The Hideaway

by Lauren K. Denton

  Before heading back into the house for dinner, William took me to his workshop to show me a table he was building. “I’d love to know what you think about it,” he said as we crossed the grass between the house and the small woodshed where he did his work.

  I looked up at him in surprise. Robert rarely asked my opinion about anything other than the doneness of a steak or whether the housekeeper had cleaned the kitchen well enough. The simple fact that William wanted to know what I thought about his work sent a spark of longing through my chest.

  “You seem like someone who appreciates nice things. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s kind of nice.” He grinned at me and pushed the door open.

  A table stood in the center of the room, lit by a single light hanging from a cord in the ceiling. I inhaled sharply. With his rough, calloused hands and joking manner, I’d expected something practical and useful, not such beauty.

  The table was long and slim with oak boards stained a rich, dark brown, but the best part was the legs. Delicately carved vines and leaves snaked around each one. I knelt and ran my hand down one leg, my fingers following the shallow curves and twists of the carving.

  “This is beautiful.” I looked back up at him.

  “You sound surprised.”

  I shook my head. “No, I—”

  He laughed. “It’s okay. I’ve heard it before. I learned carving from my grandfather. He used to whittle sticks into little creatures—bears, dogs, cats. I tried it one day on a scrap piece of wood and discovered I was good at it.” He shrugged, then looked around the shop. “I didn’t realize it was so messy in here until now.”

  Sawdust covered the floor like dew, and his tools were in disarray on his work surface. In the corner, broken pieces of wood sat in a jumble.

  “I can help you straighten up, if you want.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I wouldn’t want you to get your clothes dirty.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Suit yourself.” He reached behind him and grabbed a broom, then held it out to me. “You can start with this.”

  We got to work. I swept piles and piles of sawdust—the stuff seemed to multiply the more I swept—while he gathered loose boards and stacked them along one wall. It wasn’t long before we both grew warm and William pushed open the door to allow in a breeze. I paused in the open doorway and slipped my feet out of my heels, kicking them to the side.

  “You’ll ruin those in no time.” William pointed at my legs covered in pantyhose. “You might as well take them off too.”

  “What? My stockings?”

  “If you haven’t noticed, you’re the only one here who wears those things. Well, you and Mrs. DeBerry.”

  I looked down at my stocking feet. I could see the indentations on the top of my toes where the heels had dug into my skin. My heart beat a little faster as I reached down and pulled the thin silk off, one leg at a time. Then I dropped them in a pile on top of my shoes.

  Lord, if Mother could see me now.

  With the sweeping finished, I helped him organize his tools in his tool bag and on little hooks stuck into the wall. We worked in easy silence at first, then we began to talk. About his family and mine, about Robert and our marriage.

  “I remember the night he arrived home from the war,” I said. “My parents and his were having dinner at the Battle House Hotel. Robert had his family’s chauffeur bring him to the dinner. Mother said when he pulled her to the side and asked about me, she knew he was going to propose. She burst into my bedroom late that night and told me all about it. She was so excited about the prospect of marrying me off—especially to the Van Buren family.”

  “What makes them so special?” William asked.

  “The Van Burens own Southern National Bank downtown. My father is an executive in the shipping industry. It helps my family to have a friend in the banking business—even better if we’re married to them.”

  “I see. And did the proposal come quickly?”

  “Not as quick as Mother would have liked.” I smiled. “We’d been friends before, but it wasn’t romantic. We had to get to know each other again. But something about him was different, more serious than I remembered.”

  “I’d imagine war will do that to a man,” William said.

  “I don’t know if it was the war or just that he decided it was time for us to be together. Everyone knew it would happen. I was never too comfortable with the idea that his parents and mine decided a long time ago that we’d be a perfect match for each other. I guess I just let myself be pulled along by everyone’s excitement. And the fact that Robert was quite charming didn’t hurt matters either.”

  “Was it ever a perfect match?”

  “I suppose in some ways it was. Just not in the way I wanted it to be.”

  “And what way is that?”

  I laughed a little and smoothed my hair with my hands. “My, you are direct, aren’t you?”

  “I’m just curious about you. That’s all.”

  I didn’t answer his question—after all, how could you explain true love, the kind that nurtures and respects, that honors and cherishes? That’s what I’d hoped for when I married Robert, even though all the signs pointed to him being unfamiliar with—and uninterested in—that kind of love. But I hardly knew William, and it felt silly to try to explain my heart.

  “You wanted to be treasured.”

  “I-I guess you could say that,” I said, stammering. “Instead, I got this life—and a husband—I hardly recognize. It’s not what I pictured, that’s for sure.”

  I looked up to where he stood in front of the window, framed by the fading daylight outside. His gaze on me was so intense I had to turn my eyes away. I pushed off from the worktable where I’d been scraping spilled paint off the handle of a hammer. I wasn’t sure where to look or what to do with my hands. William crossed the floor toward me. When his fingers touched mine, I closed my eyes and exhaled.

  Big and warm, his hand wrapped around mine. I wanted to close the distance between us with one more step, but propriety held me back. He dropped his gaze to our laced fingers. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, someone called from the house.

