Circle of Three

by Patricia Gaffney

  No. 7. Mom’s Job.

  She doesn’t have a real one yet, but everybody is hopeful. Her friend Chris, who is also unemployed, had an idea that Mom could do illustrations for these kids’ books Chris wrote. First it was just an experiment, to see if it would work at all, and Mom only did some pen and ink drawings. But they were good and Chris liked them a lot, so next she tried some watercolors. Well, they were a hit, too, so now they’ve teamed up. Who knows what will happen, but at least for now they’re going to see if they can write and illustrate books for children who are between the ages of four and seven. I read the one they finished and it wasn’t bad.

  So that’s one thing. Another is that some professor’s wife in Clayborne wants Mom to paint a mural in her dining room of people sitting at a big table and eating. She wants it to take up two whole walls and be sort of old-fashioned and French, like Renoir or Toulouse-Lautrec or somebody, with lots of French bread and wine bottles and candles on the table and the people dressed like the nineteenth century—EXCEPT—she would like four of the diners to look like herself, her husband, and her two kids! Mom thinks it’s a riot! She’s probably going to do it. The lady will pay big bucks, even more than the petting zoo would have, so she’s going to give it a try.

  The third thing is—Mr. Wright asked if she’d teach a course in art next semester at the Other School!! No one could believe the balls on this guy. She said no, of course, especially since he was paying squat, but now she’s actually rethinking her decision. She could do it for “practice,” she says, because maybe Gram’s been right all along and what she should really do is go back to school for a teaching degree and then teach art. Jeez. I’m just glad I’ll be out of here by then and there’s no way she could ever be my teacher. Who knows if this will happen or not. It’s sort of a last resort, as I get it, in case the other gigs don’t work out. “Something to fall back on,” Gram keeps saying. Mom says she doesn’t hate the idea as much as she used to. I guess that’s something. But me—whatever I end up doing, I know it won’t be the thing I hate the least. It’ll be the thing I love the most. Whatever that may be. I said that to Mom the other night, as a matter of fact, but she didn’t pick up on it or defend herself or anything. She just said, “Good for you,” and let it go. So that made me think. Easy for me to say. I don’t have a kid to send to college in two years.

  No. 8. Jess.

  I’m grounded, so naturally I’m in my room last night doing E-mail when Mom comes in and sits on the bed. She’s got her serious face, so I know we’re going to Talk, and I’m even pretty sure what about, but I say nothing, to make it harder for her to start. This doesn’t work, because she says right out, “What are you going to do about Jess?”

  I’m not really mad anymore, I’m more like, oblivious. Or trying to be. Just trying to live my life without any of that in my face, and until now she’s been okay with it. I mean, maybe she sneaks over to his house all the time, maybe they have hot phone sex every night—I don’t know and I don’t care to know. (I still can’t believe he rode up to D.C. with Grampa. I wish I’d been a fly on that windshield!)

  So anyway, I try to cut the conversation short by saying I’m not doing anything about Jess, and if she wants to bring him around and be his girlfriend, hey, be my guest, no skin off my nose. I mean it’s not like he needs my permission to come a-courtin’, right? This doesn’t amuse Mom. We go around for a while, and finally she admits that what she really wants me to do is talk to him.

  Long story short, Jess calls today and invites me to go for a ride with him and Tracer in his pickup truck, and I get to drive. Yee-ha, big deal. I outgrew that stupid cowgirl fantasy a long time ago. But I don’t point that out or act smart, in fact I am incredibly polite. Butter, as they say, won’t melt in my mouth. It’s much better to peace out in these situations and act like nothing is going on under the surface, no mental alternative dramas. You’ve got a lot more clout when you chill than when you act sullen or argue or show your hand. This I have learned over the years and at tremendous personal expense.

  Jess freaked me, though. We were going south on back roads, down toward Orange, which is a pretty little town, and I was being extra careful not to speed so he couldn’t get anything on me. It was hot, but we didn’t turn on the AC, the air smelled so good, even the fertilizer smell when we went by the new fields. Cows everywhere—I used to ask him what the different breeds were and he’d tell me, Hereford, Guernsey, Brown Swiss, Jersey, etc., but today I didn’t ask because already I could see how easy it would be to slide back into our old friendship as if nothing had happened. I think it’s partly the silences, which are weird with other people unless they’re like your parents or your best friend, but they’re never weird with Jess. Why is that?

