Gordon had never worked so hard as in these last few days. According to the women, each new bout of sobriety forced Neil Dubbin to even higher, steeper peaks of ambition, so vast was his trail of broken promises. His pledge to turn the Market into a first-rate business had few believers in his family, but at least his creditors were extending him three more months of their patience. To Gordon had fallen the verminous task of tearing out the rotting cabinets to make way for new storage. Neil tried to help in between the violent headaches that drove him, nauseated and squinting, to his sour room, where darkness was his only antidote, other than alcohol. He had just reemerged and now sat on an overturned crate, shoulders hunched, wincing with every hammer strike. Again, Gordon offered to stop.
“No, keep going. Please. I need you to do this. It’s too important,” he insisted. Neil’s surest skill was entrusting others with his well-being. He needed not just their help, but their loyalty and affection in a way that validated their self-importance. And maybe he genuinely did; Gordon couldn’t be sure, not when his own natural distrust of people blotted out such nuances. He had known other men like Neil, irresistibly bitter men whose sins seem more affliction than failings. Even Neil’s eager fascination with other people’s pain made them think he truly cared about their troubles.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Neil said. “Is this the kind of thing they teach you there?”
“I used to help my father a lot,” Gordon said quietly.
“Just the opposite of me and my dad. They never wanted me wasting my time around here. I think I was supposed to be a big-time accountant or lawyer or something, I forget. But thank God they never sold the farm!” he declared with a bitter sweep of his arm. “Where the
hell
would I be without it?”
Gordon kept tapping the crowbar, to drive it deeper behind the cabinet frame.
“Just so you’ll know,” Neil continued. “I haven’t said anything. I mean, about you, back then. I haven’t told anyone.”
Shoulder braced to the wall, Gordon wrenched the heavy bar back and forth. A persuader, his father used to call it. A persuader. They didn’t know. Not yet. In a way it would be a relief to get it over with.
“I mean, what’s the point? You know what I mean, they’ll just get all worked up. The girls, I mean. They’ll start thinking weird things, you know, like . . . like . . . maybe they can’t be alone back here with you or something. But then how long can you keep a secret like that? It must’ve been hell, huh, just a kid and being locked up all that time? I never could’ve done it. I would’ve checked out my first night there—broken glass, sheets, something. You ever try anything like that?”
The crowbar fell to the floor. Grunting, Gordon pulled as hard as he could.
“You must’ve thought of it, though, huh? You must’ve.” Neil’s harsh breathing scratched at the silence. “Hey, I saw you get picked up the other day. Pretty lady. You must be making up for a lot of lost time, huh? I mean, twenty-five years! Jesus Christ, what does a big, healthy guy like you do? You gotta have something more than a warm hand, right?”
The rank dust of food-fouled wood exploded into the air as the cabinet gave way.
“You probably did what you had to do, right? Well, anyway, I haven’t said anything to anybody.” Neil sighed. “I just wanted you to know that.”
It was Friday, and Gordon was on his way home from work, still hoping Jilly Cross might call. In his bag there was an angel food cake, a pint of strawberries, and a can of real whipped cream for dessert tonight. He was surprised to be looking forward to dinner at Delores’s. He was tired of his own pathetic attempts at cooking. Nothing ever came out right. Last night’s steak had been so dry and tough, he’d had to cut it into slivers to chew it.
The phone was ringing as he unlocked the door. “Hello! Hello!” he shouted into the dial tone. Reading from Jilly’s business card, he dialed the first three numbers, then hung up. It didn’t seem right, asking to see condos he would never buy. But if she called him—well, that was different.
He waited by the phone a moment more in case it rang again. When it didn’t he went down the narrow wooden stairs into the cellar. He stripped off his soiled, sweaty clothes and put them into the washing machine so they’d be clean for tomorrow. It hadn’t occurred to him he needed more clothes until June asked the other day if that blue sweatshirt and pants were all he had.
He was lathering his arms in the shower now and trying to remember the last time he had actually bought clothes in a store. Vague images rose through the steam: his elbows banging into tiny dressing-room walls as he hurried to undress before the curtain parted, then crouching from the gash of light as his mother handed in a shirt with sleeves inches short of his wrists and pants with cuffs she would tear out and then hem in her long, clumsy stitches. The first woman in her family not to do piecework in the mills, she had been proud of her ineptitude with needle and thread.
