Authors: Beth Gutcheon
She nodded. “Do you want to come for a walk with us?”
“No, you go along. I have to write a letter to the editor,” he said, gesturing at his paper.
Hunt watched them go out through the backyard toward the mountains, and saw that Laurie was indeed holding her back straighter. She was talking to Cinder with some of her old animation.
Anna, with her lanky straight hair and her lumpy hips paced along beside the women, listening passionately to their talk.
Hunt watched them for several minutes, then went to the phone to call Geri. Geri was one of their friends up in Ketchum who had come years ago to attend Sun Valley in the season, and had ended up staying for good. It was she who had ordered Hunt to send Laurie to The Cloisters, and damn the expense.
126 / Beth Gutcheon
Cinder wanted to know in vast detail what they had done all day down there in Arizona, and Laurie described it. Anna laughed about the water exercises. Cinder was worried that Laurie hadn’t gotten enough food.
“Did you make friends? Tell about the people.” Anna was intent, as Laurie described the detective, and The Movie Star, and the woman whose friend worked for the President, and Wilma Smythe, the ER doc.
“Just like on television!” Anna cried. Laurie found herself saying,
“You’d have loved to hear what they said about your father, Puddleduck.”
“Tell me!”
Laurie did, and somehow, although she had not meant to discuss this with the children at all, she found herself saying, “In fact, they thought so much of your dad that they said I ought to run for the Senate. In his memory, to carry on for him. Wasn’t that nice of them to say?”
Anna looked at her, electrified. She was an avid reader, and she’d spent much of the past year filling herself on tales of American heroines. “Mom! You’d be like Carrie Nation!” Laurie and Cinder laughed.
“Yeah, in Idaho, I might be.”
“Or Billie Jean King!” This was Anna’s highest praise. Anna’s favorite bedtime story, which she’d made Roberto tell her over and over, was about the time Billie Jean had beaten the socks off Bobby Riggs.
“So this sounds like a good idea to you, huh?”
“Of
course
! We’d all campaign for you! I mean, we’d have to miss some school…” Anna was an earnest child with more passion than sense of humor. “We’ll all help! The twins can make posters, and I can help with your speeches, and Carlos can drive!”
Cinder said, “Perfect!”
“And what about Cara?”
Laurie knew that Cara could fall down a well as far as her sister was concerned, so she looked forward to hearing what she was going to be allowed to contribute. But Anna was ready for her.
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“Cara and Tessie will sing your jingle. That’s what they do all day anyway.”
“My
jingle
?”
“Of course—you’ll have ads on television, won’t you? And we’ll all be on them? You’ll have a jingle…”
Laurie was very moved, and very amused. She put an arm around Anna.
Cinder said, smiling, “So, Anna…it sounds like you’re all set.”
“Yes!” said Anna. “Of course!”
“But what if I won,” said Laurie. “Would you want to live in Washington?”
That stopped Anna for a minute. “
Washington
? Not Boise?”
“Uh, no. I meant the kind of senator who goes to Washington.”
“That’s even better!” exclaimed Anna doubtfully. Laurie knew that at this point she had less than no idea what she was talking about. Washington was in the east. It was hot there. Anna was just starting high school. If she was a loner here, where everyone had known her from birth, what would happen to her in
Washington?
“So,” said Cinder to Laurie, “are you in? Are we going to do it?”
“Of course not,” said Laurie. “It was just something we talked about. I mean—Washington? I hadn’t even thought about it.”
“Why not?” Anna demanded.
“Honey, because. Listen. You’re all in school. You can’t be traveling all over with me. It’s hard and it’s boring. I’d be gone all the time, and Cinder would have to do all the work I usually do. We can’t expect other people to do our jobs for us.”
Cinder said, “Oh, I don’t mind at all. You know that.”
“See!?” cried Anna.
Laurie stopped walking and looked at both of them. Cinder and Anna had, unconsciously, drawn together. She looked at their faces, Cinder’s so fine-boned and wide-eyed, with deep laugh lines, and Anna’s, so young and unfinished, all smooth flesh. Cinder looked like a beautiful animal, a filly or a fawn; Anna looked like a piece of fruit. But they were wearing the same expression.
