by Lee Martin
One dining room wall had a painting of apples in a basket—red and yellow apples that looked so real Ancil could taste them each time he looked at that picture. The dining table, an old oak drop-leaf, had newspapers scattered over it and the mail that he’d carried in from the box just minutes ago: a circular from McKim’s IGA, the water bill, and a late Christmas card from Lucy’s pen pal in Oklahoma, a woman Ancil knew only through the photo she sent each year at the holidays, a picture of her and her husband. He was in a wheelchair, a skinny man with a pencil moustache. She wore what was obviously a wig—black, lustrous hair down over her shoulders—and she had gaps between her big teeth. Now that was a couple some stranger might take an interest in, but Ancil and Lucy? He didn’t think so. They were dry as dust, unremarkable in every way. They’d lived in that house over fifty years, Ancil pulling on his overalls every morning and grabbing his lunch bucket and heading to work on a section gang for the B & O Railroad, Lucy asking him to zip her up, please. He’d always liked that, the way she turned her back to him, her bra strap showing, and he took the zipper tab and ran it up from her waist and then closed the hook and eye at the top where the knobs of her vertebrae raised up beneath her skin.
“Thanks, sweets,” she always said, and then blew him a kiss on her way out the door, heading uptown to have coffee with her girlfriends before working behind the counter at Piper’s Sundries.
Fifty-five years together, fifty-two of them in this house. Retired now, still in reasonably good health, no scrapes with the law, property taxes always paid on time, lawn tended in the summertime, walks and driveway kept clear in the winter. Good neighbors. Now, as he continued to follow those tracks in the snow—Red Wing, Red Wing, Red Wing— Ancil felt at loose ends. Someone had Lucy and him in his sights.
Lucy was in the kitchen getting supper started, so he didn’t linger there, only long enough to see her at the sink, peeling potatoes, her back humped up, no longer the straight-backed girl who’d asked him to zip her dress. She was his “old girl,” he always said. He was her “old man.” They’d had years and years together, so many of them that they’d nearly forgotten the boy and girl they’d once been. But on occasion, he might surprise her with a kiss, and she’d say, “Old man, don’t start something you can’t finish.”
At one time, they’d seen the world together and brought it back in pieces: the music box from Switzerland, the lace table runner from England, the cuckoo clock from Germany. Decorative plates from Washington, D.C., New York City, Boston, Chicago, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, San Francisco, Hollywood, Miami Beach hung on the kitchen walls.
What was any of that to make them worth the attentions of a peeping Tom?
Ancil stood at the bedroom window and looked in. It gave him the oddest feeling to see the details of his and Lucy’s life together on display. Here were the most intimate things, the ones they never meant for anyone to see: the pint bottle of Crown Royal and the shot glass on his nightstand—just a nip before bed each night to help him sleep. The crumpled tissues on Lucy’s stand from where she’d awakened in the night, crying, because an inexplicable sadness came over her. “Well, old man,” she told him when he asked, “it’s just so hard to say why.”
Her collection of porcelain dolls on the shelves. She had a name for each, and sometimes she talked baby talk to them. That always embarrassed him a little, much the way he felt now as he stood there, looking at them the way the peeping Tom must have done.
What else had he seen?
Had he seen Ancil coming to bed in his pajamas, the shirt buttoned to the top button, a white handkerchief folded in the pocket? Had he seen Lucy in her sweatpants and thermal shirt, her heavy breasts loose beneath it? Had he seen their toothless mouths, their cheeks caved in, and the way they slept with their backs turned to each other, he on his side of the bed and she on hers? Had he wondered, as Ancil did now, how they’d ever managed all those years together? No children and now just the two of them to take care of each other, all the way out here on the edge of town in this unremarkable house, a house of last chances.
Only when Ancil thought this thought to himself, he confused a word and it came out “a house of lost chances,” and all the while he stood at the burn barrel, setting a match to a piece of newspaper in the trash and watching the flames lick up above the rim, he found himself overwhelmed with a great sadness that had something else smoldering at its edges, something he couldn’t quite name until he went back inside the house and Lucy asked him what had taken him so long with the trash, and he said he’d been checking the bird feeders.