  So it’s a beautiful day and we’re driving along, not talking much because I am being cool, when all of a sudden he goes, “I’ll get lost if you want me to.” I say something brilliant like, “Huh?” and he says, “It’s up to you.”

  I’m thinking, Shit! I didn’t know what to say. Finally I told him I didn’t think my mom would agree with him, I seriously didn’t think she’d say it was up to me. He said she was taking a lot for granted with me, she was making an assumption that eventually I was going to be okay with them being together, but it was because that’s what she wanted to happen. But that he could see clearer. He said, “Ruth, I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Oh, great! I go, “Look, it’s none of my business what you do, you’re two consenting adults.” He smiled when I said that, “two consenting adults,” and I just kind of, I don’t know, I went mooshy inside. I liked him again, the same as before, and it was so totally annoying, like I was a pushover for anybody who thinks I’m funny or lovable or whatever, which I am. A pushover, I mean.

  We drove around Orange for a while, but when he said do you want to get something to eat at the café, I said no thanks. Because this was not a social occasion. I turned around and started driving home on Route 15 because it’s faster.

  He goes, “I’ve been thinking.” Tracer was sprawled across his lap and halfway out the window, tongue out, ears flying. I didn’t want to hear what Jess was thinking, and I almost turned on the radio, but that would’ve been incredibly rude, plus I didn’t have the nerve. He said, “I’ve been wondering how I’d have felt if my father loved someone after my mother died.” (Or before, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.) He said he thought he’d have pretended to be glad for his father, but inside it wouldn’t have made any sense to him, because his mother was the center of their lives, she was what made his family work.

  So I said it’s not the same. I said my father wasn’t like that.

  I hated admitting that to him. But he was trying to make some kind of a circle, some parallel story about his life, and it didn’t work. These days when I try to think about my dad, it’s strange, but I can only picture him in his study in the old place in Chicago, doing his work. I can’t see him anywhere else in the house, I can’t put him in the kitchen or the bathroom or the yard. I just see him sitting at his desk. He’s wearing his light green shirt with his tie undone, and he doesn’t look up when anybody comes in. He’s busy. He puts his left hand on his forehead to shield his eyes, and keeps writing.

  I changed the subject, started talking about Mom and Chris’s new book, about a little duck named Schwartz who never cleans up his room so he can’t find his winning lottery ticket. I wasn’t interested in talking to Jess about my father. That’s private. All the way home he kept trying to get back to the point—his point—but I wouldn’t help him out. I admit I liked seeing him get more and more frustrated. But he didn’t press it, he didn’t put the screws on or anything.

  When we got home, I turned the motor off and just sat there, didn’t jump right out and run off. I knew he wasn’t finished, and sure enough, he starts saying how those times when we went fishing or just walking around, the times I came over to see him, he really enjoyed himself and he didn’t have any, like, motive going on.
He said, “I just liked being with you.” I’m thinking, now is the time I’m supposed to say, “I liked being with you, too,” and us to make up. I wanted to say it. But I didn’t. I just couldn’t. I sat there and played with the steering wheel.

  We got out, and I figured he was going to come in the house with me. I even half wanted him to, so this could finally be over. But he didn’t, he climbed back in the truck. I mumbled something like, “It doesn’t matter to me if you come in or not. I mean, don’t stay away on my account, because I just don’t give a damn.” That was so bad, I couldn’t look at him. Why couldn’t I be nice? I think it’s because it still feels disloyal—like being nice to Jess is cheating on my dad. It’s like giving in and being selfish, doing what I want to instead of what I ought to. Jess goes, How about if we take it really slow, and I go, Yeah, that sounds okay. And he says, “I love your mom. I wasn’t waiting for her before, because I never thought it would work out. But now I am, and it doesn’t matter how long.” I don’t know what I said. I was embarrassed. I mean, that was so personal.

