Tea and Primroses

by Tess Thompson

  We passed a white church, complete with a steeple, nestled between crimson trees. After a time, he turned down a narrower road and after a quarter mile or so we came to a red covered-bridge. He pulled to the side of the road and turned off the truck. “This is one of my favorite spots in the world.”

  All around us were the colors of the season, so vivid they seemed a photograph rather than real. I put on my hat again, tugging it over my ears. He helped me out of the truck and put his hand on the small of my back, guiding me toward the bridge. We walked across; inside were couples’ initials carved into the wood. On the other side, as we exited into the sunshine, the road was now dirt and covered almost completely with fallen leaves, a crimson blanket. We trudged along, our breath clouds in the crisp air that smelled of wood-burning fires.

  “What do you think, Oregon?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Isn’t it, though?”

  I kicked leaves with the toe of my boot. They flew into the air several feet and then fluttered back to the ground. “Why did you go to New York?”

  “I went to see my lawyer. Details of the divorce to work through.” He made a motion with his hands, like shutting curtains.

  “Oh.”

  “Last night I went back to the house to get some of my things.” He stuffed his hands in the jacket pockets. “She was there. I didn’t expect that. Thought she was at her parents’.”

  I held my breath, waiting for what might come next.

  “She’d been served earlier that day.”

  I didn’t say anything. Ahead, a crimson leaf hovered in the air above our heads, suspended as if on an invisible tightrope before falling to the ground.

  I stopped walking and put my hand on his arm to halt him. “Patrick, what happened?”

  His hand went to the gashes on his neck. “No one in her life has ever told her no. Until now.”

  A hollow feeling came to my chest. I touched the collar of his shirt. “Did she hurt you?”

  He covered my hand with his.

  “She’s not well.”

  “Violent?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “How bad has it been?”

  He closed his eyes for a second or two and took in a deep breath, the way one does when recalling something painful. “It’s bad. Nine years of bad.”

  “Why did you stay so long?”

  He looked up and sideways and then back to me. “I was only twenty years old when I met her.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “I did. But I’m ashamed to say I didn’t love her enough to marry her. I shouldn’t have. I know that now, obviously. She was like this fragile bird that needed me and I was flattered that she chose me to be her protector, her partner. And I was seduced by her family, her background—not the money—but the idea of being part of this legacy publishing empire. You know, that someone like me could sit at the same table as giants of the literary world—it was intoxicating. I’m not proud of it but it’s true just the same. As far as Sigourney’s behavior goes, I saw things early on that I pushed aside and made excuses for. My only excuse is that I was so young. We both were. She’s grown steadily worse.” Something between guilt and regret flashed across his face. “It was the miscarriages that made it worse, I think. There were four in a row, and with each one she declined further. Depression, paranoia, drastic mood swings, episodes of violence. I never knew what I would come home to on any given day.”

  “Isn’t there help for her, though? A doctor?”

  “She’s been to a slew of them. None seem to help. They give her medication that either lulls her into an almost comatose state or makes her so agitated she can’t sleep for nights on end.” He paused, and when he continued his voice sounded strangled at the back of his throat. “Leaving felt cruel. I’ve tried to be a good man, like my father was.” He hesitated, as if he wanted to say more but instead pointed ahead. “Come on, let’s keep walking or you’re going to get cold.”

  We walked in silence for a few minutes, our feet making crunching sounds through the leaves. Above us geese called out to one another. At a curve in the road, he stopped, his face twisting as if he felt a sudden pain. I stopped as well, my breath slightly labored from keeping up with his long legs. “Are you all right?” I felt the warmth of the brisk exercise and took off my hat. The nape of my neck was damp with perspiration.

  “Listen here.” He reached out and took my gloved hand in his bare one. “I talked to my colleague Janie about your work. I trust her to be discreet about where the submission came from. If my father-in-law finds out you’re a friend of mine, I have no doubt he’ll kill any kind of deal.”

