The Older Woman

by Cheryl Reavis

Mrs. Bee sighed. “She had cancer,” she said after a moment. “Three years ago.”

  Cancer.

  Doyle tried to get his mind around the word. It was the last thing he expected to hear. His worst-case scenario had been that maybe she’d been hard-up for money at some point in her life, and she’d posed like Pitty-Pat What’s-Her-Name’s relative.

  “In her…breast,” Mrs. Bee said. “She ought not be looking at a magazine like that. It’s just going to remind her. Lula Mae was right. This magazine thing is just going to cause trouble and heartache.”

  Doyle sat staring at the Galsworthy book, fighting off questions like, How bad was it? This wasn’t something he should be discussing with his landlady. Even he could recognize that.

  When he looked up again, Mrs. Bee was still standing in the doorway.

  “I’m sure you’ll know what to do, Calvin.”

  “Me? ” he said, startled. “About what?”

  “The

  magazine, Calvin.”

  “Now wait a minute, Mrs. Bee—”

  But Mrs. Bee was already in retreat.

  “Mrs. Bee!” he called after her.

  “You’re a good boy, Calvin,” he heard her call from somewhere deep in the house.

  “I’m

  not

  that good,” he said under his breath.

  So what did Mrs. Bee want him to do? Ditch the magazine for her so she wouldn’t have to fib about it when Meehan came over? He didn’t even know where the damn thing was. He sat for a moment longer, then struggled to get to his feet. With considerable difficulty, he put Michael Mont and Fleur back on the shelf. He no longer had the time nor the inclination to worry about them.

  In the process of dragging the dining room chair back to where he found it, he looked out the bay window. He could see Meehan on her patio, doing something with a bag of dirt and some pots and petunias.

  I like her, he thought, watching her work. A lot.

  And that means…?

  He knew what it meant. It meant that he was standing here in his dented-up, notso-shining armor, ready to ride to the rescue. The only thing wrong with this picture was that he suddenly felt that it wasn’t Meehan who needed rescuing. It was him. He was getting to know her, and he didn’t want anything to happen to her—for his sake.

  He took a deep breath. He should just go upstairs and forget all this. He would do exactly that—if he had the sense God gave a turnip. He began walking, across the room and into the wide center hallway. The ceiling fan waffled overhead, echoing his own indecision. He stood for a moment in the current of air. He could hear Mrs. Bee in the kitchen. He could go in there. He could go up the stairs. But, instead of doing either, he began to make his way toward the front door. He kept going, out onto the porch, down the steps and across the yard.

  Meehan had to hear him coming, but she didn’t look up.

  “Let me guess,” she said when he reached the edge of the patio, still not looking at him. “Another question.”

  “No. Yes,” he abruptly decided. Her portable phone lay conspicuously on a nearby lounge chair. Handy, in case the boyfriend decided to call.

  What the hell.

  She put a handful of plastic foam packing “peanuts” in the bottom of a flower pot for drainage. Some of them stuck to her fingers, then blew across the patio in a sudden breeze. She didn’t try to chase them down. She just kept fiddling with the petunias.

  “I want to know why you won’t go out with me,” he said bluntly.

  “I’m older than you are,” she answered—as if she’d expected to have to go through this again, and she’d gotten her big guns all ready.

  “Right,” he said. “Not much we can do about that.”

  “The age difference is significant,” she said next—still without looking at him.

  “Not to me it isn’t. Is it just me in particular, or do you have age requirements for all your friends?”

  She didn’t answer him. She stuck another red petunia plant in the pot, then a white one, then carefully began pouring potting soil around them with a bent paper cup.

  “The thing is,” he went on. “I like you. And I think you like me—so what’s the problem?”

  “Bugs, I really don’t want to have this conversation.”

  “The thing is,” he said again, anyway. “I can’t do a damn thing about when I was born, right? There’s no point in either one of us getting all bothered about it—”

  “Bugs—”

  “Now wait. Let me finish here. If you don’t want to go out with me because I’ve got it all wrong and you don’t like me and you don’t enjoy my company…well, I’m okay with that, and I won’t bother you. But if you don’t want to go out with me just because of the cancer thing, that’s something else again.”

  She finally looked up at him.

  “Mrs. Bee told me,” he said.

  “What? That I’m a breast cancer survivor?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry I survived?” she said with a flippancy he didn’t think she felt.

  “Sorry you had to go through all that.”

  She was staring into his eyes. Once again he could feel her trying to decide whether or not he meant it. It was becoming increasingly clear to him that Meehan must have had to deal with a lot of liars in her time.

