Such Good People

by Martha Whitmore Hickman

  She looked up from her story and he was watching, his blue eyes steady and warm, and she told him how it had been hard to separate from her own mother, but that such closeness had its gifts and she had wanted it all, all of it, the closeness and the freedom, too, for herself and Annie. And maybe they might have had it—who could know?

  “So I’m glad to realize all that,” she said. “Or begin to—I’m sure it goes on and on.”

  She wondered, What must he be thinking? “I’m grateful to you, for staying with me.”

  He looked down at his hands, red marks still on them where she had gripped him so tightly. “Try and get away,” he said, but his eyes were kind.

  She shrugged, laughing. “You let me go on. You didn’t intervene, or pull back, or try to make it anything different. You didn’t leave me—not for a second!” She bathed in that knowledge, as in sunlight. For a moment, all the empty places of her life seemed filled to the brim, secure and bright. “I’ll wear this moment for the rest of my life,” she said.

  “Laura, dear”—he was mystified—“I don’t know what I did.”

  “You didn’t do anything. You just were. ”

  “I’m glad I could help you,” he said, still puzzled. “I’m sure you were a good mother.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and it was for the whole gift of his presence that she thanked him.

  She stood, almost light-headed. Her body felt fluid and spare, like a dancer’s. “Come with me to the beach again?” she said.

  They went outside, walked to the beach in an easy lope. She stooped down and splashed her hands in the water and passed them over her face.

  He looked surprised, startled, almost amused. It had been an impulse—a moment of playfulness. Nothing to explain. She slipped an arm around his waist as they returned to the house. “I must go down to the seas again,” she began, trying to disarm him, reassure him she had not gone completely mad.

  But by the time they reached the house, their arms around each other, legs brushing together as they walked, there was another feeling between them, and in the shadow of the veranda she turned to him, noticed for the first time the way the hair curled forward over his ear and that the roots of his beard had, just below his mouth, started to gray. The look in his eyes was unmistakable—an invitation, a longing—and he put his hands on her shoulders and she leaned into him, her face against his cheek.

  “Well, how was the meeting?” she said.

  “The hell with the meeting,” he said, and wrapped her in his arms.

  Bart dragged himself up the stairs, opened the door to the apartment and went inside. He’d seen the car, so Paula must be home already.

  “Hi,” came her voice from the bedroom. She walked out, buttoning a baggy shirt over her jeans. “I was just changing.” She looked at his face. “It’s Friday! Let’s radiate a little joy. It’s the weekend!”

  “Right.” He slumped down in the chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him over the worn carpet, let his briefcase slide to the floor. “I wasn’t meant to be a teacher. I’m just putting in time there. My energy is shot by ten in the morning.”

  She came and sat on the arm of the chair, slung her legs across his lap, and stroked his cheek. “Junior high is a notoriously hard age to cope with. Are the kids raging out of control?”

  “No.” He snorted. “That’s what’s so crazy. They seem to like me. They pay attention, ask good questions, do the work. ‘Mr. Randall’ this, ‘Mr. Randall’ that. I’m the one who’s the washout.”

  She rested her head against his. “Can I get you a beer? Do you want to go out to dinner? Or rent a video? We could have a nice cozy time at home.”

  “No.” He hitched up a little, so they weren’t at such a crazy angle to the floor, but made no move to embrace her. “Nothing appeals to me—that’s the problem.”

  She continued to stroke his cheek. “You’re depressed. Maybe you could talk to someone…help you sort all this out.”

  “Naah,” he said dismissing it. The thought of unwinding all his stuff with a stranger was the last thing he felt like right now.

  She sat up a little, turned to face him. “We could get married,” she said, faking a coy look, fluttering her eyelashes.

  He uttered a sigh. “I’m not ready for that, either.”

  “We talked about a six-month trial. We’ve already been together more than six months—if you count the month at school.” She looked at the calendar on the wall. “Six months and five days.”

