“Look at these,” she said, and handed Rose a stack of pictures: a steaming bowl of soup, a bouquet of rosemary and thyme, a still life with carrots, celery and shallots; a close-up of two potatoes and a yam.
“They’re really good,” Rose said after she’d looked at each one twice. “They’re really good. Don’t you think so?”
Petie shrugged. “I can live with most of them. I’m hoping Gordon can, too. I worked for an hour tonight and turned out nothing but crap.”
“Well, I think these are great.” Rose tapped them into a stack and set them carefully in front of Petie. “So tell me about Loose. Didn’t you go see Mrs. Hendrik yesterday?”
“Yeah. She said Loose is dyslexic like Eddie, but maybe not as bad. She said they didn’t find anything else, no behavior problems. No behavior problems, my ass! I could show them behavior problems all right.” Petie chuckled and took a swig of beer.
“So what do they want you to do now?”
“Nothing. They have a Voc Ed person who’ll work with him three times a week. They said there was more intensive stuff they can do, too, if that’s not enough.”
“That sounds okay, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“What did Eddie think?”
“Well, you know, this is Eddie we’re talking about. He says it’s a pile of shit. But he’s also the one who wanted Loose to get Voc Ed help as many times a week as they could arrange it. I know it was hard on Eddie back when we were all in school but, you know, he never talked about it, never does now. Eula used to bring it up at dinner sometimes, about how he should never confuse learning problems with basic smarts, because he was just as smart as the next guy, maybe smarter. I don’t think he ever believed her, though. He’d always get mad at her for bringing up his problems in front of me. That house was tiny, though. There wasn’t any way to talk about anything privately unless you sent everyone out for beer or something.”
“So have you told Loose?”
“Oh, kind of. We’ve told him that he learns in a special way and so does his daddy. He knows he’ll get teaching time with someone who knows how he learns and can help him.”
“Is he okay with that?”
“Who knows. This is Loose we’re talking about, bead of water on a hot skillet. You never know what’s getting through and what’s not, never mind what’ll stick.”
“He’s a good kid, you know. You should believe in him more.”
“Yeah, well,” Petie said. “Hey, is Gordon okay?”
“I don’t know. He has a new cancer sore on the back of one hand. Nadine’s pretty down in the dumps. When we finish the stuff for the book next week he’s going to hand-carry it to L.A. and Nadine’s going with him this time. I said I’d take care of the cafe for them. I think she needs a break real bad.”
“I bet.”
Rose pushed herself up from the table, drank the last of her beer and put on her coat. “I need to get home.”
“Hey, how late is Christie staying this year? He still waiting until March?”
“It looks like it,” Rose said. “We’re just loving having him back. If it was up to me, he’d never leave again.”
“Think you could talk him into it?”
“No, but I might try anyway.”
WHEN ROSE got home she found Carissa bundled up in a nightgown and fuzzy robe watching, of all things, a basketball game on television. She looked flushed and miserable, like she was getting sick.
“Good game?” Rose asked her, crossing the room to kiss her on the forehead. No fever.
“What?”
“The basketball game. Who’s winning?”
“I don’t know,” Carissa said dully. “I don’t even know who’s playing.”
“Ah,” Rose said, running her hand over Carissa’s cheek. “You look like you don’t feel well.”
“I’m okay.”
“Huh. Where’s Jim? Have you been here alone all this time?”
Carissa shrugged. “I don’t know where he is. He went out someplace.
He’s always going out when you’re not here.”
“Well, then it’ll just be me and you.” Rose kicked off her shoes and sat down on the sofa, tucking up her feet. She put her arm around Carissa and pulled her close.
“Did Daddy like me?” Carissa asked.
“What?”
“Daddy. Did he like spending time with me?”
“What an odd question. Of course Daddy liked you. He liked you better than he liked me, when you get right down to it. He hasn’t called, has he?”
“No.”
Rose twirled a strand of Carissa’s hair around her finger thoughtfully. “When you were born, he said you were the most beautiful ugly thing he’d ever seen.”
