“Please,” she said. Her voice was warm again and soft with just a shade of longing.
I slipped my hand into hers, and some of the tightness left her face.
“Thank you,” she whispered as her fingers closed around mine.
We walked out of the barn and she shut the door behind us.
The smell of roasting potatoes wafted out from the oven. Greens were boiling on the stove, and I was doing my usual job of chopping and dicing for the salad. I was still trying to learn my way around the kitchen so I could do my fair share, but it usually ended in some kind of disaster. Meri truly didn’t like my attempts at re-creating the dishes I was familiar with. It was too fancy with the spices, she said. Her nose always wrinkled at the smell of rosemary and basil unless it was in spaghetti, which I hated. She made extravagant breakfasts with shaved cinnamon and orange zest, but for her dinners, she was strictly a-salt-and-pepper girl, maybe some garlic if she felt adventuresome. Her meals were simple and straightforward, meat and a vegetable or three, rolls or biscuits on the side. At first, it was a welcome change from long and elaborate many-coursed affairs, but after a while, I found myself longing for something other than beef or chicken. Like duck or salmon, maybe, a salad made of something other than romaine lettuce, and a three-tiered dessert of something decadently chocolate instead of vanilla pudding from a plastic cup.
I was fantasizing about a cold artichoke salad as I sliced carrots at an oblique angle and made little star shapes out of the cucumbers. I’m sure Meri would have let me borrow the truck if I really had to have something different, but I was still too afraid to go into town. Meri did all the grocery shopping, and I wasn’t in a position to complain about what she fed me. She peered over my shoulder at the florets of cherry tomatoes and rolled her eyes. I stuck my tongue out at her and she snapped a kitchen towel at my butt. She missed. I tossed the salad together and put the bowl on the table.
“What would you like to drink?” I asked her, heading for the refrigerator.
Meri leaned over the sink and drained the water out of the greens. “I think I’d like a beer.” Steam from the pan rose and swirled around her head. “I don’t suppose you drink beer, but there’s plenty in there if you want one.”
I got out a beer for her and one for myself. She was right, though. I didn’t drink beer. Or I never had. Not because of any snobbery, but just because it was never offered. Not even here. The bottles were always in the refrigerator, but I’d never seen Meri drink one. I assumed they were for guests and visitors.
“Am I supposed to set these on the table,” I asked “or should I pour the beer into a glass first?”
She stopped to look at me, a plate of baked chicken steaming in her hands. “Is that a joke or a serious question?”
“Serious question. My upbringing was a little deficient in beer etiquette.”
She nodded very slowly, as if she was trying to come to terms with that. She got a funny look on her face, one eyebrow raised and the other eye squinted half closed, but I couldn’t tell if she was distressed or amused. “You’d better just set the bottles on the table,” she said at last. “There’s a bit of a trick to pouring beer into a glass. The bottle opener is in the drawer by the fridge.”
I rummaged through the drawer, found the opener and pulled the tops off the bottles. They came off with a pop and a whoosh. Little wisps of beer vapor floated up the necks. It was pretty, but it smelled strange, sort of like sourdough bread. I set the bottles on the table and sat. Meri had already served a plate for me, heavy on the salad, and was making her own, heavier on the potatoes. I took a sip of the beer. It was bitter and foamed across my tongue. It tickled my nose and didn’t taste at all like it smelled. Meri was watching me.
“Not bad,” I said through stiffly puckered lips and set the bottle down.
Meri shook her head and got up from the table. She poured a glass of water and set it in front of me before she settled in her chair. She seemed a little disappointed.
“There are some really good vineyards around here,” she said. “They give tours and do tasting parties and stuff like that. We can go to some, if you want, or if you tell me what you like, I can pick something out for you.”
“I don’t suppose you drink wine,” I said.
Meri shook her head. “I’ve never found one that I liked very much. They’re either too sweet, too sour or they taste like the inside of the barrel.” She fiddled with her fork, poking it at her potatoes. “Your life has been very different than mine, Bea.” She set her fork down and picked up her beer. “Do you think we’re just too different?”
I laid my fork across my plate. “I didn’t think so yesterday, but today, how can I tell? I don’t really know anything about you.”
She gestured at the walls around us. “This is what I am, Bea. This house. This land. You can see me here and know all the important things there are to know.” She set the bottle on the table and tucked her hands into her lap. “And you know you love me. I think. Do you still love me?”
“Yes.” I was surprised that I didn’t have to think about it. It was true that she scared me a little now, but it didn’t diminish the love. I had no idea why not. It should have, but it just didn’t.
She smiled a little. “You know I love you. What else is there worth knowing?”
“Everything,” I said sharply. “You’ve been keeping things from me, Meri, big important things. It makes me wonder what else you’re hiding. What else is there in your life that might jump out at me and say ‘boo’?”
Meri stared her bottle. “I only have one ghost in my closet,” she said studying the label closely.
“Taylor,” I said.
“Taylor.” She nodded slowly and then slumped down in her chair. “I was born in this house. Except for college, I’ve never lived anywhere else but here. I know every single person in this town, at least by reputation.” Her face got that pinched look I hated so much, full of pain and anger, suspicion and sadness. “Taylor and I were practically raised together. We played the same games, went to the same school, rode the same bus. We started dating in high school and were inseparable until our senior year.”
