by Jane Rule
“I think Kathy’s already waiting dinner. I’m in no hurry. Come on, Dina.”
“Thanks then. Thanks anyway, Cole. You go on in and have your dinner. I won’t come right back.”
As Dina got into Rosemary’s car, Rosemary said, “I can bring you right back. I really am in no hurry.”
“Neither am I. If you drop me at the shop, I can get Cole to bring me out tonight. He’s coming down anyway, to Nick’s.”
They didn’t say anything else to each other until Rosemary parked in front of George’s.
“Thanks,” Dina said, her hand on the door handle, but she had turned to look at Rosemary. “Are you coming in?”
“Shall I?”
“Up to you,” Dina said, turning away.
It was as much of an invitation as and the only one Rosemary would ever get from Dina. She was not about to refuse it. She followed Dina to the door of the shop and waited while she unlocked it. Then she followed Dina in through the near darkness, cool with scents of wood and cosmetic oils and ashes, into the workshop where stairs led to the second floor. Not until Dina opened the door into her living room did she turn on a light. It was not at all what Rosemary had imagined, this white-walled space, rich with textures and deep colors that came from books and rugs and shawls thrown over tables and chairs. On the windowsill there were fresh daffodils.
“Will you stay for dinner?” Dina asked.
“Yes, thanks.”
Dina went to the kitchen, got things out of a large refrigerator, and turned on the oven.
“Can I help?”
“Nothing much to do,” Dina said. “Nick’s cook sends things over.” She was reading typed instructions, to do with temperatures and times, on several packages, wrapped professionally in foil. “Do you want a drink?”
“Thank you.”
Dina opened a cupboard of bottles and displayed it to Rosemary.
“Ouzo?”
“You like ouzo?”
“Yes,” Rosemary said.
Dina poured a generous two jiggers into the bottom of each of two glasses, then filled a small jug with water, and put all three on a tray.
“Take these in.”
Rosemary put the tray on a table by the couch, looked at half a dozen formally framed snapshots, one of Nick Pyros much younger, one of an old woman in a black shawl who might have been Dina’s mother. Group pictures: one a large peasant family probably in Greece, another a large family dressed in city clothes, on a city street, Chicago, perhaps? New York?
“Give me your coat,” Dina said, standing just behind Rosemary.
For Rosemary that was not possible. The slow, low-flamed need of six years, the moments that collected to hours of standing next, turning toward, only to be offered something, something else—a courtesy—turned her now slowly into Dina’s arms, face offered up to the face that had hovered over her in a thousand fantasies, serene-eyed always. Rosemary’s hands cupped Dina’s head and drew her down to the slow, seeking appetite of her own mouth which could discover against all the barriers of clothes what Dina wanted or could be made to want. But Dina’s mouth, so reluctant in speech, and her body, so solid and stolid in a weight of soft, carefully undefining armor, answered not quickly, no, but with an accepting authority, tongue delicate, then deep, a thrusting entrance into desire, hands lifting and spreading buttocks so that Rosemary must open and cling, her whole weight held into Dina. When she finally felt herself released, she wasn’t sure she could stand. She tried, but kept her arms about Dina’s neck, resting her head on Dina’s shoulder.
“I’ve loved you for six years,” Rosemary said.
Dina moved then, turned Rosemary so that she could take her coat, laid it casually and yet carefully over the arm of a chair, poured a small bit of water into each of the glasses of ouzo, watching the clear liquid swirl gently into milk. She handed one to Rosemary, sat down on the couch, and took Rosemary with her, onto her lap. She gave them time for two sips of the drink, then set the glasses aside.
Rosemary did not know finally how she had become naked. Dina’s hands did not acknowledge or tear at cloth. She touched through it, defining the shapes of breast, belly, thigh, all undoing then without urgency, sexual in itself, hand through nylon, heavy, sure, then on the soft skin of the belly, the hip, the buttocks, gently parted, probed, left quiet for a moment, gradual nakedness, gradual openings everywhere to the hands, the mouth, until Rosemary came to her beyond any fantasy or experience she had ever had. Dina held her gently, as if she were a child, stroked her hair, kissed her temple until she was quiet. Then she held the ouzo for Rosemary to drink from the glass.
