“I see.” She chuckled a little, a nasty sort of laugh that irritated me even more. “Well, what you want to do is go to the end of this road…” She gave me the directions, making every effort to not hurry about it, pointing and repeating each thing two or three times. I nodded politely until she finished. But I couldn’t endure her request that I repeat the whole thing back to her.
“Thanks much,” I said, racing back to the pickup.
“Well I never,” I heard her mutter.
And finally I sat in front of Sophie Andrews’s house. My first thought was to leave before she saw me. My second thought was to forget about the cake altogether, and walk up with no plan at all. But I changed my mind about both, cradling the fragile cake in both hands and stepping from the pickup. I swung the door shut with my foot and walked cautiously toward the house, stepping off the muddy path and onto the shining wet grass. I slid my boots through the lawn, trying to wipe the mud off.
The climb up the steps was the worst part. I knew I had most likely been seen by then, that my options were down to one, and I almost ran out of breath, although there were only four steps. I walked across the porch, trying not to let my heels tread too heavily on the wooden floor. But boots against floors only make one noise—loud—and I shivered at the door, wondering how the hell I would knock without half the cake falling out of its wrapping. But I didn’t have to worry, as the door suddenly swung open.
There, just above the lower half of the screen door, was a round head framed in blond hair straight as straw. A little girl smiled, showing a missing tooth. She pushed on the screen, bumping my arm with the frame before I stepped back. She opened it.
“Hi, mister,” she said. “Are you here to see Albert?”
I blinked, holding the cake in front of me like a small puppy. “Albert?” Must be her brother, I thought.
“Yes, Albert. He’s inside if you want to see him, talkin’ to Mother.”
“Oh, all right. Well, I really came to see your mother, not Albert.”
“Well, she’s talking to Albert.” The girl looked to be about five, and wore a blue-and-white cotton gingham dress with a blue sash tied around her waist. She twisted one hand in the other, then lifted her arms in front of her body. One wrist was bent backward in a position only children can manage without breaking a bone.
“Do you think you could tell her that there’s someone here to see her, or do you think she doesn’t want to be bothered?” I asked.
She thought about it, squinting with one eye. “I think she doesn’t want to be bothered,” she said. “Because every time I try to talk to her when she’s talking to Albert, she tells me she doesn’t want to be bothered while Albert is here and that I should wait until Albert leaves to ask her.” She let go of the one hand with the other, and began swinging them at her sides. Then she clasped them behind her back.
It was then that I realized Albert must be another gentleman caller. I was miserable. I wondered if I should leave, just scoot on back to the pickup and drive away. Or if I should somehow let Sophie know I was there, maybe leave the cake with the little girl. But I knew the girl would never be able to manage the cake, which was about to crumble in my hands.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Laurie,” she said. “Laurie Andrews.”
“Okay, Laurie. Do you think you could just show me where the kitchen is, because I have a cake here that my mother baked for you and your mom and your brothers and sisters.”
“I only have one sister,” she said.
“All right, your brothers and sister. Laurie, if you could just show me where the kitchen is, I’ll put the cake in there and then I’ll go.”
“That’s where Mother and Albert are,” Laurie said. “Mother and Albert are in the kitchen.”
“Laurie? Who are you talking to?” A voice came from within the house. It was a woman’s voice—Sophie’s. I whispered to myself, “Please come to the door.”
“A man with a cake,” Laurie shouted.
“A cake?”
“Yeah, a cake for me and you and Wade and Andrew and Millie,” she shouted.
And she appeared.
“Blake!” Sophie held her hand to her collar, gripping the lace and reaching with the other hand to push the screen door open wider. “My goodness, what a surprise. Laurie, why didn’t you tell me it was Blake Arbuckle? Blake, I’m so sorry. How long has she kept you waiting out here?”
“He never told me his name was Blake Arbunkle anyways,” Laurie said.
“It wasn’t that long.” I stepped inside and wiped my feet. “I have a cake here from my mother,” I said. “It fell on the drive in, so it’s a little busted up, but it shouldn’t taste any different.”
Sophie reached for it, but I pulled it back.
“Maybe I should just set it down somewhere,” I said. “I’m afraid if I give it to you, it’ll fall apart right there in your hands.”
She looked a little unsure about what to do, and I remembered Albert in the kitchen.
“Listen, Sophie, I know I shouldn’t have dropped in without giving you some notice, so if you have some company, I’ll just come by another time. I’ll leave this cake here and you can worry about it later.” I started to put the cake on a table in the entryway.
“Oh, no no no, Blake. No, please don’t go. It’s only Albert. He’s a friend of the family. No. Come on into the kitchen and we’ll take care of that cake. Have a cup of coffee.” She led me, lightly touching my arm, which tingled, back through the hallway and into a small, crowded-with-chairs kitchen. At the table sat a handsome, black-haired, brown-eyed man about my age. He had a dark mustache that looked to be made of wax. The top of his head was too short, as if someone had ground off a couple inches. He had no forehead. And from the subtle, unfriendly look he gave me, I could see he was not just a friend of the family.
“Albert,” Sophie said, “this is Blake Arbuckle. He lives out by Alzada. Blake, Albert Carroll.”
