Dreamthorp

by Williamson, Chet

  Though he tried, he could not sleep again. As the thought of Susan grew stronger, he felt the warmth of tears pool in his eyes, and rubbed them away with knotted fists. He drove the memories from his mind, thinking instead about wood, great blocks of it, and his hands strong as hammers, fingers long and sharp as chisels, molding the slabs like putty. But every time, just as he started to see what was within the wood, the vision vanished and instead he saw the cheap, stained tile of the motel room ceiling.

  They checked out at nine-thirty and had breakfast at a metallic, forties-style diner near the turnpike entrance, then drove back toward Dreamthorp. "You want to go to the lake this afternoon?" Tom asked Karen, more from politeness than any real wish to be with her.

  She seemed to have gotten over her pique, and nodded. "Why don't we go back to your place, laze around with the paper, and go . . ." She caught his change of expression. "What's the matter?"

  "My . . . parents are there."

  "So what? It's your house, isn't it? They don't like it, they can take a hike. Jesus, it's not like we're going to fuck right in front of them or anything."

  "Karen, it's just that . . ." He didn't finish because he didn't know what to say. She was right. It was his house, and there was no reason why Karen and his folks shouldn't at least get along as well as his parents got along with anybody. He sighed. "All right. Let's pick up a Times at the store first."

  Summer days are long, often wearisomely so.

  —Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp

  It was nearly eleven when Tom pulled his Subaru into the little parking spot in front of his cottage, getting as far off the street as possible. As it was, there was barely room for one car to get by on the tiny, narrow lane. He and Karen got out and climbed the steps to the porch. Charlie Lewis was sitting on his own front porch, the sound of jazz coming from inside his house. It sounded familiar to Tom. He thought it was one of Charlie Parker's groups but wasn't sure. Charlie waved to Tom and smiled an avuncular smile at Karen, who responded with her own smile and a lift of her chin.

  "Come on in," said Tom. "I'll introduce you to my folks."

  When they stepped into the entry, Tom heard the television in the living room. He glanced in and saw Josh lying on the sofa, his feet on the arm. "Hey, Josh," he said. "Karen's here."

  Karen leaned past Tom and smiled at the boy. "Hi, Josh."

  Josh looked at her but didn't smile back or say a word. In another second his eyes were back on the TV screen.

  "Where're Grandma and Grandpa?"

  "Kitchen," the boy mumbled.

  They were there all right. Ed was sitting at the kitchen table reading the local newspaper, a cold and forgotten mug of coffee in front of him, and Frances was clad in a short apron which hid her shorts and made her appear seminude, as if in some middle-aged man's Victorian maid fantasy. Her arm was concealed behind the refrigerator, and when she removed it, Tom saw that she was holding a wet sponge. She smiled tight-lipped at Karen, and tossed the sponge into a yellow plastic bucket.

  "Sunday morning and you're cleaning?" Tom asked her.

  "Well, I'll bet you never cleaned behind there," she said defensively. "Have you? Honestly?"

  "No, Mother." Tom sighed. "I have never cleaned behind there. Now if you'll take off that apron, I'd like to introduce you to Karen."

  Tom tried to make the introductions as quick and painless as possible. Ed didn't change expression, but a dozen expressions flashed across Frances's face as she made brief and polite conversation. In his parents' old eyes he could see how young Karen was, and he practically pulled her away from them and back out onto the porch, where they began to go through the Times, Karen leisurely, Tom swiftly and systematically, as though he had an appointment to keep.

  Just before noon, Ed and Frances came outside. Frances was carrying a small picnic hamper, and Ed was holding a book. "We thought we'd have a little picnic down near the tennis courts," Frances said. "We asked Josh if he wanted to come along, but he didn't."

  Tom couldn't read his mother's expression. He wasn't sure if she had really wanted Josh to stay and have lunch with him and Karen as a punishment for their perceived carnality or if she had wanted to get the boy as far away from the lovers' bad influence as possible. Whatever her motive, at least Tom would be spared lunch with his parents, which would undoubtedly have consisted of his mother scurrying back and forth from kitchen to dining room as soon as someone's plate or glass or cup was less than full, and his father's dour concentration on his plate until, it being emptied, he would then scowl and follow the conversation with his eyes alone until he could get back to the unending process of filling his mind with history.