  She abruptly looked down at the pot and began packing the dirt around the petunias with more force than necessary. Another breeze came through, this one strong enough to stir the wind chimes—glass, brass and bamboo. He could smell the fragrance of lemon again, and any other time he would have asked her about it.

  “The other day,” he said. “When you were sitting out in the rain—”

  “I told him,” she interrupted, reaching for a new pot.

  “I…guess he didn’t take it too well.”

  “He didn’t take it well at all. I…misjudged him. I thought I’d learned enough from past mistakes to be able to tell at least a little something about a man’s character. I was wrong.”

  “Well, he did come back—more than once.”

  “I told you. He didn’t want to feel guilty. He also didn’t much like the idea that I might be taking up with you.”

  “What’s wrong with me?” he asked, grinning. “Besides the obvious, that is—”

  He stopped because she was smiling.

  All

  right!

  Doyle,

  the

  Magnificent, has done it again!

  “This doesn’t have to be a big deal, Meehan. What I’m saying is if you want to go someplace and you don’t particularly want to go by yourself—”

  “I don’t think I’m going to need any girlie magazines.”

  “—I’m your man,” he finished as if she hadn’t interrupted.

  She sighed and didn’t say anything—which he supposed was better than having her throw a flower pot.

  “So what do you think?” he asked, because he was ever the one to push his luck.

  “I think you want to get into my pants,” she said bluntly, and he laughed out loud. This was some woman here—high maintenance and then some.

  “Your pants are safe,” he said, still grinning. “I swear.”

  She wasn’t even close to believing him.

  “Really,” he said, trying not to grin and not quite making it. “Anyway, you could outrun me.”

  “That’s true,” she said, going back to her flowers.

  “So what do you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  Nothing is better than no, he thought.

  “But you’ll keep it in mind.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” she said.

  “Great!”

  “Now, go away.”

  “Okay,”

  he

  said.

  “You’re an idiot. You know that,” she added.

  “I’ve…had my suspicions,” he confessed. “So how’s Uncle Patrick?”

  “Uncle

  Patrick?”<
br />
  “Yeah. You remember him. The one you were going to have to yell at.”

  “I’m still going to have to yell at him.”

  “Too bad,” he said, looking around at the sound of a car. He didn’t recognize this one—it wasn’t the bagel guy, at any rate. The car skidded to a stop in the driveway, and a young woman got out, a younger version of Meehan. She had a little boy with her.

  Meehan gave a quiet sigh. “Now what?” she said under her breath.

  They watched the young woman struggle to get the boy out of the back seat. Meehan walked forward, and Doyle went with her, trailing along behind. He had every intention of going back through the hedge where he belonged. He’d had too many family dramas of his own to want to get tangled up in somebody else’s.

  “Do you know anything about kids?” Meehan stopped to ask him on the way. “Do you think you can keep Scottie occupied for a little bit, if his mother is all upset?”

  “No problem,” he heard himself say without the slightest hesitation.

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” he said again.

  She looked at him for a moment, then went to help. The young woman had apparently given up. She stood by the car, and Doyle realized that she was crying. He had to step back when she hurried past him toward Meehan’s patio, completely oblivious to anyone or anything in her path. She didn’t go inside the house. She abruptly sat down on the lounge chair, upsetting the portable phone. It clattered onto the brick patio. She made no attempt to pick it up.

  He waited while Meehan got the little boy out of the car. She walked with him to where Doyle stood, holding him by the hand.

  “This is Scottie,” she said. “Scottie, this is Bugs Doyle. He’s a soldier.”

  “A real one?” Scottie wanted to know. In his other hand he was holding a small, red velvet bag with a drawstring.

  “A real one,” Meehan assured him.

  “Can he drive a tank?”

  “He jumps out of airplanes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Meehan asked, directing the question to the source.

  “So I can get to the ground without having to wait for the plane,” Doyle said. Then, “Hey, Scottie. What have you got there?”

  “Rocks,” Scottie said.

  “Can I see?”

  The boy looked up at Meehan to see if she had any objections, then let go of her hand.

  “Okay,” he said. “But you can’t know. I have to tell you, okay?”

  “Right,” Doyle said. “Can we sit down first?”

  “Yes,” Scottie advised him.

  “Over there?” Doyle pointed to Mrs. Bee’s picnic table.

  “Yes.”

  Scottie led the way. “You can’t walk fast,” he said.

  “No.”

  “You got hurt legs.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got a hurt leg one time. Aunt Kate fixed it. I bet she can fix you.”

  “I bet she can, too.”

