One Minus One (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries)

by Ruth Doan MacDougall

  He got out of the car and opened my door and I got out, reluctantly. Kites were David. He built them himself, and on spring afternoons, after school, he would fly them in our backyard. He’d constructed a reel out of a bicycle wheel to manipulate them, and sometimes kids would wander into the yard and watch their mad English teacher fly his kites.

  The kite flyers here seemed to be mostly UNH kids, shouting and laughing, their high soaring kites suddenly plummeting into the waves.

  I said, “I wonder how cold the water is.”

  “Freezing, I guarantee.”

  “Let’s find out,” I said, taking off my sandals, and all at once it was all right, I was running and laughing and he was chasing me across the sand down to the waves. I ran in up to my ankles. “Oh, my God, you’re right, oh, my God,” I shrieked, hopping up and down until the wave slid back, sucking sand from beneath my feet the way I always loved it to when I was little. Cliff had left his shoes and socks somewhere, and now he rolled up the bottoms of his pants and came after me as the next wave broke, and he chased me along through the surf toward the jetty of black rocks. I turned and shouted, “I’ll win, you smoke more than I do!” and he shouted, “Look out!” and I felt twine graze the top of my head, and David said, “Emily.”

  I was so shocked I said quite naturally, “Where’s your bicycle wheel?”

  His fair hair was longer now, like everyone’s. His shirt was one I’d never seen, one I’d never washed and ironed, and so were his corduroy pants.

  But he was still David, more familiar to me than myself.

  He said, “I’m trying this out,” and I saw he had a small red plastic hand reel. I looked up at his kite in the sky. It was a black and yellow butterfly of plastic. And then I noticed Ann, sitting on a rock watching us. She was pregnant.

  Proof. Proof of what I could never believe, David’s sleeping with someone other than me.

  Cliff came up. “You nearly got decapitated, you idiot,” he said, and ruffled my hair. “I apologize,” he said to David, and took my hand, seemed to sense something, and let go.

  I said, “Cliff Parker. David Lewis. Where are you teaching?”

  “Pleasantfield.”

  Which was a town south of here. So he had left the north country too, and he had been near me all along.

  He said, “What are you doing?”

  “Teaching at Millbridge.”

  Cliff walked away toward the rocks and began to climb them.

  We stood together and looked up at his kite. The sun went behind the clouds but still shone on the Isles of Shoals, the white lighthouse translucent.

  I realized I was trembling from head to foot.

  David said, “Are you married to him?”

  “No.”

  We watched the kite jerk and tug way out over the waves.

  I wanted to touch him, I wanted him to put his arms around me, I wanted to kiss him.

  I said, “You’re joining in the population explosion.”

  “Yes.”

  It must be Ann’s idea, I told myself. He had never wanted a baby before.

  A boy and girl in commercially streak-faded blue Levi’s shouted as the Frisbee they were playing with swooped into the ocean. The girl kicked off her loafers and went in after it; she splashed past us and I automatically moved nearer to David and then I remembered I couldn’t.

  Would he still smell the same, the David smell of clean skin and clean clothes?

  He said, “Are you okay for money?”

  “Yes. I’m making six thousand,” I said, and was surprised to hear a note of pride in my voice, as in the Morning Man’s.

  “Pay scales certainly are higher down here,” David said.

  I said, “I drove through Thornhill the day before yesterday.”

  “I haven’t been back. What’s it like?”

  “More A-frames.”

  “How’s Lucy?”

  “Fine,” I said. “How’re your folks?”

  “Same as ever. Is Lucy still teaching this year?”

  “Lord, yes, she’s going strong. And she’s signed up to teach remedial reading to junior high kids at the summer session, and you know how she is, she thought she ought to brush up, so she’s taking another remedial reading course at Plymouth this summer as well. Busman’s holiday.”

  He laughed.

  Oh, David. Oh, David.

  The kite danced in the sky.