  “Okay.”

  “But she was excited and wants to look at it. She knows I have a good instinct.” He paused and touched my hair. “Constance, your cheeks are pink from the cold.”

  “You just called me Constance.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  I shook my head as if disgusted, smiling. “You’re a liar.”

  He smiled back at me. The butterflies came to my stomach again, prancing and fluttering. “Constance Mansfield, aka, Oregon, bestselling author. I like the sound of that.”

  “Me too.”

  “Butt in seat. That’s your only job from now on. Don’t let anything get in your way.” He turned on his heel, facing the direction we’d just come from. “Time to go home.”

  “My home?”

  “No, my home.”

  We walked in silence back down the blanket of leaves until we arrived at the truck. He drove us over the covered bridge and turned left at a fork in the road. We went another quarter of a mile or so and then took another left into a dirt driveway. After about 100 yards we came to a small dirt parking area, big enough for two cars. The woods were dense; I could only just make out a structure of some kind between the trees.

  I followed him down a foot-trodden path, enjoying watching his long legs and backside without fear of being caught. He moved aside spider webs and overhanging branches of sapling trees. Dewdrops glistened on leaves and tall grass, shining as bright as diamonds in the October sun. After a few minutes, we came to a small house, made of wide planks, stained but not painted so the knots and lines of the wood were visible. The front of the house had a covered porch that ran the length of the house, supported by four posts. Above the porch were two square dormer windows, sticking out from the house like eyelashes. Four-paned glass windows were on either side of the front door. The trim around the windows and the front door were painted cranberry red. On the right side of the house was a stone fireplace.

  The surrounding yard was not landscaped but was left in its natural state; it was as if the house had been dropped into the middle of the forest, except for a stone walkway running parallel to the porch. Patrick reached in his pocket and drew out a set of keys. “This,” he said, indicating the house and yard with a sweeping gesture of his hand, “was my dad’s.”

  We were at the door now. He slipped the key in the lock and turned the knob. He held the door for me as I stepped inside. The room was only slightly warmer than the outside air and decorated sparsely but elegantly in browns and blues, with leather chairs and a fat couch. He smiled, looking sheepish. “I updated the furniture a couple of years ago.” Moving inside, he switched on the lights. “After my dad died.”

  “I’m sorry.” I paused, feeling shy suddenly. “About your dad I mean, not the furniture.”

  He grinned. “I got it, Oregon.” The fireplace was deep and made of uneven, jagged gray stones. A teepee of kindling over crumpled newspaper waited for a flame. He moved to the fireplace and took a box of long matches from the mantle. “I miss him.” Staring at the matchbox, he stroked the rough surface of the matchbox with his thumb.

  “What about your mother?”

  He raised his gaze to me, his eyes sharp. “She died when I was two. I don’t remember her.”

  “How?”

  “She was holding me on her hip walking into the market and slipped on t
he ice. She hit her head, protecting me from the fall.”

  “I’m sorry, Patrick. That’s awful.”

  “Thanks. So, yeah, it was just the two of us. He was the greatest man you’d ever hope to meet.” His voice was gruff, dismissive. Young as I was, I understood this was the way of men, uncomfortable talking about their feelings. There was my own father, of course, and his father before him.

  There were three photos on the mantle. He picked up the one in the middle and handed it to me. It was a wedding photo; the groom looked like Patrick in the face but was shorter, and the willowy young bride, with light brown hair, wore a soft, flowing white gown. Her face was delicate, almost patrician, with a slender nose, wide mouth, and round eyes. “My mother and father,” he said.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “I think so too. I look like my dad except I have her eyes, don’t you think?”

  I observed him for a moment and then looked back at the photo. “Yes, you’re right.”