“There’s no such thing as being beautiful and ugly.”
“Of course there is. Pogo was very perceptive that way. When you were little and trying out your walking legs for the first time, he used to say you walked like a Martian would walk if they suddenly landed on earth.”
Carissa smiled. “He said that?”
Rose smiled, too. “Many times.” She hugged Carissa close. “What’s making you think about Pogo?”
“I don’t know. I just wonder sometimes what it would have been like if he’d stayed.”
“Oh, honeybun, I can’t imagine. Pogo wasn’t much of a family man even when he was trying. He had walkin’ feet. That’s what he used to say—Rosalie, my feet are only good for one thing, and that’s walkin’. They’ve never been worth a damn for putting up on a couch every night in time for the news.”
“I bet he just didn’t want to stay. He probably didn’t love us at all,” Carissa said.
“Well, you might think that, but it wasn’t so simple. It was an odd thing about Pogo, but he always told the truth, even when it wasn’t pretty, or when it wasn’t anything you’d want to hear. He was an honest man who never got the knack of staying put.”
“How come he’s never called or come by?”
“Scared to, would be my guess. And the longer he stays away, the more scared he’ll be.”
“Scared of what?”
“Could be a lot of things. What I’d say. What you’d say. What we wouldn’t say, but would think. What he’d do if he liked us enough to maybe stay.”
“Do you think he would?”
“Stay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No. Only as long as his walkin’ feet would let him, sweetie. Only that long.”
“I don’t think Jim likes me.”
“Oh, that again. Why?”
“He looks at me funny.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. He just gets this weird look on his face, and then he goes someplace else.”
“Hon, I know he likes you,” Rose said. “I don’t know how I can prove that to you, but he does. Only he’s not a family man, you know? He has a life of his own and sometimes he shares it with us, but then he needs to get away from us sometimes, too. It’s Jim, sweetie, not us, that’s the reason for his doing things or not.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes, I do, hon, from the bottom of my heart.”
“Well, I hope he leaves soon,” Carissa blurted out.
“That’s a harsh thing to say.”
“I don’t care.”
Rose sighed. “Well, you’ll probably be getting your wish sometime soon. He’s always gone by March, you know that. And he hasn’t said this year will be any different.”
“That’ll be okay with me. Just us two again, like we used to be.”
Rose rested her cheek on the top of Carissa’s head. “Yes. Just us two. You know, I can think of worse ways of living than that.”
THE NEXT day, Rose went to Sawyer, bringing the final Local Flavor manuscript to Gordon. It was 225 pages of double-spaced recipes and text, more words than Rose would have thought she knew how to put together. Petie’s pictures were finished, too, except for two more small illustrations they’d send b
y UPS when they were done. Rose wondered if she’d miss it, once the work was finished. Who knew? Maybe she and Petie would think of something else to write about—seafood? maybe a seafood cookbook?—that Paul would like. Or maybe they could write a traveler’s guide. They could call it Off the Beaten Path in Oregon. It might work. She and Petie, between them, could find enough to talk about, she was sure, especially if they drove back into the valleys on logging roads. Petie knew a lot of them, and they could explore the rest using U.S. Forest Service maps. She could write it, and Petie could illustrate it. She’d ask Gordon about it. Maybe he could help.
Rose knocked on his apartment door and waited for the muffled call to come in. Instead of the usual cheerful shout, though, Gordon simply opened the door. A deep purple lesion climbed from just above his left eye to his hairline. He looked pale and ill and for the first time since Rose had known him, she understood that he would die. How Nadine would deal with that Rose couldn’t begin to imagine. Nadine was as close to Gordon, in many ways, as Marge had been to Larry, and look how that was turning out. Petie had gotten a call from DeeDee just yesterday saying that Marge didn’t have the heart to come back to Hubbard knowing Larry wasn’t there, so she’d decided to stay in Tempe for a while, rent a little place of her own near DeeDee and the kids and see what happened. DeeDee had asked if Petie wanted to run the Sea View Motel for her, keeping everything for herself over and above the bank loan payment. If Petie didn’t want to do it, they’d understand, DeeDee had said, but in that case they’d have to sell the place, and at almost the worst time of year. Petie had promised to give her an answer in the next few days.
