Mt. Moriah's Wake

by Melissa Norton Carro

  “Angry faces? Sad faces? Ugly faces? Male faces?”

  He scrunched up his nose. “My sexuality has nothing to do with my professionalism, ma’am. I actually like blank faces.”

  “Blank—like no expression?”

  “Generally, yes.”

  “So what if you happen upon a subject who accidentally screws up and, say, smiles?”

  “I don’t use posed subjects for one thing. I like to happen upon people when they don’t know I’m there. When they’re not paying attention. When they’re most vulnerable.”

  “Have you sent these photos anywhere? Tried to publish them? I saw what you had in your office—they’re really good.”

  “God knows they’re a helluva lot more exciting than a woman with two names who eats Cheerios by twos.” He pushed his chin from one side to the other, neck bones crackling underneath. “Say, what if she pulls out a Cheerio that has another one stuck to it; does that count as two or one? Wouldn’t that mess up her system?”

  More giggles. I went to the bathroom, hesitated and then locked the door. I removed my make-up, brushed my teeth, and put on the sweatsuit that I intended for pajamas. When I got back to the room, Tom was changed and in bed, the lights on his side of the room dimmed.

  “Hey, I’ve got an early shoot in the morning and it’s past eleven already. I need to turn in. The light won’t bother me if you want to read or something.”

  “No I should try to get to sleep too.” I gathered my covers around me and switched off my light. “I enjoyed our conversation, Tom.”

  No response and I assumed he was asleep. Five minutes later he piped up.

  “So what’s the crisis?”

  “What?”

  “In your story. What’s Jillsandra’s crisis?”

  “Well, she’s in therapy, as I explained—”

  “Yeah, I know, but what’s the crisis she’s facing?” He pushed himself up on one elbow. I could see light from the window glinting off the tiny bald spot expanding across his crown. “Not that having that Cheerio problem isn’t a crisis in and of itself, but she needs a crisis that leads you to a climax that leads you to closure.”

  “That’s been your experience in writing, huh?”

  “Touchy, touchy. Never mind. Just think about it. Without a crisis she’s just one more neurotic woman in the world!”

  “One more!” But there was silence from my roommate. Soon there were soft snores. I closed my eyes and my father’s gentle snoring returned to me, comforting somehow. I lay awake for probably another thirty minutes, listening in the darkness to Tom’s breathing. Sleep had not come easily to me for months. But on that night it did. Without a sip of alcohol, I slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  When I awoke I was alone, but there was a note next to my toothbrush. “Your turn to cook tonight. TR” When I returned to the hotel the next evening, at almost six o’clock, a pizza in one hand and my so-new-it-still-crinkled briefcase in the other, Tom was sprawled across one bed, balancing his checkbook. A smile and a hello, and I wished I was a man: his kind of man.

  “Hi, Ward, you’re home. And with pizza, huh?” He took the pizza out of my hand and swept the day’s newspaper from our little table.

  “How was the photo shoot?”

  “Miserable, wretched, long, mind-numbing.” He paused. “Okay, I’m not the writer so you’ll have to help me along with the adjectives.”

  “How come?”

  “Candace. That’s why.” He was washing his hands. “She had to second guess me on everything, while twisting the client around her little finger. Of course, the client, Ted Bottoms—have you met him? Well, old Teddy hasn’t been laid in quite a while, so obviously who’s he going to listen to? The hair-flipping pink bra or me?”

  “So what did Candace do besides flirt?”

  “Well that’s pretty much the total agenda. Mostly it was what she didn’t do. A good account exec should manage the client, be a liaison between the creative person—in this case myself—and corporate jerks who think a good TV spot is one that shows his inarticulate monologue.

  “God, I wonder how much longer I can stand this job!”

  “Why do you stay if you hate it so much?” There was more than a bit of defensiveness in my tone. I was proud of the company, delighted to have the name Sandalwood & Harris on my resume. Tom responded as if reading my thoughts.

  “I’m sorry; you’re probably excited about your first job. Big company, nice conference rooms, the whole bit. I remember being so excited by my first paycheck that I taped it to my mirror for a few days so I could savor it.” He paused and sighed again. “But that was several jobs ago.”