“I must get your dinner,” Dina said.
“Darling…”
“Don’t dress. There’s a thing on the hook on the back of the bathroom door… through there.”
Rosemary got up, went through the bedroom where she noticed only a large bed and the sense of other furniture. She sat on the toilet and shook, again like a child, taken to the bathroom in the middle of the night. She had no idea what time it was. Should she take a shower? She didn’t want one. Wash at least. She encountered the mirror before she could wish she hadn’t, but the face she had gradually grown uncertain of was not there. The curling, tangled hair, the dark, desiring eyes, the full, so beautifully used mouth belonged to a younger face, one she had not seen since she had come home, defeated, six years ago. There was no vanity in her pleasure, simply wonder. The robe was red silk. Rosemary put it on without thinking about it, without wondering who had worn it the night before, or the night before that.
When she got back into the living room, she found her clothes very neatly arranged on the chair with her coat, and the table was set. Dina was in the kitchen, still in her boots, lined jeans, and large, obscuring sweater.
“Do you like retsina?” she called.
“Yes.”
To drink what had the faint flavor of resin was to feel uncertain of the nature and needs of the body, slight metaphor for the confusion of wood and flesh, of cloth and skin. Rosemary ate with Dina’s silence.
“Now,” she said, “I want to go to bed with you. I want…”
“I have to get the truck,” Dina said. “Then I drink at Nick’s.”
“But I want you like that,” Rosemary said. “Don’t you want me?”
“A Greek, to marry well, must be a virgin,” Dina said.
It was a joke the more pompous and preposterous for Dina’s serious face, and Rosemary laughed with the same low breakings that were in her speaking.
“Do you want to go drinking?” Dina asked.
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly.”
Only as they were driving silently back to the truck did Rosemary begin to feel uneasy. There was nothing to say, and Dina made no gesture or suggestion as she got out of the car. Cole came down the front steps, as if he had been waiting for her.
“Dina?” Rosemary asked.
“Good night,” Dina said, as she reached for the tire in the back seat.
“I began to think you weren’t coming back,” Rosemary heard Cole say.
“We had dinner.”
Rosemary drove off without speaking to Cole, feeling both older and more foolish than she could quite believe she was. A piece of furniture.
III
THERE HAD ALWAYS BEEN a foursome for games. When they were children, the four were the family. After Mr. Larson died, Ida Setworth took his place, not so inappropriate a substitution as it might appear since, as Beatrice had observed, Ida was archaic and without sympathy from the beginning. When Mrs. Larson died, Maud Montgomery joined them, a luxury she would allow herself away from her invalid husband because she was going to a household of even graver sorrows. Then last year, when Beatrice was finally too ill to sit at the table, Carl Hollinger, widower of a good wife and no children, semiretired minister of God, accepted the fourth position. They were not serious bridge players. Often they played coon hollow instead, a nearly mindless rummy. If they met on Sundays they pla
yed Mah-Jongg, in forgotten deference to that once holy and cardless day.
Kathy had brought Amelia a bowl of milk and a rag for cleaning the pagan ivories, backed in bamboo, the winds and dragons, the dots and characters and bamboos, white, bright teeth of the wall of China to be built, opened, and destroyed that evening by the remnant four; Amelia, Maud, Ida, and Carl.
“It’s what I’d like for my supper, too,” Amelia said. “A bowl of milk.”
“There’s a chicken in the oven,” Kathy said.
“So there is, and I’ll enjoy it.”
“So that I can make chicken sandwiches for later.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“The doctor said, yesterday, maybe I’d go next week,” Kathy said.
“I know,” Amelia said.
“I don’t want it born.”
“Well, you can’t go around eight months’ pregnant for the rest of your life.”
“You’re lame,” Kathy said, as if that cast doubt on Amelia’s statement.