I set the cake on the counter, then reached out to grip the hand waiting for me. Albert’s hand was soft and a little damp, and he loosened his grip the moment I tightened mine. “How do,” we both said.
Laurie stood on her toes at the counter and with her thumb and forefinger lifted the cloth to look at the cake. A chunk fell out and tumbled onto the floor, first hitting Laurie’s shoe. “Oops,” she said.
Albert laughed, a big, boisterous “ha ha” that had a harsh edge to it. I had a strong notion I was not going to enjoy this man’s company. Laurie bent to pick up the piece of cake, but it crumbled in her small, pudgy hands. This made Albert laugh even harder.
“Albert!” Sophie said.
The more Laurie tried to pick up the lump of chocolate, the more it crumbled, and the more restless I got. I crouched down and began to scoop up the crumbs.
“Let me!” Laurie said.
“Okay. I’ll just help,” I said. “You get the big ones, and I’ll get the little ones.”
As Albert continued to chortle, Laurie carefully plucked a chunk of the fluffy cake in each hand and stood up, keeping her eyes fixed on them, like cups of tea. She set them on the counter. I brushed the remaining crumbs into one hand and dumped them into a slop bucket under the table.
“Thank you, Blake,” Sophie said. “Can you say thank you to Blake, Laurie?”
“Thank you, Blake,” Laurie echoed, without enthusiasm.
“That cake looks like it’s seen better days,” Albert said.
“It had a rough ride into town,” I said through my teeth.
What followed was the most stilted, unnatural half hour of conversation I’ve ever been party to. Sophie did her best to keep things moving, asking each of us questions, but I was so flustered I could hardly talk, and Albert thought himself quite a wit. Each time she asked him something, he made a joke of it, which annoyed the hell out of me. My curiosity and sense of humor were absent, bludgeoned by embarrassment and Albert’s lack of charm.
His smart-alecky remarks
made Sophie uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than she already was, and I couldn’t believe Albert didn’t see this. I wondered why she would even be interested in someone like him. But after he told me what he did, that he was the vice president of the First National Bank, which he reminded us of several times, I began to understand. Here was a widow, twice over, with four small children and no visible means of support. How could she not consider the interest of a man of Albert’s position? The thought made me miserable, thinking what little I had to offer.
But I fumbled through the conversation, spending most of the time studying Sophie from the corner of my eye. She looked older, but she hadn’t aged that much considering what she’d been through. Her hair was still crow black, and the creases around her eyes made her look wiser, more worldly. The joints of her slender hands were swollen from farm life, but otherwise she looked much the same. I only wished I could talk to her alone. My discomfort finally got the best of me.
“Well, Sophie, I’ve still got a long drive ahead of me, so I think I best get going,” I said. “Good meeting you, Albert.” I almost choked on this lie, hoping my insincerity showed.
“Oh, do you really have to go already?” Sophie asked. I figured she was just being polite, so I insisted.
“Hey, the poor guy wants to go,” Albert said. “Let him go.”
I glared at him for just a second, not long enough that Sophie would notice, but hoping Albert would get the message that I didn’t appreciate much about him. But he didn’t seem ruffled. He was the kind of guy who wouldn’t catch something so subtle, I decided.
Sophie showed me to the door, and Laurie followed right behind, licking chocolate from her fingers.
“Blake, thank you again for the cake. The kids will love it.”
“Where are the others, anyway?” I asked.
“They’re not home from school yet,” she said.
“Oh, of course.” Just one more reason to feel foolish.
“I’m going to school next year,” Laurie said. “When I’m six.”
“That’s good,” I said. “You should go to school as much as you can. Because you never know when you might have to start working.”
Laurie looked up at me, her blue eyes not comprehending, and I realized I was talking way over her head. I decided I’d said enough.
“Well, see you again,” I said without conviction.
“Yes, please stop by any time you’re in town.” Sophie shook my hand and grabbed the back of it with her other hand.
I nodded, but knew I never would, and I tipped my hat before turning to weave my way through the puddles in the grass.
The last thing in the world I wanted to see at that moment was a rainbow. But when I pulled out onto the main road, every color that had been missing for the last ten years was smeared across the sky in broad, rich strokes. The beauty was blurred by water gathering in my eyes. I wasn’t crying, but I was so angry that my eyes were leaking like an old rusty bucket.
I couldn’t imagine the visit being any worse. Everything had gone wrong, and in my head I listed every reason I’d ever had for not bothering with marriage. First and foremost, I had no time for romance. There was too much to do. This I knew, had always known, and now I was angry at myself for forgetting, for having to learn this lesson once more. I vowed to never forget again.
Besides the rainbow, I failed to appreciate one of the most beautiful spring evenings we’d had since boyhood. I drove home faster than necessary, jaw set in the direction I drove and no other. I did not let myself dwell on the sky as the light faded and the western half caught on fire, glowing a glorious red.
My other senses were also shut down for the night. I ignored the fresh smell of damp grass, and damp ground, and the damp, clean air. And my skin was coated with leather, unable to feel the cool freshness of that moist air. I tried to convince myself that the hope I’d had on my drive in was ridiculous, that it would only be a matter of time before the ugly, gray dryness returned.
