Foxglove

by Mary Anne Kelly

  The door she’d come out of opened up, revealing a sliver of yellow. She thought for a moment the large frame to be dealt with was Andrew’s again, but it wasn’t. It was Stefan’s. When she saw him like that, away from Carmela, her first thought was that she ought to make some borscht. That was one thing Stefan swore nobody made like she did, and he was right. Nobody did. Fresh with dill and carrots and dahl, was her soup. She would slice up mushrooms and baby lima beans and barley, and add lots of onions, garlic, and black pepper. A lovely dollop of sour cream on top and croutons fried in butter were the finishing touch.

  “What are you doing all alone out here?” Stefan smiled, delighted to see her.

  “I just thought I must make you some borscht,” she said. “You made me think of it.”

  He sat down beside her. “It’s certainly cold enough.”

  “I like it.” She breathed out to demonstrate she could blow tidy puffs of steam.

  “So do I.”

  There was an undercurrent here. What kind, Claire wasn’t sure, but she admitted grudgingly to herself that she did like to be alone with Stefan now and again. Not to flirt. It was just that Carmela was so consistently uptight whenever the two of them were together that usually they both chose not to talk nor even to look at each other in her presence lest they risk the inevitable squall of silence that would follow.

  Rhythmic music filtered out from the hall.

  “I hate that song,” Stefan said.

  “How can anybody hate ‘Let Yourself Go’?” She looked at him, astonished.

  “It’s ridiculous,” he said.

  “I was just thinking how terrific it is.” She put her arms out and did a little shimmy-shimmy à la Ginger Rogers with the top of her body. “Really, Stefan. I defy anyone, anyone but you, that is, to sit still during that song.”

  “It’s not that,” he bristled, “but you can’t have a musical and have each song come from another era. It’s outrageous. She’s got the thirties, she’s got the sixties, she’s got the eighties. It’s not done. She’s got that song from the opera and the other one from the Temptations. She’s even got that sentimental Disney thing! I mean for God’s sake!”

  “Well, maybe that’s the fun of it. And it works. Everything fits. More or less.”

  “Era, yes. Category, no. You can’t put a tap-dance number together with ‘Stormy Weather.’”

  “That’s Zinnie’s favorite song. She sings it great.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Who says you can’t?”

  “Oh. That’s what she says. Now you sound like her. You’ve all got that stubborn Irish streak, you girls.”

  “Well, I think it’s a great idea,” Claire retorted. “It’s enjoyable. There’s nothing wrong with enjoyable, is there, Stefan? Or does it interfere with your introspective Polish streak?”

  Uh-oh. She knew that flinch. As in control as Stefan was, as able and ready as he always was to dish it out, he couldn’t take much of it himself. His posture would become ramrod-straight, and you’d have to ply him with vodka if you wanted any more conversation. “Come on,” she gave him a bossy, friendly whack, the kind of blow with which she’d seen an Australian photomodel girlfriend bop the male models when she wanted them to play along for a shot. The technique had always worked for her.

  Strangely enough it seemed to work for Claire, too. She saw some glimmer of participation reenter Stefan’s blue eyes. Then, across the yard, behind the trees, the other door opened and Andrew Dover came outside with Carmela. Oh, thought Claire, him. And she was just about to call out and wave to her sister when Andrew turned back and—what was he doing? Was he kissing her sister? For a moment she wasn’t sure, and then Andrew’s hands were gone and then they were holding Carmela’s face. Claire almost slid to the ground on behalf of Stefan, who sat on, who didn’t move an iota, though she could feel his heart like a stone in the courtyard. They both stayed frozen still.

  “And she wonders why I won’t let her get pregnant,” Stefan snorted.

  Claire groped for what to say. “I’m sure it didn’t mean anything,” she mumbled.

  He turned his body to her. “Did you think they were kissing?”

  “They weren’t?”

  “They were snorting coke.”

  “You’re right,” Claire realized, remembering the glint of what must have been a shiny box. “For a minute, I thought …” She had to laugh at herself. She was so out of the scene she thought all foul play had to do with procreation. Drugs had never occurred to her.

  Andrew and Carmela slipped back inside the hall just as quickly as they’d come out.

  “Tell me, Claire,” Stefan said after some moments’ pause. “Have you ever thought about divorce?”

  Claire said nothing. There seemed nothing appropriate to say. They sat silently on, keeping each other’s vigil. There were cats out, making their horrendous prowling address. Sometimes, she did, she thought about divorce. But really, only when Johnny’d hurt her again and she didn’t know what to do. When he would want to go off and play cards or pool, and she would hole up on their bed with her books. He would be down there by the phone, weighing the nonchalance of her voice—“Not at all dear. Go ahead”—against the atmosphere that would rattle with bitterness behind each word.

