Cold Tea on a Hot Day

by Matlock, Curtiss Ann

  Marilee was amazed. “Carl won eleven thousand dollars?”

  “Yes, he did. He didn’t know how much he had won by the time he came up to the room. He had a bucket, but he had chips stuck all in his coat and pants pockets. I pulled one out of each of his shoes, even. Heaven knows what he was thinking, but he had tucked them in his shoes.

  “I took all of those out of his clothes, and I went downstairs and cashed them in. There was nearly fifteen hundred dollars from just in his clothes. He never knew when he woke up. He just remembered about the bucketful. And then, while we were waitin’ for our cab, he went in there and lost that entire bucket at the blackjack table.”

  “Oh.”

  “I never did tell him about that fifteen hundred dollars I got out of his clothes. He remembered the five hundred he’d given me and wanted that, but I wouldn’t give it to him. I told him I had paid it on his drink bill.” Her mother’s voice dropped. “I want you to help me get it into the bank down there in Valentine. Carl won’t know about it there. I want you to help me choose a CD.”

  Marilee sat there a minute. Then she said, “The bank will help you choose a CD. I wanted to tell you that Parker and I are not getting married.”

  She did not know why every conversation with her mother seemed as if they each spoke a foreign language.

  Twenty-Three

  Seize the Day

  He spilled his guts to his mother, in her kitchen at 6:00 a.m., over morning coffee. His mother had already had her meditation and yoga workout, and having slept very little, he had lain in his bed, listening to her stir.

  He had, he realized, come running to her just as he always had, despite being a man of a certain age. He was also quite amazed at his level of heartache. He simply had not known what was going on inside him until he had arrived at his mother’s house and found he didn’t want to bathe or shave.

  Now that he had poured out his difficulty of wanting a woman he could not have, he didn’t feel any better, either. If anything, he felt worse.

  His mother’s response was not a great deal of help. When he had finished with his sad tale of love rejected, she said, “So she got engaged, and you ran off.”

  Tate did not appreciate this take on the situation. “I let go. I quit tryin’ to make it be my way. She’s made her choice. I’m not going to beat my head against a brick wall to change things I cannot change.”

  “Oh, pshaw…all she did was get engaged.” She sipped her ginseng tea. “You can let go but still stay around to see what happens and see if things are eventually going to go your way. What you did was more like giving up. Two different things entirely.”

  Tate was stung. He had not expected this criticism.

  “People often change their minds, most especially about being engaged,” his mother continued. “You don’t know that she might not have changed her mind the next day. You were too busy runnin’ off because of your hurt pride.”

  As Tate saw it, a man did have his pride.

  “You’re down here, so you aren’t goin’ to know what is goin’ on up there. You say this Parker fella isn’t right for your Marilee. Well, it may take time for her to realize this. What if she realizes it while you’re down here pitying yourself?”

  “I am not pitying myself.” Tate did not appreciate the picture his mother painted of him. He smoothed his hair and got up to refill his coffee, real coffee, not some health-nut stuff his mother wanted to palm off on him.

  Grudgingly, he could admit to slogging around in a bit of pity. Maybe ankle deep.

  “You wanted my opinion, and I’m givin’ it. Get back up there and see what develops.”

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion,” he clarified. “I just wanted you to listen…and to make me feel better.” He was disappointed and annoyed, and felt very childish.

  His mother got up and came over, kissed him and hugged him hard. “There you go.”

  Just before noon, the door opened and Charlotte looked up to see a man enter. Young, in his twenties, thin as a rail, and wearing his slacks high at his waist. Her mother would have told him to jerk his trousers down where they belonged. It was, however, his great height that arrested her attention; she found herself looking at his thighs, and then her gaze moved upward, higher and higher, to six and a half feet at the very least.

  “Hello. I’m Sandy Conroy.”

