Hope Falls_Giving a Little

by Frances Elliot

  Emily decided to let that one go by. “What is this, Mom? It doesn’t smell like anything at all.”

  “To be honest, I’m not quite sure. It goes in a squash pudding I decided to try, but I don’t think it’s coming out right.”

  Internet access to untold thousands of recipes delighted her mom but the new dishes were getting mixed reviews. An excellent instinctive cook, she was inclined to “tweak” things a little, with varying results. “Did you follow the recipe this time?” asked Emily.

  “Indeed I did, even though I thought it called for too much sugar for a side dish. Maybe the bourbon offsets that.”

  “Sounds like a dessert to me.”

  Her mom looked at her. “I never thought of that. Well, either way. Here, let me take over and you sit down and tell me everything that’s happened lately. Where’s this Mark you mentioned, by the way?”

  “Mom, it’s about ninety in here. I’m going to run upstairs and change – I’ll be right back.”

  “Might as well -- the oven’s going to be on all day. And find your father and tell him I need the table and chairs and the cot. He needs to get going because the rental place closes at three today.”

  “Fine,” said Emily, “who’s the cot for?”

  “Oh, we’re putting Emma in with you. Abby and Aaron will have the crib in their room and we knew you wouldn’t mind.”

  Actually, she did, a little. She’d been planning on staying up late, eating ice cream and reading romance novels in bed. Oh, well – Emma probably wouldn’t wake for anything short of an earthquake. “That’ll be fine,” she said. “If I need to get away from the crowd I’ll go up to the third floor.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” her mother replied, pouring a bowl of something orange into the saucepan. “Joe will be up on the third floor, I hope.”

  Emily stopped on her way out the door. “Who? Who’s Joe?”

  “Go on and get your father on the road and I’ll tell you all about it when you come back.”

  Emily shrugged and set off in search of her dad in the rambling old house.

  *

  With every passing mile, Joe’s mood dropped another notch. The familiar scenery streamed past, gorgeous as ever, still suitable for a wall calendar titled “Meditations,” and he found himself struggling to resist its peaceful charm. The hard, reliable shell around him was turning out to be far more fragile than he’d thought.

  He’d been okay when he woke up today, still on the floor in the Salt Lake airport. Maybe it was bright clarity of the early morning light, maybe it was the fact that almost every six am traveler held a steaming cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun – two insistently cheerful aromas.

  The too-perky-for-the-hour gate agent assured him he’d be on a flight by eight at the latest and not to stray too far for too long in case they called his name. He lugged his gear into a men’s room and cleaned up a little, deciding the beard would have to wait until tomorrow. Then he found a pleasantly quiet food court and wolfed down a plate of huevos rancheros.

  It was nearly ten-thirty before the airline finally got him to Reno and it was in the airport there that he felt the first hairline crack in his armor. He’d been through here a few times – school trip to D.C., ski trip with his high school buddies, and of course, a couple of family trips when he was a kid.

  He’d almost reached the end of the security area before he turned back down the concourse in search of an open bar. Of which, it seemed, there were many, all pretty well patronized by people getting an early start on the holiday. He knocked back a quick shot of scotch, then sat for a while with a beer, eavesdropping on different conversations so he could avoid thinking.

  Eventually he sighed, got up, made his way out of the terminal and took a deep breath. Damn, he’d been trapped indoors for over twenty-four hours and even the frigid air felt great. He began the trudge away from the airport – the absolute worst place to catch a ride, he’d learned. Everyone was preoccupied and wary.

  His body loosened up as he walked and he kept unwanted thoughts at bay by working on his hitchhiking face. Years ago, a great-looking woman in Texas told him she’d almost passed him by because his grin looked “a little maniacal, like a bad clown or something.” So he’d ditched the crazed grin and then the next driver, a barbed-wire wholesaler, told him he’d pulled over because Joe looked liked a conspiracy theorist.

  “And you stopped anyway?” he’d asked.

