by Tina Welling
I said, “Lizette, this is about as private as we get around here. Periodically, we all scrunch into the bathroom together and talk things out.” I looked around with smiling eyes, stupidly expecting support in the form of laughter to my witticism. My humor was not appreciated. Neither was my position of spokesperson for “us workers.” This was my problem, those faces said. I felt like firing the bunch of them. Start over.
Maybe keep Lizette.
Hold it, buster, I counseled myself. This is serious stuff. Besides, at the actual thought of touching Lizette, not in the fantastical future but now and here, I felt a great resistance rise in me. I bought time to sort out this surprise piece of news by pretending we were all waiting for Casey.
Annie can rub her snot all the hell over me, but please don’t make me have to deal with some other woman’s snot. In fact, I didn’t want to deal with another woman, period. Not her snot, not her emotions, not her sexuality. And now I understood how I had messed up. I had not treated Lizette with the dignity deserving of a real person, but rather had used her as a receptacle for my imagined longings, and it was no more right than if I had dishonored a woman by paying for sex with her. Maybe that was putting it harshly, but Lizette clearly felt abused and I needed to try to fix that, if I could.
Casey returned, took his place, leaning against the wall. “Locked up, but we’re losing money, boss.”
“We’ve got a different kind of business to attend to here.” I moved to the bench. “Molly, could I trade places with you?” I took her seat beside Lizette. “We could use some more toilet paper here.” Todd handed me a wad and I gently removed the damp scrunched-up mess from Lizette’s hands. Now that I saw her as a real woman, I didn’t mind Lizette’s snot as much as I had thought I would. I’d still rather have been dealing with Annie’s snot though. God, how I ached for Annie. Suddenly it seemed as if my own emotions surfaced along with Lizette’s. I felt my upper lip begin to swell, and I wondered if everyone in the room was feeling especially close to sad parts of their lives.
I never handled personal problems with employees or even our sons, if I could avoid it. Annie did that. The only way I was going to get through this deal was to imagine what she might do. I’d watched her enough over the years. Often she began by stating the situation; so I did, too.
I tipped Lizette’s face up with my forefinger to meet her eyes. “Lizette, you are a very pretty woman. I like to look at you. I have been looking at you a lot lately.” I took the new bunch of toilet paper and dabbed at Lizette’s tears and held it to her nose. “Blow.”
Someone handed me more toilet paper. I got Lizette to blow again.
“I’ve been rude about it, this looking at you.” I fought back the excuses that flooded to my defense, the remarks that suggested this was not typical behavior of mine, that it was prompted by my loneliness for the woman I really wanted to stare at. I came close, but I heard Annie’s voice tell me to grow up and own up. I heard her accuse me of slippery behavior, of hiding behind a “nice guy” persona. I felt such a powerful pull to slide into those old slots that I dug in my mental heels and forced myself to resist.
In the disturbed ground that resulted from the struggle, new thoughts surfaced that promised to serve us all better.
“I regret how I have treated you, Lizette. I haven’t learned who you are.”
More than that. I avoided knowing information about Lizette. I was afraid it would blow my fantasy. She would hate fly-fishing or rodeos or beer or mystery novels. I just looked at her and let her see me looking at her and that was all I wanted from her. I felt full of regret for my refusal to know who this young woman was. And disgust. I had told myself it was okay to think anything I wanted, just not to act on it. Well, it was not okay, because all thought begat some kind of action. And because I was responsible for what I put out in the world . . . even thoughts. I did a disservice to this young woman and to Annie and to myself.
“My wife, Annie, and I are trying to spend the winter apart. Instead of thinking about some of the questions she and I want to settle between us, I just daydreamed looking out the window and when I wasn’t doing that I daydreamed looking at you. I wish now I hadn’t put you in that bad spot.”
Lizette looked puzzled. This wasn’t what she had expected. She was young enough to enjoy creating dramas and she was pretty enough to have experienced control over them. In this drama, my life depended on the outcome, and Lizette hadn’t counted on that.
The others were still and attentive. Saundra was twisting a new piece of hair and crying quietly.
I was unsure of what to do next. One thing I recalled was how Annie made sure all of us in the store knew one another personally. So I said, “I enjoyed your prettiness without taking into consideration your whole self. For instance, I know Saundra has two hamsters, Twiggy and Penelope, and that she reads a romance novel every three days. And Todd here comes from Bill, Wyoming, where they only have a single parking meter—imagine that. He likes to fly-fish from opening day throughout the season. We practically want to wear black in honor of his misery closing day. But I don’t know anything about you. That might be one of the hard parts about standing out physically—that’s all anyone acknowledges about the person, the physical sight.”
“Everybody just thinks of me as fat,” Saundra said to prove my point. She nodded to everyone to acknowledge that she meant to be helpful. A new tear started at the corner of her eye.
I tore off some of the tissue and passed it to Saundra. By now the fresh end of the toilet paper was in my hands, while Todd held the center of the roll itself, which was huge and refilled one of the industrial holders we had in the toilet stalls around the corner. He rolled it loosely in his hands, letting it unwind as I needed it.
