Patricia Gaffney

by Mad Dash

  “Shevlin was just set, he was not going to be denied. I felt like a dandelion in a hard wind. So I fall back on that in the bad times, because he’s still the same man.”

  I hear his footsteps, heavy and measured, coming through the dining room. Cottie does, too; she leans back, assuming a bland expression I do my best to copy. Perhaps we’re too bland: He looks at us with suspicion as he thunks a plastic pill bottle down on the table. A dandelion in a hard wind. I try to imagine Mr. Bender in passionate love with the Cottie of forty years ago, a pretty woman with long legs and laughing eyes. She’s still tall, but spare and rugged now, as if the years have whittled away everything not absolutely necessary. He’s shorter, scrawnier, a bantam rooster to her tough old hen.

  He puts his chapped hands on her shoulders, standing behind her chair, and announces, “She could’ve gotten a pig valve if she wanted.”

  Cottie laughs.

  “Pig valve, she could’ve had one o’ them put in if she’d rather. This contraption lasts longer, though. Looks like a Ping-Pong ball in a cage.”

  She lays her cheek on one of his hands. “I swear, Shevlin wishes they’d given me the old valve in a little jar so we could set it in the kitchen window.”

  At last! Humor gleams for an instant in Mr. Bender’s closed, narrow face. Cottie tips her head back to let it rest on his stomach, and he looks down with that soft, sappy expression I saw before. I think he would run his hands over her smooth, Quaker-gray hair if I weren’t here. Or lean over and kiss her forehead. I have an ache in my jaw, a longing I don’t know how to fill. And a great frustration, as if satisfaction or the answer or some kind of relief are just over there, but I’m blindfolded, my hands are tied, and I can’t walk.

  The other thing I feel, the last emotion I expected when I set out on my little mission of friendship an hour ago, is envy of the Benders.

  He raises her gently but firmly out of her chair. “Time for your rest.” I get up, too. She gives a helpless shrug and starts to thank me for coming—just then there’s stamping at the back door, it opens, and a man in heavy boots and an old red barn coat tramps in on a blast of cold air. He smiles politely at the sight of me, pulling off his wool hat and hanging it over a hook by the door.

  “Oh, Owen,” Cottie says, “good, you can meet Mrs. Bateman. Dash, this is our son-in-law, Owen Roby. Or do you two already know each other?”

  “You look familiar,” I say, but I can’t really place him, a fortyish, solid-looking man with fair hair thinning on top, his face ruddy from the cold. His hand swallows mine when we shake, and his fingers feel rough as bark. He smells like pine.

  “You’ve prob’ly seen me around. You live on the mountain, the cabin with the pond,” he says, which would be a creepy thing for a strange man to know about me in D.C., but not down here, where everybody knows where everybody lives.

  Mr. Bender clears his throat. “Owen can change that kitchen faucet for you.”

  “Owen can do anything,” Cottie says fondly, tilting her head at him. Her smile looks tired; she’s holding on to the back of the chair. “There’s no reason you can’t do it, though,” she says to her husband. Then to me: “Shevlin is determined to be my nurse, and I don’t need one. I haven’t felt so well in months.”

  “Come on, Mother,” Mr. Bender says, face stern, moving her toward the door.

  “Dash, come back and see me. Don’t bring anything, just come and talk. If you have time. Or if you ever get lonesome up there—” Her husband is rustling her out of the room like a sheepdog. “Thanks for the casserole. Do you like piccalilli? Owen, go down and get her a couple of jars of piccalilli, will you?” She waves from the dining room. “Give it to somebody else if you don’t care for it!”

  “Piccalilli,” I say to Owen. That’s a word I haven’t said in a long time.

  “It’s like a relish—”

  “I know, my mother used to make it.”

  I’m probably imagining that he looks surprised. “I think I know where she keeps it,” he says, opening the door to what I thought was a cabinet, but instead I see it’s a wide, shelf-lined pantry on two sides, and straight ahead are steps to the dark basement.

