“Oh?” she said with an ironic laugh. “I thought that was exactly what you did.” She pushed him away. “It may come as a devastating surprise to you, Lamar, but I don’t want you to come back. I don’t need you. Eddie is quite enough.”
A dark flush rose into Lamar’s face. “Well, I hope you’ll be very happy,” he said.
“I already am.” Though she knew that in the pain-inflicting game she hadn’t come anywhere near even with him and never would, she felt better than she had in a long time.
***
Lamar’s car had hardly reached the crest of the hill when she heard Eddie clomping down the ladder. She was pleased he had finished cleaning out the gutters so quickly, and since there was still enough light he could sweep out the mice nests in the garage.
Eddie came into the kitchen. “He sure took his sweet time leaving,” he said in a voice full of disgust. He took a beer from the refrigerator and rolled the cold bottle over his forehead before popping off the cap. “I sure don’t figure a sexy babe like you with a wimpy guy like that.”
His tone, his words—the crudeness, the impudence—shocked her, and it took her a moment to find her voice. “I’ll get your money.”
As she walked past him toward the living room, he set his beer on the counter. “Forget that,” he said, grinning. “We got more important things to be doing.” He reached out and put his hand on her arm.
“Get your hands off me.” She whipped away from him. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
His grin turned quizzical. “What’s going on?’
“What indeed,” she said. “I’ll get your money and then I want you out of here.”
The grin washed out of his face. “I don’t get it.”
“Surely you can understand plain English, can’t you? I’ll get your money and then I want you to leave.”
She made a move toward the door, but he stuck out his leg to block her. “Hey,” he said, his voice plaintive, “you came on to me, you made a pass at me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He couldn’t be drunk on a beer or two. Was he crazy? “How could you possibly think such a thing?”
“You been after me all day,” he said. “I seen you watching me out the window and then rubbing my tattoo every chance you got.”
“Rubbing your tattoo? I wouldn’t touch that ugly thing with a ten-foot pole.”
“You saying you didn’t?” He reached his hand across his chest and patted the tattoo as though pointing it out to her. “Come on, you did so.”
She stared at him, at the tattoo spreading across his shoulder, the acid yellow, the dull, sickly blues and reds. Touch that? She let out a little scornful laugh. But then she saw herself out in the field, smiling up into his face, and yes, touching the beer can to the tattoo, touching him. And Lamar had seen her and she had had her little victory. “Well, okay, maybe, once, maybe,” she said in a softer voice. “But I’m afraid you misinterpreted.”
Eddie looked puzzled, confused. “What do you mean, misinterpreted? Misinterpreted what?”
“What I was doing. It really had nothing to do with you.”
“Nothing to do with me? That don’t make sense. Who did it have to do with?”
“Lamar,” she said. “It was just a game I was playing with Lamar.”
“A game?” Eddie’s eyes flashed and his lips rolled back tight against his teeth. “I’m a football for the two of you to kick around?” He hammered his chest with his fingertips. “I’m a fucking football?”
“Of course not.” She patted the air to calm him. “No one was kicking you around. You simply misunderstood.”
After a pause he said, “Yeah, I misunderstood all right. I should of figured you wouldn’t be coming on to me. I ain’t fancy enough for you. I ain’t got no season tickets at the fucking opera. I ain’t nothing but a stupid handyman. Right?”
“Of course not. Look, I’m very sorry if your feelings are hurt. I certainly didn’t intend that. But what more can I say?” She shrugged to show that should be the end of it. “I’ll get your money. Thirty dollars an hour, wasn’t it?”
As she started past him, he grabbed her shoulders and swung her around against him, and the stench of his armpits poured over her face. “You had your fun,” he said. “Now I want mine.” His face was flushed, swollen with rage.
A sound like a waterfall began to roar in her head. “I’m so sorry. Please don’t hurt me,” she said, in a high cracked voice. And then she was stumbling back against the sink.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he shouted. “Jesus. I ain’t going to hurt you. Just give me my fucking money.”
