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Spring defined itself: present against odds. April rained in May; the early days poured. On the twelfth of May snow fell on white tulips. Kitty could not get into the soggy garden she had unveiled on a hopefully sunny April day. A flock of glistening wet crows, each a foot long, jabbed at the wet grass. One huge beast flew from a redwing blackbird circling in pursuit in the rain âto account for what crow-crime? A jay, screeching, hit Kitty's feeder with a seed-scattering bump, scaring flickers, two robins, a grackle. Lorenzo, watching from inside, threw up his breakfast. After mid-month the rain rained lightly. May showers brought May flowers: yellow troilius, feather-cusped red tulips, iris, white and purple; dandelions were scattered in the fields, buttercups; a blue haze of forget-me-nots; golden mustard in the green grass. In Kitty's Wood there were violets. The grass, come to life, thickened quickly. Dubin raked away last year's dead leaves from under trees and bushes. The new leaves had, on the thirtieth of April, burst forth like light-green lace on bony fingers. The green spoke a dozen green tongues, foliage covering hills and rising in lighter shades on the stony shoulders of Mt. No Name. In the morning, mist lay like a deep sea on the hills, their tops breaking through like green islands in white water. Sometimes clouds in gray and black masses were piled above the distant mountains, towering
like Alps into the sky, a line of golden flame burning at the highest edges.
He welcomed the softened warming days; broke out the tractor mower on Saturday afternoons and drove himself in narrowing circles over the front and back lawns as Kitty sunned herself in a one-piece bathing suit on a strawberry beach towel in the grass. She wore her straw hat and sunglasses and read
Cape Cod
when she wasn't napping in the sun. Or she watched the flowers in her garden. They drove into small towns in the Berkshires, walked in each, sometimes picnicked on roadside tables. They played shuttlecock on Sunday mornings; once in a while tennis. Kitty disliked the game. Evenings they went more often to visit friends, driving with the Habershams or other couples to restaurants in nearby towns. After returning from his latest trip abroad, Oscar Greenfeld called and asked them to come for drinks. Kitty nervously begged off and Dubin, of two minds, wouldn't in the end go without her.
During the week, one afternoon she wasn't working he asked her to go along on his long walk and Kitty, after changing into sneakers, walked with him.
“We haven't done the long walk for a long time.”
At the end of the walk, close to where he had been lost in the snow, Dubin felt an urge to leave the road and attempt to retrace his circular wandering, wherever it had been; but one stone wall looked like another; and the woods were full of green trees and flowering bushes, the farmland growing grains and grasses. Where he had been was in truth no longer there.
“What are you thinking of?” she asked and he answered: “D. H. Lawrence.”
“Why did I ask? I was thinking of you.”
She had given up Ondyk with Ondyk's blessing.
“So long as we have each other.”
He told her he had been working well. “I think it will be a good biography.”
One morning Dubin, slim manâhe had stopped dietingâinstead of cutting an orange in quarters and eating it at the breakfast table, peeled it, and stood at the morning-blue kitchen window chewing it in pulpy sections. He sucked each juicy piece. He enjoyed fresh coffee, putting on a clean shirt, listening to Kitty playing her harp. That night he was struck by the splendor of the spring sunset bathing the hills brightly crimson, then mauve. The biographer determined to be kinder to his life.
Now as he briskly strode along the road it was May-become-June, a touch of summer in the mild breeze, nice reversal of running time. If you're into somethingâthis lovely dayâyou're in it, not longing for it. Dubin wore buff cords, striped T-shirt, blue sneakers with loose white laces: he had been shopping; Kitty had said he needed summer things. He bowed to an ash tree, slender, virginal, but didn't linger. Its young leaves were light-green, seed pockets lavender, like a girl's spring dress. In the fall it bloomed green-gold; then the windy rain came and it was bare, broke the heart. The biographer hurried on. It could get dangerous loving trees, drive you wild. H.D.T. had wanted to embrace a scrub oak “with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow ⦔ Lush fields were sprinkled with wild flowers; shrubs in bloom. The maples were dropping spinning white seeds into the breeze. Poplars reflected changing sunlight. The lyric greens of first spring had darkened and sights of field and wood enticed the eye: meadows sloping upward toward a descending line of trees; and above sprawling woods upland fields rose to groves of evergreens surging over the hills. Mt. No Name, behind him, was covered with foliage except its stony top. The day was broken by patches of bright blue sky through gaps in cottony clouds sailing like slow ships. At intervals the sun, looking through, lit the landscape. Dubin loved what he observed: nature rather than scene. For nature he
felt
âhad earned in winter this beauty of late spring.
A new world, he sighed. In a new world he looked for a friendâscanned the road for Oscar Greenfeldâbut the flutist, when you wanted him most, was elsewhere fluting. Dubin had regrets about his affair with Flora.
A white Volvo passed from behind, swerved suddenlyâit had drifted too close to the walker's side of the road. Gave Dubin a turn; sped on in the risen dust.
Ten minutes later, as he was inhaling lungfuls of air at the verge of the road, the white car, long past its prime, drove by a second time, skirting the opposite shoulder of the road. It slowed down and, a hundred feet on, parked in the grass. Tourist stopping to view the view? She seemed to hesitate, head bent as though considering the odds, then opened the door, set a doubtful foot down and came toward him. Dubin knew the slender-waisted abundant body, her sturdy stride, female presence. He reflected it was inevitable they would meet again. He knows life.
Fanny, wearing sunglassesâhe remembered the short denim skirt, her
bare legs in sandalsâwalked toward him in deep focus, on her face an apprehensive smile. She was in no great hurry, taking her time, might never make it. Perhaps she didn't want to. People do impulsive things they immediately regret, Dubin for one. He might have trotted off the other way; she'd never have caught up once he was on the runâas if to prove he lived in his era, she in another. But here we both are. He'd give her short shrift.