  While he’s gone, I wash the cups and saucers Cottie and I used and put them in the dish drainer. There’s a sun catcher in the window, rainbow-hued; pots of greenery in various stages of germination line the sill. Outside, snow dusts the ridges and furrows of what you’d never guess is a fabulous garden, alight with masses of color and bloom from spring until fall. I’ve always wanted to grow flowers like that, planning ahead so as each amazing display starts to fade, a new one takes its place, week after week, all season long. I study the diagrams of perfect beds and borders in the plant catalogs and think, Oh, I could do that, but then I never order the right flowers in time, or when I go to the nursery I forget my list. Apparently a gorgeous, summer-long perennial garden is one of those things, like black hair and blue eyes, or my own horse, that I’m never going to have.

  Owen stumps back up the steps. He’s not especially tall, he’s certainly not fat, but he’s one of those men who just take up a lot of room. Or maybe it’s the coat and boots—whatever, the kitchen gets smaller as soon as he comes in. “Here you go.” He sets a couple of mason jars on the table. “Shev told me about your kitchen faucet. Says you’ve got a door that sticks?”

  “The front door, but it’s nothing that can’t wait. I mean, unless you’ve got absolutely nothing else to do.”

  “I’m a farmer, there’s always plenty to do. But this is the slow time of year, and I like to help the Benders out when I can.”

  “Oh, you don’t live here?” He came in like he lived here.

  “I’m a couple miles south, out along the river.”

  But if he’s the son-in-law, isn’t he married to Danielle? Who’s in Richmond, a two-hour drive from here? Andrew jokes that I can find out everything about anybody I meet in five minutes, but Owen Roby’s going to take a little longer. He’s perfectly friendly, but also formal with me in a courtly, old-fashioned way. Any minute now I expect him to call me ma’am.

  He walks outside with me, talking about hot and cold fixtures and spigot sizes. He parked his tan pickup next to my car; there’s a rifle in a rack in the back window. I’m used to that around here, but I still shake my head when I pass a truckful of bundled-up men in orange, firearms on display. Owen has a bumper sticker championing his right to bear that rifle, I see, and a couple of others supporting our troops. I feel comparatively insubstantial; my only car sticker says WE THE NATIONAL ZOO.

  “Mrs. Bender seems so well,” I say, looking out across her snow-covered garden. “It’s hard to believe she just had major surgery.”

  “Yeah.” He puts his hands on his hips inside his open coat and stares down at the ground, shaking his head. “She was bad all fall. Before that, too, but we didn’t know—she didn’t say. She had rheumatic fever when she was little, that’s what caused the heart failure. If she’s as good as new…” He looks up, his eyes frank with hope and gratitude. “If she’s okay now, it’ll be a pure miracle.”

  “It will be.”

  We saunter over to my car.

  “How’re you fixed for firewood, Miz Bateman? I can drop off a load for you when I come up.”

  “I’m probably okay for a while—would you please call me Dash? I don’t use that much wood since I’m not here every day. I drive to D.C. a couple of times a week. I have a photography studio, but I don’t have to be there every day.” He’s a little more talkative, but he’s still almost as good as his father-in-law at making me chatter. “So I probably have enough for a while.”

  “You up there by yourself?”

  I nod, feeling no apprehension admitting that to him. Odd, since I don’t know him from Adam. I wonder what he thinks of me. I bet he and the Benders will talk about me later on.

  A crow flaps over our heads, moving from one sycamore to the other. “What’s a good day for you to come up?” I ask, opening the car doo
r.

  “What’s good for you?”

  “Well, not tomorrow, I have to go into town. The day after?”

  We settle on Friday. I get in and start my car; we say it was nice meeting each other and all that.

  “Might want to take a look at that left front tire sometime,” he says before I close the door.

  “Uh-oh. Is it bald?” Imagine him noticing.

  “Just wearing down in the middle. You’ll want to check your pressure.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “See you Friday.” He has very definite lips, slightly jutting and aggressive, but his smile is small and reserved. But genuine. I like him. I like all the Benders, even Shevlin, whom I picture right now wafting a homemade quilt over Cottie in their bed, so she’ll be warm for her nap.

  There’s no room to turn around, so I back out of the driveway. Carefully, hoping to stay on the gravel in case Owen is watching. When I bump up onto the road and level out, though, I see he’s already gone back in the house. Too bad, because I did it perfectly.

  six

  Why am I so nervous? It’s like a first date.

