by Cathy Holton
Darlene stopped, letting her hand drop. “I wouldn’t mention to Will that you saw Jake if I was you.”
“Why?”
“They don’t speak. They’re estranged.”
“But why?”
Darlene let her face go blank. “Something about a girl,” she said.
“A girl?” Ava said stupidly.
Darlene clamped her hand over her mouth, her eyes blue and sharp as ice picks.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I’ve said too much.”
Burn Barrel
Darlene Haney left the clueless Yankee girl Will Fraser was dating, told her boss she had to make a bank run, then drove over to the wrong side of town to visit her mother and brother. She was in a foul mood; being around Ava had done that. Darlene couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was about Ava that was so attractive. She was pretty enough in that careless, affected way some smart girls adopted, as if the way they looked was secondary to what went on inside their heads. But she certainly wasn’t pretty in the conventional sense of the word, not in the sense that Darlene, raised on beauty pageants and reruns of Charlie’s Angels, had been taught to appreciate. Her hair was too short, she wore very little makeup, she obviously didn’t care a thing about fashion, and yet there was something compelling about her.
Darlene guessed she was different enough from the Southern girls that Will Fraser had been raised with to seem like a novelty, although Darlene was just as certain that Will would eventually tire of all that naturalness and come looking for a woman who kept breath mints on the bedside table, who went to bed wearing full makeup, and never left the house without fixing her hair and wearing a pair of six-inch heels. It was only a matter of time before you came back to what you were raised with.
This thought took root in her mind, but instead of cheering her only served to deepen her depression as she pulled up in front of her mother’s peeling little shotgun house. A pair of kitchen chairs sat out on the sagging porch, and the overgrown yard was decorated with a couple of painted plywood cutouts, one showing a spotted hound dog lifting his leg on a daisy, and the other a little girl in a petticoat and a short dress leaning over to water the grass in a disturbingly provocative way. A rusty wind chime stirred listlessly in the slight breeze. This part of town sat down in a depression and was always foul smelling and airless, choked from the south by a dense swamp and from the north by the railroad stockyards. Darlene had spent her childhood and adolescence trying to figure out how to get as far away from here as possible.
And now here she was back again, although she wasn’t living with her mother; thank God, she hadn’t sunk that low. Yet.
Darlene’s seventy-seven-year-old mother, Snowda, was a chain-smoking diabetic who had already lost one leg and a lung to her vices, and spent most days hooked up to an oxygen machine. She kept her thermostat set on eighty-five, even during the hottest days. Darlene’s sixty-year-old brother, Richard, lived with Snowda. Richard had a heart condition and failing kidneys that left him puffed up like a blowfish. He was deaf in one ear but refused to wear a hearing aid, which may have been a blessing in disguise, as his ex-wife, Deb, had been a loudmouthed shrew. Deb had recently absconded with the proceeds from the sale of their trailer and most of Richard’s railroad pension, leaving Richard with nothing more than a molting, mean-tempered parrot named Fred who spent his days screeching, “Ri-chard! Ri-chard!” and “You want a piece of me?” in exact mimicry of Deb’s shrewish voice.
When Darlene opened the front door they were just sitting down to what Snowda liked to call “her programs.” The cable was out, and they were reduced to watching Spanish television soap operas even though neither one of them spoke the language. Through the dining room window of the tiny house Darlene could see her three sons in the backyard flicking lit matches into a burn barrel.
Neither Snowda nor Richard seemed to have noticed her arrival, their eyes glued to the flickering television set. “Guess what,” Darlene said to her mother. She sat down gingerly on the sofa, smoothing her skirt. “Guess who sold more cotillion gowns this month than any other salesgirl at the Debs and Brides Shoppe!”
At the other end of the sofa, Richard scratched listlessly at his crotch and said, “Mama, turn it up some. I can’t hear.”
“Don’t make no difference if I turn it up or not,” Snowda said. “You can’t understand none of that gobbledygook they’re saying.”