I wasn’t sure Lizette liked the way things were going. She had created this scene, I suspected, to move me out of the hands-off staring track I kept myself in, and because she was used to playing center stage and maybe because it was Groundhog Day, which came along with the bleak reminder that we were only halfway between the first day of winter and the first day of spring. But I felt a sense of peace and cleanness of spirit pervade our group’s intimate space, so I kept going.
“Tell me, Lizette, do you have any pets?”
“No.”
“Where does your family live?”
“Here.”
“Here?”
“I was born here.”
“You’re kidding. I didn’t think anyone was born here. That’s what I tell tourists who come in the store and ask me if I was born in Jackson Hole. I say, ‘Nope, nobody was.’ Now I’ll have to send them to you with their questions.”
“We moved when I was a month old. Then we moved back this winter.”
“So you feel new here. Do you like it?”
“Not much.”
“It’ll get better. Do you like to read?”
“It’s okay. I read sometimes.”
“We should start a book trade. Bring in our old books and borrow from one another. I’ve got a bunch I can bring.”
“Boy, do I have a lot,” Saundra said. “Hope someone else reads romances. I could save a ton of money if I didn’t have to buy so many.”
I checked my watch. We usually closed at eight; it was now a quarter to six. “How about we all head over to the Mangy Moose and order some dinner? My treat.” I looked around and was met with agreeable faces. I smiled in gratitude for their forgiveness.
I said, “Celebrate this book-trade deal.” They laughed to let me know we were all square. Hadley was beaming. But I felt one more piece of closure was needed to cement the situation.
“Lizette, I ask your forgiveness for the trouble I gave you.”
“It’s okay, I guess.”
“Todd, wait for Lizette while she gets ready for dinner, and we’ll meet the two of you at the Moose.”
I realized I was playing favorites here, but I didn’t think Rafe had a chance with Todd.
Nineteen
A
nnie
I sat on the top step outside my porch, feeling the luck of the draw with my college classes, Bijou on my lap. That morning I had attended introduction to basic art with happy anticipation—and some terror that I’d be asked to draw. But the instructor planned to concentrate class assignments on understanding composition, perspective and the color wheel, with preliminary steps into various media. Next class, he said, we’d mix paint colors and learn about their warmth and coolness. I could do that.
I was also enrolled in an art class that involved creating with textiles. And a contemporary craft class, which was a study of craft as business and innovation. There, I was expected to design a pretend business and be innovative about it, to boot. The two remaining classes—psychology and English literary masterpieces—involved mainly reading. I loved to read, so felt I could handle my full schedule. I sat in the warm sunshine and fairly buzzed with excitement over my new textbooks and especially my art supplies, all set out on my worktable ready to use.
I smoothed Bijou’s ears. My new life was taking shape. I found it pleasant to concentrate on myself and my own interests. And though the busty young woman who was surprised that Jess was “mar-ried” intruded on my thoughts now and then, my response was impatience, annoyance. Anything more would have reflected the old pattern of my married life, in which I offered my primary attention and energy toward Jess and directed the leftovers to myself. Briefly, I even wondered if Jess had set up a situation designed to draw my attention back to him.
These weeks away from the store reminded me that I never meant to make a career out of the retail business. I began studying the ledgers of TFS to see if I could save the business from the threat of bankruptcy, resulting from Jess’ disregard of the financial aspects of the store. Once I packed up Saddler’s portable crib and carted it into the office, I never got away again.
I succeeded in resolving the financial problems, then became engaged in the challenge of maintaining a thriving sports store in a world-class resort. Our second son was born, and both Jess and I assumed I’d bring him into the store, as well. I worked in the office and Jess minded the children while he waited on customers. We were pleased with ourselves for stepping outside the traditional gender roles of husband and wife. Yet somehow the confusion of dropping those barriers instilled an imbalance in our workloads, and the bulk of responsibility landed on me. How could I have created a life so full and hectic and challenging that I never once paused to notice that it wasn’t fulfilling to me?
I saw now that intimacy in my marriage was how I had defined the path to my sense of self. And I saw, too, that often I was so engaged in the pursuit of it that I didn’t notice it wasn’t reciprocated. These two ideas—intimacy within my relationship and an independent sense of self—described my struggle. They had been the two conflicting pulls on my marriage. Intimacy with Jess had often opposed my need to become an individual and any individual choices seemed to encroach on my intimacy with Jess. I thought especially of the time I cleaned the dining room table of my craft projects.
How did I come to feel that abandoning myself for Jess was proof of my love for him?
Breezes ruffled Bijou’s fur and brushed the fronds of a coconut palm against the screen on the porch. I recalled leaving Perry’s house at sunset Sunday, the dark descending quickly, and as I waited for the attendant to bring my car, early stars sprang out and dangled on the frond tips of a palm as tall as this one beside me. Despite the reason for being here, I enjoyed the enchantments of living in the tropics.
I ducked inside, grabbed a ball and my new knitting project and raced the puppy down to the yard to play awhile before meeting my friends at the Green Bottle Café. “Tuesday. I’ll explain everything,” Perry had said again before we parted. I recalled glancing across the lawn then to Alex, her husband, dressed in pale linen pants, a short-sleeved knit shirt and leather sandals, talking to friends of his parents. He looked happy and at ease. A handsome Prince Charming.
