Cold Rain

by Craig Smith

  Whenever I notice the young Romeos and Juliets of modern-day suburbia cluttering the mall or close against the shadows at a high school game, the kids really in love and not just on a date, I wonder if it was like that for Molly and Luke. It’s hard for me to imagine Molly at fifteen. By the time I met her she was twenty-one. The six years between constituted a lifetime of experience, more for Molly than for most.

  She was not a moon-eyed romantic at twenty-one, and I have trouble imagining her without her endearing streak of hard-nosed practicality. The pregnancy, according to Molly, was an accident. She was taking precautions but just forgot her pill one morning.

  Sometimes forgetting is a decision, too.

  Doc and Olga handled it badly, of course. They pre-empted Molly’s right to choose, telling her they knew what was best. I’ve seen Molly play the same game with Lucy, watched the fireworks afterwards. But never with those stakes. Molly saw her duty to her child, just as Olga did. Neither could understand the stubbornness of the other.

  The Sloans went along with the McBrides’ decision.

  They told Molly years later they understood from the McBrides Molly wanted an abortion. If they had known she wanted to keep the child they would have done anything to help.

  Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s only what they believe now. For Molly and to a lesser extent for Luke, I expect, the parents appeared to stand together. Molly would see a doctor. Afterwards, they would go on with their lives as if nothing had happened.

  Molly and Luke took off hitchhiking toward Chicago instead. They thought they could get an apartment and Luke could get a job. In the abstract it didn’t seem improbable. Luke was a big strapping kid, capable of giving a day’s work to anyone. They had a couple of hundred dollars and Doc’s .22 Magnum for protection, the only thing Molly took when she left, other than the clothes on her back.

  They lived together for a week in a cheap motel applying for different jobs, then they managed for a couple of nights without a room as they clung desperately to the last few dollars. Then the rain came. Luke stayed with Molly four days more. They huddled together at night under bridges and close to buildings off the beaten track unable to sleep. By day they walked the streets asking for work and panhandling bits of money. One afternoon Molly looked around to say something and Luke wasn’t there.

  Molly knew where he had gone. He’d been trying to talk her back from the moment it was clear the money wasn’t going to last. It wasn’t the end of the world, he said. All they had to do was just go along with her folks. They could keep on seeing each other just like before. It didn’t matter what her parents said, they could be together and it wouldn’t be like this.

  This, Luke said, wasn’t going to work.

  And their baby? Molly asked. There would be other babies, he said.

  Molly called her parents a few weeks after Lucy was born to tell them they had a granddaughter. When they asked if she was coming home Molly told them she was never coming home. Did she want them to tell Luke? She said she didn’t care.

  The McBrides told the Sloans they were grandparents, if only to share their grief with someone. Luke’s parents told Molly later Luke was happy about it and only sorry he couldn’t find her and help out. He wanted that more than anything. That was what they said.

  The truth was probably something else. A year after Lucy was born Luke drove into a tree. He was drunk.

  He had been drunk since he had come back home. It went down as an accident, but everyone except the Sloans knew it wasn’t that. It was the shame of his betrayal finally catching up.

  After Molly and I were married I persuaded her to contact Doc and Olga and the Sloans. For Lucy’s sake, I said. Molly already owned three houses and had a good deal of cash in the bank. We had been up to DeKalb a couple of times. If I could put up with Tubs, she could spend the occasional weekend visiting Doc and Olga. She knew from a friend she had called one time that Luke had died. She also knew the Sloans and her own parents had no one else. She wasn’t going to have to face Luke or even an I-told-you-so. She could go home knowing she had done the right thing.

  Lucy was proof of that, and I think she was almost relieved when we finally made contact.

  For a long time, Molly wouldn’t tell Lucy the whole story. She said simply that things had not worked out.

  In a world of broken families this was something Lucy could understand. Lucy of course wanted to know everything about her father. Molly could satisfy her to a point, but as she got older she asked more penetrating questions. Shortly after Lucy’s twelfth birthday, Molly told her everything. She made no apologies for Lucy’s father. She said only that he was a kid, seventeen years old. They didn’t have any money. They didn’t have a place to stay. It was cold and it had been raining for four days in a row. ‘Luke went home,’ she said, ‘because he could. Anyone would have.’

  But of course Molly hadn’t.

  I think Molly had always wanted to believe I wouldn’t have either. That was important to her. Molly didn’t love by half-measures. She loved with all of her heart and expected the same. When things got really bad, she knew most men would just turn back and go home. But not the man she loved.

  That was the deal in Molly’s world. No matter how safe things got for her, she still understood love in this way: in a you were either there or you weren’t.

  WALT SHOWED UP AT HIS apartment around eight that evening. I met him in the parking lot. He seemed surprised to see me, but helped me bring my gear in.

  Once inside, he caught a good look at my face. The way his expression changed, the mix of perplexity and concern, was almost touching. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Didn’t you wonder why I didn’t come back last night?’

  ‘Last night? What was last night?’

  Such are the joys of a good bottle of Scotch. I went through the whole thing again. When I had finished my narrative, executed with a gentle soft-shoe, I got it all a second time. ‘You and Molly breaking up?’