“Me! That’s who!” Darlene said brightly.
Snowda slid her eyes from the screen to Darlene, then back again. “What?” she said. “Were some of the regular salesgals out sick?”
The house was as sweltering as a jungle. Waves of heat rose off the TV and hung in the air like thunderclouds. In the background the parrot screeched, “Ri-chard! Ri-chard! Ri-chard!” in a crazed, endless loop.
“No, they were not out sick,” Darlene snapped, but she knew she was fighting a losing battle. She’d gone her whole life without her mother’s approval, and she wasn’t about to get it now. Snowda had been nearly fifty when she had Darlene, a surprise up until the very moment the birth pangs began, and as a child Darlene used to imagine that she’d been kidnapped from a large white-columned house on a hill and plopped down in the middle of these poverty-stricken circus freaks.
“Mama, you got any Pepsi?” Richard said.
Snowda pointed behind her with a large flat thumb. “Them boys of yours need a good whipping,” she said to Darlene. “They cut the blooms off all my Crimson Glory roses.”
Darlene stared through the window at her sons, who had managed to ignite the burn barrel and were dancing around it now like a tribe of savages. She left the boys with her mother because she couldn’t afford decent child care with the wages she made at the Debs and Brides Shoppe. She sighed. “I’ll buy you some new roses, Mama.”
“Them boys need a daddy.”
“I’m working on it,” Darlene said grimly, and, rising, she went into the kitchen to hunt for the fire extinguisher.
By the end of her third week in Woodburn, Ava was growing accustomed to the routines of the house. The sameness of their days, broken only by the one daily planned activity, the punctuality of meals, the afternoon nap, light gardening or reading followed at five by Toddy Time, all had a soothing effect on her. She found herself being lulled into a kind of stupor by the somnolent quality of the place: the steady ticking of the mantel clock, the low hum of the air-conditioning, the ceaseless whirring of the cicadas in the trees, so loud you could hear them through the window glass.
Some days she would wander out on the verandah after lunch while the others slept, stretching out on the old porch swing or along one of the settees with a book on her lap, a frosty glass of iced tea resting on the table beside her. They made it by the pitcher down here and loaded it with sugar and fresh mint. Sweet tea, they called it, and Ava had never tasted anything so good. She would sip her tea and gaze out at the garden and the lawn, hazy beneath the midday sun. Everything in the landscape seemed to move in slow motion, drowsy with the heat. She would look up into the tall trees shading the house and think, This is heaven.
Lost in her reveries, it was not hard to imagine how it must have been when the house was first built, men on horseback passing out front, the muffled clop of hooves on the dusty road, the jangle of mule-drawn wagons on their way to town. In the old days this would have been fields and forest, all except for Woodburn Hall and a few other summer “cottages” scattered along the road. Half closing her eyes and squinting up into the tops of the tall trees, Ava could imagine herself in another time and place, with no sound but the clatter of cicadas, bird-song from the dense thickets, the occasional creak of wooden wheels or the rattling of bridle bits.
She had always been an imaginative person. Reared on Clotilde’s fantastic stories, Ava had turned naturally to literature. Whole worlds opened to her between the covers of a book. Whatever her other failings as a parent, Clotilde had always made sure Ava had a library card, and she had gone once a week to pro
wl the shelves of the public library in whatever city they found themselves marooned in. Ava never got over the sense of sanctuary she felt in a library, the fragrance of cloth and old paper, the reverence she felt when holding some dusty book in her hands. It was the same feeling she got now, shut up in the library of Woodburn Hall. The house, the whole town, was like living inside an old novel.
Yet despite the quiet peacefulness of the place, she had not written one word since she arrived. She had not entered one sentence onto the glowing computer screen.
