by Modean Moon
A dozen eggs, a gallon of milk and a pound of coffee rattled forlornly in the shopping cart with Neil’s shaving cream and razor blades up to the front of the store where Mr. Sims rang up each item and placed them, smiling blandly as he did so, in intimate closeness in the same bag.
Ginnie reached for her purse, but Neil shot her a glance that said clearly, Don’t you dare, as he took out his wallet. She wouldn’t dare. Not with that look in Neil’s eyes, and not with the speculation she could feel emanating from Mr. Sims at the blatantly domestic assortment of items they had chosen.
Neil walked to the passenger side of his car, opened the back door and slid the grocery bag onto the seat. When Ginnie reached for the handle of her door, he shook his head. “Not yet. We’re down here already. Humor me?”
Her senses caught at the elusive plea in his voice. Wordlessly, she nodded and let him take her hand and help her back up onto the high sidewalk.
The square was deserted now, not bustling with activity as it had been that first time, and yet it reminded her so poignantly of that visit.
“You still love this town, don’t you, Ginnie?”
Did she? At first it had reminded her of something out of a dream. Then the dream had turned into a nightmare. Was what she felt for this town love? Or comfort, from a sense of habit? The promise she had first sensed in it was for a part of her life that no longer existed. “I think so.”
Neil reached for her hand again and guided her around a patch of ice. “You called it Munchkin-land,” he reminded her. “From the Land of Oz. A magical community.”
Yes. She had. And an imaginary one. She shook her head against the pain of memories.
“But that dates us,” he said.
“Dates us?”
“Yes. It puts us firmly in the older generation.”
“Does it?” she rattled on, anything, anything to keep from saying what mustn’t be said. “You’ve got to keep up with these things, Neil.”
“Oh, and if remembering a sixty-or-so-year-old movie doesn’t date us, why doesn’t it?”
She grinned then. Sometimes idiocy could be beneficial. “Television, VCRs, and a group of young people who have made The Wizard of Oz their latest cult hit. Didn’t Ron clue you in on that yesterday, too?” Especially since it had been a comment of hers that had originally sparked Ron’s and Debby’s interest ?
Neil chuckled. “No. He didn’t tell me. He pretty well confined his conversation to rock music, basketball, and, of course, you.”
What else had Ron said? He’d never been particularly discreet. Maybe she should have sent them away, or at least taken the boy off to one side and tried to explain the situation. No. No, it really wasn’t any of his business. “I—I don’t imagine he revealed too many deep, dark secrets.”
“No. Not too many more than I’ve already mentioned. He did say he’s in your youth group at church. They keep you pretty busy, don’t they, Ginnie?”
“I suppose some people would look at it that way.” She paused in front of the hardware store, staring distractedly at the assortment of garden tillers and lawn mowers inside. “I don’t think of it that way, though. I enjoy having young people around me. I enjoy their exuberance, enjoy watching them grow. I enjoy having them like me.”
“And they do.”
“Yes,” she said. “Isn’t that the strangest thing? I thought for a long time there must be something wrong with me...” Her words trailed off. Here she was, admitting to him something she thought she’d never admit to anyone, something she had barely admitted to herself. “I thought there must be something terribly wrong with me because I was never able to reach Todd.”
He squeezed her hand. “I wondered if you went through that, too.”
“Too?” she asked.
“Too.”
She studied their reflection in the window—both of them standing there so solemnly, to anyone watching just a couple looking at unneeded and out-of-season lawn-care equipment.
“You never asked why I went back to Little Rock.”
Convulsively, her fingers clenched on his. “I couldn’t bear to ask,” she whispered.
He returned the pressure of her hand. “It was one more last-ditch effort, Ginnie. A concentrated effort to communicate with my son. I never did, you know. Not on anything important. By the time we left Pleasant Gap, I knew firsthand what you must have gone through, and I knew that even if it hadn’t been for the—” He broke off and sighed. “Even if it hadn’t been for the other, I couldn’t ask you to come back into that hell.”
A shudder ran through her at the thought of the other that not even Neil could bring himself to talk about.
“You’re cold,” he said, closing the door on his own memories. “Come on. Let’s get some coffee.”
They found the drugstore as deserted as the square. It seemed that only the two of them were willing to venture out on this bleak day.
Arlene Perks, who had worked in Johnson’s Drugstore for thirty years, Ginnie now knew, looked up from her newspaper. “Hi, Ginnie,” she said. “Hello, Neil. Saw your car Christmas Day. I was hoping you’d come in for a visit.”
Ginnie went on ahead to the booth while Neil stopped at the counter for two cups of coffee, speaking briefly with Arlene, whose delighted laughter floated to the corner where Ginnie waited. Saw his car on Christmas Day, had she? she thought wryly. There was only one place Arlene could have seen Neil’s car Christmas Day and that was her driveway. It was hard for Ginnie to believe that she and Neil had once sat in this booth in anonymity.
Ginnie smiled as he set her coffee on the table and settled his long length into the seat across from her. He shook his head, laughing softly. “Are you up on the local gossip, or do you want to be filled in?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t laugh if I were you,” she told him. “I’m sorry, Neil. I didn’t think what this would do. You realize, of course, that everyone in town is going to know by tomorrow, if they don’t already know, that you’re...”