  Around ten o’clock, I set my sleeping bag in Walt’s bedroom and went to sleep. As near as I could tell, he came ‘to bed’ around one o’clock and was still reading at four.

  The next morning Walt suggested I go to the hospital.

  I couldn’t look that bad and not have some kind internal damage, broken bones, ruptured spleen, some damn thing. I asked him where the spleen was and we went off on that for a while.

  On Sunday I gave the hospital serious consideration. The bruise in my side was tender and hot. My face looked almost as bad as it felt. Walt’s home-remedy medicine helped, though, and by midnight I slept without pain.

  I got to the university around eight-fifteen on Monday, quite a bit earlier than usual, and I was feeling very satisfied with myself until I found a note on my office door from Dean Lintz. My presence was required in his office immediately. The nastiness of phrase was no accident. As a tenured professor I decided I could ignore the note, claim I hadn’t seen it when he finally caught up with me, and that’s what I would have done, except that the lock to my office had been changed.

  When I entered his office, Dean Lintz told me Leslie Blackwell in Affirmative Action had called him Friday afternoon. Apparently, I had not only attempted to discuss the investigation with one of the witnesses, I had actually assaulted him. That was not true, I said.

  I’d been arrested for assault, but the judge dropped the charges. As far as talking, I hadn’t spoken so much as a single phrase to Buddy Elder Thursday evening.

  Dean Lintz sighed and shook his head sadly. He liked me, he said, but he had no choice. He was going to have to suspend me.

  ‘What about my classes?’

  ‘I’ve already instructed your chair to find replacements. We’ll need your grade book and syllabi, David.

  As soon as you’ve taken care of that, I want you off campus. I have no idea if the vice president will want to bring additional disciplinary action against you for this, but I do know it’s likely you’ll be looking at additional ch
arges once Dr Blackwell has finished her investigation.’

  I was confused. ‘What kind of charges?’

  Dean Lintz grimaced. ‘Sexual misconduct. According to Leslie Blackwell you’ve been having sex with one of your freshmen students in your office. I mean really, David! Couldn’t you at least have taken her off campus?’

  ‘Is it against the rules to have sex in our offices?’

  ‘Smoking in your office is against the rules, David!

  Of course it’s against the rules! You know that, as well as I do! Tenure can only protect you so far. This kind of behaviour… it’s an embarrassment for the whole university.’

  The dean ended our meeting on a more conciliatory note. The suspension was with pay and benefits.

  I still had options. I was free to appeal any action taken against me. I was entitled to a faculty adviser and of course free to hire an attorney if I thought I needed one. ‘The thing is Affirmative Action has let too much of this kind of crap get by for too long.

  Leslie Blackwell was brought in to change that, and you just happened to be her first. She needs to let everyone know there’s a new sheriff in town, David.

  I tried to warn you!’

  I cleared out my desk under the supervision of the department secretary. She was close to tears the whole time. I left most of my books in my office, as I had for my sabbatical. I had every intention of returning.

  On the last trip to my truck, I met Buddy Elder in the hallway. He made a show of making room for me.

  I had a box in my arms. He understood what it meant.

  Not a word from him, of course, just the same lazy smile and sleepy brown eyes.

  I CALLED MOLLY TO tell her I had been suspended and was bringing some stuff from my office out to the farm. ‘Sorry to do it,’ I said to her answering machine, ‘but I can’t unload this in Walt’s apartment.’

  I hesitated at the end of my message. I wanted to tell her that Buddy Elder had delivered a copy of the diary to Leslie Blackwell Friday morning, but I realized that would not seem especially diabolical to her. I was banging a stripper in my office. Maybe the university should know about it. After several seconds of dead space on the tape, I said, ‘I’d like to see you, Molly.’

  I finished by saying I loved her.

  I don’t know anyone who enjoys talking to a machine. Emotional pitches are especially difficult.

  You make the speech in the belief that you’re talking to a person. After you hang up you are haunted by your own words. You imagine you have said too much or that you sounded as mechanical as the machine you have spoken to. I didn’t remember the drive out to the farm. I was too busy imagining what I should have said and worrying about the words I had actually delivered. I was rolling along an empty pavement doubting everything, looking at cornfields and patches of woods here and there, and suddenly I was home.

  Except it was not home. Not anymore. The horses were in the pasture. The dogs circled my legs howling and growling, a few of them even wagging their tails.

  Molly leaned out the window from the third floor.

  But her tone left no doubt: I was not welcome. ‘Put everything in your office,’ she called. She retreated at once. I guess she could still see me looking up at the place where she had been, because after a moment she appeared again. ‘I’m sorry about the suspension, David. I really am.’ And that was it. A couple of minutes later I heard the familiar whine of her table saw.

  Chapter 11

  MY LIFE IS A RATTY piece of string stretching out behind me in silly, dull serpentine twists. There are little knots and tangles, those points in my existence I know I should have marked as sacred time, but to be honest they did not seem worth the effort. I suppose it was my natural stubbornness. People said your first is unforgettable, so I remembered them all dutifully, but I cherished nothing. My first sexual encounter had transpired with the town tramp in the backseat of my old man’s Ford Ltd. demo, an awkward and embarrassing piece of business. My first job as a man had been walking out and shaking hands with strangers and trying to convince them to buy one of my cars. My first diploma came at age eighteen, college graduation four years later.