  “Hello…Mr. Conroy,” Charlotte said, as she slowly stood, until she was straight as a rod. Finally, at long last, she was looking upward at a man. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Mr. Holloway.”

  “I’m sorry. Mr. Holloway is out of town. Was he expecting you?”

  “Well, no…well, yes, ma’am, but he was expectin’ me next week. He’s hired me to do layout. I was supposed to be in next week, but I decided to come on down.”

  Charlotte saw his blush and instantly drew the conclusion that there was a story behind his coming early. The most likely scenario would be a breakup with his girlfriend.

  “I should have called, I guess.” He looked at a loss.

  “I can show you to your desk,” Charlotte said so quickly that he blinked. She suddenly was not going to take a chance on him leaving.

  “Oh, I’m Charlotte Nation. I’m the receptionist and general do-all person.”

  She put out her hand, and he shook it with some eagerness. “Glad to meet you, ma’am.” At his touch Charlotte thought something happened to her. She seemed to lose coherent thought.

  Seeking to regain her poise, she strode firmly back to the office cubicle that had belonged to their former layout artist, gesturing along the way at the empty desks—“The paper is put to bed, so everyone sort of scatters, and Leo has taken the disks to the printer…he’ll see to the deliveries later.”—and Zona’s office, telling him the names of his new colleagues. She was thrilled to be walking beside a man who stood a full head taller than herself.

  She had to knock dust off the desk. Only then did she notice he carried a bulging case with him, likely a portable computer. “This space hasn’t been used much since we lost our layout man, several months ago now. June uses the long table some.”

  He placed his case on the desk and looked around. He was shy, and quite suddenly Charlotte felt very shy. It was such a foreign emotion that she didn’t know how to handle it. She had no idea of where to lay her eyes, because she found she could not meet his gaze.

  “There’s the coffee machine,” she said gesturing. “Oh, only there isn’t any coffee made, since the editor is out. But you can help yourself to the cold drinks in the refrigerator…if there are any. I don’t know. I haven’t looked today. I like mixed juice drinks, but I haven’t brought any down this week. Sometimes the editor puts Orange Crush in there. Do you like that?”

  She was rattling and just came out with the question, while what she was really thinking as she gazed into his soft brown eyes was: Are you free and open to an older woman, and would you possibly like Chinese food, which is my favorite?

  “Yes, I like Orange Crush,” he said, seeming a little surprised at the question.

  “Well, help yourself. Look around. I’ll leave you to settling in.” She was backing up. “If you need anything, let me know.”

  She beat a retreat to her desk, sat herself squarely, and sought to find her familiar composed, even cool, self. Goodness. She was shy. This was quite a surprise. It had never happened to her before. She did not care for the feeling.

  As she struggled to bring herself into some order, she attempted to focus on her computer screen, while her eyes were repeatedly drawn back to the young man moving around in his glass cubicle. The ringing of the phone was a welcome interruption.

  “Charlotte?” It was the editor.

  “Yes. It’s a good thing you called.”

  “It didn’t sound like you. Why? What’s happened? Is there trouble with the Wednesday edition?”

  She was a little surprised at his rapid-fire questions. Her boss did not usually speak so fast. He sou
nded almost as if he wanted trouble. “No trouble with the paper. It’s a light edition, already gone to the printer. But the layout artist you hired—Sandy Conroy—has shown up.”

  “I wasn’t expecting him until next week.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Well, make him welcome. You can show him his desk and stuff.”

  “I did.” Did he think she’d thrown him out? “He’s at his desk now. Do you want to speak to him?”

  Her editor said he did want to talk to the “young man.” Charlotte called back, “Mr. Conroy, the editor is on the phone for you,” and punched the button.

  Sandy Conroy was looking wide-eyed at her through his window. Then his phone rang, and he answered it. Charlotte sat there thinking that he wasn’t all that young. He had just taken a responsible position at a newspaper.

