good,” Petie said, and turned to Carissa, who was sitting at the table making a friendship bracelet out of embroidery thread. “Would you call upstairs and ask Ryan to come down? I want to talk to you both for a minute before Marge gets here.”

  When they were all together in the kitchen, Petie said, “You guys know that Marge’s husband Larry died a few weeks ago, right?”

  Ryan nodded solemnly.

  “Well, Marge is real sad right now, she has a big bruise around her heart, and—”

  “Did you see it?” Ryan said.

  Petie frowned. “Did I see what?”

  “The bruise.”

  Rose smiled. “No, sweetie, it’s too deep to see. That’s why your mom’s talking to you about it.”

  “Oh,” Ryan subsided, clearly disappointed.

  Petie started again. “When people miss someone as much as Marge misses Larry, they forget how to be happy for a while, and sometimes it makes them cry even when they’re right in the middle of talking to you.”

  “I like Marge,” Ryan said.

  “So do I,” Petie said. “That’s why I want her to come over for supper. It will help. If you have to be as sad as Marge is, it’s easier to get through it when you’re with people who love you.”

  “She’s probably still going through the five stages of grief,” Carissa said.

  Petie looked at Rose.

  “Anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance,” Carissa explained. “Somebody named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross figured that out.”

  “The child cannot possibly be from my loins,” Rose said to Petie.

  “We learned about it in Family Sciences.”

  “What the hell is Family Sciences?” Petie said.

  “You learn about how people relate to each other at different stages of life,” Carissa said, unruffled by the looks she was getting from Petie and Rose.

  “Huh,” said Petie. “So anyway, if Marge cries when she’s here, I don’t want you to worry.”

  “Hey, Ryan, why don’t we make a picture for her?” Carissa said. “It might cheer her up.”

  The two of them went upstairs to the boys’ room. Petie could hear them banging around in the closet. She gave Rose a quick summary of the afternoon, and Rose shook her head. “I feel so badly for her,” she said. “You’re a brave woman, meeting her at the Greyhound station and having her over.”

  Petie shrugged. “There haven’t been that many people who’ve loved me, and most of them are dead.”

  Outside, a car door shut and a minute later Marge puffed in, shaking rain off a plastic rain bonnet. “My Lord,” she said. “I was getting used to it being dry in Tempe.” She carefully folded her rain bonnet and set it on top of her purse.

  “Hi, Marge,” Rose said, and approached for a hug.

  “Hello, honey,” Marge said. “Why, don’t you look pretty? Petie said you’d been going through some times lately, but you’d never know it to look at you, hon.”

  “It’s all makeup and bad lighting, but thank you anyway,” Rose said. “Can I get you anything? Petie, what do you have?”

  “Beer, juice, water. Pepsi, of course.”

  “I’ll just have a glass of water, hon,” Marge said.

  “Nadine’s coming over in another few minutes,” Petie told her, “to have dinner with us, too. Girls’ night.”

  “Oh, isn’t that nice of you. I always felt sorry for her, to tell you the truth,” Marge said, accepting a glass of tap water from Rose. “She seemed like one of those people who has their nose pressed to the glass, watching other people having a nice time, but like it was never going to happen for her. And her brother, what was his name?”

  “Gordon,” Rose said.

  “Yes, Gordon,” Marge said. “I never really saw the point to him. He didn’t ever seem to do anything.”

  Rose looked at Petie. “You should tell her,” Petie said.

  “Tell what?” Marge said.

  “Gordon has AIDS,” Rose said. “He helps when he can, but he doesn’t always feel well enough.”

  “Why, I had no idea. Is he a fairy?” Marge said.

  “Well,” Rose said, “he’s a homosexual.”

  Marge nodded thoughtfully. “I can’t pretend I understand how people get that way, but Larry and me, we always tried to keep an open mind. There was the nicest boy over in the Valley
who cut my hair for years and years, just the sweetest thing. He’d tell me about his boyfriends sometimes. Will he die?”

  “Will who die?” Rose said.

  “Gordon. You said he has AIDS. Does that mean he’ll die?”

  “Yes.”

  Marge nodded matter-of-factly. “Yes, I thought so. Maybe that’s why Nadine’s always looked so sad. I didn’t know that, honey. I’m glad you told me.”