  Ed and Frances muttered hasty good-byes and moved off down the street, seemingly as relieved to be going as Tom was to have them go. "You hungry?" Tom asked Karen after his parents had vanished from sight.

  She glanced up from the magazine section. "No. We had a late breakfast. Maybe a little later."

  He nodded, got up, and went inside. Josh had not moved from the sofa. A Tarzan movie was now on the television. "You working today?"

  "At one," Josh said.

  He had begun a part-time job at Ted's Mobil, the only gas station in Dreamthorp, a few days earlier. Ted Johnson, a craggy man in his sixties with permanent black oil marks rimming his fingernails, had caught his previous summer helper helping himself to the Lance cookies without paying for them and had fired him. Tom got gas just after it happened, and Ted told him about it, as Ted told everything of any consequence to anyone of any temperament. Ascertaining that Ted would need a new helper, Tom volunteered Josh, thinking that the job would get the boy out of the cottage and give him some financial independence as well. Josh had never shown any interest in cars or engines, but Ted Johnson needed someone to pump gas, wipe windshields, and add oil, not do tune-ups and change spark plugs.

  Josh had been agreeable, which is to say he had not refused, and was doing an acceptable job, if what Ted Johnson told Tom was true. "A good kid," Ted had said. "Quiet, but a good worker." The boy put in twenty hours a week, got the minimum wage, and banked most of it.

  "You're going to want some lunch," Tom told Josh.

  "I'll get something."

  "No, look, I'll whip something up for you. How about some pasta salad, a little soup?"

  "I can do it."

  "Really, let me. I'll call you when it's ready." Tom went back out on the porch and told Karen he was going to make Josh lunch, but that they would eat later. She nodded, not looking up. In the kitchen he heated some dried chicken soup mix and got some salad from the refrigerator, along with milk and an orange. "Come around to the dining room," he told Josh through the kitchen door, and met the boy there. Josh sat down and began to eat slowly. Tom sat across from him.

  "You not hungry?" Josh finally asked him.

  "I had a late breakfast. I'll eat later with Karen."

  Josh stopped chewing and looked at Tom. Then he breathed a sigh through his nostrils and looked down at his plate again. "You really like her," Josh said. He said it as though he couldn't comprehend the reasons behind it. "You going to marry her?"

  Only the entry and the screen door separated them from Karen. Tom dropped his voice. "We haven't even talked about it."

  "How was last night?" the boy said, still looking down at his plate.

  Tom felt his ears getting red. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "You have a good time?"

  "All right," Tom said, his voice rising.

  "Tommy?" Karen called from the porch.

  "Nothing," Tom called back.

  "'Tommy.'" Josh shook his head. "Mom never called you Tommy."

  "I don't need to hear—"

  "She never called you that." Josh's voice was trembling.

  "Josh, don't make me lose my patience. . .."

  "I don't . . . why do you like her?"

  "This isn't the time to discuss this—"

  "It's never the time!" Josh looked up and Tom saw tears in h
is eyes.

  "Josh, I've talked to you about this, I've tried to explain to—''

  "Explain? What are you gonna explain? What are you gonna explain? How can you like her better than Mom?"

  "Josh! . . ."

  The boy pushed himself back from the table and got to his feet. "You didn't love her," he said as he ran toward the entry, toward the front door. "You couldn't've loved her . . ."

  Tom heard the screen door slam, heard Josh's feet pounding down the porch steps. He didn't go after his son.

  He sat there at the table, hugging himself as if trying to hold in all the grief that he had refused to show to anyone, that he had been ashamed of showing. You're still young, Tom, friends had told him over and over. You can still find someone. The thing to do is let it pass. I know. I know how much it must hurt.

  Jesus, how they lied. They didn't know. They couldn't. But he listened to them. He played their game.

  "Tom?" No Tommy this time. At least he was grateful for that.