  I’m jiggling my foot at a corner table in a restaurant called Isabel’s, sipping a glass of the house white too fast and wondering why this place is so crowded on Christmas Eve. Who goes out to eat on Christmas Eve? People on dates, people who don’t want to be alone tonight—that’s what I’d have thought, but right across from me is a family, mother and father and three kids, including one in a high chair. What kind of Christmas tradition is that to set for your children? Thanksgiving I can see, especially if you hate to cook, but Christmas is different. Go home, I channel to the family, leveling an intense, disapproving stare. I guess they could be Jewish. Or traveling. Visiting the nation’s capital for the holidays, and they picked Isabel’s because it’s close to their modest Silver Spring family motel. Oh, all right, then. Merry Christmas to all.

  The reason I picked Isabel’s, aside from it being close to the college, is because Andrew and I have eaten here before, so it won’t be a fun new dining experience, incompatible with the serious business at hand; but not very often, and not on any special occasions, so it’s not loaded down with a lot of emotional nostalgia. Bad enough it’s Christmas Eve, the least we can do is eat our dinner in neutral territory. Hence, Isabel’s, the Switzerland of restaurants.

  Why is Andrew late? I’m the one who’s never on time, so says the comfortable old myth in our family. But we get our reputations early on, and then nothing can dislodge them. Dash is always late (except for work), Dash is unorganized and impulsive (except at work). Andrew’s the sensible one, steady and sober, you can always depend on Andrew. Personally, I don’t think he’s that sensible. He’s getting more quirks all the time, he’s heading toward eccentricity. The nutty professor.

  As for me being impulsive, that’s another figment of the family imagination. Even Chloe’s in on it. “You always jump in with your clothes on, Mom,” she said to me once, I forget in what context. “You don’t think first.”

  Chloe always thinks first. When she was seven, she asked Andrew (not me; interesting), “Does every single other person in the whole world think they’re as important as I think I am?” Pretty astute for seven. I myself was much, much older before I recognized I wasn’t the center of the universe. And even now…

  Andrew, needless to say, agrees with Chloe: That Dash, she’s so impulsive. It’s a flaw now, but I remember when he thought it was one of my most bewitching charms.

  Either way, they’re both wrong, I do think first, but too fast for them to register. Then I jump in with my clothes on. Because if someone’s drowning—keeping on with Chloe’s analogy—he could die while you’re still shucking off your underwear. The only advantage to thinking before jumping is that it might turn out the person isn’t drowning, he’s playing, or just seeing how long he can hold his breath under water. So then all you accomplished by taking the time to strip was trade one kind of embarrassment—Oops, didn’t mean to drag you out of the pool—for another—I’m naked! It’s not worth it.

  I signal the waiter for another glass of wine.

  I keep thinking about the Benders. I wonder if they still sleep together. I bet they do. Even though she’s been ill, I bet they share the same bed they’ve had all their married lives. A double bed, not queen-or king-size. And he tries to be careful now, worried he might throw out a leg or an arm in his sleep and accidentally hurt her. I keep remembering his scuffed old hand on her shoulder, the goofy smile on his face when she teased him. I’m sure he’s the one who wrapped the elastic support bandages around her ankles and calves. I picture him kneeling in front of her as she sits on the edge of the bed, or maybe the toilet seat, with her foot on his thigh while he gently winds the elastic cloth round and round her leg, thick with edema. I bet he’s doing all the cooking this week, even though there’s no reason she couldn’t heat up the church ladies’ casseroles in the oven as easily as he.

  Andrew took care of me last year when I had the worst flu of my life. I thought I was dying. “This can’t be right,” I whimpered, gagging into the toilet for the dozenth time, nothing but spit left to throw up. He rubbed my back, he rubbed my feet. He kept quiet and didn’t try to cheer me up. When I could finally keep liquids down, he went out and bought a bag of oranges and hand-squeezed glass after glass, keeping me hydrated. They tasted delicious, cool and sweet and tart, just the perfect thing. “You saved me,” I told him. “You saved my life.”