  So then he said, really quietly, “I love you, too.” I looked at him. “I do,” he said.

  Well, I couldn’t talk. But it was kind of the last straw. He put his hand on the side of the truck, and that was like a touch on my hand or my arm. Then he started the engine up and drove away.

  So who knows what will happen.

  Or else it’s obvious.

  Mom says we have to forgive each other for the things we do out of love. Oh, I guess. She forgave me for telling her I was sleeping on the street with derelicts. Did I do that out of love? I might have, but you have to go pretty far back to see it. And you’d have to really love the person to bother going back that far. Well, I will work on my forgiveness. Jess is cheating somehow, though; he’s making it too easy.

  So anyway, I guess that’s it for items that are on my mind and strategies to deal with them over the summer. It’s been a…I don’t know what. A some kind of a year. It’s been the kind of year I’m not going to understand for a few more years. Like the year when I was twelve and I first got my period and we moved from Chicago to here—I can see now how interesting that year was, but at the time it just felt like one stupid thing after another.

  This is the year my father died. I turned into a different person. I am forever changed. The problem here is, I didn’t know what kind of a person I was before, so how am I supposed to know who I turned into? Time, I guess. “Time will tell” is a true saying. Nevertheless, one of these days I would very much like to understand things about myself while they’re happening.

  I read somewhere that grief is all about the griever, hardly at all about the person you’ve lost. Thinking over this past year, I can see how true that is.

  Okay. Well, that’s it.

  EXCEPT! No. 9. There is this guy. His name is Robbie Warriner, and he’s Chris’s next-door neighbor and also a year ahead of me at school, a total computer freak, and a major babe. (I think. Becky says no, he’s a tool, but she likes Jason Bellinger, so what does she know.) He’s so nice, he comes over to Chris’s and helps Andy, her kid, with his new computer and teaches him games and stuff. So of course sometimes when I go over there to see Mom, he’s there. He’s going to study computers and virtual reality in college, he’s already decided. I told him I’d like to learn how to do spreadsheets, since I might take statistics next year, and now he’s teaching me! He has red hair, but it’s dark red, not orange, and he doesn’t have freckles. He’s taller than me. He has long, graceful fingers and this really intense face, and when he hunches over the keyboard and stares into the monitor at a pie chart it’s like watching Van Cliburn or somebody. He chews Dentyne. Sometimes he sits behind me to show me cell formulas or fields or whatever. I smell that peppery-cinnamon smell and forget what I’m doing. According to Chris he’s not going out with anybody. I think the guy being a year and a half older than the girl is exactly right. Mom likes him a lot. Not that that matters.

  28

  Celtic Circle

  RUTH SAID YES.

  I couldn’t believe how easy it was. I’d phrased my question very casually: “I was thinking I might drive out to Daddy’s grave, clean it up, put some fresh flowers. It’s such a beautiful day. But you’re probably busy, you wouldn’t want to come with me. Only for an hour. I just thought since it’s so pretty.”

  “Sure, Mom. I’ll drive.”

  But just as we were leaving, Mama pulled up in her new car, a sporty red compact with a sunroof. “Where’re you going?” she yelled out the window, spotting us on the sidewalk. I told her. “Great, I’ll go with you. Get in, this car rides like a dream. Ruth honey, you want to drive?”

  And that was that. I seethed all the way to Hill Haven. My mother might be bossy, but she wasn’t blind, was she? Surely she could see that this particular mother-daughter foray was tricky enough already, fraught with pitfalls, a minefield of possible disasters. Maybe she thought a third party might ease the way, but honestly, couldn’t she see that the whole point was the intimacy, the privacy—the mother-daughter part?

  No. As it turned out, she was blind, but I didn’t learn why until later. All I knew then was that she was in a rotten mood and she wanted company.