  I felt young, stupid, and naive, in that order. And determined not to show it.

  “You have the experience—so quit. Go somewhere else.”

  “Well, if there were any place better to go, I would. Or maybe I wouldn’t. The truth is that it’s pretty rare for an agency to put a photographer on the payroll. In fact, I talked them into creating the job for me.”

  The next day I found a black and white photo of an expressionless woman taped to my cubicle. On it, a note. “This is JS, in a crisis over what?”

  A further delay in closing meant Tom stayed in my hotel room for ten days. During that time, we would come and go almost as siblings—crossing the street to the laundromat, poring over work on the side of the room each of us had designated as our own. Because I preferred to shower at night and Tom in the early morning, and because our start and end times at work were different, it seemed a perfect logical and amenable coexistence. We were careful not to mention the arrangement at work, and actually, except for the Park Hotel account creative meetings, we saw each other rarely at S&H.

  There was an unspoken time in the evening when we were both ready for sleep, but it seemed too impersonal to simply climb under the covers and sleep. So Tom would stretch his arms, or I would loudly and firmly close my book, and we would both know that our bedtime ritual had begun.

  Tom used the bathroom first and changed into pajamas. Then the bathroom was mine. After a long shower—something never permitted at Doro’s Inn for fear of depleting the antique hot water heater—I brushed my teeth, applied my arsenal of creams and lotions, and then got in my bed.

  The lights stayed on, then, and the talking began. Sometimes we both fell asleep mid-sentence, while other nights we didn’t fall asleep until past 1:00 a.m. The conversation was as effortless as it was endless.

  “I’ve never seen a man who wears pajamas like Dick Van Dyke,” I said one night, crunching ice and spitting it back into the plastic hotel cup. “I remember my dad had some that were that same plaid.”

  “I don’t think you mean that as a compliment,” Tom said. “But I’ll tell you a little secret: these are my dad’s pjs. I borrowed them the night I first came here; I thought they’d be a bit more appropriate than what I usually wear to bed.”

  My imagination wandered.

  “And while we’re on the ‘I’ve never seen’ category, I’ve never seen a woman who smothered her face in so much cream. It seems like your face would slide off the pillow.”

  This bantering punctuated the weightier subjects we discussed: parents, college, work, politics. I told Tom about Doro, about Maddy, about my college life and living in the Inn. I mentioned Grace only in passing. I learned from Tom that he had three sisters and a stereotypical American family. In the ironically safe cocoon of a hotel room, I opened up to a man I barely knew.

  “My dad really wanted me to become a dentist and join his practice,” said Tom, “and I used to think about that when I was a kid. But somewhere along the way I just knew I couldn’t go to work every day for the rest of my life and see a bunch of mouths hanging open, waiting for me.

  “I think me going into photography was a great disappointment for him—like I was saying his career was boring, which, honestly, it is to me.

  “When I had my first gallery show, I sent him prints to hang in his office. I don’t kn
ow—somehow I thought this would bond us together. You know, I wasn’t there to stare into those open mouths, but they could stare at me.”

  From that time with Tom, I learned that he had never had a serious relationship, never really been in love. When the question came back to me, I told him about my infatuation with Christian Tuck from high school and my college boyfriend named Jake.

  In those weeks with Tom, my insomnia vanished, perhaps because of the soothing snores echoing around me. Maybe it was the sense of not feeling all alone in a big city. But most likely it was because I had found what once was mine, what I had lost—that which alcohol and caffeine and wind and walking could not replace. A friend.

  13

  BROWN EYED GIRL

  AFTER TOM CLOSED ON HIS HOUSE and the hotel room was mine again, I saw him very little. The parent company for Park Hotels had put the ad campaign on hold, so there were no creative team meetings for us to attend together. One day, when Tom had been gone for almost five weeks, I visited his office. It was dark, and the sign-in board indicated he was on vacation.

  “Looking for Tom?” The voice belonged to Rod Cheshire, the man I often saw leaving for lunch with Tom. Friend? Lover?

