There were two old beat-up bikes in the garage, both fitted with large wire baskets front and back. Jayne explained that sometimes—to save gas—she did her marketing or deliveries by bike if the orders were small enough but that the bikes were ours for the summer. And then we were sitting in Jayne’s kitchen, a canary chirping at us from an antique-looking birdcage in the next room. Jayne treated us to peach-mango tea and her walnut bars, and I wiggled my bare toes in pleasure.
* * *
“What do you think?” Abby asked as we unpacked later, standing between a single bed with its faded patchwork quilt and a metal army cot. There was a blind on one window but not the other, tie-dyed curtains at both; a seashell lamp on the bedside table; and a dream catcher, some Mardi Gras masks, and a few scattered watercolors on the walls.
“I think it will be a blast!” I told her, because Jayne herself looked like an expatriate from a sixties commune. She had an angular face devoid of makeup, deep-set gray eyes beneath her graying bangs, and a girlish smile, as though life still were capable of surprising her. She wore a kerchief around her head, tied in back beneath her hair, and a baggy cotton jumper over a tee. It was going to be two months with a housemother whose smile alone gave you the sense that she was up for whatever mischief you might think of next.
We helped unwrap dinner—little parcels of food from a farmer’s market—and after dinner Abby and I rode the bikes all around the university neighborhood on miles and miles of bike trails along both sides of the Willamette River, with a bike bridge to cross over now and then.
“I love it here!” I called to Abby, feeling a remarkably cool breeze after such a warm day. “The weather’s perfect!”
“You wouldn’t think so if you were here the rest of the year,” she called back over her shoulder. “This is the sunny season. The rest of the year, it’s like England.”
I could do with a little England, I thought. I could live with these one-of-a-kind houses, with the bikes and the breeze.
“When were you here last?” I asked, watching Abby’s bare legs make slow revolutions on the pedals.
“I come every summer for a short while. Last time I came for the whole deal, I was twelve.”
“Was Jayne ever married?”
“Yeah. They divorced when I was small. I hardly remember him. Now she says she’s too busy to fall in love.”
That evening we sat around the wood-burning stove in the living room, and I marveled that it could get cold enough to light a fire. Jayne poured each of us a cup of wine in Japanese teacups and told us about the koi pond she was planning to dig in her backyard if she could figure a way to keep the raccoons out.
She chattered on about the plants she would need and the fish she would buy, and when my head began to dip and jerk, and the teacup felt weightless in my hand, I snapped to and saw Jayne smiling at me.
“Okay, girls, off to bed. Quilts in the chest beneath the window. Who gets the cot?”
* * *
There were no definite hours working for Jayne. On Mondays and Tuesdays she made casseroles of one kind or another, packaged and labeled each one, and delivered them to steady customers on Wednesdays. Thursdays and Fridays, she cooked for the Saturday Market downtown.
Abby and I did some of the grocery runs for her and helped with the peeling and dicing and cleanup. Jayne loved doing the seasoning, the experimenting and sautéing, but she was glad to turn over much of the baking to us. When Saturday came, we rose indecently early, packed our treasures into assorted boxes and plastic milk carriers, and hauled them all to the back of the minivan.
When we reached the Park Blocks, we set up our folding tables. Farmers were already unpacking crates of lettuce and radishes, mushrooms, beets, and early peas, and it wasn’t yet seven in the morning. When the sun comes out in Eugene, though, it’s like a sacred moment, people see so little of it the rest of the year. In Maryland, I spend most of summer trying to hide from it.
The Saturday Market was a feast of color. More tie-dyed clothing than anyone sees in a normal lifetime. Watercolor paintings, tablecloths, and quilts. Shelves of pottery, wood bowls, and birdhouses, as well as the kind of kitschy lawn ornaments that you always hope your neighbor won’t buy.
If your eye isn’t drawn to the food stalls, your nose will take you there. Abby and I had each downed a banana muffin on the ride in, but as customers arrived, we could smell the empanadas and sausage rolls that were already becoming someone’s breakfast.