I tossed the ball across the yard, and Bijou peeled after it, caught the ball as it rolled and somersaulted over the top of it. I laughed. She took the ball in her mouth and lay in the grass and chewed on it. Not a retriever, I reminded myself. I moved over to the shade of an acacia tree, sat and pulled out my blue ribbon yarn and needles. Time enough to work a few rows on the scarf the yarn shop owner had talked me into tackling, graduating me from both dishcloths and the simple knitting stitch. She had taught me the “drop stitch,” which created a lacy pattern, with holes I deliberately knitted in. Daisy would look great in it. And when I met Caridad under the bottlebrush tree to knit between classes, she might find this project more interesting than a dishcloth.
I had almost forgotten that elated feeling I used to get in a yarn store, with all that color and texture sparking the air. Along with my other craft projects, knitting also had gotten put away a few years back. Now I felt a rush of energy, thinking about all the free time I had in which to do the things I liked.
I rested my needles in my lap for a moment. Some unspoken tug-of-war had been going on between me and my marriage. And though I didn’t for a minute believe that Jess had understood this, I did believe that he picked up on it unconsciously and tugged with all his might on the rope that kept me from moving in one direction or the other.
I watched Bijou roll onto her back and hold the ball between her paws to mouth it like an ice-cream cone. I held up one of the ear-shaped leaves that had fallen from the acacia tree above me and traced the inner curve of it.
I was struck by the realization that it didn’t work for Jess to have me fully invested in intimacy with him or to create any sort of life without him. It worked best for Jess to keep me striving for footing and never quite succeeding balance. For Jess, it worked to have me off center and scrambling.
Intimacy and selfhood, those were the two ends of that rope.
My landlord, Shank, drove into the driveway alongside the picket fence, interrupting my thoughts. Probably home for lunch after doing errands, which reminded me that I needed to leave for the café soon. Shank had retired from the maintenance department at the college and his wife, Lucille, also retired, had taught history there. I said hello to Shank and he wandered over to pet Bijou and praise the weather, which was soft and warm and the exact reason people loved Florida in early February.
“Cille says you’re attending classes.”
“I am and I’m enjoying it, too. Attended my first classes this morning.”
“Good thing somebody here is going to the college, now that Lucille and I are retired. How’s the place doing without us?”
“Falling apart and grieving,” I said.
He laughed his deep, rich chuckle.
And I joined him and got up to walk across the yard with him, then on up my stairs.
We met inside the mossy air of the Green Bottle Café. The day was so beautiful, we decided that even eating outside on the deck wasn’t good enough. We ordered carryout, piled into Perry’s car and drove to the savannah for a picnic. Twenty minutes inland got us to a vast, waving land of tall grasses, hidden ponds and paths wending through it all. We laid a blanket from Perry’s trunk in the shade of a scrub pine near a pond and opened our lunch bags, screwed tops off our drinks. The loveliness and silence of the afternoon sun were stapled in place by the soft, lazy buzz of insects and an occasional breeze that lifted our hair.
Sara said the best time to come was early morning or sunset. “We aren’t likely to see the animals in the heat of the day.”
I said, “I hope that includes alligators.”
Marcy said, “There’re always alligators. Good thing you didn’t bring your little dog. That’s their favorite afternoon snack.”
Sara said, “If it were later, we’d see white-tailed deer, turtles, rabbits, maybe raccoons.”
We laid our food out on opened napkins.
“The party was wonderful,” Marcy said to Perry. And Sara and I agreed, and we all lavishly praised the wonderful food, beautiful s
urroundings, the lovely people we met.
“And it was nice to meet your husband,” Marcy concluded for us, bringing up the subject we had been avoiding so far.
Perry probed her salad with a fork. “I’ll just start from the beginning, I guess, before Alex.” She took a sip of her lime soda. “I left Kentucky and came down to Florida to hide out. I had gotten beaten up by my husband quite a lot, which had caused three miscarriages. The last messed me up for ever having children.” She looked at each of us and addressed our sorrow over this news. “It’s okay. That was fourteen years ago. Things have been looking up since.”
She took another drink. “I worked as a checkout clerk at the K-Mart here in town and Alex was a shelf stocker there.”
“Really, a stocker?” Marcy said.
“I’ll get to that.”
I had assumed that Alex either didn’t work or worked with his father in some capacity. I couldn’t picture anyone who lived in that beautiful home working as a stocker at K-Mart. But Perry continued.
“Alex was hit by a car when he was eleven and suffered brain damage. His intellectual development was halted at a fourth-grade level, and that is as far as he will go.” I recalled the deep scar that marred Alex’s beauty and expressed sadness at that news.
Perry said, “At work Alex always told new people about his problem and explained that many things were hard for him. That was the opposite of how I had been brought up, in which you felt shame and tried to hide personal things. He made people comfortable around him. I was drawn to Alex right away because of his kindness.”
“That’s remarkable,” Sara said. Marcy and I agreed.