  “And you haven’t told your mother yet.”

  “If we got married, she’d never need to know.”

  “That’s a lousy reason for getting married.” His voice took on an edge.

  “Just kidding,” she said. “How about that we love each other—is that a good reason?”

  He gave her an appreciative squeeze, but his expression didn’t change.

  “It’s about Annie?” she said.

  “Sure. I keep seeing it all in my head—her horse riding off into the trees, the wrangler turning to follow her, calling ‘Hold on.’ And I just sat there.” His voice faltered. “Stupid oaf,” he said.

  “What makes you think you could have made any difference?”

  “Maybe not. But at least I could have tried.”

  “The wrangler was the expert; you weren’t.” She was getting impatient now. They had been through it so many times—always the same questions, the guilt he couldn’t seem to shake. Besides, she was tired and hungry and she feared he was going to be this way all weekend. “I’ll put the water on for pasta,” she said, and got up from his lap. He put his head back and sprawled against the chair, his eyes closed. There was a great big hole in his heart—an Annie-sized hole—and he didn’t know what to do about it.

  He heard, down below, the hum of conversation, the laughter of the baby. The baby was about to have a birthday. He was not quite one year old and had just started to walk.

  The thought of the child cheered him, and he stood up and went to the kitchen. “Sorry to be such a grouch,” he said. “Shall I make some of my razzle-dazzle sauce? Do we have stuff for salad?”

  She looked up from the pot of water. “Well, what cheered you up? Or maybe I shouldn’t ask—just be glad.”

  He came and stood behind her, put his arms around her waist. “I was just thinking of little Jimmy. We’re invited to his birthday party, aren’t we?”

  “Yes—a week from tomorrow. After dinner, we could go buy him a present.” She tilted her head to look up at him.

  “Good. And maybe take in a movie,” he said. “Sometime this weekend, I want to call Dad, see how he’s doing.”

  “We could invite him over.”

  “Good,” he said.

  *

  When they got home from the movie, it was late. The house was quiet. It was probably late to call Trace. They would call him tomorrow. They went to bed and made love and fell asleep, not anticipating that as the night grew colder, thermostats would kick on the heating elements in the house, including a wall heater downstairs near a pile of loose papers in Jimmy’s room.

  “Come in.”

  Philip pushed the door open and walked into his adviser’s office. “Hi, Mr. Krantz.”

  Charles Krantz stood and extended his hand. “Glad you could come by, Phil. Sit down.” He reseated himself in his chair.

  Philip took the chair on the other side of the desk. “I got your note,” he said.

  “Yes, I know conferences don’t come up for another month or so, but I thought maybe you and I should get together sooner. How are things going?” He looked down at a paper on his desk. Philip couldn’t see clearly what it said, but he read, upside down, what looked like “Office of the Academic Dean.”

  “Not real great, I guess.” Philip crossed one leg over the other, felt his ankle jerk against the leg of his chino pants.

  “I know from talking with you in the fall that you’d had a family tragedy over the summer.”

  Phil nodded his he
ad yes.

  “It’s very understandable that your work should slip.” Krantz looked back at the paper. “You had almost a four-oh last year, and it could be hard to keep that up under any circumstances.” He looked back at Philip. “But your work has suffered pretty badly, Phil. Some of your professors are quite concerned. Work incomplete, and not your usual quality when it does come in.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” Philip uncrossed his legs, sat forward. “It’s just hard to make myself believe it’s important. That is, I know in my head it’s important, but that lasts me about twenty minutes. Then I think, What’s the use? and give up.”

  Mr. Krantz nodded. “Is there anything we can do to help you? You have friends?”

  “Yes.” Though that had changed, too, since last year. He’d seen his bio lab partner his first day back in the fall. Bob had called to him across campus, “Hey, Phil,” and come toward him on the run, feigned a punch at his side. “Good to see you. How was your summer? Cut up any cadavers?”