  Taking the photo from me, he set it back on the mantle, in the exact spot he’d taken it from. He pointed at the photo on the left. “This is dad and me when I was about six. I don’t know who took it.” They stood next to a truck, circa 1957, I guessed. My father always told me the year and make of cars and trucks we passed on the highway and for some reason these always stuck in my mind. Patrick’s father wore a work jumpsuit and held a wrench; Patrick was in jeans and a flannel shirt and had a stack of books in his arms. “I think I’d just come from the library. My best friend’s mother used to take us every Friday afternoon. My father was a mechanic, could make any old car or truck run with some tinkering of his tools. But he encouraged me to do well in school and insisted I go to college. He wanted me to have all the opportunities he didn’t have.”

  Patrick took a match from the box and struck it against one of the stones before kneeling on the floor and lighting the paper. It flamed and the kindling caught fire easily. The smell of burning wood brought the sensation of familiarity to me. I’d watched my father light our woodstove every morning of my childhood, his fisherman hands raw and red, before he left for work. I’d sit on the bottom step of the stairs that led up to the second floor and watch him light the fire. The room would then smell of burning wood intermingled with freshly brewed coffee. In the background were the angry sounds of my mother slamming breakfast together. After the fire was lit and burning, he would close the door of the woodstove and turn to me. “Don’t want my Sweets to be cold while I’m gone, now do I. So you keep an eye on this while I’m gone. You don’t want to let the fire burn out.”

  I glanced up to find Patrick watching me. “What were you thinking of just then?” he asked.

  “The way you lit the fire reminded me of my dad. He’s the same as your dad. Wants me to have all the opportunities he never had.”

  “Why does it make you sad?”

  “I miss him. And I wish he had a happier life.”

  He motioned for me to come closer and held out his hands. “Give me your coat. I’ll make us some tea.”

  I shrugged out of my coat and handed it to him. “Do you have anything stronger?” I asked.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Oregon! A mid-day drink?”

  I flushed. “A beer, maybe? It’s the weekend.”

  “I’m just teasing. I can rustle up a beer for you.” He headed toward the kitchen. I took a moment to take in the room. The first floor of the cabin was one large room with a kitchen on one end and the sitting room space on the other, separated by two large wooden beams. The kitchen had plain wood cabinets and shelves built into the wall, with neatly arranged stacks of white dishes, a dozen white cups hanging from clips, and various pitchers of green and white. There were two perfectly square windows above the shelves, set too high to see out of. Captured in their squares was blue sky between scarlet leaves, like paintings.

  He reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Miller. Peeping between his outstretched arm and his torso, I snuck a peak into his neatly arranged refrigerator: a package of steaks, a whole chicken still in its plastic wrapping, a chunk of cheddar cheese, a glass container of milk, and a carton of eggs. Vegetables packed one crisper drawer, with apples and a head of lettuce in the other. The door held beer and various condiments, most notably several varieties of hot sauce. He grabbed the package of steaks and tossed it onto the counter next to the sink. Apparently he planned to feed me.

  Closing the refrigerator, he took a pocketknife from his jeans pocket, the same variety my father used, and popped off the cap of the beer with the bottle opener attachment. Grinning, he handed the beer to me. “You Oregon girls are probably used to a man popping a beer with his teeth.”

  I laughed, tilting back my head slightly as I did so. “Hardly.”

  He leaned against the table, watching me. “You’re beautiful when you laugh. You should do it more often.”

  “I laugh all the time.”

  “Yes, I suppose it’s me who needs to laugh more.” He smiled in a way that made him look sad. He was the only person then or now whose smile made them look sadder than when their face was sober. Reaching up to the cabinet above the refrigerator, he pulled out a bottle of whiskey and poured some of the amber drink into a glass tumbler from another cabinet. His large hand seemed even larger grasping the small glass. His hair flopped over his eyes and he brushed it aside in a way that made me think I could see the little boy he once was, growing up here motherless amidst these lonely trees. I ached to touch him. Perhaps it was the way he appeared both strong and vulnerable. Patrick Waters: a man of contradictions. This flashed behind my eyes like a tagline on a product. I thought of things in terms of words, always, even the man I loved.