  The two men conversed for some minutes, and then Sandy Conroy lifted his head right over his cubicle window and hollered, “He wants to talk to you again, Miss Charlotte.”

  She snatched up the phone and pressed the button. Her editor told her the young man was starting immediately and to have Zona cut him a check for a week’s pay. He then wanted to know who won the council seat, and she told him it was Jaydee Mayhall by a landslide. “He was embarrassing going on about it, and then him and Juice got into it so bad that Sheriff Oakes hauled them in for disorderly conduct last night. Marilee interviewed them both at the jailhouse, right after they were let out. Reggie got a picture, too.”

  “I’ve missed some excitement,” he said. “Where is Marilee? I called her house, but no one answered. She didn’t go get married today, did she?”

  “Oh, no. Marilee and Parker broke up.”

  “They broke up?”

  Her editor fairly yelled, and this got her attention. She had been concentrating so hard on an unobtrusive way to ask about Sandy Conroy’s age that she had not fully processed his question, which, now that she thought of it, was a very telling one.

  “When?” he demanded.

  “Well…they were broke up on Monday.” She had not asked Marilee when, and she didn’t think it really mattered, although she clearly saw the situation now.

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “You weren’t here, and I did not know you particularly wanted to know.” Okay, that dealt with, she said in a hoarse whisper, “How old is Sandy Conroy?”

  “Uh…twenty-five. And, Miss Charlotte, don’t let Marilee get back engaged to that idiot before I get there.”

  “I don’t think I can do anything about what Marilee does.” Her editor was getting carried away.

  “I put you in charge of it—and in charge of helping Sandy Conroy find a place to live, so you owe me. I’ll be there tonight.” And the line clicked dead.

  She sat there, wondering how she could have been so blind to her editor’s inclinations toward Marilee, but then her gaze slipped over, and she was looking through the window of Sandy Conroy’s office again. It was only an eleven-year difference. That wasn’t so much. And he was taller than she was. He was so tall that she could once again wear high heels.

  What she thought was something along the lines of: Seize the day. She had spent too long mooning after Leo, Sr., and many others before him, men who were too short to be fully satisfying, and usually married or otherwise beyond her reach. She had done this because she was afraid to reach out. Now, here before her, was a real chance, and she was going to go forward and take it.

  She pushed her chair away from her desk, took up her purse and walked back toward the young man’s office. On the way she poked her head inside Zona’s cracked door and said, “Zona, Editor says cut a week’s check for Sandy Conroy. We’ll pick it up later. I’m leaving for the day. You are now in charge.”

  She proceeded onward so quickly that she caught the barest glimpse of Zona’s shocked expression.

  “The editor said for me to help you find an apartment. Would you like to go check out some places, and then possibly have supper?” She was no longer shy. She knew what she wanted. Her ship had come in.

  “Well…yes, thank you.” His grin was shy but wide.

  As she walked beside him out the door, she dared to slip her arm through his, and she stood straight and tall.

  After some minutes, Zona came to her door and peeked her head out, looking around at the huge empty room. Slowly she opened her door wider and left it that way. Everyone was getting too lax in the workings of this paper, and the responsibility to hold the fort apparently had fallen to her. She could do this, for Ms. Porter.

  Tate told his mother, “Okay, you were right.”

  She did not ask what about but said simply, “I won’t ever say I told you so.”

  In twenty minutes he had his bags packed, Bubba stuffed into his carrier, and was loading his car. His mother brought him a mason jar of cold tea with lots of ice, just like the ones she would pack in the old days, for working in the cotton fields. For an instant, memory of how cool and sweet the tea would be on his tongue and going down his hot throat washed over him.

  “Thanks, Mom,” he said and kissed her cheek.

  “You’re welcome, and now remember: everything will turn out how it is supposed to, and in its own time.”

  “That isn’t what you were saying this mornin’.”

  “I could not say it then, because you were running away, upsetting the flow of life. Go back up there and get into the flow.”