Since college, she had written only in the evenings, being forced to support herself by a series of dismal day jobs. None of the produced work had been promising; few of the short stories were ever finished, and those that were were never accepted by the literary magazines she sent them to. But she had persisted with a stubborn tenacity, an overwhelming belief that she was meant to be a writer and that one day her luck would change. The sale of her mother’s old Subaru, as well as the extra income from her sublet apartment, had left her with enough to get by on for a few months this summer, and yet now that she had time and quiet and was free of the need to make a daily wage, she found herself unable to sit down at her computer and plink out more than a few halfhearted attempts at an outline.
Write what you know or what you’d like to know, one of her professors in college had told her. What she had known, what she had experienced, was a nomadic childhood with a mysterious mother who collected odd characters the way some women collect spoons. And yet when it came time to write about such promising material, she felt stymied, blocked, unable for some reason to immerse herself in the story.
As if guessing that she was having trouble starting, Will asked her one day, “Do you want me to brainstorm with you?”
“No, that’s all right. Not now anyway.” It irritated her that he always seemed eager to fix her problems, as if he had little confidence that she could do it herself. This was on a Friday afternoon and she was putting on some makeup for Toddy Time, while he sat and watched.
“Really,” he said. “I don’t mind.”
“No. Thanks.”
She caught his expression in the looking glass. He looked amused and dubious, and it occurred to Ava that he was only being polite, that he really didn’t care if she ever wrote a novel or not. She had listened to his CD and had been surprised at the quality and sophistication of his music, something of a cross between Radiohead and Pete Yorn. But when she asked him why he didn’t try to land a recording contract, he said coolly, “It’s just a hobby. Just something I do for myself. Trying to make a living out of it would only spoil it.”
“Who’s coming today for cocktails?” she asked.
He told her. She fluffed her hair with her fingers, glad now that the short spikes had lengthened and were beginning to lie flat against her scalp. He stared at her in the glass, smiling. She hadn’t told him about seeing Jake Woodburn on the street, and yet now it seemed as if she should.
“You look nice,” he said.
“Do I?” The time for confession was past. She avoided his gaze, turning swiftly from the mirror.
Cocktail hour, she had learned in the weeks that she had been here, was as ritualistic as a Japanese tea ceremony; it began at five o’clock and ended promptly at six. Maitland was in charge of the silver cocktail shaker, and took his duties seriously. Everyone dressed for Toddy Time; Maitland always wore a prep school tie and a blazer over a pair of dress slacks and a shirt, while Fanny and Josephine invariably changed into light summer dresses. Will was partial to collared shirts and khaki shorts. Even Ava would change her shorts or jeans for a skirt. There was always a silver tray of sliced cheese and crackers and sometimes an assortment of olives sitting on the coffee table. It was impossible to tell how much anyone actually drank, as Maitland continued throughout the hour to discreetly refill glasses.
“You asked me that first day out at Longford about my broken engagement,” Will said suddenly, without warning, and she was so surprised she could think of nothing to say. He went on slowly, carefully choosing his words. “I was engaged,” he said. “To a girl I met in boarding school. Her name was Hadley.”
“Hadley? How very aristocratic.” She kept her tone light, teasing. She waited to see if she might feel even a twinge of jealousy but she felt nothing.
“We got engaged our second year of college, which I realize now was entirely too young. She was up at Sewanee, and we had been dating for nearly four years and, I don’t know, it just seemed like the right thing to do. At the time.”
“Look, Will, you don’t have to …”
“It seemed like the right thing at the time,” he said. “But it wasn’t and I realize that now. I just didn’t want you to think I was still grieving over that relationship.”
“No, of course not,” she said.
He seemed so sincere, so mannerly, and she felt bad that she had ever teased him about his engagement, and that he seemed so determined to explain something she really cared nothing about.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Jake Woodburn. She knew that it was wrong, that it would only wind up complicating her life when she was intent on simplifying it. The aunts had never mentioned him, and Ava felt certain there was a reason for that. And Will had made it clear that evening outside the movie theater that he disliked Jake. Ava didn’t want any trouble. She wanted a quiet summer where she could work undisturbed, and she was grateful to the Woodburn sisters, and to Will, for giving her this opportunity. She made up her mind to stop thinking about Jake Woodburn and start thinking about the novel she had so little time left to write.