When she realized he had shoved her away, that he wouldn’t hurt her, relief spread through her with such a rush that her legs began to tremble. “Thank you,” she whispered.
She lurched past him into the living room, pulled open the desk drawer, and fumbled out her wallet. When she heard his footsteps behind her, she swung around to face him, as though that might hold him off.
But he wasn’t looking at her. With his head averted, he walked past her to the porch door and braced his forearms against the doorjamb. He was breathing heavily, the tattoo rising and falling. Now what?
After a moment, he said, “I’m sorry for grabbing you, and I don’t blame you for being scared.” His voice had lost its furious edge. “But I ain’t like that. I wouldn’t never do nothing like what you were thinking. It’s just I saw red there for a minute.”
And charged like a bull, like the animal you are. Pay him, she told herself. Get him out of here before he sees red again. “Let’s just settle what I owe you.” She cleared her throat to settle her voice. “Eleven to after five? Six and a half hours?”
“It wasn’t okay me being rough with you.” He turned to face her, shaking his head as though puzzled. “But that game you were playing?”
“We don’t need to talk about it.” She drew the wad of bills from her wallet. Six times thirty plus fifteen. “Does one ninety-five sound right?”
But he wouldn’t let it go. “It just kind of got to me. Like you and him think you can treat people like me any way you want and it’s okay. Like I ain’t no better than a pile of dogshit you stepped in.”
As she began to count out the money, she heard the echo of his words. No better than a pile of dogshit you stepped in. Was that what he had said? That she thought people like him were no better than dogshit? No wonder he had been loud, threatening. She stopped counting and looked over at him. With his cockiness and anger gone, what was left was a look of hurt and shame.
A wave of anguish swept through her. She had done that to him. To win the puny victory over Lamar, she had humiliated this man—this rough man from Madrono Valley—had made him feel like dogshit. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t like that, that she had not intended to hurt him any more than he had intended to hurt her. It had happened because Lamar had come swaggering in, so on top of the world, so full of himself. That was why she had played the little game—to hurt Lamar. And she would tell Eddie she knew how it felt to be treated like dogshit because Lamar had treated her that way.
“When Lamar left me…” she began. But how could she explain all she had lost to this stranger from a world so different from hers and Lamar’s? His life was football and motorcycles and women picked up at honkytonks, not books and music and the wonderful quiet of this place. He would never understand how good her life had been and how empty it now was. Yet she wanted to make amends for what she had done to him.
“Here,” she said, holding out the wad of bills.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Eddie took a step backward and raised his hands, warding her off. “I ain’t falling for that. Just give me what I earned. One hundred and ninety-five dollars like you said. I don’t want no more trouble.”
“No, I mean it,” she said, flapping the bills at him. “I want you to take it all.”
He gave her a disgusted look. “And soon’s I’m out of here you call the cops and say I stole it.”
/>
“What? I wouldn’t do that. I’m not like that.” She grabbed his hand and pressed the money into his palm. “Come on, take it. Please.”
He let the bills sit on his palm for a moment. “It’s lots more than I’m due.” He shook his head. “You sure?”
She smiled and nodded. “Yes. You worked hard, out there in the sun.”
He fanned the bills. “Nearly four hundred.” He looked up at her, a quizzical yet pleased look on his face. “Well, if you want me to take it, I can sure use it.”
She felt the tension flowing away and her breath came easier. “I hope you don’t still think I’m a bad person.” She nodded at the money. “That makes everything all right, doesn’t it?”
Eddie stuck the money in the rear pocket of his jeans. “Yeah, well, I guess it wipes the dogshit off your shoe all right,” he said, and then with a snuffling laugh added, “and the dogshit says thanks.” He walked out, grabbed his shirt from the porch railing and was down the steps.
