by Brady Udall
“What a bunch of rank amateurs,” June said.
Apparently bored with spraying water on the burning barn, the firefighters began to congregate at the front of it, bunching in together while one of them stood off to the side and pointed.
“The heck are they doing?” June said. “Are they…?”
“Yes, they are, they’re having their picture taken.”
Sure enough, a chorus of Cheese! lifted across the field and a flash-bulb went off, and then one more.
“You gotta be kidding me,” June said. “Seriously. I mean. What if that place was somebody’s house?”
“Then that somebody would be looking for a new place to live,” Trish said.
“I’m just glad it wasn’t your house,” June said.
“With this house,” Trish said, tipping her head toward the dumpy old thing, “a raging inferno and a crew of inept firemen might be the best thing that could ever happen to it.”
In fact, Trish’s house, and its dubious state of repair, was what had brought June by several more times after he’d first come over with Rusty to unclog the toilet. He’d rigged up a new motor for the ventilation fan in the bathroom and repaired every leaking faucet in the place, including the outdoor spigots. He was quiet, intense, and almost superhumanly competent when it came to fixing things and improvising mechanical solutions. At first she had him pegged as one of those socially hamstrung introverts with self-administered haircuts who could not connect with the living and breathing world except through their relationship with inanimate objects. But he’d turned out to be sweet, a little goofy, the owner of a sense of humor that showed itself at the most unexpected moments.
No, she had not expected to like him so much. She liked the way he watched her when she spoke, with the humble intensity of a foreign student in a remedial English class, feverishly jotting mental notes, striving, as if his life depended on it, to absorb every rule and nuanced particular of his subject. He was twenty-seven—their birthdays only two weeks apart—but his angular head and sharp Adam’s apple seemed to suggest an older person, one compacted and honed by the trouble of years.
She liked the way he smelled, like old-fashioned talcum powder. She liked how his voice broke when he got excited. She liked, probably more than any one thing, that he so obviously liked her.
And he was not the only one paying her extra attention of late; Rusty had been stopping by the duplex every other day even though he’d been grounded for going AWOL from Old House last week. Beverly had essentially placed the boy under house arrest: he had fifteen minutes to make it to and from school and was not otherwise allowed outside except to do his chores. And yet there he was this past Monday, just before noon, sweating like a coal miner and giving her front door a hearty knock.
“I’m just stopping by to say hi,” he said. It was his lunch hour at school, and he’d ridden his bike the entire three miles, most of the way along the graveled margins of Highway 86, apparently just to say hi. Instead of the standard hand-me-downs, he was wearing a red-and-green checkerboard sweater—which was soaked with sweat down the sides and back—and what appeared to be his Sunday shoes, freshly polished. She didn’t want to imagine the teasing he had endured for showing up at school in such a getup.
“Do they let you leave the grounds for lunch?” she asked.
“Nah, not really, but nobody cares as long as I get back to class on time.” He shrugged, made a swipe with his sleeve at his dripping forehead. “I just came by to say hi.” She invited him in and they shared a quick lunch of cheese toast and leftover pasta salad. He spoke very little but regarded her with a steady, forthright stare. He asked her if she planned on attending his special birthday at Skate Palace next Friday and she told him she wouldn’t miss it for the world.
She shuttled him and his bike back to school, breaking the speed limit the whole way to get him there on time, and let him off at the corner so as not to be seen by the pertinent authorities. Before she drove away he looked up and down the sidewalk, then stuck his head in the passenger window. He said, with utter earnestness, “This should be our little secret, don’t you think?”
They shared a look, she and this boy, and she had to bite her lip to keep from erupting into a giddy, girlish laugh.
Once she was back on the highway, she let the laugh go into the confined space of her car and was a little surprised at how loud and jubilant it was. She knew the whole thing was absurd, of course she did, but she couldn’t deny how such a harmless little caper gave life to an otherwise lifeless day.