“You just filled them this morning,” she said, and she said it in a voice that was impatient and severe. She stood at the stove, frying potatoes for their supper, and she banged the metal spatula twice on the edge of the pan. “Good God, old man,” she said.
He felt it again, that thing that was rimming his sadness, and he knew the name to give it. Rage. A smoldering rage drawn up from somewhere deep inside him, brought there by the man—whoever he was—who had looked through their windows.
That night in bed, Ancil couldn’t fall asleep. The Crown Royal hadn’t done the trick, and as he tried to decide whether to have another drink, he found himself listening to the noises of the house. With each click of the furnace coming on, each pop of a roof joist contracting in the cold, he imagined that the peeping Tom had returned and was standing outside the bedroom window.
Lucy lay beside him, sound asleep, and it only stoked his anger to know that he couldn’t tell her what had him on edge. Someone had come looking to see what he might find, and because he had, Ancil was feeling every regret and sadness of his life with Lucy with a sharpness that left him raw with guilt. He’d never be able to tell her any of that. What would be the use? Here they were, toward the end of their years. What would he gain by saying hurtful things to her now?
Still, she seemed to notice that something was bothering him. The next day, as they ran their errands uptown, she said, “Cat got your tongue?”
They’d just come out of the bank, where they’d deposited their social security checks and kept a little cash for spending money. The teller, a girl Ancil recognized but whose name he couldn’t recall, counted out the cash, and then said to Lucy, “Now he can take you out on a date.”
“Oh, we’re too old,” Lucy said. She tapped the bills on the counter to square them and then slipped them into her wallet. “That lovey-dovey stuff is for you young folks. We’re done with all of that.”
The way she said it so quickly, and in a flat voice with no hint of humor at all, shook Ancil. Again, it was as if a window had opened to their lives, and he felt ashamed to be on display, the young woman knowing the truth: he and Lucy, whoever they’d been in the past, were now nothing more than companions. He knew that should be enough—a blessing—but now that the peeping Tom had come and Ancil had taken a hard look at his years with Lucy, it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.
So when she asked him if the cat had his tongue, he said, “I can’t talk to you right now.” He heard the catch in his own voice, that hiccup of air that braced against tears. “I just can’t.”
“Old man?” Lucy said. “What’s wrong?”
The sun was out, but in the miserable cold, the dusting of new snow that had fallen overnight was packed and frozen on the sidewalk. Ancil knew if he tried to tell Lucy what was troubling him, he’d make a mess of things. He could tell her about the footprints in the snow and how he’d followed them and stood at the windows looking in and seen what the peeping Tom had seen and how that had left him feeling empty and sad and angry, but where would that lead them? Only to the truth, which was complicated and well beyond Ancil’s ability to express. Even if he could, how would he begin to tell Lucy that as much as he’d loved her all these years, he’d come to regret the life they’d stumbled through together?
“Ancil?” Lucy said, her voice, this time, full of what he himself was feeling, a tremendous fear of what he might say next.
He couldn
’t look at her. He watched two pickup trucks, their fenders gray with road salt, bump their way over the railroad crossing. Across the street, at Ferguson’s Market, Lucy’s next stop, a high school boy wearing a red sock hat and a black insulated coat under his white apron came out with a bag of Ice Melt and started scattering it on the walkway. He was singing that song about a tropical heat wave as he worked, just a boy in high spirits on a cold day. The wind was still out of the north, pushing snakes of loose snow in squiggly lines down Main Street.
Ancil knew he and Lucy would have to move soon. They couldn’t stay there outside the bank in the cold and the wind much longer. They’d have to cross the street and do their grocery shopping and make the drive home and eat some lunch and turn on the radio and listen to the local news on WAKO the way they always did, and when it was over, he’d snap off the radio and the silence would settle around them, and there they’d be.
