“Have you been over to visit your sister this winter, Georgie? I hear her health’s not so good these days.” She looked at Victoria, expecting an answer. Normally, if she’d been accosted in town and Mrs. Spiller had begun mumbling her nonsense to her, Victoria would have simply walked on, ignoring the raspy, useless voice. Today, however, the old witch had her trapped, and Victoria began to feel sparks of panic igniting in her chest. “She’s fine, thank you.” She turned her attention and her body toward the side window and looked out.
Georgie. She hated the name. It was the name people had called her mother, although her Christian name had been Georgina and she had secretly despised having it altered. Victoria could recall many times when she was a young girl, her mother sitting her down and lamenting tearfully the rudeness of those who would not call her by her proper name.
“But tell them that they have to. Tell them you won’t answer unless they do,” an indignant Victoria had offered, hands on hips, rising to the defense of her offended mother.
“Oh, no. No, no. I couldn’t do that, Victoria. That wouldn’t be very nice. I suppose folks are just used to calling me that, that’s all. It’s fine, really. Not that important. Just a name . . . just a name,” she’d digress and drop the subject, until the next time she began to suffer acutely the insignificance of her life and raised a feeble cry against the injustice of it all.
But there was one thing she was adamant about; Victoria was not to let anyone abbreviate her own name. The first time she came home from school crying, however, distressed because the teacher had reprimanded her for insisting that he please not call her Vickie, her mother had completely buckled and scolded her as well, telling her it was not a child’s place to correct someone in authority. Before the school year was through, she’d been reduced from Victoria down through Vickie, and ended up just Vic: no further reduction possible short of being called nothing at all.
Doris and Tom’s farm began to peek through the poplars, and Elliot idled slowly into the yard so as not to disturb too much dust. The place was quiet and unassuming, like the couple themselves. Doris’s face appeared, disembodied, at the window, then reappeared attached to a lumpy frame that shuffled across the porch and over to Elliot to receive her sister like an expected parcel. Gratuitous, faded smiles were given, small words exchanged and Mrs. Spiller thanked young Johnny for his help as they disappeared back into the house. Elliot got into the truck and guided it out onto the main road, opening his window wide.
“Sorry about that. The old gal doesn’t smell so good, does she?”
“That’d be a major understatement,” Victoria tried to respond lightly, opening her window wider as well, hoping to blow the sobering effects of morbid reality from their space. “You think they’d do something about her.”
“Do something? Like what?” Elliot questioned her loudly, adding the fan to the wind whipping wildly through the cab.
“I don’t know. Put her in a home or something.”
Elliot shrugged. “Well maybe, but a home probably wouldn’t work, either. She’s okay, doesn’t hurt anyone. I worry about her, though. She gets herself a long way from home sometimes.” He shook his head lightly, “I just don’t know what the best answer would be for people like that.”
Victoria knew perfectly well what the best answer would be but refrained from offering it. Too many people in the valley were willing to look far and wide in order to avoid seeing the plain hard truth before them, and it seemed sweet, gentle Elliot would prove no exception in this case. He drove along encased in private thoughts, and she wondered at the genuine sorrow evident on his face. Sorrow for an old woman, denied the liberty of death, who didn’t even know his name.
“Who was George?”
“Who?”
“George . . . she called you George. Do you know who that was?”
“No. I don’t think it was anyone, really. Just her imagination,” Victoria countered quickly, anxious for the conversation to end before it got started.
“Hmm, maybe. I’ll bet if you asked the old-timers, they’d be able to tell you who George was,” he offered helpfully.
“Probably could. Oh, look, your groceries fell over.” Victoria busied herself rearranging them, hoping to shift the conversation.
“She always calls me Johnny. Benson Ferguson told me Johnny was a neighbor boy her sons spent a lot of time with growing up. Spent so much time together people took to calling them the triplets. He said Johnny’s parents forbade him from enlisting, said they needed him on the farm. I guess he was pretty shook up about the accident, went out in the field and shot himself two days after the twin’s funeral. Isn’t that awful? Such a waste of life. I guess you probably already knew that though, hey?”