And then two afternoons ago she had nearly finished her twice-a-week walk with Faye—except for trips to the cemetery, the girl had to be forced into the out-of-doors—when Rusty appeared at the end of the block on his bicycle. Without ever really thinking about it she had always considered bicycle riding to be an innately frolic-some activity, one that couldn’t be undertaken without at least the appearance of good cheer, but Rusty, head hung low, one arm loosely maneuvering the handlebars while the other hung limp at his side, was doing his best to disprove this theory. He was despondent; his posture said so. His hair was an unholy mess, his shoes were missing and his dirty tube socks flapped freely.
Faye put up a hand to shield her eyes against the lowering sun. “Here he is again.” At first he refused to speak. When she asked him what was wrong, what had happened to his shoes, he shrugged and shook his head with the mild desperation of someone who had good reason to believe if he opened his mouth the only thing likely to come out was a whimper or a sob—a feeling she knew all too well.
She led him into the house and seated him at the table. Faye sighed and retired to her prayer cave. It was clear he had already done his share of crying; there were the telltale streaks on his smudged cheeks and the remnants of tears sparkling in his eyelashes. When she asked him if Aunt Beverly knew where he was, he found the wherewithal to speak: “That witchy woman is not my mother.”
For some reason this brought a loud, derisive snort from Faye down the hall. “Faye,” Trish said.
“All right,” Faye called.
“Rusty, honey, I don’t want you getting into any more trouble than you already have. If you want, I’ll drive you home right now and talk to Aunt Beverly. We’ll get this worked out.”
“Oh no we won’t,” Rusty said. “I’m not afraid of Aunt Beverly. Everyone acts like she’s, you know, Genghis Kong or somebody.” He snorted and shook his head. “She’s just a bully, that’s all, that’s all she is. I don’t need any help with her.”
He set his jaw and stuck out his lower lip, attempting a defiant look, but he couldn’t control his sniffing and hiccuping, which undermined the overall effect. Even so, Trish had to admire the boy: no one had ever challenged Beverly this directly, this openly; not Nola, who had been fighting a war of attrition with Beverly for years; not Golden, who received his orders with a Thank you, ma’am, and a curtsy; not Uncle Chick, whose decisions and exhortations were widely accepted as the direct and final word of the Lord Almighty—except when they involved Beverly, in which case they were taken as polite recommendations. And certainly not Trish, who was going on twenty-eight and had yet to learn the elementary skill of standing up for herself.
Rusty took a big, shuddering breath and asked to use the bathroom. When he emerged a couple of minutes later he was a new person, his face freshly washed and his hair wetted down and combed straight back in the style of a fifties Hollywood gangster. He had turned both his T-shirt and socks inside out to produce the illusion of cleanliness.
“I was wondering if we could have a word in, you know, private,” he said.
They stepped into the kitchen and he reached around behind his back with both hands and for a moment it appeared he might be trying to pull down his pants. He grimaced, and after some involved tugging and pulling he eventually produced a ratty paperback, which he had apparently been carrying around somewhere inside his underwear. He held it out to her.
“It’s a present,” he said, bl
ushing hard. “To you from me.”
There was a couple seconds’ hesitation before she took it and carefully turned it over in her hands as if checking it for booby traps; like a sweet bun just out of the oven, it was warm and a little sticky. To Love a Scoundrel. By the frayed, dog-eared look of it, it had been consulted often and at length.
She stared at it for a moment, attempting to arrange the appropriate expression on her face, and then she knew: he’d taken the book from his mother. It was a badly kept secret that Rose had an addiction to romance novels. How many times had she come upon her sister-wife hiding in the laundry room or the upstairs kitchen at Big House, her face pressed so deeply into a book it looked like she was trying to taste the thing? Trish had never called her on it, never asked what she was doing; she had a pretty good idea why Rose liked such books, aside from their questionable entertainment value. Rose read them because she wanted to know how the other half lived. The half who insinuated themselves into palace politics of the opulent high courts of Prussian royalty and danced away the blossom-scented nights at Civil War–era cotillions and patrolled the woodlands of Normandy in the company of brigands and knaves. The half who, instead of settling for a life of subservience and boredom and disappointment, were not afraid to reach for the forbidden fruits of adventure and passion. The half who, on occasion, were known to have sex.