  I took a large swallow of beer and almost spit it out. I didn’t have beer often, my budget being what it was, and it made my throat burn. I coughed and then blushed, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  He chuckled, leaning against the table, watching me. “Drink much, Oregon?”

  I ignored him and wandered over to stand in front of the fireplace. A chair of worn, brown leather in the corner next to a window looked out to the side of the house. Next to the chair was a side table with a stack of books. He joined me in the sitting area, plopping onto the couch and resting his feet on the coffee table. “Oregon, I love the new beginning.”

  “Of my manuscript?”

  “Yeah, Oregon, jeez. What else would I be referring to?”

  “I don’t know, one of the hundred books you have here.” I gestured toward the wall next to the front door. It was floor to ceiling bookshelves, all full. When he didn’t respond except to tilt back his glass and drink from it, I went to the couch and sat on the opposite end from him. “I’m terribly relieved, I have to admit. I wanted to please you.” This was out of my mouth before I could analyze whether it was what I wanted to say. At once I felt childish, amateurish.

  “You already have.”

  I couldn’t think what to say. How had I pleased him, exactly?

  “You’ve written a beautiful book,” he said, as if I’d asked the question out loud. “This is just the finish work.” He pointed to the cabinets. “Like the woodwork in here. Sanding and staining, fitting each piece together perfectly.”

  “Did you do all this?”

  “Yes. Over time, of course. I started with the kitchen and worked my way to the rest of the house. I finished the upstairs two summers ago.”

  “What’s upstairs?” I asked.

  “Bedroom and an office. The office was my room when I was a kid.” He took a sip of whiskey, smoothing his hand over the couch cushion. The material appeared soft, with whisker-like fibers I didn’t know the name of. He made a back and forth motion with his fingers over the material until it made a pattern that looked like crop lines in a field.

  “Has your mother read your manuscript?”

  “No. She doesn’t read. My stuff or anything else.”

  He nodded, sipping his whiskey and looking into the fire. �
��Her loss.”

  I drank more of my beer, having grown accustomed to the taste now that it was almost half gone. My cheeks were warm and Patrick’s sweater suddenly felt itchy. I got up and slipped out of it, tossing it on the back of the chair adjacent to the couch. Still holding my beer, I meandered over to the bookshelf. What books did he have? What would they tell me about him? The bookshelves were remarkably neat, like stacks at the library. I thought, briefly, of the books in my bedroom at my mother’s, all piled up haphazardly, this way and that, and yet I knew exactly where every one of them was located. They were the friends who never let me down, regardless of what happened in my real life. The last several years the characters in my own stories had become friends as well, albeit sometimes rebellious, thinking they were in charge of the story instead of me, their creator. But I forgave them. Keep whispering your stories to me, I said to them in the blank spaces between the words. I will make sure you’re heard.

  Behind me, I heard Patrick moving around the room. Then music. Emmy Lou Harris. Blue Kentucky Girl.

  I ran my fingers along the books on the left side, second row of Patrick’s shelves. The books were alphabetized by author. This was a row of H’s: Hardy, Hemingway, Herriot, Huxley. Did he have full collections of each author?

  I realized Patrick was behind me. I turned to look up at him, teasing. “Alphabetized?”

  He didn’t answer. His eyes were hooded. “Dance with me?”

  I turned around. We were inches apart. I breathed in his smell. “Patrick, are we going to talk about this?”

  “This?”

  “This thing between us.” I looked him directly in the eyes, feeling bold and raw. “Is it just me?”

  He opened his mouth as if to speak and then shut it. Time slowed; my heart pounded hard in my chest. I set my beer on the edge of the bookshelf, near the F’s. His gaze shifted between my hands and face. He shook his head, sadly. “I feel it too. Of course I do. Jesus, Oregon, you’ve made me lose my mind.” He touched the side of my face with the back of his hand. “It’s your writing. And you. Just everything.”