  “Dinner!”

  He leaned around me and peered through the window toward the house, then sighed and looked back at me. “I think it’s time for us to go,” he whispered. He held his elbow out to me. “May I escort you?”

  I raised an eyebrow and smiled, then bit it back. I nodded and slipped my arm into his.

  Dinner was a loud jumble of laughter and conversation, dishes passed down the long table, a wineglass spilled, chairs scraping against the hardwood floor. I tried to keep up with the conversations as well as I could, but William’s steady presence next to me scattered my thoughts. My fingers still tingled where he’d held my hand earlier, and I both wanted him to touch me again and was afraid of what might happen if he did.

  After dinner and dessert, guests drifted away from the table, some to the back porch, some to the parlor where easels had been abandoned almost midstroke, and a few to bed. When a couple of women grabbed the remaining plates and dishes and carried them into the kitchen, I pushed my chair back and stood.

  “I should probably go help.” I gestured to the open door of the kitchen. I picked up a scraped-clean casserole dish and followed the women out of the dining room. If they thought it strange that a woman they didn’t know was helping with the dishes, they didn’t say anything.

  As I washed and wiped, I tried to calm my frenzied mind and racing heart, but it didn’t work. Compared to Robert’s charm and swagger, William was substantial and strong. Still confident, but there was no boasting. No bluster. But it was more than that. We’d only spent one afternoon together, and already this man knew me in a way Robert never had. I’d been acknowledged—seen—maybe for the first time. The sensation was dizzying.

  Fifteen minutes later, I walked out of the kitchen drying my hands on a towel. William still sat at the dining table, alone. At that mom
ent my heart stilled, calm and sure. He smiled and pushed my chair back a few inches with his foot. Instead of sitting down next to him, I turned toward the stairs and began to climb. More than hearing him on the stairs behind me, I felt his presence staying close. When I walked into my bedroom, I left the door open.

  The next morning, I woke with the sun on my face. I’d left the window curtain open to catch the breeze when the room grew warm during the night. I stretched and smiled, remembering, but I froze when William stirred next to me in bed.

  Good Lord, Margaret, what have you done?

  But then he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him. Whispered into my hair. Kissed my neck. Things Robert never did. In that moment, it was easy to forget the previous three years had even happened.

  I felt bold. Eager. Yet I was scared to speak, scared to break the silence between us that felt almost sacred. I waited, a complicated knot of tension and contentment in my chest.

  A few minutes later, I couldn’t wait any longer. I rolled to my other side and faced him. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Mmm?”

  “My name isn’t Helen Parker.”

  He smiled, his eyes still closed. “I know.”

  “What do you mean, you know?”

  “I saw you through the window when you first arrived here. You hesitated when Mrs. DeBerry asked for your name. I thought, ‘Now there’s a girl who’s running from something. Or someone.’ Makes sense that you’d give a different name.”

  Was that what I was doing? Running? It didn’t feel that way. It felt more like I was arriving.

  “So what’s your name?” he asked.

  “Margaret.”

  “Margaret,” he repeated. Just when I thought he’d drifted back to sleep, he spoke again. “Can I call you Maggie? Margaret’s a little . . . stuffy.”

  I laughed. “You can call me whatever you want.”

  “Okay, Maggie.” He propped himself up on one elbow. “Remember what I said yesterday about you being in an awkward position? This is what I meant.”

  “You’ll have to explain that.”

  “It’s awkward because you’re going to fall in love with me. Don’t laugh, just wait—it’ll happen. Then when people hear that you left your husband, they’re going to say you’re getting back at him by being with me. You’ll have to defend yourself to them—prove to them that this is something other than a rebound.” He lay back down next to me.

  “I am not going to fall in love with you,” I said, our faces inches apart.

  “You’re not?” He moved his lips closer to mine.

  “Nope,” I murmured.

  He smiled. “Now it’s my turn to tell you something. From the moment I got here, I felt like this was where my life would start. My real life. I’ve done a lot of things and gone a lot of places, but when I arrived here, something felt different.” He reached up and stroked my cheek. “I wasn’t sure what to look for, but then you showed up. I think you’re what I’ve been waiting for.”

  Silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Rather, it was a space for dreams. For possibility.

  8

  MAGS

  FEBRUARY 1960

  William and I quickly became an item. Everyone in the house saw it and no one questioned it. Only Mrs. DeBerry thought it improper.

  “Mrs. Parker—or whoever you are—it is ‘Mrs,’ isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “Mrs. Parker, he’s a bum. They’re all bums. They don’t do anything. You’re a young girl. What would your father think?”

  “He’d probably be shocked, Mrs. DeBerry. Just like you are. Even I am, a little. But William isn’t a bum. You should know that.”

  She shook her head and walked away, mumbling about ladies and gentlemen and indecent things.

  William introduced me to his friends as Maggie. He looked at me when he said it the first time, as if asking for belated permission. I nodded. Maggie felt good. It felt light.

  A woman in the house, Daisy, lent me some clothes when she saw me adjusting the waistband of my slim skirt. “Here, this will be more comfortable.” She pulled a long tunic dress out of a bag.