“What happened in your senior year?”
“Nothing,” she said looking down at her lap, “but it was a lot of nothing.”
I scooted my chair back from the table just a little. I wasn’t trying to distance myself from her. I was only trying to prepare myself for what I thought was coming. “Was it ever serious between you two?”
She started to shrug, but her shoulders fell before they rose very far. “Everyone assumed we would marry. I did too, at first. I even slept with him a few times. Prom night, graduation, stuff like that. You know, all the times you’re expected to, but I didn’t care for it. I did it, but I never wanted to. It wasn’t what the books said it should be. It wasn’t like what it was in the movies. I kept trying to feel something special, but I never did. I figured the books were all lying and feelings like that didn’t exist.”
So far, I understood exactly what she was saying. I spent my early teens wondering what was wrong with me that I wasn’t giddy over all the boys. I didn’t want what the other girls seemed to want. I couldn’t even imagine wanting it, but I got very good at pretending that I did.
Meri picked up her beer, cradling it in her hands. “When I went to college, I met this girl. Red hair and freckles. We were both English majors so we were in a lot of the same classes. We got together to study a lot. She liked arguing, and I had plenty of things to argue about. I liked her. She said that the way I talked was cute.” Meri looked up at me. “Do you think the way I talk is cute?”
I shrugged. I hadn’t thought about her accent in while. “When I first heard you talk, I thought you used too many vowels. Now, I don’t notice it so much.”
Meri frowned. That probably wasn’t the answer she wanted. “Well, she thought it was cute.” She tapped the bottom of the bottle on the table. “One time I was sitting next to her on the cou
ch in her dorm trying to explain why I thought Hemmingway was a lazy writer, and right out of the blue, she leaned over and kissed me.” Meri shook her head, remembering. “I was so stunned, I just sat there, like a bump on a log. Then she did it again, but that time I kissed her back. Inside that kiss was everything the books were talking about, fireworks, bells, electricity, everything. It really did exist. I’d just been looking for it in the wrong place.”
I looked down at my plate of slowly wilting lettuce. I didn’t like the picture of Meri kissing someone else. “What happened to her?” I asked. “Where is she now?”
Meri took a hefty swig from her bottle and set it on the table. “I don’t know. She was from a city where people like us weren’t a big deal. She wanted to be open about everything. She wanted to go out on dates and to go to dances and hold hands in the park. She wanted to come home with me and meet my parents.” She scratched at the label, peeling one corner and smoothing it down again. “It scared me. In this town, the word ‘gay’ still means happy and ‘lesbian’ isn’t even in the dictionary. I wasn’t ready to challenge my upbringing. I couldn’t be as open as she wanted me to be, so she found somebody else who could.”
In a way, I knew what that was like, too. People in my own life always seemed to want me to be something I wasn’t and they made it very clear that what I was wasn’t an acceptable thing to be. It made me afraid of myself, afraid that I might do something that betrayed my real feelings and everyone would know how perverted I was and then they would do bad things in order to “fix” me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That must have hurt.”
Meri lifted her beer and drank. She touched her mouth with back of her hand. “It did. But what was I going to do?”
“What did you do?” I asked with just the hint of a smile. I did know her at least that well.
Meri smiled thinly and drank the last of her beer in two quick gulps. She looked over at mine. I shoved it across the table and she picked it up, holding it in her hands, rubbing the dew off the glass with her thumb.
“I came home from college the summer before my senior year and announced to my parents that I was gay, not as in happy.” She raised the bottle to her lips but lowered it again without taking a sip. “It wasn’t really that bad. They were upset, naturally. They had their own dreams of what they thought my life would be like. They assumed that I would come home from college, work a little and then marry Taylor. They figured I would settle someplace nearby”—she waved the bottle at the wall—“have a couple of kids, support them in their old age and eventually inherit the farm. It was a nice dream, and I didn’t object to it except for the part about marrying Taylor. My parents and I had some sharp words, but I never doubted that they loved me.”
Meri’s grip tightened on the bottle, her knuckles going white as she tucked it against her chest. “Right before I was supposed to go back to school, I told Taylor that I wouldn’t marry him. He didn’t take it very well, especially since I couldn’t tell him why. He was very, very angry. We said some nasty things to each other. He said them first, but I made sure I had the ugliest last word I could think of. Then he hit me.” Meri punched with the bottle. Beer sloshed out and splattered her hand. She ignored the drops as they ran down her wrists and dripped onto the floor. “My dad found out. He could hardly help it since I had a huge bruise under my eye.” She touched her left cheek with her fingertips. “The next day, my dad went into to town and beat the stuffing out of Taylor, broke some teeth, bloodied his nose and told him not to ever set foot on the farm again.”
I smiled grimly. I could appreciate her story even if I didn’t understand it. My father would have told me that the black eye was my fault, punished me for marring the family image and then sued the boy just for the hell of it. “Your dad sounds like a wonderful man,” I said.