He put on the chinos and yellow shirt Dennis had gotten for him to wear home from Fortley. As he sat on the edge of the bed, tying his shoes, he could see down into Mrs. Jukas’s backyard. In the full swell of late-afternoon sun, the trees seemed even thicker with leaves than this morning and the grass darker in the deepening shadows. The only trees through Fortley’s windows had all been distant, the land cut close, allowing no shrub or stump of growth for a man’s concealment.
Neil Dubbin had asked, but the truth was Gordon had never considered suicide as a way out. The most vital elements had died inside, died before he got there. After a while he stopped noticing the horizon’s lethal scroll of razor wire. The letters and visits he initially yearned for soon became cruel reminders of a lost world. His father’s trembling head and stroke-frozen face seemed only further proof of his crime. In a way, he had been glad when his father finally died, glad for his father, relieved for himself and his mother, who seemed happier, less burdened. From then on, her letters brightened with details of Dennis’s busy life or her trips with friends, and then her pride in Lisa, who was exactly the kind of girl a mother would want for her only son, one letter so guilelessly confided. But he knew what she meant. He understood. It was all part of the price.
The phone rang and he grabbed it on the first ring. A breeze lifted the curtain as the room filled with Jilly Cross’s voice. She apologized for not calling sooner. The condo had gone under agreement, but another had come on the market this afternoon. It was perfect, just the right size, still in Collerton, which she knew he preferred, but in a much better neighborhood—and, she added, still in his price range. “I thought of you immediately!” she said, and he grinned. “Can you see it tonight? I’ve got to make a few more calls and then I could pick you up.”
“Yes, of course.” He had to check on something first and then he’d call her right back to tell her when.
He dialed Delores’s number, then hung up quickly, confused when he got the recording. He was supposed to be there in twenty-five minutes, so why hadn’t she answered? Maybe she was busy cooking. He called again, listened to the tape. “Hello, Delores?” he said in a rush at the beep. “Delores, this is Gordon. Gordon Loomis. I can’t . . . The thing is, I have to . . . that is, you see . . . well, let’s see now, what should I do? Maybe you’re at the store. Maybe you’re not home yet. I’m going to call you there. That’s what I’ll do. I’m going to call you at the store.”
Listening, Delores froze, hand inches over the phone. She’d heard that tension in so many men’s voices. If she answered, he’d say he couldn’t come. But at least he wasn’t leaving the message on her machine the way others had done. The phone rang again. He sounded frantic. “Hello, Delores? Delores, this is Gordon Loomis calling you back. I mean, I called before and you weren’t there, so now I’m calling back. I just called the store, but you’re not there. And now you’re not home, either, so I don’t know. I’m not sure, maybe I’ve got the wrong night. I thought you said this Friday. But maybe you meant—”
“Gordon!” she cried, as if in a breathless run for the phone. “I couldn’t really hear who it was. I was busy cooking and then I realized it was you, and yes, you’re right. I did say Friday. Tonight. In fact, everything’s just about ready. . . .” The countertops were cluttered with cucumber peels, onion skins, and discarded lettuce leaves, bottles of spices and oils, the sink filled with bowls and pans. Her shoulder crimped to the phone, she turned on the hot water and began to scrub the encrusted fry pan.
He couldn’t come. There was an appointment, a very important appointment he had forgotten until just a few minutes ago. “I’m sorry—”
“No!” she cried. It was all the unanswered letters, the long, hopeful drives to Fortley, her prideless efforts to keep the conversation going, telling him things he so obviously had little interest in, her sisters, nieces, nephews, neighbors, the store, her boss, and the illicit sensation of speaking Albert’s name to another man, this man she had grown to care deeply about. But then, as with Albert, the secret had taken on its own life, its significance swelling with an imagined complicity that required no acknowledgment on his part. It suddenly seemed so twisted. Yes, it was. It was. She knew it was, but she could not, would not, continue to be unloved, and so his cold disinterest and her desire had to exist on parallel tracks, unexamined. And now with their collision she wasn’t sure who she was berating, the fantasy lover or the socially blunted ex-convict. “You can’t just be calling me up twenty minutes before you’re supposed to be here! I’ve been expecting you! I’ve got everything cooked.” Her voice faltered as she looked around. “I mean, what am I supposed to do with all this—”
“I’m sorry. I should have thought. I’ll be right there. I’ll still be on time. I just have to make a phone call and then I’ll leave . . . I’ll be right there!”