She listened as his motorcycle stuttered into life and roared out of the driveway. They were both gone now, Eddie speeding over the hill to Madrono Valley where he wasn’t treated like dogshit, and Lamar making his way to his new love, probably amused by his little spurt of jealousy. And here she was, alone with her soured revenge and this new wound she had inflicted on herself. She wandered around the cottage, gathering up ashtrays and ornaments, unplugging lamps, rolling up the scatter rugs. She’d be glad to be rid of this wretched place.
The Pioneer Women
It’s the first day of the fall term, and Rachel stands at the lectern and looks out at the students—thirty or so young faces, handsome, relaxed, bronzed after a summer in the sun. Despite so many years of practice, she still feels the same old anxiety: will the class work? Will the students like her? So silly, these little moments of insecurity.
The air is hot from the mid-morning sun blasting through the closed windows, and Rachel seizes this as a chance to connect with the class. She pulls forward the collar of her blouse and fans her chest. “Will those sitting by the windows please open them, unless they’re nailed shut.” Grinning, the students on the aisle get up and tussle open the windows. The woman on the front row cannot open hers.
“Use your shoe and break the damn thing!” Rachel cries, and of course the class laughs. A short muscular man moves to the window and bangs so hard on the frame that the glass shivers. The window gives and he thrusts it up. The woman sits back down, her shoulders slumped forward in embarrassment. Rachel feels a twinge but shrugs it off: the class is now in a relaxed good mood.
Rachel distributes the syllabus, goes over the grading guidelines, and sails into backgrounds of American Romanticism. Just as she is connecting Rousseau and Wordsworth, a red-haired man interrupts, saying he had signed up for the course because it was supposed to be on American lit, not European. Rachel says, “American lit did not burst full-armed from the head of George Washington at Valley Forge.” Now there’s a thunder of laughter, and she’s happy that the boy’s laughter is loudest of all.
For the rest of the hour, Rachel talks and the students listen, and her anxiety slowly abates. After class the students file out. A few stop by the lectern, to check her out at closer range, to be checked out. A curly-headed man slips in the name of his uncle, a big-shot Hollywood director. Rachel nods and looks impressed. A blond woman says she memorized all of Wordsworth’s “Hiawatha.” Rachel lets the mistake go—she doesn’t want to embarrass the woman.
The last student to leave is the woman who couldn’t open the window. “That was a mean window, wasn’t it?” Rachel says, a late apology. The woman nods. Drab clothes, timid slouch. “What’s your name?” Rachel asks. This kind of inquiry is flattering to students and often breaks through shyness.
The woman says, “Elaine.”
Rachel smiles. “No last name? Suppose I read in the newspaper that Elaine MacTavish won the lottery. I wouldn’t know whether to ask for a loan, would I?” She has said the same kind of thing to other students. They like to be teased this way. They laugh and blush and say their full name.
The woman doesn’t laugh, doesn’t blush. She says, “Elaine Sherrill.”
Rachel smiles. “That’s a very pretty name.” Elaine doesn’t respond. She is not to be charmed. Rachel begins to pack her books and her papers in her briefcase. “If there’s nothing special I better get back to work.”
The woman instantly starts for the door. Rachel wonders if she’s hurt the woman’s feelings again. “Come by my office sometime,” she calls.
***
Rachel stops by the Law School café and picks up a turkey sandwich and a carton of milk and goes to her office. She is working on the diaries of eight pioneer women, and she intends to have a rough draft of a book, her fourth, by summer. She spent the previous summer at various archives, photocopying diaries. This is an important project, and she guards her time jealously. Her friend Hennie has moved to Tucson, and she will not see him until Thanksgiving—he is as busy as she is, but with bats and DNA. This arrangement suits her: she is glad to devote herself to her wonderful pioneers.
She takes down one of the binders in which she keeps the diary photocopies, and for the next four hours, Mary MacTavish absorbs her. A bear had mauled Mary’s husband, leaving her with 125 acres of wheat and five children. Mary’s daughter Susan went to St. Louis to work and that was the last Mary heard of her. Her son Charles was killed at Bull Run. Colin and two younger sons remained at home. Colin married a neighbor’s daughter and brought her back to live on the farm.
