by Larry Watson
She bends over slowly and reaches hesitantly toward the bag, its unzipped top gaping open like a smiling mouth.
“Looking for something?” a voice behind her says.
Edie lurches backward as Jesse Norris steps from the doorway into the room.
“Your . . . your guitar,” she says.
“What about it?” He looks at his duffel bag, and he knows what she has seen.
“I hope it’s all right,” Edie says. “I strummed it. To hear the sound. That was all.”
“Yeah? Would you like a lesson?” But he flips the guitar case closed.
They’re facing each other now, Jesse in the middle of the room, close to the foot of the bed, and Edie almost against the wall.
“I wasn’t sure if you were still here,” she says. “I didn’t see your car in the lot.”
“Yeah, I’m still here. As you can see.” He steps toward the door and she follows. “Billy and your granddaughter dropped me off. They’re headed someplace down by the river. We talked to a fellow in a sporting goods store who told Billy where the fishing’s supposed to be good. So they went to scout out the location. He’s thinking maybe he’ll go fishing tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
Jesse laughs. “You probably thought you were getting rid of us!”
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,” Edie says.
Staying close to the wall, Edie leaves the bedroom. She walks to the kitchen. She can feel Jesse following, his bare feet so close behind hers he’s almost stepping on her heels.
Edie is still holding her keys, and at some point she has shifted them in her hand so that she carries them as women are advised to do when they are crossing a dark parking lot. Now she tosses them on the counter. She opens the refrigerator and takes out a bottle of chardonnay. “It’s become my habit,” she says in a voice that’s strangely formal, “to have a glass of wine at the end of a workday. Can I pour you a glass?”
“Sure,” Jesse says, slouching in the same chair he sat in the night before. “Unless you have something stronger.”
Edie doesn’t say anything. She sets the wine bottle down and opens the cupboard below the sink. She reaches back behind the garbage can and takes out a bottle of Wild Turkey 101. She sets it on the table.
Jesse raises the bottle. “Strong enough,” he says.
Edie picks up one of the dirty juice glasses from the counter. “I don’t suppose you remember which one is yours?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jesse says cheerfully. “We pretty much share everything.”
But Edie takes a clean glass from the cupboard and hands it to Jesse. “Do you want ice?” she asks. “Water?”
“I’ll take it neat,” he replies. “Isn’t that what they say? Neat?”
“I believe you know the answer to that, Mr. Norris. I believe you know many more answers than you let on.”
“Well, it’s true I’ve had more schooling than Billy.” He uncaps the whiskey bottle and pours himself a generous portion. Across the room Edie pours her chardonnay into a wineglass.
“I had almost a year at a community college,” he says. “Before I got interrupted.”
“Interrupted?” Edie leans back against the counter.
“You know how it is.”
“I’m afraid I don’t. And school wasn’t exactly the kind of knowledge I was referring to.”
Jesse looks out toward the living room. “I like your balcony. I was sitting out there having a smoke. Bet you see some sunsets from there. You want to go out?”
Edie shakes her head no.
“I met your neighbor out there this morning. George?”
“George.”
“Jesus, what a hand he got dealt, eh?”
Edie sets her wineglass down on the counter. “We can discuss George Real Bird’s hard luck some other time.” She crosses her arms and, in a voice as precise and official as she would use speaking to a dental patient, she says, “Mr. Norris, you have a gun in your luggage.”
Jesse points toward the living room and beyond. “You sure you don’t want to go out on the balcony? Looks like a thunderstorm might be coming our way. Some big-ass thunderheads blooming in the west. Should be impressive.”
“You brought a gun into my home.”
Jesse shakes his hand as though he might have just pinched his fingers in a door. “Woo-hoo! We got a little lightning flashing in here, don’t we?”
Edie’s steady gaze at Jesse doesn’t waver.
“You don’t have a gun somewhere around here?” he asks.
“I do not.”
“Woman living alone out here on the prairie, I’d think she might want to have some protection on hand.”
“This is Gladstone, Mr. Norris. Not Tombstone or Dodge City. And it’s 2007. Not the Wild West.”