  He made a point of sitting on the far side of the table so he could see Meehan and—if he wanted to make a wild guess—her sister. Scottie hopped up on the stone bench and dumped his rocks out on the table. The kid had a nice collection—polished stones mostly, some fool’s gold, a few pieces of road gravel.

  “Cool,” Doyle pronounced them. “Where did you get them?”

  “Dan Nicholas Park,” he said. “Uncle Patrick took me to them. They got a merrygo-round. And a train. And rocks.” He rubbed his nose with the heel of his hand. “And bees,” he added.

  “You have to watch out for bees,” Doyle said.

  “Yeah,” Scottie said with a little giggle in his voice.

  “So what’s this one,” Doyle asked, pointing to, but being careful not to actually touch, a small ragged piece of turquoise.

  “Chewing bubble-gum sharing rock,” Scottie said solemnly.

  “Wow,” Doyle said, glancing over the boy’s head. His mother was really crying now. He could see Meehan reach out to put her hand on her arm.

  “And this one?” he asked

  “Green garden kinder rock.”

  “What about that one?” he asked, pointing to the fool’s gold.

  “Golden crispin,” Scottie said without hesitation, and Doyle smiled, wondering where he’d gotten his creative rock names.

  “You really know your rocks.”

  “Yes,” Scottie said. “My mommy’s crying.”

  “Yeah,” Doyle said. “I think she is.”

  The boy looked at him sharply, as if the truth was the last thing he expected. He turned his red velvet bag upside down as if to clear out any rock that might have remained.

  “I have to stay over here.” It wasn’t quite a question, but Doyle answered it, anyway.

  “Yeah. For right now. We’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not going to cry,” he said.

  Doyle didn’t know what to say to that, or even if the comment was meant for him. The boy looked up at him.

  “I don’t want my mommy to be sad.”

  “Well, I think your aunt Kate can make her feel better—like she made you feel better when you hurt your leg.”

  “Aunt Kate can make her feel better,” Scottie repeated. He gave a little sigh.

  “Tell me about the rest of your rocks, okay?”

  Scottie went back to naming his collection. When he reached the “white recklin rock,” Doyle saw the boy’s mother hide her face in her hands, but by the time he’d identified a “blue tiger falgon” and a “purple shark seaweed,” she seemed to have gotten control of herself—which was a good thing, because they were running out of rocks.

  But the two women continued to talk. Meehan was obviously listening—and not particularly liking what she heard. Doyle knew her well enough to recognize the body language. It was something on the order of when he was still a patient on her ward, and she found out Rita had smuggled him an ice-cold beer in her purse. The fact that he hadn’t drunk the thing made no difference whatsoever.

  He realized suddenly that Scottie was looking at him.

  “How long has it been since you washed these things?” he asked, relying on his own boyhood memory of how much he liked to play in water.

  “Forty days and nights,” Scottie said, and Doyle grinned.

  “That long, huh? In that case, we better find some water.”

  Thankfully, it was a short trip to the nearest outside water spigot. It stuck up out of the ground, not too far from the driveway, handy for washing cars and watering Mrs. Bee’s little patch of tomato plants.

  He was allowed to hold the rocks in his hands while Scottie turned the water on. And off. And on again. They both got wet, but it couldn’t be helped. Meehan had asked him to keep the kid occupied, not dry.

  They carried the rocks back to the picnic table for a meticulous one-by-one, hand drying—with the tail ends of their T-shirts. Scottie kept up a running conversation, admiring what he imagined was a decided improvement in the appearance of his collection.

  When the drying was done, they made up new, off-the-wall rock names as Scottie dropped each one back into the red velvet sack. The kid had a sense of humor, for all his worry about his mother. It didn’t take much effort on Doyle’s part to make him giggle.

  Doyle looked up at one point to see Meehan heading in their direction. The sister had disappeared, he supposed, into the house.

  “Come on, Scottie,” Meehan said, holding out her hand. “Time to go.”

  “Is my mommy happy now?”

  “She will be when you get there,” Meehan said, lifting him down to the ground.

  “Tell Bugs bye.”

  “Bye,” he said. “We can play some more later.”

  Meehan gave him a look, one Doyle had no problem at all deciphering. It was: See? I told you you were too young.

  He grinned—and kept his mouth shut for once. Meehan looked back as she walked away with Scottie in tow, mouthing the words, Thank you.

 
You’re welcome, he thought. You are welcome.

  He eventually took up his usual perch on the porch swing, and he sat there a long time, thinking about Meehan and whether he’d gained any ground here or not.

  Probably not. But he didn’t think he’d lost any, either.

  He was just about to go inside when Meehan and her sister came out of the house.