Ancil knew he could stop that from happening. He could stop so much from happening if he’d only say what had been troubling him ever since yesterday, when he’d stood at the bedroom window and taken in what the peeping Tom had seen. I wish you’d kept the baby. If you’d done that, our lives would be different.
But because he was a cowardly man, and always had been, he didn’t say that. He looked down at his feet, amazed by what he saw. There, imprinted in the crust of snow covering the sidewalk, was a footprint and then another, a trail of prints headed south, each of them saying, Red Wing.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said to Lucy. He even reached out and patted her on the arm. “You go on to Ferguson’s,” he said. “You wait for me there when you’re done. Go on. I just remembered something I forgot.”
He didn’t give her a chance to respond. He just started walking. He looked back once and saw that she was still standing there. He lifted his arm to wave at her, and she did the same. Her wave, hesitant and shy as if she were a child, nearly broke his heart and he almost went back—the thought of the two of them apart even for a short time overwhelmed him—but there were those tracks in the snow, and he had to know where they led and who might be waiting at the end of them.
LUCY
What a puzzle he was to her sometimes, even after all these years. What a mystery all men were, really, with their silent hearts. That’s what she was thinking as she crossed the street and stepped up onto the sidewalk along Ferguson’s Market where the box boy, one of Hattie Mack’s towheaded grandsons, was just then finishing up with the Ice Melt.
“Here now, let me help you,” he said, offering Lucy his arm. “Wouldn’t want you to slip.”
“You’re just like your granddad,” she said. “You’re a gentleman just like him.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy said, and she took his arm and let him usher her safely inside the store.
Lucy bowed her head and kept a watchful eye on her feet. She noticed the boy was wearing what appeared to be new boots.
“Were they a Christmas present?” she asked.
“Ma’am?”
“Your boots.”
The boy looked down at his feet. He lifted the right one and turned it to the side. “My gramps got them for me.”
Lucy nodded. “They look like the ones he always wore.”
“You remember what boots he wore?” the boy said, amazed.
“Oh, I’m well acquainted with your granddad. You be sure to tell him Lucy says hello.”
Yes, she knew Burton Mack and could have told his grandson things about his grandfather that she wondered if even Hattie knew—like the fact that when he was a younger man he worked summers on the section gang with Ancil. Then when autumn came, he went back to college in Champaign, where he was studying agriculture. Ancil said he’d never heard of such a thing. All that money and time spent learning to be a farmer. Wasn’t that something a man knew from doing it?
When Burton finally came back with his diploma and settled into farming with his father, he brought a bride with him. Hattie was the one who insisted on calling him Burton—not Burtie like everyone else—and wearing white gloves and sun hats covered with plastic flowers and sending away to St. Louis for just the right living room set—it’s Danish modern, she said—and otherwise making a snooty show of herself. At least that’s how it appeared to Lucy.
Oh, there was so much she could tell Mrs. Hattie Mack if she took a mind to. She could tell her that she remembered when Burtie Mack was a boy who was just becoming a man. Broad shoulders and bulging arms, Vitalis Hair Tonic, Aqua Velva aftershave, a scent Lucy still recalled from time to time, like she did now as she grabbed a wire shopping cart inside Ferguson’s. Oh, yes, she could tell anyone who wanted to know that Burtie always wore Aqua Velva and bought Wilkinson Sword double-edged blades for his safety razor. He liked to eat braunschweiger sandwiches with thick slices of longhorn cheese, and he always put salt in his Schlitz beer. He kept a Camel cigarette behind his left ear, within easy reach when he wanted it, as he often did after their lovemaking. She’d snuggle in close to him, her head on his chest, the two of them in the backseat of his Chevy Impala pulled back into the woods down a Marathon oil lease road, and she’d listen to the steady beat of his heart and let herself believe that they could go on and on like that and Ancil would never know.