  “Hell, kid, I’m going all the way to Kansas City. Conspiracy guys never stop talking, keep me awake and entertained. I love ‘em. Always pick up a man who looks like he knows what’s going on in Area 51.”

  Since Joe thought that guy might represent a rather small percentage of the driving public, he’d gone back to work on his expression, finally coming up with something that seemed to work pretty well. Open, friendly but not too friendly, almost bland. He usually shot for the expression of a local news anchor delivering a baby panda story.

  By the time he got close to the interstate on-ramp, it was past noon and he’d had to wait a while for a lift, partly because a lot of cars going past were already stuffed to capacity. A nice local couple finally stopped and took him all the way to the exit to the state road that led down towards Hope Falls. They were headed for San Francisco and chatted happily with him – had he ever been there?

  In fact he had, but those memories were particularly treacherous so he lied and told them nope, never had the pleasure. Now he was riding with a blackjack dealer and another hitchhiker, an out-of-work ski instructor headed for Tahoe. Joe tried in vain to focus on their conversation, the ribbon of highway ahead, the music on the CD player, anything other than his growing anxiety.

  He knew now he’d made a serious mistake, but he also found a well-known stubbornness settling over him. As usual, he hadn’t thought things through, and now he would have to accept the consequences. A shrink would tell him he was repeating unproductive patterns – it was time to face the past, do the work, wait for the glorious future that would surely follow. Uh-huh.

  The driver had offered to make a short detour to drop him right in town and seemed surprised when Joe declined and told him no thanks, just pull over up ahead and he’d walk the rest, stretch his legs a bit. The whole area was an emotional minefield but there were a few places Joe intended to avoid entirely.

  Fortunately, the Elmore house was on the outskirts of town at the end of a road that petered out into forest. Joe had worked out a mental map that would take him there without passing anything he knew he just couldn’t face.

  When reached the end of the driveway, he started to clamber over the ridge of piled snow there and then stopped, surprised to find his eyes filling with tears – he hadn’t cried in years. But damn. The place looked exactly the way he remembered it – warm friendly stone and weathered white clapboard, red door, smoke curling from one of the chimneys, arrogant-looking black cat on the porch.

  He’d been in the place a lot when he was a kid; his mother would bring him over to play with the older daughter while she and Mrs. Elmore gabbed and discussed their young husbands. There was a shallow creek that ran through the back yard and he and the girl – Abby, that was it – were allowed to sit there with homemade poles and wait for non-existent fish.

  There was another daughter, too young to be worthy of his five-or-six-year-old notice, whose name he couldn’t remember. As the years passed, he’d visited less, because of course girls were stupid and it was infinitely more fun to sit around by himself and play video games or read comic books.

  Brushing the tears away before his eyelashes froze, Joe started up the drive and began working on his expression again. Happy, he could do happy, he knew – he’d worked on it enough. The cat watched him approach, calmly it seemed, then suddenly flattened out and put its ears back as if Joe had brandished a weapon or yelled “Banzai!” As he put a foot on the porch step, it vanished so quickly Joe looked for a puff of smoke. He shrugged and rang the doorbell.

  *
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  Emily had gone back to the kitchen in a Gilmore Girls t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants – clothes she’d found in her old dresser. The squash pudding, whatever it was, was baking and her mom had moved on to pies. Emily cracked one of the kitchen windows, then sat at the table crimping crusts as she explained about Mark, talked about Boston and the next promotion she wanted, got a few updates on friends from high school, and listened to a little family news.

  “So,” she said, after they’d covered most of the basics. “Who’s this Joe you’ve invited to intrude upon our happy family reunion?”

  Her mom was peeling apples and paused. “Of course you remember my friend Marguerite? And the accident…” She trailed off.

  She’d been in eighth grade, but Emily remembered very well; her mother had cried off and on for weeks. Marguerite, her husband and their twelve-year-old daughter had all been killed by a jackknifing logging truck – an incident that shook the entire town.