  For after all, she couldn’t go anywhere, with a child fast asleep. And even if she could, it wasn’t she Johnny wanted to be with just now. It didn’t really bother her; once he was gone she was fine. But she couldn’t bear his loud, sneaky precautions. “Can I get you anything, Claire?” She always knew it was cards or pool when he said that so nicely, “Can I get you anything, Claire?” But, no, she really didn’t want a divorce, even at those times. She was just sulking about not getting all his attention. And cards or pool (or, nowadays, a horse) were anyway better than a woman.

  “No,” she lied to Stefan after a while. “I don’t ever think about divorce.” It wouldn’t do to pretend she were emotionally free. She felt sorry for him, and she could probably even have an affair with him, if she were one for affairs. But she wasn’t, and that was that. She wished she could cheer him up. But there was no cheering him now. He would have to stew in his own juice, would Stefan. The way she and everyone else did. Would. Must. Oh, the world was a sorry place.

  “You know,” he said, suddenly, relighting his stagnant cigarillo. “I was told when I married your sister that she was bad blood. I might have listened.”

  “Really? Who told you that, your filthy servants?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Not for nothing, Stefan, and I’m sure you are hurt and that’s why you say something like that, but I don’t see your family about, nor have I ever. And if it’s a question of blood, perhaps yours is tainted as well.”

  He laughed, a hearty genuine laugh, and she felt better.

  “Now about that borscht,” she said.

  He pulled back. “You are the most arbitrary person I’ve ever known,” he said scornfully.

  It hadn’t bothered her what he’d said but how he’d said it. She wanted to know exactly what it was he meant, but he wouldn’t go on, just left it at that. Claire said nothing. She was just beginning to enjoy the music again herself, tapping her foot and thinking how nice it was. Stefan always made you feel like a jerk, he was good for that. Mary had always told them that charm was the ability to make someone else feel clever, feel good-looking, feel exceptional. Well, Stefan had that power, but it wasn’t really charm, because the minute he had you feeling that way, he’d pull your pants down with some other, more telling observation about you, some weakness he would weed out and call you on, and he would leave you there in the middle of the room like that. So it wasn’t charm he had. It was the power to demean. Claire felt suddenly very sorry indeed for her sister, and she marveled once again at the innate strength and gumption she must have had to take a chance like this with a husband like that.

  Stefan, with his uncanny sense for discerning insurrection, leaned calmly over and k
issed Claire’s downy cheek. Stung, she sat bolt upright and rattled the heel of her shoe. She wasn’t going to let him think he had enough power to really upset her, but she wouldn’t have disrespect toward her sister. She wouldn’t have it. She wiped her cheek with disgusted fingers and made as if to fling the kiss with her fingers to the grass. Stefan smiled, amused. Claire spat like a crosscountry trucker on top of the discarded kiss.

  “You are wicked.” His eyes sparkled.

  She knew she wasn’t, but she didn’t mind anyone thinking she was. She just sat there, and he began to tell her a story about when he was a little boy, some kilometers outside Krakow. She didn’t really listen. Stefan was always telling one heartwarming tales of his youth in the fields riding on the hay-laden horse carts, playing in the hallowed halls with inbred Tarnowian servants, visiting in the offices of friends of his father’s. He had told her once of a grand duke who had given him marzipan and then asked him to carry a clandestine message to his mother. And he had. At least he said he had. If there had really been a grand duke. Knowing Stefan, there had been. Which was why, she supposed, you didn’t just get up and walk off when he was speaking.

  As he lit another match, she felt Stefan’s eyes on her dirty hands. Submissively, she put them in her pockets. It wasn’t that she didn’t find Stefan attractive. When they had gone out on a date together, she’d found herself looking him up and down as husband material, even though they’d never been intimate. They had so many things in common. All the things she valued so, those Swedish films and recycling and V. S. Pritchett. She and Johnny didn’t. Johnny made fun of all those things, whereas Stefan found them equally entrancing. So they were certainly more suited in that way.

  Only, she remembered, the times when Stefan had come on to her more intently, with his opaque infusion of Parisian scent, she’d longed for the raw, rough smell of Johnny: all boy and tightened fists when he tried to make his way heroically through her outerwear, at the most splashed frugally with Old Spice, his one and only finishing touch. He made her laugh, did Johnny, because he was so pure, and he reminded her of herself before she’d run into and been run over by the big time. Her face softened even as she thought of him. Oh, yes, Johnny was tough and jaded. But only on the outside. Underneath, when you scraped away the callus there was a clear stream of integrity. Stefan, as diplomatic and smooth and polished and well-manicured as he was, Claire had the feeling if you took him apart, his callus would be wrapped and bitter inside, tight and careful as a walnut around his condescending heart.

  Stefan’s family ring glinted in the lamplight. Or was it the moon that already gleamed? Oh, it was. She looked up sentimentally and remembered very clearly how she’d coveted the sense of history that went with that family ring. She was glad now that she hadn’t followed through. Oh, you were so much better off following your heart. Carmela said they had no contact whatsoever with his family and would never visit his family seat. There went the family jewels. Oh, well. Carmela had enough jewels. Although, Claire thought fleetingly, she hadn’t chosen to wear them much lately. Claire wondered why. It couldn’t be because of money. Claire remembered the weighty presence of wealth for which their home was so notorious. No, it couldn’t be because of money.