We artfully arranged the cookies and brownies we had baked, along with Jayne’s custard pies, and smiled at everyone who even looked our way. She was right—the food sells out every time before noon, which gave Abby and me a chance later to wander through the aisles and check out the competition. Not that it mattered, because only the most crumbly or lopsided items were left on the tables, and those were hastily disposed of by a markdown after twelve o’clock.
“Are these what I think they are?” I asked Abby as we stopped at one of the tables.
“Yep,” said Abby, checking them out. “Pipes for smoking weed.” The seller, a long-haired guy wearing a beaded necklace and a leather vest over a bare chest, beckoned to us, but we smiled and moved over to inspect the recorders and guitars across the way.
The Saturday Market had elements of a carnival, for not only were there panhandlers ready to greet you, but some of the customers themselves were a major attraction. In the time we worked the table, from early morning to afternoon, we saw the Tattooed Man, the Girl with the Thousand Piercings, the Fat Lady, the Thin Lady, and the Multi-dyed Hair Man, and we had lots of fun naming them, the infinite variety of the human race.
I wanted to check the stalls one last time to see what I might like to look for the next time—jewelry for Sylvia, maybe. There was a silversmith, as I remembered, and we made our way down an outside row—past the leather belts and bags, past a young man sitting on the ground, head in his arms. We couldn’t see his face, but he wore a navy-blue knit cap that covered most of his head, with a few blondish curls hanging out. A hand-lettered sign on cardboard beside him read PLEASE HELP.
We studied him as we drew closer.
“Do you think he’s sick?” I asked Abby.
“Stoned, probably.”
An open cigar box sat in front of him, but only three dollar bills lay inside. “Should we stop?” I wondered.
She shook her head. “Whatever he wants, we haven’t got, and we need to get back to help Jayne.”
I reluctantly started to follow when the man raised his head and stared right at me. His eyes didn’t have the look of someone who was stoned, but his face had a yellowish cast and the skin under his eyes was dark.
“Hi,” I said. “You okay?”
He almost smiled. “Not really. But I need to get home bad.” His voice was scarcely audible.
Abby turned around and came back where I was standing. “Where’s home?” she asked. We’d both bent down a little to hear him.
“Seattle,” the guy replied.
I wondered if he had AIDS. I looked at his hands, dangling listlessly from his knees, but he didn’t have any telltale blotches. His knees could have been bony beneath the worn jeans; I couldn’t quite tell.
“So what do you need?” Abby asked.
“Eight dollars more.” It seemed an effort for him to get the words out.
I wondered how much I could ask. “Does anyone know you’re coming?”
That faint smile again. “They’ll know when I get there, but I . . . really got to get home.”
I think we all agreed on that. I slipped my bag off my shoulder and found a five. Abby added another.
“That’s too much,” the man said quickly, and reached toward the bills in the cigar box.
“Keep it,” Abby said.
“And good luck,” I added.
He thanked us and slowly got to his feet. “Do you know the way to the bus depot?”
“I think it’s back that way,” Abby said, pointing. “You’d better a
sk. We’re from out of town too. What’s your name?”
“Christopher,” he said, and then he gave us an almost full smile. At least his teeth looked good. He took good care of those. “Thanks a lot.”
“Our good deed for the day,” Abby said as we headed back to Jayne. “That was my last five. We’d better make a good profit on those pecan bars.”
* * *
I was both surprised yet half expecting it when I got a phone call from Sylvia telling me that Les and Stacy were getting married at Thanksgiving. They’d set a date.
“Wow!” I kept saying. “Can you plan a wedding in five months?”
“Well, they have. They’ve taken care of all the arrangements, and Les sounds as sure and happy as he’s ever been. We just wanted to let you know in case you were making other plans for Thanksgiving.”
“I’d cancel anything to be at Lester’s wedding. Tell him that. This is terrific,” I told her, and ran to tell Abby and Jayne the happy news.