Trish took a good look at the cover, which featured a busty bimbo being wrestled into submission by a shirtless ne’er-do-well. She smiled. “Well, I suppose a sincere thank-you is in order.”
Rusty made a grandly dismissive wave. “And you don’t have to get me a present or anything, even though my special birthday is coming up. I just wanted to get you something. Because I like to get people things, that’s all.”
“You didn’t have to, but thank you anyway.”
“I think you’ll enjoy it. After the dictionary and the Bible, it’s probably my favorite book.”
The crunch of tires on gravel outside brought them to the front window, where they could see June pulling up in his old pickup.
Rusty said, “What’s he doing here?”
“Got me,” Trish said, sliding To Love a Scoundrel behind one of the couch cushions. “He’s been so nice, though, fixing up whatever needs fixing.”
“He was just supposed to fix the toilet and that’s all.”
Trish held open the door for June, who came in cradling some kind of mechanical contraption with wires hanging off it.
“Hey, everybody,” he said. “Oh, hey there, Lance.”
“It’s Rusty,” Rusty said, an edge to his voice. “I already told you.”
“Rusty? Right, yeah, sorry.” He turned to Trish and grinned. He held up the contraption. “A little present for you.”
June’s presence, and that shy, aching smile of his, had made blood rush to her face and to hide this fact she covered her cheeks with her hands in a show of mock, blinking gratitude, saying, “You shouldn’t have, June! Really now!” Then she noticed Rusty, who had fixed June with a murderous glare.
“You were only supposed to fix the toilet.” He made an indignant snort. “You weren’t supposed to keep coming back.”
June turned to him, surprised. “I’m just, uh, helping fix a few things around here. Yeah, this is a fan motor for the swamp cooler.”
“As if,” Rusty said darkly.
“What? I came across it today at the salvage yard.”
“Oh come on,” Rusty said.
“What?” said June. He looked at Trish for help. “What?”
Watching these two, Trish was taken back to her high school days, when young suitors had shadowed her in the halls, asked her on dates, plied her with gifts, and competed awkwardly for her affections. She had forgotten just how good those days were.
“Rusty, honey, please,” she said. “He came to fix the swamp cooler, before it gets too hot around here. He’s trying to do us a kindness.”
She tried to put a hand on his shoulder but he pulled away and made for the front door. His voice breaking, he shouted, “And what about Big House? Huh? Everything there needs fixing, and who’s going to do that? Huh, June? Doesn’t anybody care about that?”
He pushed open the screen door, letting it slap shut behind him, and mounted his bike. “I hope you’re all happy!” he cried as he pedaled into the scarlet remnants of a sunset, socks flapping. “I hope everybody’s happy!”
A WOMAN WITH NOTHING TO LOSE
The old winery had disappeared; now there was nothing but a single bowl of flame feeding on what seemed to be the faint memory of a building, a ghost-image traced in glowing, white-hot lines. The low, flat-bottomed storm clouds had passed and now hovered on the eastern horizon, as if pausing to watch the spectacle, roiling and grumbling and throwing down the occasional stick of lighting.
Because the power had not yet been restored and it was too dark to continue on with her afternoon séance and scripture-reading session, Faye had come out to watch the fire and feed the turkeys a bag of Fritos.
Moving with the caution of a man approaching a poisonous snake, June took a couple of sideways steps and squatted down next to the girl, to meet her at eye-level.
“Stay back,” she said, without looking his way.
Slowly, he retreated a few feet. “How’s this?”
“That’s okay.”
“So,” he said, “you like turkeys, then?”
“No,” she said.
“I don’t either,” June agreed.
“You’re just saying that.”
June gave Trish a quick, uncertain glance. “No, I’m—”
“Yes, you are,” said Faye. “All grown-ups lie to children, you included.”