Gordon and Rose sat down across from each other at his kitchen table. She set the stack of pages in front of him, put a cardboard portfolio filled with Petie’s drawings beside it, and smiled. Gordon smiled back.
“Look what you’ve done,” he said. “You’ve written a book. A good book. Who’d have ever thunk.”
Rose wasn’t sure what that meant, but she blushed at the gist of the compliment. “I can’t believe it’s done. Really, I can’t believe it. I don’t know how to thank you for believing in me.”
“You and Petie are a couple of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” Gordon said. “I think—listen, because I mean this—I think you both could do absolutely anything you wanted to, if you set your minds to it.”
“I’ve been thinking—” Rose said, and laid out for him her ideas for a cookbook or travel book.
“I don’t know that Paul would be interested in another cookbook, at least not right now,” Gordon said carefully, “but I think the idea of a guide to the lesser-known back roads of Oregon could be fantastic. Especially if it included stories about the people who actually home-steaded here. You and Petie could scout the area and go to the county historical society for information. Plus the county courthouse will have birth and death records, property deeds, that sort of thing.” Rose watched as he lit up, fueled by this new idea. Then, abruptly, he moved the manuscript and drawings to one side, lining up their edges carefully. “Listen, there’s something I should probably tell you,” he said. “Nadine and I may not be coming back. Well, we’ll come back to pack things up, but we’ve decided to move back to Los Angeles.”
“Why?”
Gordon sighed. “It’s not that we don’t like it here, please understand that. It’s just that we don’t really fit in, do we, and it’s been lonely for Nadine. She has you, thank God, but she’s tired and she worries too much about money on top of worrying too much about me. She thinks she can get a job in L.A. that might be less stressful, which is funny since that’s why we left L.A. in the first place. I don’t know, things never work out quite the way we expect them to, do they? I’m going to be sick enough soon that it’ll be hard for her to take care of me up here without an HIV clinic or program of some kind. Paul and I actually talked about living together when I was down there last time, though who knows what Nadine will think of that. Still, it would keep costs down. Paul’s lover—” Gordon broke off and looked at Rose. “Is it okay if I talk like this?”
“I think so.”
“Paul had a lover who died of HIV just like my partner Johnny did. We know what we’re facing, is what I mean. It’s easier to get through it if you don’t try to get through it alone. Most of Paul’s friends have died, and so have most of mine. I don’t say that to be dramatic. It’s just the fact.”
“I can’t even imagine your not being here,” Rose said. “I understand, but it’s awful. Do they let unsophisticated country girls visit Los Angeles?”
Gordon grinned. “All the time, Rose.”
She smiled back a little tearfully. “Then I guess it’ll be all right.”
Chapter 14
SCHIFF HAD had another one of his dreams about the redheaded farm girl he met at the fair. He was at a fair in his dream, too, but instead of being safety-chained to a ride, he’d been shackled to Carla. The girl had been taunting him, daring him to cut himself loose. Go ahead. Skip. she kept saying. Betcha can’t do it. Betcha won’t.
The problem, as Schiff kept trying to explain to her, was that they were at the top of the ride and cutting the chain would mean he’d freefall fifty feet or more. That made no difference to the girl, who’d simply said, You don’t have it, Skippy, you do not have what it takes to do something about that woman.
What woman? he’d asked.
The awful one. You know the one I’m talking about.
But Schiff knew a number of awful women—his two wives, for example.