  “Well, Joe was her son, eighteen at the time. He’d stayed home that night to study.” Her mom paused again and reached for a dishtowel to dry her eyes. She shook herself a little and went on.

  “He was a wonderful boy, so sweet and always so helpful, played all the sports, worked hard, got a scholarship, to Stanford, no less. Abby had a terrible crush on him until she met Aaron junior year.”

  The daughter who died had been a grade behind her, but Emily didn’t even know there’d been a son. What had she been thinking about in her junior high world? Boys, she supposed. Boys and TV shows and her clothes and whether or not she’d make the softball team or something else terribly important at the time. “What happened to him?”

  Her mom picked up the apple again. “It was terrible. He just closed down. Wouldn’t talk with anyone, wouldn’t accept any help – I tried to get him to move in here with us but no, he wouldn’t have it. And of course, legally he was an adult. He went through the last six weeks of high school like a zombie and graduated, but didn’t go to the ceremony. And the next day he just disappeared. Without a word to anyone and I knew. Somehow I knew he wasn’t coming back.”

  She sighed and went on. “I went over to the house and he’d left everything clean and tidy, but his sister’s bed was unmade and I realized he probably couldn’t make himself go in there. The freezer was still full of casseroles people had taken over after the funeral. Your father and I closed the place up and it’s still just sitting there. Some of the kids on that block say it’s haunted.”

  What a horrible, horrible story. Emily wasn’t proud of it, but she kept thinking how gloomy it was going to be having this guy around the house all weekend. What had possessed her mom to invite him?

  “How in the world did you find him? Did he call here or something, after what, fifteen years?”

  “Almost sixteen.” Her mother got up and took down a cutting board. “No, no, we’ve been in touch for a while. He sent a letter saying he was sorry, for what I’m sure I don’t know, and told me he had an email address and he goes to libraries sometimes and checks it. So we’ve been writing back and forth occasionally, but he never says much. You could have knocked me over with a feather when he said he’d try to come for Thanksgiving.”

  Me, too, thought Emily. Well, there was nothing she could do except make the best of it. Sounded like the guy would probably keep pretty much to himself, anyway. “Well, Ma, I’m done with the crusts, what’s my next job?”

  Her mom seemed lost in thought, staring out the window with an apple in her hand. “Oh,” she said, blinking a little. “I don’t know what I’ve done with my list and I’m lost without it. You want to go out to the sun porch and start on the centerpiece? Or I know – give your sister a call and find out if they’ve landed yet.”

  “They’re renting a car?”

  “Yes. And while you’re at it, call your father, too and tell him not to forget the liquor store. God forbid we find ourselves without a bottle of wine with a fancy label when your cousin Alec arrives.” Her mom was smiling again. “Which reminds me – go hide the gin bottle. Your uncle seems to be fine with anything else but gin turns him mean.”

  Ooh, this was sort of interesting – which uncle had the gin problem, her dad’s brother Morris or Herb, the oddball who married her mom’s sister? Probably Herb – he was unpredictable at the best of times. Of course, that certainly applied to Aunt Dottie as well. Ah, family, she thought. Can’t wait.

  Emily got her phone and found her sister and family were less than an hour away, “unless Emma didn’t settle down and they had to turn the car around and go right back home,” and caught her father leaving the liquor store “with enough hootch for a shipload of sailors.” She was headed for the liquor cabinet when the doorbell rang.

  “Can you get the door, dear?” her mother yelled. “And tell whoever it is to hang up their coat?”

  George, barking ferociously, beat her to the door and Emily patted his head, telling him for the hundredth time that burglars didn’t usually ring for admittance. She swung the door open and looked out at one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen. With shock, she recognized him as the hitchhiker they’d passed in Reno – now there was another reason to regret her negativity.

  Because up close, this man had an impact that left Emily feeling slightly dazed, as if she’d just awakened from a nap and couldn’t figure out how long she’d been asleep. She hadn’t noticed until this instant, but she’d grown used to big-city guys – somehow slightly tamed, always “put-together,” as though they’d worked on their scruffy hipster look.