  AS SOON as Nadine arrived, Rose served them all from the big soup pot. Ryan brought his picture down for Marge, presenting it with great solemnity. He had drawn a rainbow over the ocean, with a boat sailing underneath it. Marge was elaborate in her praise. “You’re such a good artist, honey. Look how good you did your colors. Whose boat is it?”

  Ryan tucked his chin gravely. “Larry’s.”

  “Oh, is it? But we didn’t have a boat, honey. Larry used to talk about it, but we just never seemed to get around to doing anything about it.”

  “It’s the boat that’s taking him to heaven,” Ryan said.

  “Oh! Why, that’s a beautiful thought, honey.” Marge’s eyes glistened. “Is the rainbow heaven?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “But I think it might be. Are there colors in heaven?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Marge said. “Do you know, I think God must love colors, to have made such beautiful rainbows and flowers.”

  “Yes,” Ryan agreed.

  “Can I take this picture home?” Marge asked.

  Ryan nodded.

  “I know just where I’m going to put it,” Marge said. “I’m going to put it smack in the middle of my refrigerator door, where I can see it all day long.” She gave the boy a hug. “You’ve made an old lady real happy, hon,” she said.

  “Mom told us you might cry.”

  “Ryan,” Petie warned.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Marge said to Petie. To Ryan she said, “I might. I get real sad sometimes. But being here with you I don’t feel one bit sad, and that’s the truth. Thank you for that, honey.”

  Carissa and Ryan took their dinner to the living room and turned on the TV. The four women settled around the kitchen table like old campaigners during a lull in the fighting. They ate Rose’s good soup and talked quietly about things that didn’t matter: the price of early strawberries, the cost of gasoline in Tempe, the five-year prison sentence Billy Wall had been given that morning for abusing those Hubbard boys; Nadine’s job at the rare books store in Los Angeles, where she would return to work two weeks from next Tuesday.

  Eddie Coolbaugh and Loose came in and disappeared upstairs. After a while Petie went up to check on the boys and Carissa, who’d fallen asleep beside Ryan. When she came out of the boys’ bedroom she saw the light on down the hall, in their bedroom. She looked in and found Eddie sitting on the side of the bed with his shirt unbuttoned and one sock off. He was as still as death, as though he’d been beached there for hours, pinned to the mattress by misery.

  “Hey, Petie,” he said softly when she came in, barely glancing at her.

  “Hey, Eddie.”

  “Boys okay?”

  Petie nodded. It was relative.

  “I’ve been thinking, Pete, I’ve been thinking real hard. Was it something I did?”

  “Don’t.”

  “You always seem to know what’s going on with me, but I never know what’s going on with you, so I figure it was something I did.”

  “It wasn’t anything you did.”

  “Because I could change it, you know, if you told me. You just tell me, and I swear I won’t do it again.”

  “It’s not like that,” Petie said.

  Eddie looked at her with the terrible, uncomprehending look of an animal being led to slaughter. “You loved me, huh? Didn’t you love me?”

  “Yes,” Petie whispered. “I loved you.”

  “So where did that go, Pete, huh?”

  Petie shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t just stop loving people,” Eddie pleaded. “You love them for keeps.”

  Petie smiled the slightest smile. “Eula used to say that.”

  “Well, and she knew stuff, didn’t she? Didn’t she know we were going to get married before we even told her?”

  Petie dropped her head, ducked in shame.

  “You loved me, huh?” Eddie pressed.

  “Yes, I loved you,” Petie said. “You and Eula saved my life.”

  “So isn’t that worth something? Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Petie whispered. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I’m so sorry.”

  “Aw, Jesus, Petie.” Eddie started to cry. “Jesus. You tell me how to fix it, and I’ll fix it, okay? You’ve always been smarter than me, you always know what to do. You just tell me and I’ll do it. C’mon, huh?”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t just keep saying that, Petie. Goddamn it.”

  Petie put both hands to her mouth, forcing herself to watch Eddie rise, grab his second sock and bolt from the room. A minute later, she heard the protest of his truck door, and then wheels crunching on gravel.

  How do you begin to tell someone they’re too thin a meal when they can’t even see that you’ve been starving?

  WHEN PETIE returned to the kitchen she found Nadine, Marge and Rose deep in conversation.