* * *
One June night, I was half wakened by a noise somewhere in the room. I felt a breeze from the window and perhaps a curtain blowing about. But then I heard just the lightest step, and my eyes opened wide in the darkness.
I could make out Abby’s figure in bed, so knew she wasn’t walking around. Jayne—tiptoeing in to get something? A second later I sensed that someone was in the room, and was afraid to turn my head. The footstep again, and instantly I thought of Jared, following me here and wanting revenge. And just as I moved to turn over, he was on top of me.
I screamed with every muscle in my throat, and then he licked my face. Spirit!
Abby tumbled out of bed, trying to reach the floor lamp and knocking it over. Noises in the hall, and there was Jayne in the doorway, one hand on the light switch.
Spirit was curled up beside me, and I lay with one hand on my chest, afraid my heart was bursting through.
“What in the world?” said Jayne, her hair half covering her face.
“Spirit,” I said. “He jumped up on me, and I thought . . . I thought . . .”
“Post-traumatic stress, Jayne,” Abby explained. “She thought it was a guy.”
“Well, he is a guy,” I said, patting Spirit’s head. “A rather hairy one. I’m sorry, everybody.”
“You guys must have left your door ajar. He’ll do it every time. Come on, Spirit,” Jayne said. “Pick on someone your own size.”
After they were gone, Abby asked, “You still think about him?”
“No more than I have to,” I said. “Let’s get some sleep.”
* * *
Dave and I were e-mailing more. We didn’t do much of that on campus, and now that I was clear across the country, it felt strangely intimate to see our thoughts on a screen.
He’d gotten that construction job in Pennsylvania for July—would be finished by August.
I want you back, he wrote, and those four words said a lot.
That night before I left, the way he’d held me . . . “Makes me wild waiting for you,” he said. “Think how much I’d enjoy a night to remember all summer long.”
But we didn’t have all night. I’d still had packing to do. And I clung to my wish to have all the time in the world when we did it for the first time.
Now, lying there on a cot in Oregon, I began to wish I hadn’t been so particular. I’d heard that first times weren’t so great for the woman, but I would have enjoyed the rest of it, wouldn’t I? And Dave would be over the moon. Or not. He was a man I really liked and respected. Loved, even.
Now we had to wait till I got back.
I’ll be at the airport, he promised. And there was time for us both before school began.
Spent the last two weeks of June at the Olive Garden working—late shift. Someone’s on vacation. I was next on the wait list. They tell me that story is true, by the way—about their salad.
“What story is that?” Abby asked when I read his e-mail aloud.
“That a girl came for an interview once, concerned that because there are topless restaurants where the waitresses are naked from the waist up, Olive Garden’s ‘bottomless’ salads meant . . .”
“O’m’god,” Abby said, and both she and Jayne broke into laughter.
Jayne had just washed her hair. She’d treated it with conditioner and was now sitting at the window, letting the sun dry it naturally, threading her fingers through it every once in a while. “So who’s this Dave guy, anyway? Someone special?” she asked.
“A good friend,” I said. “Part of the crowd we hang out with.”
Abby gave me her famous half smile. “More than a good friend. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
“He looks at all the women. He’s a guy!” I said, and went on clipping recipes from the stack of newspapers Jayne had been collecting for several years. “He’s really fun to be around—makes funny remarks about how I look—my eyes, my hair. The ‘haystack’ he calls it, the way static electricity affects it.”
“Remember when he gave you that comb shaped like a pitchfork?” Abby said, laughing. “He just loves everything about you. Lights up like a Christmas tree when you walk in the room.”
It was all true, and what I didn’t read aloud were the last few lines of Dave’s e-mail: When I kissed you before you left, I didn’t want to let go. . . . Right now all I want is you in my arms again. Three months is too long, Alice.
And I replied, Sometimes all I can think about, Dave, is you.
Truthfully, I checked Patrick’s blog now and then to see if he was having second thoughts about the Peace Corps. He wasn’t:
Learning to adapt to a lot of things, like the rats as big as kittens that scratch their way into my house at night, having their babies and fighting in my walls. Lots of reggae music here, and that I can take.