  She chuckled to herself. She had imagined a very different life for herself back then, seen herself quite another way. A more pronounced way, full of chocolate. With no swinging banging gate to run out and hitch shut in the middle of a blow. For then she had met Johnny. And then she knew you don’t choose the one you love, love chooses you, and irrevocably. She looked over at Stefan, unkindly inspecting his spotless manicure, and she was sorry for him. She gathered her skirt to stand to go but Stefan, not to be left sitting there, stood first. Floozie, who had sensed Claire’s movement as a sign of departure, ran toward her but stopped when Stefan stood. Stefan was so tall. Claire hated it when Floozie shivered like that. She looked so infernally unattractive. Claire went over to the little ragamuffin and stuffed the dog affectionately into her bag. Stefan held the door open for her and she headed to the back of the theater. She would leave by the front way, the way she’d come in.

  “Claire,” Stefan said from behind her, and she turned.

  He held her tortoiseshell combs in his hand. “You dropped these,” he said, and she took them back, returning them to her coiffure. Her fingers, passing close to her face, still held the fragrance of the earth she’d dug up just before, and now the newer, lingering cloy of patchouli remained from Stefan’s milky kiss.

  When Claire went home, she parked in the street to let Johnny in the driveway first. That way she’d get out in the morning when she wanted, without having to wake him. She walked into the back yard—her back yard, she thought possessively. She leaned against the wooden house and watched the yard in the cold starlit darkness. Floozie went over to the garage. It was a nice garage, with a loft in it from the days it had been a barn or carriage house. “Don’t do anything over there,” she warned the dog, but Floozie was sniffing at the door. Someone had left the light on in there. She clicked her tongue, then realized someone was inside and the door was ajar. Without moving from her spot, she craned her neck and saw a man—she thought it was a man—bent over a pile of something, going through a big old box.

  She grabbed hold of the shovel propped against the clothesline pole and backed away. Her heart was pounding, and she could feel the blood pumping into her throat. Then she realized that it was Mr. Kinkaid.

  “Mr. Kinkaid,” she yelled, angry and relieved. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Kinkaid looked up, perplexed. “I’m looking for my Vernier caliper, that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Your Vernier caliper?” She stalked over to him. “That’s good. I thought we bought this place, to quote the former owner, ‘hook, line, and sinker.’”

  “That don’t mean I can’t come and get my stuff,” he frowned, annoyed.

  “Oh, really? Next time I come home the stained-glass window upstairs will be on its way to Florida, I suppose.”

  He looked up and held the hanging light-bulb towards her, squinting. “My wife gave me that Vernier caliper, fifty years ago. It measures to one thousandth of an inch. You want it?”

  “Of course I don’t want it. You just scared me. I didn’t know who was there, that’s all. I never thought it was you.”

  “Who’d ja think I was, Mrs. Dixon? Didja?” he grinned horribly. She was glad Swamiji and the warmth of her household were just inside the back door.

  “Look. Find your thingamajig and scram, okay? And don’t go touching any of Johnny’s stuff. He doesn’t like anyone touching his stuff.”

  “Ohhhh no, we all none of us don’t like nobody go touching our stuff,” he mocked, with his tongue out like a nasty little kid. “Say!” he stopped. “Lookee here.” He sat down on his haunches and picked up a pair of well-oiled, good rose clippers. The short, wrenchy kind, the only ones that are any good to anyone. “Why, these are Grace’s,” he said, struck. He petted them softly. His growly old face turned into some other man’s. A fellow who loved his wife, must have lived for his wife, because Claire had never seen the old boy with a modicum of kindliness to him, and now here he was on her garage floor in the dirt and she thought he was a little bit all right. Or you could see how he must have been. Poor old coot.

  “Grace,” he said, “used to keep these in her basket. Hooboy, she loved that basket. She had the gloves, the hat, the trowel, the woiks. You see those flowers out there? The size of them? She’s got them in two different series, so they come up every other year. Them foxglove only come up once every other year, see. So you have to time them. Grace? My wife? She had it all figured out. She had the yellow ones coming up the one year and the pink ones the other. Her hollyhocks were eight, ten feet high.” He shook his head. “A lotta woik.”

  Claire nodded appreciatively. “I was just admiring her work,” she said. “Just before I saw you.”

  “Really?” he whirled around like a
dervish. “She must be here.”

  “Who?”

  “Grace.”

  “Oh. Mr. Kinkaid, would you like to come inside for a cup of tea?”

  “Now? No, not now. Too much to do.”

  Claire remembered Iris and her leek pie.

  “Your sister Carmela’s got me buildin’ her a whole new setta row lights.”

  “Ah.”

  He laughed. A hollow cackle that filled the littered garage with strange and gone-forever memories.