  I said, “Remember how I used to recite while you were kite flying, ‘O by the by has anybody seen little you-i who stood on a green hill and threw his wish at blue’?”

  Ann walked toward us. She was tall enough to carry her pregnancy well. She wore a ruffly white maternity blouse over pink slacks, and her brown hair was braided into pigtails tied with ribbons, one white and one pink. I thought suddenly of what I was wearing, a new gold shift that was so short it was practically a long jersey, and I was glad of it and glad that I’d started my tan.

  “Hello, Emily,” she said. “I’m going back to the car, David. My legs hurt.”

  I imagined with fierce joy varicose veins erupting purple through those legs that, instead of mine, could hold him tight.

  But as she walked away he said, “I’ll be along in a minute,” and the time was running out.

  I said, “Remember when Susan and John were at UNH and Lucy gave them the money to rent Ma’s camp for a week before they had to start their summer jobs, and we came down from Thornhill for the weekend, and that Saturday we lugged six-packs out on the jetty and you and John had a kite-flying contest and we all drank beer and it’s a wonder we didn’t fall in the ocean we were so drunk.”

  “The kites themselves finally fell, as I recall.”

  “Then we went back to the camp and cooked hamburgers on the barbecue grill.”

  “I never ate so many hamburgers in my life.”

  We looked at each other, and then David looked up at the kite and began to reel it in.

  “How’s the writing?” he asked.

  “I haven’t done any.”

  He turned to me. “Emily. For God’s sake. You once said that the only important thing is writing.”

  What I had said was the only important thing besides David was writing.

  The kite made a wild dive and David turned back to his reeling in.

  He said, “Do you like your job?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Does he teach in Millbridge, too?”

  “Yes, he’s the head of the English Department.”

  “You live in Millbridge?”

  “No, in Hull, in an apartment with a couple of girls.” If I gave him my address, would he come to see me? How long could pregnant women be screwed? Was Ann out of commission now, was he horny? Could this be a way I could see him again?

  “Oh, damn,” he said as the kite dropped into the ocean. “Well, it’s plastic, it’ll survive,” and he reeled it in.

  He stood holding it. We looked at each other.

  He said, “Have you been all right?”

  Oh, David. I love you.

  Then I realized I’d said this aloud. I reached out and touched the pelt of blond hairs on his wrist. I was trembling, I was crying.

  “Emily. Jesus Christ. Emily.”

  Hold me, please hold me.

  He said, “Look, if you ever need anything, money or anything, you can call me at the school.” He walked quickly away across the sand.

  The waves were black waves crashing in on me, and I felt myself falling.

  “Emily,” Cliff’s voice said. His arm was around my shoulders, and I sat up. Then I put my face against his chest and wept.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”

  When I could speak, I said, “I left my pocketbook in the car, I haven’t got a Kleenex.”

  He gave me his handkerchief and I blew my nose.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve only done that twice before in my life.” The first was the time when David, traveling to a class one evening a week in Ply
mouth, had got caught by a snowstorm and had telephoned to say he couldn’t make it home and he would have to spend the night in Plymouth. I had put the phone down, and with the thought of the night ahead without him, the first night alone since we were married, the waves of blackness came. I didn’t fall; I went to the sofa and lay down for a long time. Then I got drunk so I could sleep.

  The other time was the evening he said, “There’s something we’ve got to talk over,” and I knew what it was, I had known for months but I wouldn’t allow it into my mind, I’d become adept at blanking it out until it was only brief sick sweaty moments each day. And as David talked, his voice strange and rough and tormented, his words “Ann Turner” and “divorce,” the words crashing in like waves, for one last time I blanked out the knowledge that we were dead, the world was dead, and the blackness engulfed me.

  Cliff said, “Do you want to go home?”

  “No. I want a drink.”

  I stood up and began brushing sand off me.

  “May I help?” he said, and smiled tentatively at me, and I smiled back, and he helped brush. My bottom seemed to need a lot of brushing.