Had my first trip into a primary rain forest—huge, gorgeous trees. Saw a lemur—they look like moving teddy bears. One did me the honor of peeing on my head.
I’m really fond of the elderly woman who’s like a grandmother to me. Last night she told me about the “hungry season” in Madagascar, when rice is so expensive. Life is hard in these villages. I’m here as an environmentalist, and the two projects I’d like to start are a garden and a compost pile, and making some kind of a solar oven/food-drying system like they taught us during training. But I still need to be more fluent in their language. The one phrase I’ve been good at, when villagers talk to me, is “Mora mora azafady!” meaning, “Slower, please.”
I wished I could be that definite about something. At the same time I was yearning for Dave, I found I was liking Oregon a lot—liking the freedom from the clock. I could understand Abby’s satisfaction in making a product she could see and feel and eat. The idea of being self-employed began to look a whole lot better to me than going back to school for two more years. I mean, this was basic survival by the work of your hands. Maybe I could persuade Dave to move out here! Or maybe I should change my major from education/counseling to business! Then Dad would know that I was serious, that I could run a business by myself.
What I especially enjoyed was creating my own recipes. I’d done it only twice so far, but customers complimented Jayne on them the following week. Especially my chocolate date cake with the cream cheese frosting. I was working on coconut-orange bars with an almond crust, and Jayne said I was a natural in the baking department.
“Do you ever think about doing this as a career?” I asked Abby one Sunday as we were getting ready to go out for the evening.
“What? Working for Jayne?”
“Starting a business like she has. Catering or something.”
“Not really. I wouldn’t want the pressure.”
“Pressure? What pressure?” I said, thrusting a comb in my hair. I reached for my dangly jade and silver earrings. “Except for Saturdays, she doesn’t ever set her alarm.”
“That’s the Jayne you see in the summer—when business is best at the Saturday Market,” Abby said. “You should see her around
income tax time. I spent spring vacation here once, and she’s got all sorts of stuff to worry about. She even had court costs once, when somebody sued her in small-claims court for food poisoning. She was scared she’d lose her house.”
“So what happened?”
“The woman who sued told the judge she’d had diarrhea for a whole weekend after eating Jayne’s seafood lasagna. And she said she’d seen inside Jayne’s kitchen when she’d come to pick it up, and it hadn’t looked too clean. She was suing her for seven thousand dollars.”
“And . . . ?”
“Jayne had proof she’d passed inspection and said none of her other customers had been sick. And when the woman said she’d settle for a year’s worth of meals instead of the seven thousand, the judge threw the lawsuit out.”
We were still chuckling over that when we set out for a little dive that Abby had found the last time she was here. Moroccan-style kebabs and great espresso.
The restaurant was buzzing when we got there and seemed to be a seat-yourself kind of place. We stood just inside the door reading the menu posted on the wall, debating the merits of lamb stew over beef kebabs, when suddenly Abby poked my arm. “Alice, doesn’t that guy look familiar?” she asked.
“Which guy?”
“The one with the curly hair. The table in the center there, with the girl in the red shirt.”
I studied him a bit more intently, and sure enough, it had to be him. We were positive when the girl threw back her head in laughter and said, “Oh, Chris!”
As far as we could tell, he had recovered completely from his jaundice (or theater paint) and was in no hurry to get to Seattle.
“C’mon,” I said. As we headed to the table next to them, which had just been vacated, I slipped my bag off my shoulder and hung it on the back of one of the empty chairs.
“Well, Christopher, hi!” I said brightly. “Imagine seeing you here!” The girl was still smiling as she looked up at us waiting for an introduction, but Chris’s face had undergone a rapid-fire transition from pleasure to surprise to dismay and, finally, to phony friendliness. If his eyebrows could type, they would have written, Okay, I’m busted, but help me out here and I’ll be eternally grateful.
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