Victoria nodded solemnly, although the tale was so familiar to her it had lost the edge of truth, Bobby dragging it up and needling her with it when he was feeling particularly morose. And it was all good and well for Elliot, a newcomer to the valley, to be filled with such patient compassion for an old soul. He had not endured endless years of Mrs. Spiller’s frightful wailing as she wandered desolate streets searching for her vanished family. His was not the heart that ceased momentarily in the dead of night as gnarled fingers clawed open bedroom windows to reveal a gnarled face. There had been times, twice, that Victoria had bent to her as Elliot did now, attempted to ease her suffering and relieve her pain, but it was no good. She was eternally broken, could not be fixed. Victoria considered a bullet to the brain would be but a small mercy if one had the gumption to do it.
The rambling driveway, better maintained by far than the main road, ushered them cordially up to a quaint blue and white Norman Rockwell house. A collection of farm animals, obviously secure in their status as no more than fat pets, lounged in the shade of towering trees with armfuls of leaves. After only a year in Elliot’s hands, the farm bore but a faint shadow of resemblance to its former self.
A gaggle of geese, disturbed from their resting place under an ancient maple, waddled indignantly in front of the truck as a welcoming dog woofed a hearty greeting and trotted out to hasten them along. Victoria turned her head to take it all in, amazed to see every tractor, every harrow, every hoe had its own place, and everything was put away like a toy farm set packed up for the night.
“Wow, you’ve done so much work around here. What a difference. I would have thought this place was a mow-down.”
“Pretty much was! Sure would’ve been cheaper!” Elliot laughed. “Actually, it did turn into a much bigger project than I’d first envisioned. When I look at these old places, I tend to see them how they could be not as they really are, and I always seem to underestimate the amount of work required to transform them. My brother says I could dream a castle out of an outhouse, and he’s not really too far off the truth.” He leaned forward to gather the groceries from the floor by her feet, his head almost in her lap by the time he’d recovered an errant orange from the corner. “Want to come in and have a look?”
Victoria’s face flushed hotly. “Oh, no thank you. Maybe some other time. I’ll just wait here if that’s okay.”
“Okay by me.” He winked as if he understood her dilemma. “If you change your mind, just come on in,” he added as he started up the steps, which emptied onto the porch that ran across the face of the house like a wide, gap-toothed smile. He stopped briefly to chat with the cats and tousle the retriever before disappearing through the front door.
Victoria leaned her head back against the seat and watched cotton clouds puff languidly across the sky. The moment felt surreal, and she half expected to see brush marks on the horizon, wishing she herself could just be painted eternally into such a blissful scene. She did want to see the house. Wanted more than to just see it. She wanted to join Elliot in his home, explore the brilliant creations procured by his incredible, artistic hands. She wanted to sit with him on the fan-back wicker chairs that graced the porch like two Southern belles and discuss Portugal, Spain, France, the world, the universe . . . life itself. But it could not be. Even now she stood dangerously beyond her limits, and Bobby’s voice lumbered up through her reverie: she refusing to acknowledge it, the pleasure of her moment being so far in advance of the displeasure of his.
A smile slipped from her heart and onto her face. She wiggled free of her shoes and pulled her long legs up onto the seat, wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her cheek against them. She felt happy. A song, bright and lively, played inside her head the words bursting onto her lips before she had a chance to quiet them. She tried to envision Elliot’s life in this place. Closed her eyes and was instantly met with his, staring back through the void direct and inquisitive, his interest in her open and undisguised. Her face ran hot and she smiled again, flattered but also flustered by his attention. She tried to imagine the inside of the house. The welcoming living room, the warm bright kitchen, but her mind was filled with images of the sun streaming full into his bedroom window, gliding across the rich pine floor and onto the bed, murmuring him awake with a fiery bronze kiss. Rising from the snug embrace of his tangled sheets, she watches as he stretches his long limbs, his body painted in the white-gold hues of early morning. Behind him, asleep in the bed, she is conscious of a form, still safe in the cocoon of sleep. He turns and smiles at the figure who admits no identity, but she knows it is her, can only be her.