  "Yeah," he said to Karen, who stood in the doorway.

  "What's the matter with that kid?"

  "He's . . . upset." He unfolded his arms now, and rested them on the table.

  "I don't know why you take that, Tom. If I'd ever acted that way in front of my parents, they'd have—"

  "Yeah? Well, I'm not your parents. Maybe I'm old enough to be, but I'm not, so don't tell me about your parents."

  She looked at him for a long time, and he could see the anger building in her face. Lines he had never known were there now stood out plainly, as if her entire youth were a lie. "I think you'd better take me home," she said coldly.

  "Yeah." He nodded. "I think that would be a hell of an idea."

  On the ride back to her apartment his sad rage did not subside. They said nothing to each other, not even when he took her overnight bag from the back, handed it to her, and drove away. He had been afraid to talk to her, to apologize, to try and make her understand what he and Josh had been going through. He had been afraid that she would not understand, and he had also been afraid that she would.

  If she did, he might never escape her. Even now, as he drove back toward his cottage, he felt an emptiness inside him at her absence. It was juvenile, even perverse, but nonetheless there. He had tried to fill the gap that Susan's passing had left with his infatuation with Karen, and although it had worked for a time, it was doomed to failure. He tried to drive the girl from his mind now, to accept the loss of a second lover in less than a year.

  But that was not right. Susan had been far more than a lover. She had been his wife, his best friend, the person to whom he confided both dreams and fears. And having her wrenched away from him was the worst thing that had ever happened to him and, he truly believed, ever could happen. His own death would be anticlimactic.

  The cottage was empty when he arrived home. Still angry, he descended into the cellar, grabbed a mallet and his old number one chisel, and savagely attacked a cubic yard block of white oak he had bought the week before. These were no light, tapping strokes that he dealt the guilty wood, but harsh, bitter swings that sent chips twisting through the air. He had little idea of what it was that he was forcing from the block—the thought was dimly in his mind of a head, a massive, bestial head, but it was not the act of creation that obsessed him now. Rather it was the act of destruction. Or perhaps it was both, his aim being to bring forth art from his fury.

  He stopped after several minutes, after the effort had made sweat bead on his face, and he dropped the mallet and the chisel on the cement floor, where they struck with a dull rattle. He looked at the block, at the chunks driven off its corners, and saw nothing else, no form within, only random butchery.

  "Stupid," he muttered to himself. "Stupid."

  Tom knelt, picked up the mallet and chisel, and set them on his workbench, then ran his hand over the wood, picking away splinters. "I'm sorry," he told the wood, he told Susan, he told Josh. "I'm sorry," he told himself.

  He went upstairs, took a six-pack of Heineken from the refrigerator, and stepped outside. Charlie was sitting over on his porch, and Tom could hear, very softly, the strains of jazz coming from his house. Tom whistled, and Charlie looked up from his paper. Tom held up the six-pack, and Charlie beckoned him.

  "Never one to refuse a good German beer," Charlie said as Tom came up the steps and sat on the porch swing next to him.

  "It's Dutch."

  "Dutch, German, whatever. They know how to brew, right?" Tom unscrewed the cap and handed a bottle to Charlie, then did the same for himself. "Now I know," Charlie went on after taking a swallow, "that I frequently indulge in the holy beverage before one o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, but I have not known you to. Might this have something to do with the fracas over at your place earlier today?"

  Tom didn't smile. "Can I talk to you? Seriously?"

  Charlie nodded. "Sure," he said, and Tom believed him.

  "I miss Susan, Charlie," Tom said. "I miss Susan more than I've ever told anyone, more than I've ever let on. And I don't know what to do about it."

  "I know that," Charlie said. "I've known that all along."

  Charlie took another swig of beer. "You just have a fight with this girl, this Karen?"

  "Yes."

  "You think it's over between the two of you?"

  "I think so. I hope so, really." Tom gave a small, wry laugh. "And yet, even now, I find myself considering calling her up again, telling her I'm sorry."

  "You see any future in it?"

  "Hell, no."