Trish knew that June had absolutely no chance of getting into Faye’s good graces—nobody did, nobody ever had—but it was sure nice, she thought, to watch someone giving it a try.
It didn’t take long for everybody to become bored with the fire, including the turkeys, who were more interested in Fritos, and the volunteer firemen, who now appeared to be sitting on top of their water truck playing cards.
Trish turned toward the house, and as if a spell had been broken, the turkeys began to disperse. June looked up at the purple sky as if noting the weather. He nodded. “I should probably be getting going…”
“You’re welcome to stay,” Trish said. “At least let me get you something to drink. I haven’t offered you anything.”
“If you want I could go ahead and install the fan motor I brought by the other day.” He kicked at the dirt beneath his boots, gave the fire one last look. “I’ve got a couple hours free.”
“Nonsense,” Trish said, guiding him by the arm toward the house. “It’ll be dark soon and the power’s still out. And I can’t let you go tromping around on top of the house in this weather.”
June looked down at his boots as if consulting them. “All right. Maybe I’ll stay a minute or two.”
He stayed most of the evening. The electricity still off, they roasted hot dogs over the stove’s gas burner and popped popcorn in an industrial-sized pot. At some point there was a knock at the front door, which Trish opened to reveal a nervously grinning Maureen Sinkfoyle. Trish took up a territorial stance in the doorway and had to fight off the urge to slam the door in the poor woman’s face.
“Hello, there!” cried Maureen, who wore a wrinkled windbreaker and was cradling something in her arms. Her hair, normally poufed to the limit, had collapsed in the bad weather, which gave her the sad, flopping aspect of a deflated hot-air balloon.
“What can I do for you, Maureen?”
“Oh! Well, I was just stopping by to see if you and your girl were doing all right. I brought some candles”—she showed Trish the bunch of emergency candles she was clutching against her chest—“just in case you needed some, looks like the power might be off through the night, I already dropped off some at Rose and Nola’s, my husband—ex-husband, I mean! I keep forgetting that!—he used to be big into emergency prepare
dness, I mean before he abandoned me and the boys, which was an emergency none of us were prepared for! Ha! So we had a whole box of these things lying around and I thought—”
To put a stop to this speech Trish stepped out from behind the screen door, accepted the candles, and quickly retreated to her original position. Maureen was a pitiful figure, abandoned and desperate, pathetic in her ill-fitting clothes and dismantled hairdo, who reminded Trish, in altogether too many ways, of herself. So why couldn’t she work up any empathy for this person? Why did she view her as nothing but a threat to the contentment and security she didn’t really possess? Why did she want to wrench the screen door off its hinges and scratch the poor woman’s eyes out?
“I’ll help you light them…if you want,” Maureen said haltingly, no doubt unsettled by the look on Trish’s face. “I’m not doing anything else right now.”
Trish took a quick glance into the family room, where June’s work boots were visible from the entryway.
Maureen said, “Is somebody here?”
“What? No.” Trish crowded the door and lowered her voice. “No, no. It’s just me. Me and Faye.”
“Would you have a minute or two to chat, then? All this time, and we’ve never really had the chance to talk—”
“I’m so sorry,” Trish said. As she spoke, she gradually nudged the door with her foot, as if it were closing on its own accord and there was precious little she could do about it. “I’ve got things on the stove and Faye, she isn’t feeling very well, and thanks so much for these candles, Maureen, it was really kind of you…” Then the latch clicked shut, and Trish waited, holding her breath, until Maureen stepped off the porch and could be seen crossing the lawn toward her car.
Sighing, her arms full of candles, Trish stepped back into the family room. June was on the couch, studying To Love a Scoundrel, which, in her hurry to get out of the house earlier this afternoon, she had left on the coffee table, right out in the open. It was past dusk and the room was filled with an eerie dimness tainted with the smoky glow of the still-smoldering fire, and in the semidarkness June was holding the book right up next to his face, reading the back cover.