“But…no, but my god, think about it. Think of the money I’d 128 / Beth Gutcheon
have to raise. Think of all the…setting up offices…getting the party to support me…”
“I doubt that’s a problem,” said Cinder.
Laurie gaped. “Of course it’s a problem…I’m a woman. I lost a big race once and said I’d never do it again. I haven’t paid my dues…”
“Honey—Roberto paid your dues for you,” said Cinder.
It caught Laurie by surprise, and her eyes filled with tears. Her daughter looked at her, full of conviction. Cinder, dear Cinder, looked at her in that calm, unsentimental way she looked at everything. Neither of them looked away, or backed down. Finally Laurie said, “And then…after all that, all that money and work, I’d lose.”
She expected them to protest, but Cinder was way beyond that.
“Oh, I don’t think that matters,” she said.
I
t was the Monday before Thanksgiving, and Rae had spent a lovely morning at the club having an Italian lesson. This had included lunch, over which they said things in Italian to each other like “This is my fork.” Rae’s great triumph of the meal was managing to announce in correct grammar, “Today is my anniversary.” People wanted to ask what festive plans she and Albie had for the evening, but no one could think of the vocabulary words.
Jean tried to slip into French, but was scolded by the tapping of a butter knife against a water glass.
It was lovely weather, cold, bright, and windless. Rae put the top down on her little car as she drove home, and enjoyed the sense that, really, all was right with the world. Maybe she could take Albie to Rome after Christmas, and dazzle him by saying to people in Italian,
“This is my fork.”
When she pulled up in front of the house on Broadway, the front door was standing open, and the garage door too, with Albie’s car halfway up the driveway. It was stopped at an angle, rear outward.
Something was definitely not right.
Rae ran up the walk. Doreen met her at the door; she had been crying.
“Oh, Missus…” she said. She looked terrible.
“Is Mr. Strouse all right?”
“He isn’t hurt, but…”
“What happened?”
129
130 / Beth Gutcheon
“He tried to drive away. James heard the garage door open, and went right down…”
Albie hadn’t driven in six months. He’d been embarrassed when he met a friend downtown and accepted a ride home, forgetting he had left his own car in the Sutter/Stockton Garage. Soon after he had parked the car at Laurel Village and then been unable to find it again; Christine at the bank had had to call Mrs. Strouse to come get him. Gradually he had fallen into the habit of letting James drive him when he wanted to go out.
“Then when we heard a screech,
so
terrible…” Doreen started to cry again.
“But what happened?”
“The dog was screaming…”
Suddenly, Rae understood. Albie going down the back stairs with his hearing aids out. Winston Churchill trotting fondly behind him, unseen and unheard. Albie focused on the now unaccustomed task of backing the car up the drive, while Winston Churchill gamboled about, trying to show that he wanted to go too…
“Where is the dog now?”
“James took him to the vet, but…”
“Did you see him?”
Doreen nodded, weeping. Rae could see, it had been ugly. Then, as if disturbed by the level of distress in the house, Doreen’s baby began to wail, and apologizing, Doreen ran for the kitchen.
Rae stood in the front hall with an awful, sickening sorrow. The poor, loving, innocent dog…her poor husband…
She hurried upstairs. Albie was sitting in silence in the den. Rae went in and sat beside him. She took his hand.
He looked up at her sadly and then smiled a little. “You,” he said.
“Yes, love. I’m here. I think something bad has happened?”
He nodded. He seemed too miserable to speak, and yet she knew he would try. It was so terrible for him to be walled up with confusion and sorrow, apart from her, when they had shared so much.
“You were going out?”
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He nodded. His mouth worked, a new sort of tic he had, born of frustration.
“You wanted to see someone?”
He shook his head hard. No, that was wrong.
“You wanted to get something?”
He nodded.
“Something you left somewhere?
No.
“You wanted to buy something?”
Yes. He did. He wanted to buy something. Now she was stumped, because she couldn’t imagine what he could need that he didn’t have. It could be anything.
He struggled. He pointed to his forehead, he frowned painfully, he shook his head. With his hands and shoulders he conveyed something lost, wrong, something that didn’t connect.
“Word…” he said.