Bobby’s voice rises loudly in her mind, his face escaping the mental shutter she had composed for him, and she shakes herself loose, reprimands herself for being ridiculous and struggles back into her shoes as she hears the screen door bang. She watches as Elliot emerges from the house with an armload of camera equipment, coos at the cats coiled in the laps of the wicker ladies and makes his way toward the truck.
“Hope I wasn’t too long.” He laid the camera equipment on the seat, reached for the ignition and stopped, his eyes on her face, concern on his.
“You okay?”
She was surprised by the question, confused as to its origin.
“Yes, I’m fine. Why?”
“I don’t know. You just looked kind of sad. Really sad, actually.”
Instantly she shrugged a smile, a practiced reaction to temporarily erase all feeling from her face. Their eyes met, a tryst between them, and she struggled to return his piercing gaze calmly. Finally he looked away, and started the truck. Whether he’d believed the lies he’d read in her eyes she could not tell, but she hoped so. She’d like to tell him the truth. Share with him just how desperately trapped she felt. How incredibly close to her heart he’d cut with his casual suggestion of her opening a studio. But what could come of it? He could listen attentively. Be compassionate, caring. But he, for all his considerable learning, all his worldly knowledge could not change the facts of her life. So what could be gained by laying herself open before him in the cold rain? His sympathy? Or worse. His pity. She rejected the very thought. Shut herself up tight. No, she thought. There was simply no point in bringing up things that couldn’t be changed. Elliot, delicate to her discomfort, shifted his attention to the sky, frowned a bit too obviously.
“Hmm. Hope we can get out there before we lose too much light.”
She surveyed the day, knew the strong afternoon sun would be holding fast for hours yet but understood that he knew this also, realized he was grasping thinly at ways to release her discomfort and she played along.
“There’s a shortcut. Through the back of Jack Webber’s place. You turn off just before his hay shed.”
“Really?” Elliot said. “Through the back of Jack’s place? I never knew there was a road back there.”
She’d heard the words escape her mouth and instantly regretted them, cursing her inherent helpfulness.
“Well, it’s not much of one. An old logging road, actually. Might not be such a good idea come to think of it. Could be blocked off or anything by now. I haven’t been down it for years. Since I was a teenager. Used to pick berries down there sometimes,” she added hastily, and not altogether convincingly.
“Berries? What kind of berries?”
“Well, you know, like blueberries and huckleberries and stuff . . . strawberries.”
Elliot nodded slowly, looked over at her and winked.
“Probably not the only berries that got picked out there, are they?”
“Elliot!” She blushed. Felt sixteen again. Giddy and beautiful. Like she actually held within her the promise of love.
Jack Webber’s farm pulled them closer. The truck dipped and angled off the main road and began to follow a rutted, overgrown impression of a trail that ran along the edge of the field. Clusters of trees sprouted up and thickened until the truck was lost under a canopy of fury-armed spruce and fir, the sun reduced to an occasional twinkle through thick branches. She’d been down this road many times before. She knew it well. A false darkness closed over her with memories. It had been a game for her really. A way to divert the stifling boredom of empty summer nights. But games had rules and, as long as everyone played by them, the games could go on. Billy Bassman enjoyed her rules. Enjoyed laughing at them, enjoyed bending them and, the night the game ended, enjoyed breaking them.
The moon had hidden its face early that night, and once he’d killed the engine and turned off the headlights, there was no light at all. No light until he ripped her open with a blazing white pain that drove every last breath from her body, every seed of dignity from her soul. Afterward, he’d laughed. Told her he’d taken her for himself and every two-bit Tom she’d played for a fool and blown off like a fly. When he turned on the lights to find his cigarettes, she’d closed her eyes. Closed her eyes and wished she never had to see the light again. Later that night she’d drained the hot water tank trying to scald herself clean. But his dirt lingered in her mind, could not be washed away anymore than the irrevocable crimson that stained her panties.