  “I was twenty-six,” Marge was saying, “and we had nothing, not even furniture of our own. Larry’s folks let us borrow some things—Lord, there was an old green davenport that Larry always said reminded him of peas and was just about as comfortable to sit on,” Marge chuckled softly. “Larry, he was working enough for two jobs, DeeDee was a year old, and then out of the blue the army decides to up and send him to Korea. Well, you can imagine what I had to say about that, me with a small baby and Frank on the way. Not that it made a bit of difference what I thought, seeing as how Larry went anyway. I knew a couple of other girls whose husbands were sent overseas, too, but it was still the loneliest time. I’d put DeeDee to bed and turn on the radio real loud so she wouldn’t hear me cry. I swear I cried enough tears to fill a bathtub. It was the first time we were ever apart.”

  “It sounds romantic,” Rose said.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, honey. You know, some of the boys who went over with Larry were killed, and that was awful, those poor girls hearing from the army that their lives were busted all to pieces—no more husband, no more dreams. And we were all dreamers—we’d spend whole evenings talking about where we’d go for picnics and what we’d bring with us when our husbands came home, what their favorite foods were, what we’d bring for the kids when some of us didn’t even have kids yet, just planned to. It sounds silly now, I guess. You girls are so much more independent than we were.”

  “How long was Larry away?” Rose asked.

  “One year and seven months. And those years after he came back to us were the happiest times. He was a good man, my Larry, and he worked real hard to give us a good life, me and the kids.”

  “Pogo was never like that,” Rose said. “He was always taking off and leaving us to figure things out for ourselves.”

  “All the same, he gave you that beautiful little girl of yours,” Marge said.

  Nadine said, “My parents used to fight all the time. You drink too much, you don’t help out, you flirted with that girl, you won’t amount to anything if you can’t keep a job. For thirty-five years they were locked in mortal combat because neither one of them was willing to be the one who walked out. Funny thing was, my mother died first, and my father fell apart. He died within the year.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” Marge asked her.

  “No,” Nadine said, coloring. “I’m pretty set in my ways.”

  “Oh, honey,” Marge said, and reached across the table to pat Nadine’s hand sympathetically. “There’s a man out there who will worship the ground you walk on, who will look at you and see God because no one else could have made you so perfect. That’s what Larry used to tell me, that he looked a
t me and saw the Lord. If you haven’t met that man yet, honey, you just wait for him because he’s out there.”

  “What an extraordinary thought,” Nadine said.

  “Is it?” Marge said.

  “Yes,” said Petie and Rose in unison.

  Marge reached into her purse and retrieved a postcard. She held it out to Petie. “Here, hon, before I forget, this came in the mail for Larry. It’s from Bachelor Butte Resort, that place over in Bend. You get two nights there for free just for listening to their sales presentation. I thought you and the boys could use it.”

  Petie and Rose both smiled. “Thanks,” Petie said, accepting the card. “Every household on the coast must have gotten one of these. The Schiffens got one, and Rose has one that was sent to Jim Christie.”

  “Well, you use it or not,” Marge said. “It sure wasn’t doing any good sitting in my mailbox.”

  Nadine yawned and stood. “I’m sorry to be the poop of the party, but it’s been a long day and I’ve still got packing to do. Petie, thank you for having me over.” She slipped into her slicker. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Marge. If you’re ever in L.A. please look me up. Petie and Rose will know how to reach me. Rose, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  When the sound of Nadine’s car faded away, Marge said to Petie, “What a nice girl. Honey, you never told me she was nice. Shame on you.”

  Petie shrugged. “She’s more Rose’s friend than mine.”

  “Well, she’s nice anyway.”

  Rose yawned and stretched. “Time for me to go, too, and get Carissa to bed.” She went upstairs, roused Carissa and left after a quick hug for Marge.

  “Well, honey,” Marge said after they’d gone, “that was a real pleasant evening. It made being home easier.”

  “I’m glad,” Petie said. “There haven’t been many pleasant evenings here lately.”

  “You want to talk about it, honey? I’ve been thinking maybe something was wrong, but I didn’t want to press.”

  “I don’t know. I lie in bed at night and I can’t sleep for all the noise going on inside my head. There’s someone, not Eddie, that I love. There are pictures I want to paint instead of working. I’d like just once to experience joy.”