Fanny smiled amiably, or tried to; obviously there were difficult emotions to contend with; maybe she was groping for one he couldn't match. The man had learned his lesson.
Now they touched hands, Dubin lightly.
“I thought it was you but wasn't sure,” she said breathily, as though surprised.
“How are you, Fanny?” His voice was subdued, manner polite. Dubin saw clearly what she had and what she lacked; was unmoved by her. She lacked, he thought, experience of a necessary sort; certain mistakes are wrong to make.
“I hope you don't mind me stopping to say hello.”
“Hardly.” Why would he mind?
“I'll bet you thought you'd never see me again?”
“There were times I hoped so.”
She paused to breathe, her lips moving as if she was searching for a new way not to wince. Fanny looked down, then directly at him, her pupils tight, mouth toward sour. He remembered the expression, tried to remember less, remembered all. Dubin was tempted to say a quick goodbye but after a momentarily shaky sense of wasted effort, a feeling quickly banished, objectivity returned. Mustn't make any more of the experience.
Neither spoke for a minute, he observing the small locket she wore, a gold heart with red ruby at its center. Gone six-pointed star and/or naked crucifix, whatever they had signified. Here was another sign. She looked sensibly older although less than a year had gone by since they had first met. She would be, he remembered, twenty-three come August.
A child, he reflected, recalling her face in sleep. Mad he had felt so much for her all winter. A sort of love; he knew the feeling, an old one, indulged in often in youth. Kept one young, he supposed. But how could I put my fate in her hands? Dubin wondered what she had learned from the experience. It seemed to him a commentary on himself that he expected her to have learned something.
“I finally had electrolysis done on my chin,” Fanny explained as though he had asked. “One morning in Rome I waked up anxious and made an appointment. The creep used an unsterilized needle and my face blew up but after a week I was okay.”
“You've cut your hair?”
“Don't you like it?”
Dubin thought it looked fine. “Visiting Center Campobello?”
She examined him vaguely. “Only for a week to take it easy, but I'm driving back tomorrow. Roger invited me up when I got back from Rome and I came up for the day about a month ago. This time I was here a little longer.”
“Thinking of getting married?” he courteously inquired.
She shook her head. “We're friendsâas my mother saysâPlatonically; I don't sleep with him.”
He nodded politely.
“I'm capable of it.”
“Is Roger?”
“He's really a great guy.”
“How was Rome?”
“Not that good, in fact flaky. My friend who I wrote you aboutâHarvey âdied.”
Dubin grimaced sympathetically. Fanny sadly smoothed the road with her sandal.
“And I told you about my operationâthe cyst I had?”
“Yes, I'm sorry.” He remembered she could still have children and tried to think of her as a mother but it came to nothing.
“My father's been sick. I visited him last week in L.A. Otherwise I'm still living in New York. I had a job for a month that I lost when I went to California. And I take an evening course at the New School.”
Dubin approved.
“How are you doing?” Fanny wanted to know.
“Fine, now, after a difficult winter.”
She was for a moment neither here nor there, then said, “I'm sorry for whatever of it was my fault.”
Fanny had hesitantly raised her hand as if to sympathize with at least his bare arm but Dubin had instinctively stepped back. She was again uneasy.
He spoke kindly. He had, now they had talked again, nothing against the girl. She was who she was, no doubt her own worst enemy. Caveat emptor, or words to that effect.
“No need to be,” he finally replied. “We make our own fates.”
“That might be, still people hurt each other without wanting to. Could I give you a ride somewhere?”
“Thanks, I'm on my walk.”
She remembered, with a smile.
Dubin, after gazing in the distance as though estimating tomorrow's weather, after a confident minute of self-scrutiny, remarked, “Care to walk a little instead?”
If the invitation surprised her it didn't surprise himânormalizing things. For his sake if not hers: helped put the past in place. Calm now made experience then easier to live with. What still rankled still hurt. Better seeing in perspective, not always possible, but where it seemed to be occurring, let it. He didn't want the girl to be uncomfortableâscared of him. Suppose something similarâhe doubted itâhappened to Maud?
Fanny said she wouldn't mind. “Just let me get my bag out of the car. It's got everything I own.”
She reached into the Volvo for her shoulder bag and car keys. He noticed a bit-into peach on the front seat.
Dubin advised her to lock the car; Fanny did.
They strolled in the direction he had been going. The afternoon sun, having escaped the steamy clouds, was now in full bloom.
“Why don't we get off this road and walk in the grass? I dig that.”
Fanny stepped up on a stone wall and before Dubin could warn against it had hopped off on the other side.
“Private property,” he said.
“I don't think anyone's going to arrest us for walking in the grass. There's endless miles of it.”
Dubin stepped up on the wall and jumped down.
Fanny removed her sandals and dropped them and her glasses into her bag, swinging it back on her shoulder.
“Careful of poison ivy.”
“I've never stepped in any that I know of, though I guess I've stepped in everything. I don't even know what it looks like, do you?”
He told her the plant had three shiny leaves.
For a moment Fanny proceeded cautiously, then walked on without concern.
It occurred to him he was more a comic type with her. With Kitty, their anxieties meshed, highlighting the serious life. That's the way it is: you marry a serious woman the chances are increased of a serious fate; a lighter type laughs every ten minutes and takes you with her.
He said he knew a better way to walk, led her diagonally across the field. A brown cow wandered in their direction. Fanny quickly moved toward Dubin, who shooed the animal away.