  It used to be an old joke, but not this time. “It was terrible. My sister died.” He didn’t know what kind of response he’d expected from Bob—some sympathy, surely, some understanding.

  Bob had dropped his hand from Phil’s shoulder, backed away, his face a blank. “I’m sorry. Well, see you around,” he’d stammered. And then added, “Gotta run.” He’d turned and loped away. After that, Philip watched whom he told about Annie, and when he did tell, he broke it to them more gradually.

  He realized Mr. Krantz was looking at him, expecting an answer. “I… I don’t think so,” he said finally. “Am I in danger of flunking out?”

  Mr. Krantz frowned. “You may have some incompletes,” he said.

  Philip hesitated. “I’ve thought of taking off a semester, getting a job, something like that.”

  “That’s a possibility, of course,” Krantz said. “But I wouldn’t rush to do that. Give yourself a little more time. See how things go. You might want to talk to someone over at Health Services. And come in and see me anytime.”

  “Thanks, sir.” He left as quickly as he could.

  He unlocked his bike from the bike rack and set off up the hill—no particular destination, just a need to go somewhere, no matter that it was getting dark or that he’d hardly slept for two nights, and only fitfully before that. No matter that he was way behind on his Darwin paper and hadn’t even begun the reading for Sociology of Cities.

  He passed the tree where he used to sit and look out over the valley. A couple of times last year, he’d brought Sarah up here, and they’d studied together, talked, laughed—in that other lifetime before Annie died. He could scarcely remember how it felt in that carefree time when the most serious issue was getting papers in on time or whether or not to smoke a joint with Sarah.

  They had written over the summer. She was working on a ranch in Montana. He wrote her after Annie died. She sent back a damn sympathy card, with only her name.

  She’d tried to cheer him up since they’d returned to campus, tried to distract him, make him think of something else. She probably would have had sex with him if he’d wanted—they’d come close last spring.

  But the relationship had cooled and there wasn’t enough to ignite it again. She tried to be understanding, but her own stuff got in the way. “Death scares me,” she said once. “I try not to think about it.”

  “Well, lots of luck,” he said, and he didn’t call her again. She didn’t call him, either, which told him she was content to drop the whole thing.

  With the spring coming, he was haunted by the thought of Argonne Woods, and how last year he’d thought he was too busy to go. Well, he certainly wasn’t now. Not that he didn’t have work to do, just that he wasn’t doing it.

  He heard the sound of the train. He’d always loved that before—there was a train track not far from their house in Woodbridge. Now it frightened him—how easy it would be to ride down the hill and onto the tracks. In high school, he’d played chicken a couple of times—see who could stay on longest with a train speeding right toward you. Sometimes now when he heard the wail of the train whistle, he thought of riding onto the tracks, and not getting off. He jerked himself to attention. He wouldn’t do that, would he? He’d thought a lot about death since Annie died—what, if anything, was on the other side? He’d even had dreams of seeing her again.

  He shivered. It was cold and he swung around in a loop on the empty street and headed back for the dorm.

  Once in the house, the light inside dimmer now with the approach of early-evening shadows, Laura and Fred shed their wraps, turned to each other again in a recognition that they had a new world to negotiate. He moved toward her again.

  “My God, Laura.” Fred pressed his lips against hers. She opened her mouth to him, slipped her tongue under his, her arms around his neck, felt the presence of his body hard against hers, felt weightless, as though he carried the weight of gravity for them both. His hand was easing her heavy sweater from her shoulder. “We don’t need this,” he said gruffly, and she let her arm drop so that first one sleeve and then the other fell away from her and the heavy cardigan tumbled to the floor.

  “Oh, Fred,” she whispered, raising her arms again to encircle his neck, press her lips to his, her body aflame. But then with a groan, she pulled back and shook her head lightly against his shoulder and said, into the warmth of his flannel shirt, “I can’t.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you can,” he said, and kissed her again.