  She’d forgotten what men like this were like – casually, authentically male. The slightly too long light brown hair that curled over the collar of his battered sheepskin coat, the day-old beard, the flushed cheeks and soft-looking lips – that was all pretty good, thought Emily, but it was the smell of him that was making her dizzy. Underneath the fresh air, clean snow scent was something else – a whiff of exertion from the warm body in the cold air.

  He was turned slightly, staring into the bushes beside the door with a puzzled expression. “Honest to god, I swear there was a cat here less than a second ago,” he said, turning back to her.

  His eyes were a soft, sweet brown and Emily saw something naturally warm and gentle as they looked into hers and widened very briefly. Then there was an abrupt change, a click as if a light had gone out, and the warmth was extinguished and replaced with look that was pleasant, but remote.

  A strange sense of loss swept through Emily and she found herself wanting, longing, to see the other look again. Having glimpsed it, she wondered if she’d ever forget it. “That was Flash,” she managed to say in a voice that sounded reasonably normal.

  “Good name,” he said. “I’m Joe Chandler, and I sure hope I’m expected.”

  “I’m Emily Elmore,” she said, adding for some reason, “I don’t live here.”

  Two adorable vertical lines appeared above his nose as he looked at her, puzzled again. Emily wanted to reach up and smooth them with her fingertip. “Okay, I’ll bite. Where do you live?” he said.

  “Oh.” For a split second, she couldn’t remember. “Boston. Massachusetts.”

  “As opposed to…?”

  “What?”

  “Are there other Bostons?”

  He was smiling a little and Emily realized he knew exactly how he was affecting her. Probably happens with every woman he meets, she thought, feeling suddenly miffed. “There are probably lots,” she said, which didn’t really make any sense at all. “Mom?” she yelled in desperation.

  Her mother came down the hall with a vegetable peeler in her hand saying, “Is it the paper boy? I don’t know where my purse…” She stopped abruptly, then almost ran the rest of the way to throw her arms around Joe and hug him tightly.

  Emily reached to take the peeler, stepped back and saw a curious thing. Joe had wrapped his arms around her mother to return the hug, and she saw him suddenly lift his hands, fingers splayed, away from her mother’s back as though he
’d been burned.

  Her mom broke the embrace saying, “Let me get a look at you. Oh, well, we can fatten you up over the next few days. Here, let me take your coat and you’ll come into the kitchen for a nice talk.”

  Emily watched in amazement as her mother actually tossed a coat over a chair, a cardinal sin in this home. Taking Joe by the arm, she headed back to the kitchen. “I’ll bet you didn’t have any lunch. I’ll make you a sandwich and you can eat while we chat. Oh, Emily, are you hungry too?” she called back over her shoulder.

  “I’m fine, Mom. I’ll be back in a minute – I’m just going to run the gin upstairs.”

  She saw Joe glance swiftly back at her and raise his eyebrows, then smile. An explanation rose to her lips, but instead she smiled back and shrugged. He already knows, she thought, he knows I’m not a gin guzzler, he’s just curious. Funny, that little crooked smile of his made her feel as if they were allies in some strange way.

  After collecting the bottle, she went upstairs, set it on her dresser and took a minute to collect herself. She looked in the mirror and wished she could fix herself up a little – Gilmore Girls, really? And a little make-up wouldn’t hurt, but it would be ridiculous if she went back down looking as if she’d been primping.

  In the kitchen she found her mom at the counter, carving thick slices off a leftover ham. Joe was sitting with his hands folded in front of him, staring at the empty surface of the table. “…and maybe you’ll remember Aaron from high school, I think he played some kind of ball with you,” her mother was saying.

  “Running down the personnel for him, Mom?” said Emily.

  “I’m lost already,” Joe said. “I, uh, didn’t know you were expecting so many people.”

  Emily saw that he looked a little…edgy, as though he might be plotting an escape. “Well, you don’t really have to keep everybody straight,” she said hurriedly. “They’ll do all the talking, anyway.”