  She was standing in her little yard, watching after him, as he drove away with the salty air of the Gulf blowing around his windshield. He gauged that he could get to Valentine in less than seven hours. And he supposed he had within his reach the best secrets of life: cold sweet tea and a high heart.

  When Perry came driving down the street, Vella was sitting on the front porch, drinking iced tea flavored with her own mint leaves. She had not wanted to start sitting on her porch; that was something her mother and other old ladies did. However, she had been taken with a new set of wicker furniture on sale up at the Home Depot, really pretty, newfangled wicker that went through anything and never molded, so the brochure said.

  Her front porch was beautiful with it, and once she had sat down in the chair, she found it rather relaxing, sitting there, gazing out at the street, watching the birds and rabbits, a blue jay harass a cat. Certainly it wasn’t as bad as she had anticipated. She didn’t feel any older or more depressed sitting on the front porch than she did sitting anywhere else. In fact, it did seem to soothe her.

  Sitting there, she was quite surprised to see Perry’s black Lincoln approaching in the middle of the morning. She did not think she had ever seen him go anywhere outside the pharmacy before five o’clock in the afternoon, not in a decade, since they had buried his brother in a morning service. She felt a flicker of anticipation. Of hope, and it ran along the lines of her husband dashing up in the driveway and saying he had come to be the man she had married.

  Watching the black Lincoln more or less crawl along the street at an incredibly slow pace, however, she squashed that fantasy down in the manner of swatting a fly. Get real, Vella. The black Lincoln turned into the driveway so slowly that it looked like it might just roll back out again. Vella found herself tensing, as if trying to give the car a helping hand. Somebody needed to tell Perry that if he couldn’t drive with more conviction, he needed to get off the road.

  When he got out of the car, he hitched up his pants and gave a look around, then started up the walk. About halfway along, his head came up and he saw her for the first time. He sort of jumped, his eyes widening.

  “It’s me,” she said. Who in the world did he expect to find here?

  He did not reply, and she might have known he would not.

  He came up the walk and stopped at the foot of the stairs. Lord, he looked awful. Her gaze moved back and forth from her husband to his car, which she noticed had stuff piled inside it at the same time that she took note that his shirt looked as if he had deliberately squashed it into a ball befo
re putting it on. He needed a haircut, and his pants were sagging. He looked generally wrung out. How would anyone confidently accept a prescription filled by this man?

  “My television took out down at the store.” He squinted at her. “I came for the one in the kitchen.” He squinted at her.

  “It isn’t in the kitchen anymore. I put it in the closet under the stairs. You’re welcome to it.”

  He stood there a moment more, then started up the stairs, holding to the handrail, his head bent, as if to watch carefully his footsteps that trudged.

  Oh, Lord, oh, Lord. Vella felt emotions, like bubbles, erupt from deep within her and move upward: pity, resentment, regret, guilt.

  She sat very still. Perry opened the door and went inside. The storm door closed after him. Shifting her gaze to his car, she saw shirts hanging at the back window. It looked like clothes were lying over the front seat. Panic mounted. Was he living in his car? Had he come to this? Whatever would she do?

  She was not responsible for him; he was a man grown. If he could not take the initiative to go to a motel or do his laundry, so be it. She was not his mother. She picked up her glass of tea, drank deeply and wrestled with her demons, trying to bring out her better self, but uncertain as to just what that entailed. She had been uncertain about this for some time. Lord, help!

  Perry, standing with the door of the closet open, cocked his head, listening for his wife to come inside. He wished she would come inside and start a conversation.

  Moving slowly, still listening, he bent into the closet and hefted out the television; it was a little heavier than he had anticipated. He wondered at Vella having hauled it into the closet. He felt like a wimp, and he jerked it up, got it out of the closet, and then he felt stuck with a kink in his back. He had the fleeting thought that maybe in carrying it he would suffer a heart attack. Vella would not be able to boot him out then.