  We found my sandals and his shoes and socks and sat on the wall and brushed off our feet and put them on. Then we went back to the parking lot where a group of UNH kids were trying to patch up a kite, asking each other, “Has anybody got any scotch tape?”

  As we drove away to the Seaside Restaurant I saw only one kite still flying, a Mickey Mouse kite.

  In the Lobster Buoy Lounge of lobster buoys and fishnets and starfish and clamshells, we sat down on one of the red-cushioned benches behind a little table and we both ordered martinis. When I took a cigarette, my hands still trembled violently. Cliff noticed and started talking about the way he planned to organize the English curriculum at North Riverton. I didn’t listen, but his voice, and the cigarette and martini, began to soothe. My hands grew steadier.

  But David. My David.

  Cliff said, “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry.”

  “Would you like another drink and we’ll go out to the restaurant?”

  At the next table a woman said, “New Hampshire Sweepstakes. Sweepstakes,” she repeated. “I can’t say that word since I had this tooth filed off.”

  I said, “Have you got any booze at your place?”

  “Some scotch. Some rum. Some gin and vermouth.”

  “And I’ve got a gorgeous steak at mine,” I said. “Why don’t we go pick it up and I’ll cook it at your house. I’ve got salad stuff, too.”

  He regarded me over his glass.

  At the bar, somebody was saying, “—the drummer named Thumper, remember the time he fell in his drum?”

  I said, “I cook a good steak.”

  “If that potato salad was any indication, you cook everything well.”

  “Yes. Except poached eggs, I’ve never mastered poaching an egg without one of those little egg poachers.”

  He drained his glass, looked at me again, and said, “Sounds like a fine idea.”

  So we drove back to Hull. Cliff hummed commercials. When I went into my apartment, Grace was eating a TV dinner and watching the news.

  I said, “May I take the steak and some salad things? I’ll reimburse everyone.”

  “Sure, go right ahead.”

  I took them out of the refrigerator and put them in a paper bag. Then I went into the bedroom and got a pair of underpants, went into the bathroom and got my toothbrush, and put these in my pocketbook.

  I said, “We’re cooking dinner at Cliff’s place. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Where’s Kaykay?”

  “At Bob’s.”

  “Oh,” I said, and paused on my way out.

  “Have fun,” she said.

  We drove through downtown and along residential streets.

  “Hey,” I said. “I used to live near here, on Brewster Street.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I used to see your car parked there. You were going out with the Morning Man.”

  The forsythia in front of the old white houses had begun to bloom springtime yellow.

  He drove into the driveway of an enormous white house with porches and black shutters.

  “I’ve noticed this one,” I said. “It’s a beauty.”

  “It’s chopped up now into six apartments, but, yes, it’s still a beauty.”

  We walked along a brick walk between yellow forsythia bushes and went up the steps to a side porch where old wicker furniture awaited summer. He unlocked the door.

  Cliff, like Grace, had made a home. There was a fireplace in the living room, and a deep sofa and chairs, and the rug and the wall of books glowed with colors.

  “Wow,” I said, looking around. There was a spray of forsythia in an earthenware jug.

  He said, “I had forsythia in March. You cut off some branches and pound the ends with a hammer, stick them in water, and they’ll bloom.”

  “Is it called forcing?” I said, following him into the kitchen. I put the steak and lettuce and tomatoes in the refrigerator while he opened the high wooden cupboards.

  “Martini?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  It was a big kitchen, painted apple-green. I tried to imagine his hanging the white Cape Cod curtains. David hung our curtains, of course, but that had been for me, not for himself. The kitchen table and chairs were like Cliff’s folks’, farmhouse drop-leaf table, slat-backed chairs. The table wasn’t covered with oilcloth, however; instead, on it lay one place mat.

  He stirred the martinis in a glass pitcher. “Fringe benefits,” he said, holding up the glass rod. “When I broke my last one, the chemistry teacher made me this.”