Those were the days of autumn, glorious sunny days before the turn to winter, Indian summer days when Burtie would come home from Champaign at the end of the week to help his father with the corn harvest. Fridays were theirs. He’d pick her up in his Impala after lunch and they’d go driving in the country. She’d scoot over next to him on the bench seat like a schoolgirl, and he’d drape his arm over her shoulders. Her Burtie. Aren’t you afraid someone might see us? he asked her once, and she told him, Let ’em look.
He told her she was brazen and she said that suited her just fine. She could still recall her brassy red hair and how it lifted from her shoulders in the warm air that came through the Impala’s windows. Sometimes she didn’t wear any underthings, so when he slid his hand under her dress, up her bare leg, he’d find her moist and ready. She didn’t stop to consider why she needed this. She only knew that she did. On occasion, she felt how much it would hurt Ancil if he ever knew, but she convinced herself he’d never find out.
Then one afternoon, Burtie drove her back into town from the west, sticking to the gravel roads as he always did, past the cow pastures and the old Hadley School and the cornfields where the pickers were going up and down the rows. The air smelled of the corn dust, a smell Lucy would always associate with Burtie.
“Where’s this all going?” she asked him. “You and me?”
“Does it have to be going anywhere, Lucy? You’re a married woman.”
“That doesn’t always mean forever,” she said.
“You’d leave Ancil?”
“Might.”
Burtie slowed down and took a long look at her. “You say that,” he said, “but I doubt that you mean it.” “Want to try me?”
“Seems to me I already have,” he said with a wink.
“You’re horrible.” She swatted him across his arm and slid over to the window. She folded her arms over her chest and turned away to watch the telephone poles go by. “You shouldn’t have said that,” she finally said. “You shouldn’t have made us ugly.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she believed him. That was her trouble. She always believed him. “Lucy, I never meant…I mean, I wouldn’t want to ever hurt you…aw, hell, Lucy, sometimes I just get too full of myself. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m with a woman like you.”
They rode in silence, then, the rest of the way to her house. Burtie pulled the Impala into the driveway. They had an old collie dog then, named Dickie, and he came out from behind the garage when he heard the car and started to whine for her.
“There’s my Dickie boy,” she said. “There’s mama’s good boy.”
Then, before either she or Burtie could realize it, Ancil’s truck was pulling into the driveway behind them.
“Oh, good Christ,” said Burtie. “It’s Ancil.”
Lucy didn’t miss a beat. She got out of the car and was standing in the yard when Ancil stepped from his truck.
“Look who gave me a ride from uptown,” she said in a bright voice.
“Is that Burton?” Ancil said.
“Burtie Mack,” said Lucy. “Burtie, come on out here so Ancil can see you.”
Ancil shaded his eyes and squinted into the sunlight that Lucy felt warming the back of her neck and her legs. She heard the Impala’s door open and then swing shut, and then Burtie was standing beside her.
“Burt, what are you doing here?” Ancil said.
Too much silence went by with no answer from Burtie, so Lucy knew she had to say something.
“I told you,” she said. “He gave me a ride.” She looked at her wristwatch, a Timex Ancil had given her for her birthday. “My goodness, is it four o’clock already? No, it’s only three fifteen. What are you doing home early?”
“I’m sick,” Ancil said. “I’ve been sick all afternoon.”
“Mercy, what’s wrong?”
“Sick to my stomach.”
“Well, let’s get you inside.” Lucy took him by his arm. “Burtie, I appreciate the ride.”
“I’m sorry I don’t feel like a visit,” Ancil said. “Can you get around my truck?”
“I believe I can,” said Burtie.
“All right, then. I thank you for favoring my wife.”
And that was that, so Lucy thought. She helped Ancil into the house, and she heard Burtie’s Impala moving fast back out into the country. She got Ancil into bed and she made him some nutmeg tea to help settle his stomach. She brought it to him in the bedroom, and she sat on the side of the bed while he drank it.
“It was so hot today. Too hot for October. That sun beat down on me, and I wasn’t feeling worth a pinch anyway. What were you doing uptown?”
“I needed some flour from Ferguson’s.”