But, as often happens when a conscious decision is made to avoid someone, she seemed to run into Jake everywhere.
The first time she was coming out of the small bookstore on the square and he was passing on the sidewalk. He stuck out his hand and said, “Hello, Ava. I’m Jake Woodburn.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Nice to meet you,” she said, taking his hand, briefly, and then hurrying away.
The second time was coming out of the Piggly Wiggly. He drove by in his truck and waved, but Ava turned her head and pretended she hadn’t seen him.
The third time was at the hardware store.
She had spent the morning listlessly prowling her bedroom. Determined to work on her outline, she had risen earlier than usual, and after a breakfast of cereal and fruit, had brought her coffee back to her room. She opened the shutters and made the bed, and then she sat down at the computer, facing the long windows. Sunlight flooded the room, lying in bands across the Oriental carpet and the dark polished floor. She ran her fingers over her favorite books, all neatly arranged on the wide desk between two bookends: her well-worn thesaurus, her copies of Beloved, Jane Eyre, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The Turn of the Screw.
Outside in the garden, Fanny was feeding the cats. They were feral, and no one could get near them but her. She brought them scraps of food and milk, which she placed in saucers around the garden, and they followed at her feet mewing and rubbing themselves against her legs for all the world like a troop of tame house cats. But if anyone else entered the garden, they would take off like so many streaks of color, and if anyone else brought scraps, they would wait until the stranger reentered the house before they crept forth warily to eat.
Ava yawned and looked at the clock, wondering what Josephine might be making for lunch. She had grown accustomed to regular meals, and now she found herself looking forward to breakfast, lunch, and supper. It gave a pleasant order to the day and filled the house with delicious smells. Freed from her usual habit of eating restaurant food and takeout, she had begun to feel healthier than she had in years. She had even managed to lose a little weight. Now, if only she could sleep at night, her transformation to good health would be complete.
She yawned again and stared, bleary-eyed, at the garden. Fanny had disappeared around the corner of the house along with her coterie of cats. Ava shifted her eyes to her scrolling screen saver. She picked up her mouse
but nothing happened and, flipping it over, she saw that the battery was dead.
She rose immediately and went into the kitchen.
“Where’s the best place to buy batteries?” she asked Josephine, who was standing at the counter slicing cucumbers.
“The hardware store has them. Or Walmart. The Piggly Wiggly.” Josephine pointed with her knife. “There may be some in that drawer over there.”
“That’s okay,” Ava said. “I’ll go to town. I need a break anyway.”
She parked outside the hardware store and went in. There were only a few people in the store, mostly contractors who stood around making small talk with the clerks, and now that she was here Ava felt foolish buying a package of batteries. She went over and inspected a collection of garden tools.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” a short, red-faced man asked her, and she said quickly, “No thanks, I’m just looking.”
A knot of men lounging at the cash register watched her. She would have to buy something else now, something besides the batteries. She stopped at the battery display and then took a slip of paper out of her purse, pretending to check a list, and walked slowly along the paint aisle.
It was silly but now that she’d begun this charade, she’d have to finish it. Men in groups always made her nervous. Unlike women, they made no attempt to hide their scrutiny, speaking in loud, clear voices that were easily overheard. One of them said, “Like what you see, Bill?” and the others snickered.
She picked up a couple of paintbrushes, determined to stop this foolishness and get back to work, and as she wheeled around, she ran headlong into Jake Woodburn. He had come up behind her while she stood examining the brushes. He put his arms out to steady her.
“I thought that was you,” he said.
“Excuse me,” she said, clutching the brushes to her chest.
He dropped his arms. He was tall like Will, but broader through the shoulders, and his hair was longer, falling just below his ears. His eyes, slightly almond shaped and dark, were set above sharply jutting cheekbones. He wore a kind, bemused expression. “Do you need some help?”