And then Rachel reads, “Colin decided we should plant 30 acres of corn,” and then, “Colin bought 3 hens and a rooster.” Colin decided. Colin bought. It is clear that after he married, Colin had assumed authority over the farm. Did sons always take over once they married? Was it customary for mothers to step aside? She’ll check one of the other widows.
As she opens Winifred Stubblefield’s diary, she hears a slight tapping on her door. It’s awfully early in the term for students to drop by. “Come in,” she calls impatiently.
The door slowly opens, and Elaine Sherrill enters in the halting, diffident manner of shy undergraduates, as though half-expecting to be thrown out without so much as a word. “Are you busy?” she asks.
Rachel motions to a chair alongside the desk. “I’m always happy when students drop by.” She hadn’t always found it easy to talk with students, to listen, but she had worked hard and had learned to do it, and she likes that they like talking with her. “Anything special on your mind?” she asks.
Elaine says, “You asked me to come by.”
“So nothing special? Well, let’s just get acquainted. Tell me about yourself. Family? Major? Ambition? Start with family.”
In a muted, swallowed voice, Elaine launches into the story of her life: North Dakota, father an insurance adjuster, mother at home, two sisters, English major, hopes one day to get a Ph.D. A dull recitation of facts.
Rachel surreptitiously drags Winnie’s diary closer but then she becomes aware that Elaine has stopped speaking and is watching the diary swimming slowly across the desk. Rachel pushes it back. “So what’s your favorite kind of reading?” she asks.
Elaine says she reads short stories during the school term because a novel might interfere with her studying.
“Here, I bet you’d like this.” Rachel motions Elaine to follow her to the bookcase. When students don’t know when or how to leave, Rachel often offers to show them a particular book and guides them to the bookshelf. She puts the book in their hands. They glance at it and when they hand it back, she thanks them for dropping by and they leave. It is a little trick she learned when a teacher at Smith used it on her.
She goes to the bookcase and hesitates between Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales and a collection of Henry James stories. She decides James would be wasted on Elaine, and she hands the Hawthorne to her. Elaine actually begins to read the words. She could be there for hours. “Take it home and rea
d it when you’ve finished your homework,” Rachel says. “Thanks for dropping by.”
Rachel feels good that she had thought to lend the book to Elaine. She knows how tough it is to be shy. But there is something off-putting about Elaine, not a typical student, not scrubbed and open-faced but uneasy and repressed. Still, a little friendly attention can make a difference with the shy ones.
Rachel returns to Winnie’s diary. When Whistle dies, Winnie does not get another little dog because her son William says little dogs are useless on a farm. Here, too, the power has shifted. Now married, William makes the decision. Beneath patriarchy, does filiarchy flourish?
If this is borne out by her other widows, Betty and Clondie, she will have the important idea to hold her book together.
***
Elaine Sherrill stations herself in the middle seat of the front row. This is disturbing, and so Rachel takes to lecturing from the side, perched on the window ledge, and makes only occasional visits to her notes on the lectern for a quotation or a specific number. She focuses on the back row where there’s a couple who can’t keep their hands off each other, a pretty girl who every day skates in on rollerblades and a broad-shouldered young man with greenish blond hair—probably on the water polo team soaking up the chlorine. Typical students, attractive, cheerful, confident.
When Rachel stays after class to talk with students, Elaine is always there. She stands apart and never asks a question.
***
In the third week of the term, Elaine again comes to Rachel’s office hours and returns Twice-Told Tales.
“Did you enjoy it?” Rachel asks.
“No.”
This surprises Rachel. Most students would automatically say they liked a book a professor had recommended. “I’m sorry, I thought you’d like it.”
“Why did you think that?” It’s a serious question.
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