“He was the best dad in the whole world.” Meri wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand leaving a smear of beer across her cheek. She laughed a short, sad sound. “Mom told me that if dad hadn’t done it, she would have beat the crap out of Taylor herself. She would have, too. She was such a strong woman, not very tall, but full of fire.”
I nodded, though again, I didn’t really understand. I didn’t know any strong women, except Meri. My mother was so nondescript and such a vague part of my life that I had trouble even remembering what she looked like. She spoke seldom and almost never to me. My father, and her father before him, had beaten her down, well and truly, long before I was ever born. “I wish I could have met your parents,” I said.
“I wish you could have, too.” Meri set the beer bottle on the table and hugged her arms across her chest. “It’s still hard to talk about it.”
“Have you ever talked to anybody about it?”
She shook her head.
“There was nobody to talk to,” I guessed.
“There was nobody left.”
Meri got up from the table and began to pace around the kitchen, her body a chaos of conflicting signals. The dip of her head was sad, the tight set of her shoulders angry, her footsteps stumbling and confused. She had her hands buried deep inside her pockets.
“Taylor never got over it,” she said, “me or the beating my father gave him.”
“I heard him say that he still thinks you would be good for each other.”
Meri froze in mid-stride. “Goddamn arrogant son of bitch,” she said through clenched teeth. Her face crumpled, and she collapsed back into her chair. “He took everything away from me, Bea, my parents, my dreams, my future. How could I not want to hurt him?”
“Tell me the story, Meri. Help me understand it.”
Meri scrubbed at her face with her hands. “The summer after graduation, I came home to stay for a while, partly to decide what I wanted to do with my life, and partly to put off the deciding.” She dropped her hands. Her eyes were glittering brightly. “I met Taylor in town one day. He cornered me in the produce section of Twiggy’s grocery store. He said how sorry he was for hitting me, swore he’d never do it again and begged me to change my mind about marrying him. He got down on his knees, right there in front of God and everybody, in between two bushels of green beans and a pyramid of tomatoes.” Meri’s face paled and then flushed. “I said some harsh things and then turned around and left him kneeling there. I hadn’t forgotten what that punch felt like.” Meri’s face paled again, her color fading almost to gray.
“Meri,” I said, “you don’t have to tell me any more. I think I understand enough.”
She shook her head fiercely. “You don’t understand anything.”
I stood and moved around the table to sit in the chair next to hers. I put my arms around her shoulders. They were trembling, and she leaned into me. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Maybe she was counting to ten or something, but whatever it was, some of the color came back into her cheeks.
“Okay,” I said pressing my knee against hers. “I’m ready to understand. What did Taylor do?”
She shifted in her chair. “That night, after the grocery store thing, Taylor snuck up to the house and put a very large king snake inside the farm truck.”
My hand stilled against her shoulder. That wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. It wasn’t even a close second. “A snake?” I asked. I wasn’t particularly fond of snakes, and it certainly wasn’t a nice thing for Taylor to do, but I couldn’t see why Meri would want to kill him over it. Meri shook her head at my confusion. Her eyes focused on the dripping beer bottle making wet rings on the table.
“It was just a joke,” she said. “A mean and ugly joke, but he didn’t mean me any harm. It wasn’t a poisonous snake or anything. He just wanted to scare me, and he knew that I did most of the farm chores. We kept sheep then, and I had to drive out to the west pasture every morning to count heads and make sure they were all right.” She paused and then she leaned harder into me. “I guess he imagined that I would open the truck door and the snake would pop out. I would run screaming and he would get the last
laugh.” Meri squeezed her eyes shut. “I wouldn’t have, though. I wouldn’t have screamed.” I gripped her shoulder tighter. I believed her.
“But that morning, before I woke up, Dad decided to take the truck over to the next town to buy some feed for the chickens. Mom decided to go with him to do some shopping at one of the fancy stores.” Meri started to tremble, her shoulder shivering under my hand. “You have to cross the mountains to get there,” she said softly. “They’re not big mountains as mountains go, but there are some steep parts and some tight turns.”
I remembered those tight turns, on the motorcycle, in the rain. I remembered the steep parts too, the dark trees and the small points of light far below. “What happened, Meri?”
“Somewhere on the way back, my father lost control of the truck. It crashed through a guardrail and went over the side. The truck rolled over so many times that it didn’t look like a truck anymore. I made Jeremy, our sheriff, show me the pictures.” Her eyes opened wide. “My mom had bought a new dress. They found it on the slope about halfway down the mountain. It was still in the bag, still on its hanger.”
“Was it the snake?” I asked, hushed and horrified.
“They found what was left of it in the cab afterward, twisted around the brake pedal.” Meri shuddered and stilled. “My dad was terrified of snakes.” She turned her head. Her eyes were haunted and hollow. “Taylor stayed dead drunk for almost a month. It was pretty clear to me that he knew something he wasn’t saying, and I had a good idea of what that something might be. I ran him to ground, put the shotgun to his head and made him tell me everything.”
I blinked at her. Her eyes had gone scary again, her voice cold and dark, but this time it didn’t scare me quite as much. This time I understood a little. “It’s a wonder that you didn’t pull the trigger,” I said quietly.
As Far As Far Enough Page 8