  I didn’t even put a robe on for that. I did not know what I wanted. I did not believe in much of anything.

  My sole ambition in life, once I understood something about life, was to avoid becoming a man like Tubs.

  Everything changed for me on the afternoon I met Molly McBride. Molly was drunk the first time I saw her. It was pouring down rain and she and her crew had landed in the bar I always went to. I remember I almost went home because of the rain that afternoon, but I didn’t keep beer in my apartment in those days.

  It had been a tough day in the academy, or so I persuaded myself, and I drove over, intending to pop in for a quick one and see if anyone was around.

  I saw her the moment I walked through the door.

  She was laughing at something one of the men had said, bringing her glass to her lips at the same time.

  Because I had stopped for no other reason than to look at her, the glass froze just as her laughter did. I knew she had caught me staring, and so with some embarrassment I turned toward the booth where I usually sat. None of my crowd was there. To avoid looking at her incessantly I dug around in my backpack for something to read. I heard her calling to me, her voice having just a bit of an edge to it, ‘Everything all right over there?’ There weren’t many people in the bar, so I couldn’t ignore her. I waved my hand and smiled at her. Everything was just fine!

  One of the men said something. Molly answered him. I couldn’t make out what they said, but their laughter was all about me, I had no doubt of that. I ordered a pitcher instead of a glass because I was suddenly a lot thirstier than I had imagined. I tried to look at the text swimming before my eyes, but I was a young man and just across the room was the most radiant blonde beauty I had ever seen. After one especially long look by her, I came up out of my pretended reading and caught her at it. She looked away at once, and I called across the room, ‘Everything all right over there?’

  Even in the gloomy light of the bar, I could see her smile. One of the men said something, and she laughed, making a gesture with her hand as if to say just a nice fantasy.

  And it was. A pretty carpenter on a rainy afternoon.

  A bored grad student wondering what he was doing with his life. We caught each other’s eye. Nothing more.

  Then Beth Ruby came through the door and trudged over to my booth. She tossed her backpack on the seat and started complaining about the rain.

  I looked up from my book. ‘I’ll give you a hundred dollars from my next pay check,’ I said, ‘if you’ll sit somewhere else.’

  Beth Ruby looked at me curiously, then around the room. Beth was nobody’s fool. Her eyes settled on Molly. ‘Two hundred,’ she said.

  I told her I didn’t have two hundred bucks, but if I had it I’d give it to her. Could she just give me a break? Beth shrugged indifferently and smiled. ‘I could, but I’m not going to. Believe me, you and your dick will thank me later.’

  I gave up the dream. I tossed my book on the table and started talking to Beth about her total lack of sensitivity, her failure to understand that someone could fall in love at first sight. Beth and I had sparred a few rounds in the office and quite a few more over beer.

  We both figured eventually something was going to happen between us, but we were both too stubborn to make the first move. As a result, we actually had a fairly decent friendship, as that kind of friendship goes.

  While I was explaining to Beth that she had ruined my life out of simple greed Molly slipped into our booth. I had not seen her crossing the room, and nearly jumped out of my seat when I saw her across from me. Molly’s smile was so pretty that for a moment all I could do was blink.

  ‘Is he a total asshole or just the run-of-the-mill kind?’

  Molly asked Beth without taking her eyes from my face. I liked her voice. It was strong and confident. I liked the wa
y she was looking at me, too.

  ‘Total and complete, I’m afraid,’ Beth answered almost sadly.

  I started to defend myself, but Molly wasn’t buying the verdict, not entirely anyway. ‘Kind of cute though.’

  ‘And doesn’t he know it?’

  Molly shook her head, still not taking her eyes from me. ‘I hate that in a guy.’

  ‘Dumb and pretty.’

  Molly laughed. ‘Beats dumb and ugly, I guess.’

  Molly had practically the same build as now, though she was leaner by a few pounds. That came of being twenty-one and working twelve-to-fifteen-hour days running rooftops. She had short straight blonde hair with neat square bangs. A blush of freckles ran over the ridge of her nose.

  ‘What are you reading?’ she asked, taking the book up from the table and examining it for some evidence about my character. ‘ Black Spring. What kind of book is that?’

  ‘I don’t have a clue,’ I said.

  ‘Amen,’ Beth echoed.

  On any other occasion I might have rewarded Beth’s nastiness with a scowl, but I couldn’t take my eyes from Molly.

  ‘Why not? You were reading it?’

  ‘I was trying to read it. The truth is I was distracted.’

  Beth rolled her eyes and grumbled something about pathetic pickup lines. ‘You two together or something?’

  Molly asked.

  Beth said yes. I said no.

  ‘We teach together,’ I said, hoping that explained it.

  This, as it happened, was terrible. Being a graduate student was okay, but teaching was a suspect activity in Molly’s view. ‘If you’re going to have your nose up in the air, then at least you ought to have some cash in your pocket.’

  ‘Better than no money and no class,’ Beth answered testily.