At dinner, I averted each question from the family with a scornful glance. Jack was the only one who didn’t give up after the first try.
“What? It couldn’t have been that bad,” he said.
“Guess again.”
He looked at me, head tilted forward, eyebrows raised.
“There was some guy there already,” I said.
“Oh, hell.”
“Yeah.”
Jack shook his head.
To my surprise, Jack’s turnaround had proven to be the real thing. He wasn’t a completely different person, of course, but nobody expected anything that drastic. I wouldn’t even say he was happy. His moods were still unpredictable, changing often and for no apparent reason. But he worked hard and had put a lot of thought into what could be done with the bulldozer. I had yet to see him take a drink since his return. But of course we’d seen a similar turnaround from him before, and I for one assumed he would turn again.
He showed impatience with any skepticism, especially as the months rolled by. But instead of refusing to work when he was insulted, or disappearing, he set his jaw and worked harder, which seemed to me the most impressive change.
The biggest skeptics, predictably, were Rita and George. Mom and Dad didn’t exactly warm to Jack’s return, but they seemed too tired to make anything of it. They appeared ready to put the years of dealing with family drama behind them and concentrate on work. Dad still tended to take things out on Jack, but not often and not as harshly as before.
But Rita would not let Jack near her. Not even in a crowd. She would not sit next to him at the table, she didn’t dance with him at the dances, nor would she ride in the same vehicle unless she had no other choice. She didn’t make a spectacle of it. She just made damn sure these things didn’t happen, and once everyone figured that out, we helped by sitting next to her, or making certain they never ended up in the same room alone. To my delight, Jack didn’t seem to mind any of this. I couldn’t figure out whether he had no desire to regain his status as her husband, or if he was just showing a hell of a lot of patience.
Jack made more of an effort with George, trying to talk to him from time to time, usually with the same results the rest of us had gotten over the years. Teddy seemed immune to the history of the situation, and gave his father every chance to make up for lost time. In fact he insisted Jack take him fishing, something that Jack had never enjoyed much, especially after George drowned. But to his credit, he often went.
The biggest surprise to me was that Bob and Jack did not hit it off. Not because they didn’t try. But Helen didn’t trust Jack, and in her subtle way, she managed to keep them from spending much time alone. I noticed that even when they were together, Bob talked tentatively, as though Helen might be able to hear him.
“All right, here’s what you have to do,” Jack said. We sat in the barn, Jack on a rail, peeling a potato with his pocketknife, slicing off strips thin as shoelaces. “You have to send her a note, some kind of apology, or thank-you note, something like that, just to let her know you’re still interested. ’Cause she’s going to think that because this other son of a bitch was there, you probably don’t want to see her again.”
“She’d be right about that.” I scooped handfuls of oats into a galvanized pail and carried it over to one of the horses.
“I don’t want to hear that.” The peelings gathered at Jack’s feet, a pile of strips that looked like a bird’s nest.
“She sure would be right about that,” I repeated.
The horse dipped her nose into the pail, and a hot snort blew a hollow into the oats. Her upper lip grabbed at the oats and she began munching. Jack stopped his peeling and turned to me, tilting his head and his shoulders and dropping his hands. “Are you serious? You’re ready to give it up because of one bad afternoon?”
I nodded. “It’s not worth it, Jack. I’ve lived almost forty years without a woman.”
Jack turned back to his potato, sliding the silver blade across the rough brown surface and lift
ing a string of peel. The meat of the potato turned brown from the dirt on Jack’s hands. “There’s some damn nice things about being married, Blake. I know I’m not exactly the one to be giving advice about it, but there’s some things about it that are real nice.”
This was a remarkable statement, I thought, considering how easily Jack had given up on his own marriage. And it made me think. But only for a minute or two. “I guess I’m just not sold on it myself.” I picked up the pail, now empty, and filled it again, ducking into another stall.
“Well, I’m not about to try and talk you into anything,” Jack said.
We sat silent for several minutes, his knife working away at the potato. I stood there wanting to ask him about things—everything. The letter from the army, where he’d been the last ten years, what he’d done, what he’d seen, and of course George. Jack was the only person in our family whose life I knew nothing about. Everyone else had lived their lives in front of each other, unable to hide. But Jack’s secrets were out of reach.
“We all have our secrets, right, Blake?” Jack said, as if he’d read my thoughts. He smiled, then nodded at the barn wall. “Even you. Even the king of morality.”
I was annoyed by this sudden anointing, but also a little amused, and I had to smile.
“I just about swallowed my tongue when David told me about your tryout,” Jack said. “He said you were great.”
I shrugged. “I think I did pretty well, actually.”
“You must have, if the guy offered you a contract.” He chuckled, looking at me and shaking his head. “Damn, I would have liked to have seen Dad’s face if you told him you were going to go play ball. That would have been something.”
I sat soaking this all in. And I thought of questions again, and almost did the same thing I’d always done with Jack—that is, keep it all to myself, just thinking about what I wanted to know, but not asking. Not opening my mouth. But before I could talk myself out of it one more time, I spoke.
In Open Spaces Page 28