“You’ll be glad once it’s over.”
“I won’t. I’ll have to give it away, and then I’ll have to go home, empty.”
“That’s all right.”
“It isn’t. I don’t want to go. Couldn’t I just come back here? Couldn’t I just go on working for you?”
“You haven’t even finished school.”
“I don’t care about that. I never did. Anyway, they’ll all say things, they’ll…”
“Kathy,” Amelia said, quietly.
“Miss Hopwood said I shouldn’t ask you.”
“Shouldn’t isn’t ever very strong against needing to. Miss Hopwood understands that,” Amelia said, both to comfort and to end the conversation.
“She’s pretty, and she’s not really strict, but she’s not kind the way Miss Jameson is. I hope Miss Jameson’s going to marry Mr. Fallidon.”
“Do you?”
“Oh yes, don’t you?”
“If they’d like to,” Amelia said. “Now go along and get the table set.”
Was it something lacking in her nature, Amelia wondered, that she did not speculate about such matters? The only thing she ever tried to look ahead to was trouble, and even that was an alien exercise which she took on now simply because Sister was not there to do it for her. Beatrice, reader of horoscopes and weather reports, was, just the same, often surprised about what finally did happen. Amelia rarely was. Without expectations to contradict, she could usually see how whatever it was had come about, motives and clues stored for after-the-fact. She was never as well prepared as Beatrice to accept responsibility, though better prepared simply to accept: love, death, a hot day. And Agate? As Rosemary pointed out, whether Amelia was going to be good or bad for Agate wasn’t the issue; there was no one else to take her. That was not, of course, what Amelia would say to Maud Montgomery tonight.
“I’ve taken Rosemary Hopwood’s advice,” Amelia said.
“I don’t believe Rosemary Hopwood is a real social worker. I never have,” Maud said, trying to find the die she had just cast in one of the two lower areas of her trifocals.
“It’s a two, Maud,” Ida said, without aid.
“Just turning up like that,” Maud said, “after her mother died.”
“She has a master’s degree in social work,” Carl said.
“I’m not talking about degrees. I’m talking about the feel of a thing. Anyone who would advise Amelia to take another of these girls is simply not competent.”
“Well,” Carl said, “we’re all too old to be doing what we’re doing, but we go on doing it.”
“If you’re suggesting that I should hire a nurse for Arthur …”
“Not at all,” Carl said. “What would you do with yourself if you did?”
“It’s Arthur I’m thinking about, not myself. He simply couldn’t stand someone he didn’t know doing the things I do for him.”
“He’d have to if you got sick,” Ida said.
“I don’t intend to get sick.”
“Six, Carl,” Ida said. “So, double East, pick up your luck.”
“Thank you,” Carl said, putting the die on his rack. Mah-Jongg was a relatively new game to him, and he often forgot the ritual gestures, which were more important at this table than any concentration on the game itself. This attitude, in his profession, should have suited him well enough, but he never had been able to accept it easily—in church or at the gaming table.
The way some of these young women behave,” Maud said. “They don’t even seem to think they have to get married any more. Harriet Jameson, for instance. She apparently believes she can be anywhere with Peter Fallidon, even in his apartment, as long as she takes her own car. He trails her around the city, following her little Volkswagen as if he were a private detective instead of a bank manager. I think it’s disgraceful.”
Ida smiled, opening her part of the wall. Peter and Harriet driving around after each other all over town did not interest her so much as having seen Rosemary’s car parked in front of George’s last night after the shop was closed. Rosemary interested Ida. She found Harriet frankly dull and was sure that, however silly the arrangement with Peter Fallidon might be, it was perfectly innocent.
“… perfectly innocent,” Amelia was saying.
“Oh, Amelia, every girl in this house is treated as if she were victim of the immaculate conception. Sorry, Carl.”
“Quite all right, Maud. I don’t believe in it myself as anything but a metaphor, though it’s an accurate one.”
“Do you know anything about the new girl?” Ida asked.