  Again she returned the kiss, this time her hand playing along his neck, moving up through his hair.

  But she drew back from him, looked up into his face, his eyes bright with the intensity of desire. “I can’t,” she said.

  “Please,” he whispered.

  Again she shook her head, then reached around to disengage his arms from her body, dropped down into the nearest chair, and covered her face with her hands. “It’s too much,” she said through her fingers. “Too much has happened. I can’t take it all in.

  She heard, rather than saw, him sit in the chair opposite her, and then she opened her eyes and saw him gazing at her with a look of such unguarded hunger and tenderness that she closed her eyes again against the urge to go to him, yield up the day to whatever might happen. And why not? She had trusted him with her most intimate story and he had been worthy of that trust, had heard her out, honoring whatever she had to say with absolute attention. He had helped her move into a present that felt alive and hopeful, so that she felt renewed, her body light with new life, now so drawn to the man who sat before her that to move toward him in an ardor of lovemaking seemed the most natural thing in the world and to do anything other than that would deny the power and beauty of this whole afternoon.

  As though reading her mind, he said, “Life has few enough such moments, Laura.”

  Again she felt her body stir, the blood rise. It would be an adventure, to go to him. Would Annie approve? Her adventurous daughter, hardly more than a child, telling her, “I feel very good about myself as a woman.”

  But there was another face she saw—dark eyes, gray hair falling over his forehead, the eyes luminous above her, the body moving against her own. So many years of shared history. Moments strung along the turning chain of years like strands of DNA moving in elliptical circles, the dance of life.

  “Thank you, Fred. I’d like to, but I can’t.”

  “No one need know,” he said, his eyes pleading.

  She knew she could trust him—his silence, his genuine care for her. For a minute, she closed her eyes, watching the play unfold. “I would know,” she said.

  He shrugged, turned away, then stood and walked over to the fireplace, stared into its black cavern.

  She went to stand beside him, put her hand lightly on his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d like to go to bed with you, but I couldn’t bear the aftermath—the guilt, the secrecy, the pain to Trace if he knew.”

  “Would you have to tell him?”

 
; “It would cost me too much keeping still. I’ve always told him everything.”

  “Lucky bastard,” he said.

  She looked at him, startled.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m jealous of him, and I’ve never even met the guy.” He was staring at the curios and photos on the mantel. He seemed to hesitate, then reached to take a small framed picture from a shelf and handed it to her. “My daughter,” he said. The picture was of a girl of nine or ten, braids lying against her shoulders, a sailboat barrette at the end of each one. She was wearing a white blouse and dark jumper with a school emblem on the pocket.

  She drew in her breath. “Oh, Fred. When was this picture taken? How old is she now?”

  “Fifteen. She was four when we were divorced. For a while, I would go and get her, take her places. Then Lucy remarried and they moved away. I send her presents at birthdays and Christmas. But I haven’t seen her for a long time.”

  “I remember she’s in California. You could be in touch with her, if you wanted. You fly out there?”

  “Yes, I could find her. But I’m afraid it’s too late. I’m afraid she won’t have anything to do with me. She’ll blame me for not being a better father all these years.”

  “For you, there is still time,” she said softly, not knowing whether he heard.

  They gathered up their things and got ready to leave. Laura stopped in the middle of the room, engulfed by a surge of tenderness for this now-hallowed spot. “In a way, I’d like to stay forever.”

  Fred stood at her shoulder, his down jacket slung over his arm. “You could always change your mind and stay. Just overnight,” he teased. “We could call your mother, tell her the weather was bad down here.” He started to open the door. “Oof,” he said. “As a matter of fact, look at this.”

  She stepped to join him. Off to the west, the sky had darkened to an ominous steel gray. A driving wind entered the room and flung the curtains against the wall.

  Fred closed the door. “Better check.” He moved to a small black box on a shelf near the refrigerator. “My weather channel,” he said.