“You couldn’t find a word.” He nodded, miserably but vigorously.
He waited for her to go on, but she couldn’t. He couldn’t find a word. But what word? Was he going out to find something that would help him show what he meant?
He tried to illustrate something with his hands. It made no sense to her. He quivered with sad frustration. Clearly he could see the thing in his mind, but he couldn’t put it into
her
mind.
“Oh,” he said, as if it were more than he could bear. He got up and went out into the hall, and she followed him. Agitated, he paced the hall, stopping to study the pictures. There were hunting dogs, and a pair of eighteenth-century prints of the Roman Forum.
Searching, he opened a door to an unused bedroom.
“There!” He pointed to a Chinese vase on the mantelpiece.
“Vase?” Rae said, and then understood it all, with a sense that her heart was breaking in two pieces at that exact moment.
Flowers
. He knew it was their anniversary, and he wanted to buy her flowers.
He couldn’t think of the word, but he knew how to drive to the flower store.
132 / Beth Gutcheon
“Oh, love,” she said, and put her arms around him. He clung to her, so grateful to have finally been understood, so horrified at what had happened. Rae cried a little, trying hard not to. Poor dog, sweet, loving, dumb dog. Poor husband—what angry God had done this terrible thing to such a man? This fine, kind man with his lively mind, his sense of humor, his dignity…
“Come here,” she said. “Come here.” They sat down on a little loveseat that filled a bay window in this unused room. The November afternoon light came through white voile curtains in a thin stream. Albie’s eyes were red-rimmed. Deep in sorrow, he held both her hands.
When she had composed herself, Rae said: “You are the dearest man I have ever known, and every day I’m allowed to share your life is a happy day for me. You have made me feel loved and safe, you have loved my children…. Thank you for the best years of my life.”
She kissed him, tenderly, and he kissed her back. (It was one thing he had not forgotten how to do.) When she looked at him, tears were streaming down his face. She added, “And I never in my life met a man who could do a better cha-cha-cha.”
She produced a handkerchief, and dried her own eyes, and handed it to him.
“If we go to the store together, will you still buy me flowers? I have a feeling I’m going to want something
very
expensive.” He nodded.
They went downstairs, and while Albie found his coat, Rae stopped in the kitchen to talk to Doreen. Bertha, whom everyone called Cook, was making dinner, and Doreen was with the baby.
“Is James back?”
“No, Missus.” Doreen feared, as Rae did, that the longer he was gone, the worse the news.
“Maybe Winston Churchill needs an operation?”
“Yes, maybe. I’m glad James is with him. I’m going to take Mr.
Strouse out and make him buy me some flowers as an anniversary present,” Rae said.
Doreen and the cook both nodded. They were so worried for her, knowing how she loved that dog.
Five Fortunes / 133
Rae and Albie then drove off in her little red car, top down, and when they came back, Rae had an enormous armful of long-stemmed French tulips. Albie came out to the kitchen with her to watch her show them off to Doreen and Cook.
“Aren’t they beautiful? Can you imagine, in November? I think they’re the prettiest flowers I ever had. Don’t you think so too?” She turned to Albie. He bobbed his head.
“Doreen, would you just put these in some warm water while I go up and help Mr. Strouse get ready for his nap?”
She took her husband’s arm and left the kitchen.
When she came back downstairs a half hour later, James was back.
She knew by his face the moment she saw him.
“He’s dead,” Rae said.
James nodded. His eyes were full of tears as he said, “His back was broken. He was bleeding inside. He was so good and quiet….
He kept looking at me with his eyes…
“They came out after a long time and said he should be put down.
I called, but Doreen said you had gone out…. He was in terrible pain. I hope I did the right thing.”
Rae’s eyes and throat ached with tears. She didn’t want to cry in front of them. Finally she was able to say, “Did you…” and that was all.
“Yes, I held him. They gave him a shot. He looked at me with his big eyes. He showed the tip of his tongue, the way you say he is throwing a kiss…”
Rae looked down at the floor and tears flowed. After a while she put her shoulders back, lifted her chin, and produced her handkerchief. “Thank you both. Let’s not mention this to Mr. Strouse. Please put the dog dishes away. Find his chew toys. Bring his bed down from my room.”