“Not a great deal,” Amelia answered. “Her name is Agate.”
“Agate?” Maud repeated.
“Short for Agatha, I suppose.”
A peculiarity of the arrangement was that none of these girls was ever given a last name, except in the records.
“Pung,” Ida said, picking up Carl’s discard. “What color are her eyes going to be?”
“What an odd thing to wonder,” Maud said.
“Dark gray?” Carl suggested.
“They must catch the light anyway,” Ida said.
She had no further help, and Amelia regretted it, but she had nothing in her of Beatrice’s whimsy, which could always encourage Ida in her own.
“Kong,” Maud said.
Amelia drew from the wall, paused, and said, “Mah-Jongg.”
Carl never liked the moment of counting because he could not remember the doubling intricacies of flowers and winds, kongs of dragons. He did not mind being helped, but he was always reminded, by Maud, that technically any help disqualified him. She liked disqualifying people so that she could then be generously forgiving. Carl had promised himself for months that he would read and memorize the scoring, but, once away from the table, he could not feel defensive enough to bother.
“I know I pay everybody double,” he said hopefully.
“And with a count of fifty, you’ll be paying everybody,” Ida said.
Maud glared with a slowly raising head so that she could register disapproval in all three ranges of vision. Ida smiled at her, offering her ivory counters, held out in her frail, ivory hand. Payments made, it was time to build the wall again.
“Their ancient, glittering eyes were gay,” Ida said.
“Yeats?” Carl suggested.
“Yeats,” she said. “About some Chinamen on a mountain.”
“I don’t want to talk about the war,” Maud said, “or anything related to it.”
“Hysterical women,” Ida thought, still in the poem and staying there.
“Pung,” Carl said, resisting a boyish temptation to shout “bonsai!” instead. It was a burden of age to feel more often childish than adolescent. To deal with it, he added, “Old Tom Berger died last Wednesday.”
The other three nodded. They had read the death notices. All four had one thing in common: Ida at seventy-eight, Maud at seventy-five, Amelia at seventy-two, and Carl at seventy did not wonder which one of them w
ould be next. Each one, in relative health and commitment, imagined into at least another five years. It made them, for all their other differences, comfortable companions. They would see each other through a number of other deaths first, as they were still, to some extent, seeing Amelia through Beatrice’s.
“Was that a chest of yours I saw on Dina’s truck today?” Ida asked.
“Yes,” Amelia said. “I’m giving it to Harriet.”
“To Harriet? What for?” Maud asked.
“She liked it,” Amelia said.
“Oh.”
“Is she going to marry Peter Fallidon?” Ida asked.
“I don’t know,” Amelia said.
“I don’t think he’s the marrying kind,” Carl said.
“How do you judge that?” Maud wanted to know. “He’s already a widower.”
“You know, he’s nearly convinced me that this town may still turn into a city,” Amelia said.
“So he doesn’t want you to sell the F Street property?” Maud asked.
“Yes, that,” Amelia said.
Kathy was at the door with the chicken sandwiches.
“Is it that time already?” Amelia asked.
“Ten-thirty, Miss A.”
On a Saturday night they often played whatever they were playing until midnight. On Sunday, though none of them had any reason to consider Monday the beginning of anything, they were careful to stop early. And they could stop in the middle of a rubber or round, in the middle of a hand, since there was never anything at stake, not even their interest. So now they pushed away from the table, variously adapting to their frailties, except for Ida who seemed to have none aside from being frail. Kathy left the sandwiches and came back with thin, hot, nearly bitter chocolate, the only thing Amelia insistently taught all her girls to make, for it was a specialty of the Larson house. Her guests could trust it, no matter who had made it. They were not so confident about the sandwiches, but they ate briefly against the alarms of both butter and mayonnaise, knowing remedies.
“A week from Friday?” Amelia suggested, as she stood with her guests at the door.
They agreed, soft, old lips against the soft, old cheek, careful of dentures. There was only one car in the drive, Carl’s. He helped both his passengers in.