“That I’m staying at your house?”
She nodded.
“Does that bother you, Ginnie?”
“It shouldn’t,” she said. “But you’re going back to Little Rock... soon, and I’m going to be left here to answer the questions—when you’re coming back, if we’ll continue to live in my house, when did we decide to reconcile?”
She could hear those questions now, unending, not malicious, but prying, all the same. And for some reason, those questions threatened to be harder to handle than questions about Todd would be should news of his escape leak into general knowledge.
Refusing to answer wouldn’t help. The questions would still be there. And no matter how lightly she answered, each would prick, each would remind her of a loss as great now as it had been at the first.
She held her smile until her face ached, until she could no longer maintain the facade. “Look” she said, “I really don’t want any coffee. Do you?”
“No,” he told her. “Let’s get out of here before the morning coffee-break crowd comes in.”
Neil drove slowly through town, partly because of the ice on the roads, but partly, Ginnie could tell, because he was studying each familiar landmark. How was he seeing Pleasant Gap? she wondered. As they had that first day? And what was he looking for in this strange, silent journey?
They passed the small stone church. He slowed almost to a stop.
“What?” she prompted gently.
“The divorce,” he said. “Does it give you—are you able to...” He remained completely silent for a moment.
Her participation in a religion so opposed to divorce must seem an anomaly to him. “It would only be a problem if I decided to remarry,” she said in answer to his disjointed question. Which she would not do. At least not for a long time. Perhaps not ever. She knew that now.
“It wasn’t a church wedding,” he said finally. “You could —”
“Neil.” She stopped him. She had to. “Don’t.”
He pul
led to a stop a the edge of the park. A pilgrimage, Ginnie thought, to all the points of pain. No. All but one. Not even Neil would attempt the road to the farm in this weather.
Neil got out of the car and stood looking over the frozen landscape. Why not, she thought. Maybe together they could exorcise some ghosts. He looked up at the sound of her door opening. When she joined him at the front of the car, he nodded solemnly and together they walked into the park.
At their bench—the bench, she corrected herself angrily, she looked half-expectantly for the squirrel. He didn’t appear. Neil also looked up into the tree. “I guess some things do change,” he said flatly.
She dropped onto the bench. “I guess they do.”
Neil didn’t sit down. He leaned against the tree. “I didn’t want to divorce you, Ginnie.”
Her head jerked up, but after that one uncontrollable movement, she held herself erect, waiting, not wanting him to say anything else and knowing that if he didn’t, she would scream at him to speak.
“But I couldn’t go on the way we were,” he continued, “sneaking around to meet you, to meet my own wife, and knowing that I might not ever be able to ask you to share a home with me again. I know now how sick Todd really was. I went through a period wondering if maybe I wasn’t the sick one, allowing him to ruin three lives—No. Not him. Allowing three lives to be ruined.”
She blinked hard against the tears forming in her eyes. She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at him.
“How do you untangle all the different things that run through your mind at a time like that?” he asked. “How do you separate what you thought then from what you learned later? Somewhere in that morass of confusion were fear and wounded pride and anger and frustration.”
Oh, yes, she agreed silently. They were all there.
“You know what this town is like,” he went on. “Every time I walked up on a conversation that stopped when I got there, I knew they were talking about the fact that you and I weren’t living together. Every time I thought about bringing you home, I remembered that scene in the kitchen, and I knew I couldn’t do that. God, I even thought about sending Todd off to boarding school, maybe a nice, strict military academy, but by then I think I was afraid to let him out of my sight
“At some point, I decided the only thing to do was put as much distance between you and me as possible, and maybe then it wouldn’t hurt so much. And maybe then each of us could get on with building a life. I don’t think I really believed, when I first left, that it would be forever.
“But,” he said, beating his fist against the tree, “I suppose it’s worked out, after all. Hasn’t it, Ginnie?” he asked in a voice so low and so subdued she barely recognized it as his.
One tear slid halfway down her cheek, freezing in its path. If Neil meant that each of them had been able to survive, then he was right. But if he meant that they were happy because of it—how could that be measured? Right now, all the things she had filled her life with, other people’s children, other people’s families, work, a house that was almost a home, seemed pale imitations of what they should have had.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose it has.”
Chapter 12
Ginnie replayed the scene in the park through her mind later that night as she sat alone on the sofa. Neil had pushed himself away from the tree with no more than a terse, “Let’s go.” When they returned to the house, he had commandeered the kitchen table and the telephone and remained on the phone until late afternoon, talking to his office, talking to law enforcement officials, talking to Kirk. Talking. Now he was back on the phone and had been for over an hour.
A fire burned in the fireplace, imparting no warmth, imparting no cheer. Briefly, she considered plugging in the Christmas-tree lights, but it seemed that Christmas this year had never happened. She glanced idly at the tree. One package remained. She’d forgotten to take it to Frank, had forgotten all about it until just now.
She leaned back into the curve of the couch with her hand over her mouth. What a mockery, she thought, all the glitter and tinsel.