  I smiled—Mother would definitely not approve. I stopped rolling my hair that day. I let it fall around my shoulders, free and unruly. That night, I shoved my bobby pins, pearl necklace, and foam rollers into a side pocket of my suitcase. I went ahead and dropped my wedding ring down there with them. Lord, it was a sad, expensive little collection.

  The days were long, with nothing concrete to mark the passage of time. Most mornings William and I sat among the other guests in the dining room, munching on croissants and idly reading the newspaper. No one had real jobs to hurry off to, so the mood in the house was one of utter relaxation. It wasn’t hard to slip into a routine of ease.

  As the painters painted, the sculptors sculpted, and the yogis practiced their moves in the grass, I learned the routines of the house and became a part of them. Since I didn’t have a creative endeavor to take up my time like everyone else, I wanted a job to do—something to make me feel useful and productive.

  Starla, the woman I’d seen in the kitchen the first night I arrived, asked me to help with food preparations. She just needed an extra hand to help pull meals together, but I took it a step further. I made a grocery list every few days with ingredients for each meal plus extra items for the house—toilet paper, matches, soap. I organized the pantry by food type and size. I scoured the oven and cleaned out the refrigerator. As a wedding gift, Mother had hired a woman to clean our house in Mobile twice a week, so I rarely had anything to clean or straighten at home. The hard work felt good, and I relished my sore muscles and dirty fingernails.

  William and I spent most evenings sitting on the back porch, huddled together on the glider. He’d massage my feet and tell me stories of working in orange groves in Florida and selling his tables and benches from a roadside shack in Asheville. My privileged prior life was sedate and sheltered compared to William’s hard-earned wisdom and tales from the road. I soaked him up, every word, laugh, and touch.

  He knocked on my door early one morning before the sun was up. He stuck his head in the room when I answered.

  “Come with me,” he whispered, holding up a mug of coffee. “Outside, five minutes.”

  Curious, I dressed quickly. Following the aroma of coffee outside, I found him waiting in his truck, the passenger door open for me.

  “Where are we going? It’s still dark.”

  “I know. You’ll see.”

  He drove fast down Highway 55. When he turned onto a side street, I grew lost in a maze of dirt roads and creek beds. Finally, we went around a bend and the path opened into a cove overlooking Mobile Bay, isolated except for a blue heron standing on thin legs in the shallow water. It was still dark beneath the cover of trees, but directly in front of us, the sky had exploded in streaks of orange and pink, with violet clouds scattered like pebbles. Just above the waterline, the horizon remained a deep indigo blue. Seagulls gliding in the air provided the only movement other than the quiet waves creeping forward and back along the shore.

  We watched the sky change colors without speaking. At some point during the show, we walked to the edge of the water and sat down, a blanket over our shoulders and our toes just touching the water. I leaned my head on his shoulder.

  “What do you think?” he asked once the sky was a solid fluorescent orange.

  “It’s breathtaking. How did you find this place?”

  “It’s mine. I bought this plot of land from a buddy who moved to San Francisco. It had been in his family for generations, but he didn’t plan to come back and said he didn’t need ties here. I’ve done nothing but move around, and I guess ties are what I’m looking for—something to anchor me to a place I can call my own.”

  We sat close and still, watching the gulls overhead and the water’s gentle movement. In the distance, the double masts of a shrimp boat interrupted the perfect line of th
e horizon. He took my hand in his and traced the skin on my palm and wrist, up to the crook of my elbow. The light touch sent chills up my arms and down my back. He laced his fingers between mine and I pressed myself into his side. It had been a little more than a month since we met, but already, I felt connected to him in a way I’d never felt with Robert.

  “This thing that’s happening between us—it’s fast.” I was scared to say the words out loud, so I whispered them.

  “Too fast?” He turned to face me.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know how this sort of thing works. I’ve never been with anyone other than Robert, and we’d known each other for years. Is it possible—rational—for us to feel so much so quickly?”

  “Sure it’s possible. Rational? I don’t know and I don’t care. I care about us and where we’re going.”

  “How do I know this isn’t a rebound, like you said?” I touched the tip of his nose. “And how do I know you’re not just taking advantage of the only woman at The Hideaway not dressed in black and ranting about Kerouac or Ginsberg?”

  He didn’t laugh or even smile. “I’m not taking advantage of you. You know me well enough by now to know that.”

  “That’s the thing—sometimes I feel like I don’t know you at all.”

  “You do know me.” He pulled away a bit. “What else do you need to know? My life before you wasn’t that interesting, then you showed up and my world cracked open. Isn’t that enough?”

  “It is—or I want it to be. But you have to understand how it feels to open the door to a world that’s entirely unknown to me. And . . .” I stopped. I didn’t want to remind him. Or me. As if either of us could forget.

  “And what?”

  “I’m still married. I have a husband.”

  “You’re right,” he said softly, his gaze on the water. “Do you have plans to return to him?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then this new world—I know it makes you nervous, but isn’t it also a little exciting?” He cupped my cheek with his hand. “We can make our future anything we want it to be.” The corner of his mouth pulled up—the same half smile he offered as a life preserver the first evening I arrived at The Hideaway.