“You sure about that?” Jesse says with a sly smile. “And what’s with the ‘mister’ business? We know each other better than that, don’t we . . . Edie?”
She stares at him for a long moment. He doesn’t flinch under her gaze however, and she is the one to look away. She picks up her wineglass and heads out of the kitchen. “Go ahead and watch your sunset,” she says. “I’m going to change my shoes and go for a walk.”
As Edie walks past him, Jesse leans lazily out from his chair and says, “It’s not even loaded.”
Edie takes a quick sideways step and then stops, out of Jesse’s reach. “I’ve been around long enough to have heard plenty of stories of some person who was shot with a gun that someone swore wasn’t loaded.”
“If you really need to know,” he says, “I brought it along because of Lauren’s dad. Up in those mountains there’s all kinds of folks who don’t want strangers coming around trying to find somebody. Meth dealers, like I said before. Survivalists. Religious nuts. Plain old outlaws.”
“Keep it in your bag,” Edie says. “And keep the bag zipped. As far as I can tell you’re the closest thing to an outlaw around here.”
EDIE HAS BARELY walked half a mile when she has to turn around and head for home. The thunderheads have risen now to blot out the sun, and the sky has darkened to the same dark blue as that gun’s barrel. Thunder booms and cracks overhead. Jagged lightning streaks crack and thud into the earth not far down the hill, and Edie picks up her pace. Soon she’s jogging, slowly and stiffly, but jogging—though when she comes to the steepest part of the hill that climbs toward the apartment complex, she has to slow again to a walk. But she’s close enough. A few fat drops splat on the asphalt and on the surrounding prairie, releasing a mingled odor of salt and sage, but Edie steps through the apartment building door scant seconds before the great rush of wind and the near-horizontal torrent of rain arrive. For a moment she stands with her back to the door as if she has to brace it against an onslaught that wants to force its way inside. Wind and rain pound the building, and Edie looks out the window next to the door. It’s difficult to see much of the parking lot through the pulsing cascade, but it doesn’t look as though the Blazer has returned. She climbs the three flights of stairs and walks down the hall to her apartment.
Jesse has turned on the lamp next to the sofa, where he sits. His glass of whiskey is on the coffee table, and in his hands are a few photographs from the envelope.
He looks up at her and smiles. “Get wet?” he asks.
Some people get bleary-eyed from drink, but Jesse’s eyes glint sharply and seem to have lost none of their ability to focus. He holds up the pictures, fanned out in his fingers like a hand of cards. “Hey, what did Laure think of these?” he says. “You’ve got her whole damn childhood right here!”
Edie wants to grab the photos from him, but she stops and sits down in the rocking chair.
“I was watching you from the balcony,” says Jesse. “You move right along, don’t you? I checked all the windows, by the way. All shut down.” He holds a photograph overhead. “I believe this is my favorite. God damn.”
He has it turned so Edie can’t see the image. She doesn’
t ask him what’s pictured there, and he quickly lowers it and mixes it back into the batch. He pulls out another, and this time he allows her to see it. “Who’d have thought Laure would ever have been fat?” he says. “But she was a chunky little thing, wasn’t she?”
Edie says, “Those aren’t yours.”
“What? Yeah. No shit.” He flips through a few more photographs. “I kind of get now what Laure’s mother’s problem with you is. No daughter wants a mother who’s better looking than she is. And then Mrs. Keller loses out on the other side too when she has Laure. I mean, Lauren’s mom isn’t a bad-looking woman, but you get what I’m saying.”
Minutes pass. Jesse continues riffling through the photographs but so rapidly he can’t really be seeing what’s there. The wind gusts even harder, and rain strikes the balcony’s door with a sound like a hundred brooms slapping back and forth across the glass. Edie leans forward in the rocking chair, the palms of her hands pressed together.
Finally she says, “What do you want from me?”
Jesse picks up his whiskey, takes a small sip, and then carefully sets the glass down on a coaster. He straightens the pile of photographs, making certain that all the edges align. He puts them back in the envelope and folds the flap over. Only then does he look at Edie.