  “Actually, I had to pick up a contact sheet but it wasn’t ready.” Lying made me stammer. “I notice he’s on vacation.”

  “Well I wouldn’t call it a vacation,” Rod smirked. “He went to his parents’ house to pick up some furniture for the money-pit, as we’ve come to affectionately call his new abode.”

  “Oh? Troubles?”

  “Just a few leaks, some bowed drywall, a little crack in the foundation. Nothing major.” Rod made an orange X in the “Out to Lunch” column next to his name. “I don’t really understand why people are in such a hurry to be homeowners. I say give me an apartment key and no strings.”

  “It’s that American dream thing I guess.”

  “Yeah, first the house, then the picket fence, then the bride, then Little League. Not for me … not yet, anyway. I’m not in any hurry. Are you?”

  It was the summer after my sixteenth birthday. Grace and I sat on the porch swing, batting at flies while we dripped popsicle juice onto the pages of Bride magazines. Amelia Warren and her three bridesmaids had occupied the March, April, and May rooms for a bachelorette celebration prior to Amelia’s wedding in Cincinnati. They had left behind a stack of well-worn magazines, which were like Christmas morning to us. In our heads swirled images of peach taffeta. White lilies. Bryan Adams music at the reception.

  “No way. Haven’t really thought about it,” I lied.

  “Too bad. You and Tom would make a good pair.”

  My disbelief must have registered on my face. “But Tom is gay.”

  Rod raised first one eyebrow, then the second. “Oh, that joke??” He chuckled. “Someone has pulled one over on you, girl.” He turned to walk down the hall, then paused and looked back at me.

  “After all, calling someone the ‘cutest thing I ever saw’ does not exactly sound like he doesn’t like the opposite sex, does it?”

  To my silent gape, Rod continued. “Yes, he was talking about you.”

  Peach taffeta. White lilies. Bryan Adams.

  Two weeks later, Tom unexpectedly showed up in my cubicle holding a rusty ball flapper in one hand. He sunk into the straight chair and pushed his glasses back on his nose.

  “What was that guy’s name on Mt. Moriah? Marty?”

  “Maddy.”

  “Right. Well, did Maddy teach you anything about replacing toilets?”

  “Nope. Mostly drywall and painting. I’m pretty good at taping and mudding.”

  “If you’re offering your help, I’ll take it. But I’m still at the putting-pails-under-leaks stage.” He leaned over and picked up the photo on my desk. “Is this your friend Grace with you?”

  Age eighteen, graduation night. We were leaning over the rail of Doro’s front porch, in caps and gowns, oversized sunglasses, and our two front teeth blackened in with gum wrappers. “Now why do you girls want to be so silly on a big night like this?” Doro had complained, but she was laughing and snapped the picture anyway.

  I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my stomach.

  “You weren’t lying when you said Grace is pretty.”

  Was, I thought.

  “I don’t lie,” I say coyly. “But it seems you do.”

  Tom looked up, genuinely perplexed. “I do?”

  “About your sexual orientation, I mean.”

  Smiling, Tom leaned his elbows on the edge of my desk. “You wouldn’t have a case in court. What I said, if I remember correctly, was that you should tell your parents I’m gay. I never actually said I was gay. But I do beg for the court’s mercy.”

  “Why’d you lie? Why about that, Tom?”

  “Because I thought you’d never go for that hotel arrangement if you knew I’m straight.” He cleared his throat, as a rosy color panned his face. “It just didn’t seem appropriate; you’re an old-fashioned Southern girl …

  “Is that an insult?” he asked, seeing my reaction. “It wasn’t meant to be. I guess you could say I’m old-fashioned, too. I like that about you.”

  He leaned forward and looked directly into my eyes.

  “I like many things about you, not the least of which is the fact you like to tape and mud.”

  “I didn’t say I liked to tape and mud; I said I’m good at it.”

  He stood and turned to leave. “And that, among other things, makes you, JoAnna Wilson, a woman to be cherished.”

  Cherished. The word hung in the air, suspended above me, soothing me like the gentle rain pelting the tulips lining Doro’s front walk.

  What was happening to me?