In his dream he reached for the chain-cutters the girl held out to him, but he woke up before he could do anything with them, and that pissed him off. He’d done a lot of hard things in his life, don’t think he hadn’t. Look at his feet. They were all scarred up, especially the soles, and do you know why? Because he’d used them to stamp out the flames of a buddy who was burning in Vietnam. Schiff hadn’t been able to walk for a month. But the girl didn’t let him tell her that story. She was too busy ragging on him about not doing stuff. I know you, she said in his dreams. You have a million reasons why you won’t do something, but the fact is, you won’t do it because you don’t want to do it. That’s the real reason. You know it, Skippy, and I know it, too.
So he’d woken up slick with sweat, wondering why he hadn’t cut that chain, why he hadn’t stayed with Petie Coolbaugh at the Wayside the other night and let Carla sit by herself. There’d been a time when he would have. Why not now? Was it Carla, did he really love her in a way he’d kept a secret even from himself for years? Did he stay out of some higher moral commitment to her and Randi the Makeup Queen? Or did he simply lack the balls to go? He knew what the girl would say to that, and it wouldn’t be pretty. But it wasn’t that simple, not anymore, not at his age. He was forty-two. He couldn’t afford to be financially wiped out. And make no mistake: Carla would hunt him to the ends of the earth before she’d let him get away with so much as one penny more than his share. She was the most vengeful woman he’d ever met. Petie had even more at stake than he had, with her kids and Eddie Coolbaugh’s good job and Marge closing up the Sea View and all. So really, you could say he was giving her up out of concern for her own greater welfare.
Oh, Skippy, that’s rich. That’s the best one yet.
There were times when he couldn’t stand that girl.
Schiff got a tighter grip on the steering wheel as he crested the cape and pierced the gummy fog at the top. He had never dreamed a single dream about Petie Coolbaugh, even though when he was awake she was like a light acid burning away under his skin.
He flipped down his visor briefly to make sure the postcard was still there. It was an offer he had received in the mail yesterday for a free weekend at Bachelor Butte, a resort over in Bend, if he’d simply agree to listen to an hour-long sales presentation. Usually Carla was all over the mail, but yesterday she was playing Bunko with some girlfriends at mail time. Normally they played Bunko on Thursday nights, but Tootie had gotten sick, s
o they’d rescheduled it. Normally Schiff wouldn’t have been home that early, but he’d had a headache and left work early. It was awfully co-incidental unless it was a sign from God that he was meant to go—and Petie, too. He tucked the postcard into his shirt pocket. Maybe he’d go ahead and mention it to her if he could get her on the phone. Two nights, three days at Bachelor Butte Resort in Bend. Him and Petie. Yowzah.
Truth was, he hadn’t seen Petie for over a week. She’d gone squirrelly on him since he and Carla had looked for her at the Wayside the day Larry went into the hospital. Not that Carla had any idea she was chaperoning. He’d never wanted anything as bad as he’d wanted to hitch up a barstool beside little Petie Coolbaugh. That walk to Carla in the corner had taken him miles through a wilderness.
He’d call Petie when he got to work. With Eddie Coolbaugh hot for promotion, Schiff had been sending him all up and down the coast from Garibaldi to Winchester Bay, and Eddie had thanked him for it. Handy, since Petie would at least still answer his phone calls.
At work he waited until fat Bev went to the restroom, and then he dialed, taking the postcard out of his pocket so he could read it to her.
“Yeah,” Petie said on the third ring. He’d never met anyone less friendly on the telephone.
“Hi, beautiful,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m sitting here looking at something. Can you guess what?”
“Yeah, and you better put it away. They arrest people for that, and next thing you know you’re listed in the weekly police report in the Sawyer News-Tribune.”
“Jesus, Petie.”
“What.”
“I try to be nice and you get all nasty on me.”
“Turnabout’s fair play, bud.”
“Meet me somewhere. Say yes before Bev comes back.”
“No.”
“Yes. It’s a small word. Some people use it all the time. Say it. Yes.”
“No.”
“You’re damn tough, you know?”
“Don’t think I don’t work at it, though,” Petie said.
Bev had come back. Schiff could hear her lower her broad haunches onto her squeaky desk chair.
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