“Want something? From you? Why would you think something like that?”
“Intuition,” Edie says. “Experience.”
He shakes his head slowly. “You’ve fed us. Given us beds and clean towels.” Jesse picks up his glass again and holds it toward her as if he’s about to propose a toast. “Shared your liquor. What more could we ask for? No, I should be the one asking.” He pauses and smiles the smile that no doubt has charmed women of all ages. “What do you want from me?”
Edie says, “I want you to leave.”
Jesse laughs. “I’d like to oblige you. I surely would. But I’ve got no car. Not to mention it’s raining like a son of a bitch. I believe you’re stuck with me. So we’ll just have to find a way to spend our time together that brings us both a little pleasure.”
Swiftly and wordlessly Edie rises from the rocking chair and leaves the room. She walks down the hall to her bedroom. She doesn’t slam the door behind her, but she pulls it shut with enough emphasis that Jesse can surely hear it close, and perhaps even the lock being turned.
The wind has died, but the rain continues to tap insistently on the sliding door to the balcony and every one of the apartment’s west-facing windows.
Jesse watches the hallway as if he expects Edie to return at any moment. When it’s clear that she’s not coming back, he sighs and rises from the couch. He picks up his glass and drinks off what remains. He puts the glass down and heads down the hallway.
At the door he knocks. “Hey. Hey, Mrs. Dunn. Don’t go away mad.”
He puts his ear close to the door and says, “You know, if it was up to me, we’d be on our way tomorrow. Hell, tonight. We’d head out tonight. Storm or no storm. But Laure—Laure wants to kind of get back with family.”
He steps back from the door as though he expects it to open. When it doesn’t, when no sound comes from the other side, he knocks again and waits. Still nothing.
“But if we’re still here Sunday,” says Jesse, “I’ll need you to give me a recommendation on a church. That’s maybe something you didn’t get about me. I might not look like it, but I’m pretty regular about church attendance. Denomination doesn’t matter so much to me. Methodist, Baptist. Whatever. I figure Jesus doesn’t care.”
He puts his ear to the door again. “Hey. Hey! Everything okay in there?” He pauses. “I hope you’re not in there snooping through someone else’s things. Not nice, Mrs. Dunn. Not nice at all.”
Very slowly he backs away from the door. “But I forgive you,” he whispers.
WHEN BILLY AND Lauren walk in Jesse doesn’t even look up from his beeping, pinging Game Boy. “Still raining?” he asks them.
“Not like before,” Billy says. “We was down by the river, and I thought we’d get washed away in a fucking flood.”
Billy’s carrying a twelve-pack of Busch beer, but the carton has been opened and three cans are missing. He sets it down on the coffee table. He takes out a beer and holds it toward his brother. “You ready for one?” he asks Jesse.
Lauren bends over and shakes her head. Droplets spray from her dreadlocks as if those tubes of hair had been filled with water. When she stands up straight she sees her grandmother walking toward her from the bedroom.
“I thought I’d order Chinese food,” Edie says brightly. “How does that sound?”
“Sure,” Billy says.
“That’d be great,” Lauren says. “I can get something vegetarian.”
“And they’ll deliver,” Edie says over her shoulder as she walks to the kitchen. She takes a China Palace menu from a drawer and takes it to the living room. Tossing it on the coffee table she says, “Let me know what you want.”
Billy is still holding the can of beer out to his brother. “You want a beer or not?”
Jesse reaches out for the beer but says nothing.
Billy notices Jesse’s empty glass. “What the hell have you been into?” he asks.
Jesse turns off the Game Boy and puts it on the coffee table. He pops open the can of beer. “You order for me,” he says to Edie. “You know what I like.”
MILDRED LINDERMAN, ONCE as tall and big shouldered as most men, is now little more than a skeleton in a flannel nightgown. An aluminum walker waits by her bed, but she doesn’t look as though she has the strength to sit up, much less support her weight on that metal frame. She lies flat on her back, unmoving but for her eyes. And those eyes are sunk deep but open wide and gleaming like dark stones on a streambed.