  After a week of stifling heat and humidity, it was a mild, gorgeous day, the sky a puffy cloud-filled azure blue that made my chest ache. Ruth said it felt more like Chicago in spring than Virginia in July. Along with a clutch of zinnias and rudbeckia, the freshest flowers left in my neglected, baking-hot garden, I’d also brought along a blanket and a Thermos of lemonade. I’d had a hopeful but naive vision of Ruth and me sitting hip-to-hip on the blanket, sharing confidences along with the single cup. The fantasy didn’t fit three. Neither did the blanket; Mama plopped down on it heavily, tucking her skirt around her calves, perspiring from the short climb from the paved path, while Ruth stood apart and looked off in the distance, hands on her hips, long legs too tan under her black shorts in spite of my incessant sunscreen carping. With a sigh for lost opportunities, I sat down next to my mother.

  Presently Ruth dropped to her knees and began to pull back the dry, dead grass from around Stephen’s bronze burial plaque. She’d cut her hair for the summer, shorter than mine, a sun-streaked cap of soft, springy curls. I loved it, loved to touch it, even though it made her jerk away and say, “Mom.” She’d be sixteen next month. I remembered very well what getting my driver’s license had meant to me—freedom, independence, the glorious beginning of my real life. But for a mother it only meant one thing: the beginning of the end.

  “Carrie, you look tired.” Mama poured half a cup of lemonade from the Thermos and drank it. She sounded peevish. “Ruth honey, doesn’t your mother look tired?”

  Ruth looked up, narrowed her eyes at me. “No. I think she looks pretty.” She shrugged and went back to pulling grass.

  “Thanks,” I said after a startled second. How long had it been since she’d given me a compliment? Resentments were beginning to crumble, maybe from old age, maybe only to make way for new ones, but I loved our truce and didn’t care what motivated it. Ruth liking me, being nice to me again—I hadn’t known how much I’d missed that.

  “Hey,” she said, “look.”

  “Don’t point,” Mama said severely. “We see them.”

  “What?” I exchanged a look with Ruth—What is with her?—and glanced over my shoulder. “Oh.” A funeral service, above us, forty yards away on top of the hill the cemetery was named for. There weren’t many mourners. They stood out in black silhouette against the sky, a very old woman in a long-sleeved dress—she must be stifling—two older men, a young woman, and a boy. A minister was reading from a prayer book, and a word or two drifted down on the shifting breeze, Almighty Lord…beloved…we ask…

  Ruth put her dirty hands on her thighs and stared. “You never know, do you. It looks like an ordinary funeral, the guy’s dead and she’s the widow, those are the kids and the grandkids, everybody’s sad. But it could be something
completely different. It could be anything.”

  My hand paused on the way to the Thermos. Was that a shot? Ruth’s way of implying that my grief at Stephen’s funeral had been disingenuous? A lie?

  “I mean, the old lady could be the mother instead of the widow, and one of those guys could be the husband of the dead person. Or they could be brothers, the two guys, and they’ve lost their sister. You know. It could be anything.”

  “Oh.” Relief. “It’s true,” I said, “we do make assumptions about people based on—”

  “Stereotypes,” Ruth finished. “Everybody jumps to conclusions about people. It’s what causes racism and sexism and religious intolerance. I think it’s better to not think any- thing about people. Just try to keep an open mind at all times.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. Native Son, I recalled, was on her summer reading list. I closed my eyes for a few seconds. I had a sensation of rising, floating, hovering over all the graves in the cemetery, all the graves in the round, blue and green world. Millions and billions of the dead and the living, countless people standing over the stones of their loved ones, praying and wishing, weeping, grieving.

  “George lied.”

  I opened my eyes. “What, Mama?”

  “Your father has reneged on his promise.” She yanked up a tuft of crabgrass and flung it sideways. “I should’ve known, I should’ve seen this coming a mile off.”

  “What happened?” I looked at Ruth, who kept her head down; she crouched over the plaque, blowing on it, rubbing it with the hem of her T-shirt. She knows, I thought. Whatever this is, she already knows about it.

  “We’re not going on our trip,” Mama said flatly.

  “Oh, no. Why not? I thought Pop finished his book.” He had finished it, Ruth had told me so the night before last. As soon as it was done—the book he’d been collaborating on for the better part of two years—he and Mama were supposed to go away together. Only to the Bahamas, and only for a week, but it would be the first vacation they’d taken together in—fifteen years, she claimed, but that seemed impossible, she had to be exaggerating.