  Charlie shrugged. "Then don't call her."

  "People don't always do what's good for them," Tom said.

  "Tell yourself you'll call her tomorrow. Then tomorrow tell yourself the same thing all over again. It's what I used to do when I had to call to get my trees pruned."

  Tom put his bottle to his lips, then brought it down without drinking. "You get lonely," he said softly.

  "You've got Josh."

  "Do I? I'm not so sure." Tom paused. "He told me that he thought I never loved Susan."

  "God." Charlie shook his head.

  "You don't know how that hurt. I'd been—at least I thought I'd been—not . . . grieving for his sake as much as mine, that the sooner we were past it, the better off we'd be. Hell, that's what everybody else told me too."

  "Everybody else doesn't know squat," Charlie said. "You need to grieve. Everybody needs to grieve. I did when Jane died. Like a sonofabitch. I still do. And I think it's worse when you're young like you are. You don't expect death."

  "Young." Tom smiled. "I haven't thought of myself as young for a long time."

  "You ought to start."

  Tom sat without speaking for a while. When he finally did, it was a whisper. "You know I didn't cry? I felt gutted. Empty. But I didn't cry. I still haven't."

  "It might be better if you did. Someday you will."

  "I don't know, Charlie. I don't know. It's like I still don't believe it. Like I'll come home and she'll be there." He turned to look at Charlie with dry eyes. "I really don't think I believe it. I just can't believe she's dead."

  When Tom's parents came back to the cottage at three o'clock, they saw Tom sitting with Charlie Lewis on Charlie's porch. The two men had finished the first six-pack and were halfway through a second, and Tom was smiling again. Frances shook her head in disgust, refused Charlie's invitation to "set a while," and went into the cottage with Ed.

  By the time Josh returned at six, the bonhomie the beer had produced in Tom was gone, and he took the boy outside, away from Frances's curiosity, and told him that he would not be seeing Karen anymore.

  "You two have a fight?" Josh asked.

  "Yes."

  "Over me?"

  Tom paused, and Josh began to nod. "No," Tom said quickly. "It wasn't over you. Just . . . things in general. But I will tell you that I don't like the way you've been behaving lately."

  "Yeah? Well, same here."

  "Don't make me hit you, Josh. You're too o
ld for that." Torn couldn't remember spanking Josh since he was six. "Since you don't have Karen around to be rude to anymore, don't try it on me. All right?"

  Josh nodded sullenly. "All right."

  "And an apology might be in order."

  "For what?"

  "For acting like a little prick," Tom said.

  His son stared into his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said, "for acting like a little prick."

  Tom nodded. "That was fine," he said with as much sarcasm as he could muster. "That was just about the most gracious apology I've heard in a long time." They looked at each other like two wolves vying for dominance. "Go get washed up," Tom finally said. "Grandma's got dinner waiting."

  That night, after the others in the house were sleeping, Josh pushed back the screen in his window, stepped out onto the porch roof, and climbed down to the porch. He walked quietly down the steps and disappeared into the night.

  Death does not walk about here often, but when he does, he receives as much respect as the squire himself.

  —Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp

  Monday was Tom Brewer's lightest class day. He had freshman Intro to Art at ten in the morning and office hours from eleven to noon. This particular Monday no one came to see him, so he left early, ate lunch in the snack bar, and drove home.

  As he walked up his steps he heard Alice Penworth calling him. She was coming up the street, wearing her usual uniform of faded blue jeans and sweatshirt, irregular regalia for a woman who had to be in her mid-seventies. She had lived in Dreamthorp her entire life, and would occasionally join Tom and Charlie on Charlie's porch—and in a beer—and regale the pair of them with stories of life in Dreamthorp over the decades.

  "Tom," she said now as she walked up to him, her bird-like face pinched in concern, "I wonder if you can help me."

  "Sure, Alice. What's the problem?"

  "Well, I have not seen Martha Sipling since Saturday, and I'm worried that something may have happened to her. Now I'm not one to pry, you know that, but I haven't seen any signs of movement in her cottage, and that's not like Martha."