Mildred’s eyes follow Edie until she is standing alongside the bed, and only then does she stop watching her. Edie parts the curtains and peers out across the parking lot of the Cottonwood Elderly Care Center. Her Honda Civic is parked in the shade of the trees, and Lauren is waiting in the car. Edie looks at her watch and then sits down in the bedside chair.
“I have company this week,” Edie says, speaking slowly and enunciating clearly, though she seems to know that her words don’t register. “My granddaughter. Lauren. She’s waiting out in the car, so I’m afraid I’ll have to cut my visit short today. You might remember my daughter, Jennifer, Lauren’s mother—she came with me when I made that trip to see Dean. She came reluctantly, I might add. And Jennifer and Lauren visited me here on at least one other occasion, when Lauren was just a toddler. Not in school yet, and that’s why they were able to come in September. Oh, I agree. I agree. September always shows Gladstone off to its best advantage. As I recall they came during the county fair. Lauren just couldn’t get enough of the animals. Rabbits, especially. Wasn’t it the Collins girl who raised those big Belgians? My God, those rabbits were almost as big as Lauren. I remember how she petted one of the rabbits so carefully it seemed like she thought its fur could peel right off.”
Edie leans forward as if she’s listening to Mildred, although the old woman hasn’t spoken. She seems to be drowsing, though her eyes are still open.
“Was that the trip when Jennifer and I had the falling-out? It might have been. You might be right about mothers and daughters. Nothing like that went on between you and your boys. Who knows what it was that time. Nothing. Everything. It never took much with Jennifer and me. But there was one argument I remember well. Jennifer hadn’t been married for even a year, and she was going to run off with someone. This was a young man who sold insurance with Gary. My husband then. He came to Gladstone when Dean was sick. Yes, the same trip. But Gary came to fetch me. Actually he was ready to drag me back by the hair if need be. And I was just as determined not to go. You never knew that, did you, Mildred? You were so sure I walked out on Dean. But you only knew his side of things. His and Roy’s. And I bet Dean was more understanding than Roy, wasn’t he? As if it was Roy I divorced. But that’s ‘neither here
nor there,’ which is something my mother used to say. And now how did I get to talking about her? Mothers and daughters, I guess. But back to Jennifer. She was bound and determined to go off with that salesman. I tried everything. I tried forbidding her. Not that that ever worked with Jennifer. I tried arguing. Finally I asked why. ‘I want to be loved,’ she said. ‘I want to be loved.’ ‘My God, Jen,’ I said to her. ‘Listen to yourself. You have a husband who loves you. Your father loves you. I love you.’ And she looked at me, and she said, ‘Not enough, Mother. Not enough.’ And I couldn’t help it, Mildred. I thought she meant me. She was doing that because I didn’t love her enough.”
Edie sits up straighter in her chair. She tilts her head to stop the sudden tears from spilling down her cheeks. Then she resumes talking. “But I don’t know, maybe she was right. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe her shortcomings were from no one loving her enough. From me not loving her enough. But what is enough?”
Edie rubs Mildred’s arm.
“And now Jennifer’s daughter has shown up here in the company of two young men I don’t trust any farther than I can throw them. And I have that same helpless feeling I had with her mother. I know there’s nothing I can say or do to pull her away from them.”
Edie pauses.
Then she goes on. “Funny that now, after all these years—yes, after almost half a century—now I’m asking you for advice. Now, when I never asked before. Now, when it’s too late. Telling you these things, you who never had a problem with your boys. You were devoted to them, and they were devoted to you. You can rest easy on that account.”
Edie looks at her watch and then stands up. “And now I have to run. I’m sure my granddaughter is growing impatient. Yes, maybe next time she’ll come in. Maybe when we have more time.”
Edie has almost reached the front door when a young nurse who works in Mildred’s wing waddles toward her. “Is she vocalizing today?” she asks Edie. “I was walking by, and I thought I heard you two talking.”