  Two days later, we had lunch in the cafeteria and Tom showed me photos of his house. Money pit seemed a bit too complimentary, but then again, I remembered how the Inn looked when Doro and I first saw it. I actually enjoyed hearing about the work. It reminded me of Saturdays when Doro and I first moved to Mt. Moriah—days that would end with a glorious aching that forced you to bed early. I told Tom so.

  “Hey, why not relive your childhood then? What are your plans for Saturday?”

  Not exactly a romantic invitation, but then again.

  “Would I be slave labor or would there be any compensation?”

  “The gas grill works. I can offer you a steak dinner with homemade raspberry glazed cheesecake for dessert.”

  I was duly impressed. “You know how to make homemade cheesecake?”

  He grinned. Those dimples that danced their way across a room. “No, McElvay’s Grill around the corner from me does.”

  The next three Saturdays I spent at the “Manor,” as Tom had dubbed it. We worked side by side, drywall dust coating our faces so that only the space under our masks was clean. At dusk we would stop for the day, Tom showering first and then starting the grill while I showered.

  We talked little as we worked—only grunting as we hoisted the awkward sheets of drywall and dangled our bodies precariously from ladders. Music bounced off the empty walls, and we sang together, loudly and completely off-pitch. Every now and then a question would break the silence. Questions so trivial, yet so comfortable, that they expanded and filled the space between and around us.

  “Greatest Elton John song?”

  “‘Levon.’”

  “No way. ‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight.’ Best Barry Manilow song?”

  “Best and Barry. That’s what you writers call an oxymoron.”

  “Why do all men hate Barry? Okay, better looking: Cindy Crawford or Audrey Hepburn?”

  “Oh, give me Audrey any day. What about you—Sean Connery or Paul Newman?”

  “Neither. Tom Cruise.”

  “Please, he’s a jerk. You can do better.”

  “Oh, like who would you suggest?”

  Tom pushed thick hair out of his eyes, streaking paste across his forehead. That smile again. “I’ll have to give that some thought.”

  Each
Saturday I brought clean clothes with me, showered, and changed while Tom made good on his promise of steak. On the fourth Saturday, I stepped out onto the bathmat, the seductive aroma of sirloin wafting up through the vents. I hung my towel and dressed quickly in a knit dress. My drywall clothes I wadded up into a plastic bag. I was almost to the bottom of the steps when I heard Tom’s singing along to Van Morrison.

  I stopped, memories flooding over me.

  “Know what song I want at my wedding, Jo Jo?”

  “Hmmm?” We were lying in the twin beds in my room in the Inn during Christmas break our freshman year in high school.

  “‘Brown Eyed Girl.’” Grace drew herself up on her elbow, her face framed in the path of moonlight outside the window. “You know, for my eyes.” She fluttered her doe-like lashes.

  “Well, most bands play it.”

  “No, not for the band to play. For my husband to sing. I want a man to sing ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ to me.” Sighing, Grace sunk back onto the bed. “So romantic.”

  Hearing the strains of the old song that Grace loved so much, I realized I had spent four self-absorbed weeks without thinking of her. Without missing her? No, that wasn’t true. Grace was with me all the time, but the truth was that I had been happy.

  I watched Tom scrub potatoes at the sink, his back to me, and my eyes filled with tears. He should be yours, Grace. Can you hear this? Of course it was crazy. I could not see Grace and Tom together. Yet suddenly it was as if she were beside me, and I could talk to her.

  “Okay, you’re not going to believe this, Grace, but I met this guy, and he likes to hear about things I’m writing, and he’s kinda cute—not handsome, but cute—and, get ready to be jealous, he started singing ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’”

  The conversation was there. The words were formed so vividly in my mind, but there was no one to hear them.

  About the time I realized I was crying, Tom turned and saw me. As he reached out his arm to touch me—“Jo, what’s the matter?”—I backed up. I didn’t want to cry, not here, not amidst the jokes and the drywall dust and the last of the Saturday daylight sliding in around the blinds. I didn’t want Tom to see me cry—not Tom of the Cheerios and the photographs and the peanut butter. Not Tom of the dimples that lately lingered in my dreams.