  There he is. Looking very cold and pink-cheeked, his hair tousled from the wind. A sight for sore eyes. Is he nervous, too? I can’t tell. He’s giving the hostess his name while he looks over her head for me, but he doesn’t have his glasses on, so that’s hopeless. Now he’s shaking his head, no, he’ll keep his overcoat, thanks—I could’ve told her that. This way he’ll save two bucks. It’s not that he’s cheap, exactly, it’s more that he sees no sense in coat checking. And 15 percent, that’s his absolute tip limit. Me, I love to tip. Why not, if you’ve got the money? Even if you don’t, you’ve almost always got more than the person you’re tipping. I like to have long lunches with girlfriends, over the course of which we get to know the waitress so well that by the end she’s practically one of us, and then I like to leave her a tip so big her eyes bulge. “But, Dash,” Andrew says, “that makes no sense.”

  He sees me and smiles carefully. I’m glad to see him, but I don’t want him to know how much, don’t want to send a false message. He hasn’t said it, but I know he thinks I’m going home with him tonight.

  That’s why I’m so tense: I want him to understand how serious I am about this separation, but I dread the moment when he does, when he gets it. That gulp moment. The look on his face. I want to get it over with—I want to put it off indefinitely.

  “Hi.” He leans down to kiss me, and there’s an awkward, fumbly second when neither of us can decide where, cheek or lips, so the kiss ends up half and half. He takes the seat next to me instead of across the table. “Sorry I’m late. I had to drop something at the office, and Richard Weldon caught me just as I was leaving. Have you been here long?”

  “I was on time.” We raise our eyebrows together at the wonder of that. “You look a bit bleary,” I notice. “You’ve been reading journals.” Two-thirds of the grade in one of his classes is these journals the students have to keep for two semesters. They pretend they’re living in 1789 or whatever, and they have to choose characters or personas to portray, like silversmith, slave, politician, tavern wench. He doesn’t set a limit on the length, and some of the kids really get into it, pages and pages of details about their made-up lives.

  “I finished the last batch this afternoon.” He rubs his eyes, which are bloodshot. He needs a shave, too. Did he forget to shave this morning? Impossible. He’s the most fastidious person I know. “That’s what I was taking in to school,” he says, “when Richard caught me. You know how he goes on once he gets started.”

  “Have they picked his rep
lacement yet?”

  Andrew scans the wine list. I already did, so I know what he’ll order: a glass of red, probably the cabernet, not the cheapest and not the most expensive. Moderation in all things, that’s my man.

  “Not as far as I know,” he says without looking up.

  Well, that’s no surprise, that he doesn’t know. Andrew’s not a company man, not a member of any of the factions or sects or splinter groups always scheming and sniping over their petty differences in the history department. He doesn’t even keep up with the gossip. He teaches his students, who adore him and vice versa, and he goes home.

  “Whoever they get,” he says, putting the wine list down, “I hope it’s someone more student oriented than Richard. Although almost anybody would be an improvement in that department.” He’s starting on one of his pet peeves, and I catch myself rereading the menu instead of listening. I used to care about the politics; I knew who was who and what they wanted, who was going to get in their way and why. I took a lot more interest in all of it than Andrew did, in fact, and once I realized that I stopped paying attention. All that knowing wasn’t going to change anything, because Andrew was above the fray. Another way of staying out of the loop.

  We order salads. While we wait, he takes a piece of paper out of his pocket, scans it, puts it back, and asks if I got my flu shot yet. It’s nice to know I’m still on his lists.

  “Speaking of job changes,” I tell him between bites of lettuce, “I hired a new assistant. She’s young, but I think she’ll be good.” I tell him about Greta, the photo shoot with the twins, Joel the boyfriend. “What? What’s that face mean?”

  “No, no.” He waves his hand, erasing the face. “It’s just good to know you’re still saving people.”

  “I’m not saving people.”

  “The lovelorn, the needy, the misunderstood.”

  “Oh—poohy.” I’d like to say worse, but it’s Christmas Eve. Another family myth is that I’m naive about people or something. A few sets of steak knives—for gifts—from a really nice door-to-door salesman, a cleaning lady from Guatemala who didn’t quite work out—that’s it, that’s all they have on me, but now I’ve got this completely undeserved lifetime reputation as a soft touch.