Bag clutched to his side, Gordon hurried down his front walk.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Jada’s mother, Marvella, called in a lazy voice from her top step as he crossed the street. She waved.
“Hello.” He gave a stiff nod and walked quickly by. Serena knew Marvella’s brother, Bob, the only near-normal one in the family—well, the only one that worked, she’d said. He had his own business—his own truck, anyway—cleaning out septic tanks.
“Come on over sometime. Sixty-four Clover, come over, come over, first floor, door on the right, where there’s always a party going on, going on, going on, always a party . . .”
Her bawdy voice pursued him to the corner.
He had to hurry. He wasn’t enjoying this walk at all. His feet hurt. Winded, he took the steps two at a time to Delores’s second-floor apartment.
“I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry,” they both said with the opening door.
“I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” she said.
“I shouldn’t have called at the last minute like that.” He was trying to catch his breath.
Their uneasiness continued through the brief cocktail time. She had a mug chilling in the refrigerator, but all he wanted was a Coke. The can was fine, he said before she could pour it into the frosted mug. “No sense dirtying a glass.”
“That’s no problem,” she said, pouring it anyway. She spilled her Manhattan onto the sofa, then drank the next one much too quickly. They sat at the round table dragged in earlier from the kitchen. She had covered it with an embroidered linen tablecloth and positioned it in front of the living-room window. She struck a match, and her hand trembled as she lit the tall green candles. The two salad plates were the only ones left of her mother’s pattern, Desert Rose. Someday she would complete the set, she was telling him, but he looked at her blankly. Yes, she thought, when she did her registry. She poured them both Cabernet, Albert’s favorite with any kind of roasted meat. She felt better now. He looked at his watch again.
Such a big man, he must be hungry.
The ruby liquid glistened through the facets as she raised her glass in a well-practiced toast. “To your return home, Gordon.” She paused, but he didn’t take up his glass. “May your days be filled with good food, good times, and good friends. And may your heart know only love.” He began to eat, so she made a little swoop of the glass and then took a sip.
“Thank you. Thank you very much.” He was halfway through his salad. “That was delicious,” he said when he was done. He glanced around the table. She thought he was embarrassed to have finished so quickly while she was still eating. She offered him more; there was a whole other bowl in the refrigerator. “Oh, no. No, thank you.” He told her how Fortley’s salads had been a slimy mush of limp lettuce and crushed tomato chunks. “What’s that cheese called?” He pointed to her fork.
“Goat cheese,” she said, keenly aware that his lips parted as she raised the fork to her mouth. She took his plate into the kitchen. When she returned, he grinned to see the cheese-covered salad she placed in front of him.
Everything was delicious. It was, he said again as he ate the last baked potato. It was the best meal he’d ever had. “Leave room for dessert,” she warned. She hadn’t even mentioned her chocolate cake, so touched was she by his thoughtfulness in bringing dessert.
“I hope you like strawberries,” he said with such hopeful concern that a trickle of warmth seeped from her chest up into her cheeks.
“I do.”
“They’re right in season now.”
“Yes, this is the best time.”
“I can’t wait to try them.” He glanced at his watch again.
She thought he was concerned about walking home in the dark. She had already said she’d give him a ride.
“That was something I really missed,” he was saying. “Fresh strawberries. So many other things I forgot about . . . well, not really forgot. Just never gave much thought to. It all just kind of faded. The possibility—I guess that’s what I mean.” He shrugged uneasily.
It was the most he’d ever shared of his feelings. Tensed on the edge of her chair, she stared at his face, the strong chin, the smooth cheeks and wide brow, boyish in spite of all he’d been through: depravities she could only imagine, loneliness more terrifying to her than death.
Twenty-five years,
she thought, heavy eyed with this blinding ache in her belly,
twenty-five years and he’s never been held or touched by a woman.
There was an odd agelessness about him. He was both young and old, but with no experience, no connection in between. Her head trembled with the struggle to keep her fists clenched on the table.
Let me help, let me touch you and hold you, give me your pain and I will show you how good life can be, how beautiful.
There wasn’t a morning she didn’t wake up knowing that this was the day she had been waiting for. Love, with its mysteries and excesses, children, food, laughter, it was all such a wonder. Even grief had its own allure. At wakes and funerals she could give the best and most of herself, consoling, weeping, embracing even mere acquaintances in their time of need. She had never been afraid to feel any of it. Being unable to love, that would be the worst torment of all.