  I laughed, he poured, and we carried our glasses back to the living room. I sat down in one of the chairs and he sat in the other. We drank.

  I said, “This is decidedly tastier than the Seaside’s.”

  “I’m known for my martinis. Someone once named them silver bullets.”

  I wondered who the someone was. I hadn’t heard of his going out with any of the other single women teachers at Millbridge. Was his sex life supplied by Hull girls? I said, “Not known in quite the same way as your mother and her pies.”

  “Not quite.”

  I looked at the wall of books and thought of the fifteen cartons of my books which I’d stored in Lucy’s attic, unable to make myself sell them.

  He got up and went to the fireplace and pushed newspaper under the logs in it. “I guess it’s cold enough now for a fire,” he said, lighting it. He stopped by my chair and offered me a cigarette and lit that, too.

  We drank and watched the fire. I tried to think myself backward, to make myself new again, and I remembered going mountain climbing with Ned and Lucy when Susan was so young Ned toted her in his pack basket, and I remembered going blueberrying and how Susan and I would get bitten by black flies; black fly bites, I remembered, and the oddly luscious moment of discovering that dry crust of blood behind my ear. Then I heard Lucy saying, “The only way to carry a bowl of soup without spilling, Emily, is not to look at it,” and then I remembered playing dress-up in Lucy’s clothes. I remembered a red-and-green-flowered silky dress with pads sewn in its shoulders, the dress hitched up by a cracked patent-leather belt, I remembered clumpy high-heeled shoes and an enormous old pocketbook which smelled of lipstick and tobacco crumbs.

  And then I remembered a perfect moment: a winter day; I was warm in the big chair in the living room, and I had a new Nancy Drew book and a deviled ham sandwich (with mayonnaise, on squishy white bread).

  But here I was in Cliff’s living room. The red flames rushed upward, the wood snapped, and Cliff deliberately stood up, came over, and sat down on the arm of my chair and took the drink from my hand, put it on the little table, stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray, and began to kiss me.

  And we were on the glowing rug, and I started to unzip my dress but he unzipped it and slipped it off.


  “You don’t wear a bra,” he said. “I didn’t think you did.”

  “No, not anymore,” I said, and although my voice was breathless, for a moment my mind veered away again, as always, to David. At Brompton when I used to wear a padded bra, he was fond of draping it across his head like earphones and whistling like John Wayne in The High and the Mighty.

  Cliff said, “You’re lovely.”

  I had thought he would look funny, without his clothes on, with his face still clothed in his beard. He didn’t look funny at all.

  “You’re lovely,” he kept saying. “You’re lovely.” He was very slow and easy, as David was, and he kissed my breasts until I thought I’d go crazy, and then his head was between my legs and I caught his thick curls in my fingers and I came and came and came, and then he was surging into me and the slowness was gone, he was pounding against me, and again I came, and shudderingly he came.

  We lay together until the hot film of sweat began to evaporate and, despite the fire, to chill. I kissed his shoulder. “Where’s your bathroom?”

  “Off the kitchen.” He kissed me. “You’re lovely.”

  Stickily he retreated out of me.

  I said, “I do think there ought to be a more dignified way of going about this,” and clamped my hands between my legs and ran for the bathroom. I sat on the toilet and mopped up. The bathroom was very small and narrow, with a ceiling as high as the other rooms, and the bathtub was so small I imagined that in it he must look like a Western movie hero in a washtub, beard all a-lather. I used his washcloth to wash myself, and his towel to dry. Then I ran back to the living room for my clothes.

  He was still lying on the rug, the fire flickering.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  He watched while I put on my underpants and dress and sandals.

  He said, “Can you stay the night?”

  “First I’m going to cook us that supper,” I said. I knelt down and touched his beard. “Yes. I’ll stay.”

  PART THREE: THE HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT

  AND THEN it was May, warm May, and there were apple blossoms and lilacs and daffodils and dandelions and violets, and the world was fluffy with boughs of leaves, and robins bounced across green lawns.