She was cold, in spite of the fire, in spite of the central heat. She thought briefly of going into the kitchen for a fresh cup of coffee but immediately discarded the idea. She had gone in earlier and unintentionally overheard part of Neil’s conversation. He had been talking to Carole then, consoling her, Ginnie realized. Reassuring her. She didn’t know who he was talking to now, but she didn’t want to run the risk of learning it was Carole again.
The day had been hard on Neil. It showed in his face. It was drawn, haggard almost. It was as though the weight of the last few days had finally borne him down.
He brought two cups of coffee with him when he rejoined her in the living room. He handed her one, and she took it silently. After all, questions would prick at him, too. How many times could he bear to answer nothing when she asked if there was any word?
He prodded the fire and then restlessly paced the room, stopping finally at the mantel, setting his cup carefully on it, not looking at her.
“They tracked down the charges on the collect call you accepted.”
She clenched her fingers around the cup. “Where—where was he?”
Neil gripped the ledge with both hands. “He called from a pay phone at a convenience store just off Interstate 40 at Morrilton.”
“But that’s—”
“Forty miles away,” he said flatly. “On the other side of the mountains. He could have gone any direction from there, but tomorrow, when there’s light, they’ll begin searching the road north.”
“It’s been three days,” she whispered. “They surely don’t expect to find him—”
He whirled. “I don’t know what they expect anymore. But you’re right, Ginnie. It has been three days. If he were coming here, he would have been here by now. I don’t think you have to be afraid of that anymore.”
“I’m not,” she said through her tight throat. She wasn’t, at least not at this moment. “What I’m afraid of now is that he’s not coming here. Where could he be, Neil?”
“God alone knows,” he said. “In this weather, he could be—”
“No!” No, she would not let him say it. “You mustn’t even think that,” she whispered.
He ran his hand through his hair before sagging against the mantel. As she watched, she saw him swallow once and then visibly steel himself and straighten until he stood tall and strong in front of the fire.
“You’re right,” he told her. “If nothing else, Todd is resourceful. He’s probably warm and dry right now. And oblivious to the worry he’s causing other people.”
He reached for his coffee cup, a mechanical motion, something to occupy his hands. He gripped it. “It’s been a long day,” he told her. “Why don’t you go to bed?”
Was he dismissing her? It seemed so at first. Ginnie fought a quick flare of anger. She didn’t want to be dismissed. But her resentment dissipated as she saw the signs of strain around his eyes and at his mouth.
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’ll take the puppy outside and then I’ll lock up the house. I won’t be up late.”
Reluctantly, she uncurled her legs and rose from the couch. She placed a tentative hand on his arm, but he stiffened at her touch. She dropped her hand to her side.
“You need your rest, too,” she said softly.
He nodded, a quick, violent motion which spoke words unsaid. “Go to bed, Ginnie.”
She filled the big, claw-footed tub in her bathroom with hot water, hoping to ease the tension that filled her, but in the silence of the night, each sound in the old house was amplified. She heard the back door open and close, the sharp, happy yip of the puppy and Neil’s muted voice, footsteps, the grate of the fire screen being put into place, and later, through the old pipes, she heard the telltale sound that indicated water running somewhere in the house. The guest-room shower, she identified, when the noises didn’t stop after a few moments. Neil was in the shower.
A wave of heat washed through her as she thought of him standing under the steamy spray, soaping himself, and then twisting with supple grace to let the water carry away the lather.
She moaned and jerked her eyes open to cancel out the image. So much for doing away with tension. The caress of the water against her skin had become more than she could bear. She blotted her body with the thirsty towel quickly, efficiently, no languorous drying; she knew instinctively that could only lead to imagined sensations.
She reached for her terry-cloth robe, belted it around her and applied single-minded concentration to the effort of brushing her teeth.
The old tub gurgled as the last of the water drained from it, and she could tell from the silence in the pipes that the shower no longer ran.
What was Neil doing now? She could not keep that thought from her mind. Brushing his teeth? Shaving? Toweling his body dry? Oh, Lord, why couldn’t she keep her mind off him?
She pulled the pins from her hair, letting it fall around her shoulders and attacked it with the brush, but her mind refused to count the brush strokes.
She loved him. She had never stopped loving him. She would never stop loving him. She should have let him make love to her this morning.
No! her senses screamed. That would only take her back to day one—lost, hurt and frightened. She’d have to begin all over, erasing the memory of his lovemaking, erasing the memory of loving. She lay down the brush. She hadn’t done very well at either.
With both hands flat on the vanity, Ginnie studied a steady drip from the sink. Neil wouldn’t ask again, if asking was what he had really done. He wouldn’t put himself in the position of being rejected again. He wouldn’t put her in the position of having to reject him again. She watched her hand reach out, grip the faucet and tighten the handle until the drip stopped.
Compulsively, she draped her towel over the bar to dry, straightened her brush, put away her toothbrush and removed all signs of her use from the bathroom. She slipped into a clean flannel nightgown, high-necked and long-sleeved, unadorned but warm, and walked into her bedroom, where she slid between the covers without turning on a light.
