Off Keck Road (13 page)

“Followed you out,” Shelley said. “So—Peggy Umberhum, huh? Jeez Louise.”

“You probably knew each other from when you were little.”

“Wese played together. Then for a long time, I didn't see her.” She stood surveying the distant fields, where the roofs of the Vandermill Houses could be seen. “We was kids once.”

After a while, she said, “So, you selling many houses out here?”

“Some. Here, it's mostly development. And I get the odd duplex here and condominium there.”

“You got land for sale, too?”

“Oh, sure. Some people would rather build.”

“I wanna buy some land up north. Anywheres with well water. I don't like the taste of Green Bay water. And it's getting too crowded for me around here.”

“Well, that's not going to help,” Bea said, nodding to the site in front of them. She felt the heat wafting over her arms. Before too long, there'd be a girl younger than Shelley who would step up in a uniform and say, “Can I help you?”

“My sister Kim says if I think Green Bay's crowded, I should see Tokyo.”

“Or New York.”

“I never been there.”

“No, I haven't, either,” Bea said.

They started walking. “See
if my folks are there. I can use their stuff to make us coffee.” Her parents weren't home, but their side door was open. The cement porch was surrounded by thistles, Queen Anne's lace, and long grass. Their steps set insects jumping.

Shelley took out a brand-new coffeepot from a box, washed it out under the tap, and began to brew coffee.

When it was finished, they took their mugs out into the backyard. The view there was probably the same as it had always been. They could see the chimneys of the slaughterhouse, and the air was pungent, not necessarily bad, a hospital smell, sugary and somehow warm.

Shelley's coffee was good, as good as the new expensive place on Madison where everyone paid $2.50 for a cappuccino.

There was a careful, tended garden, marked off with pine stakes and white string, the vegetables in rows: carrots, parsley, peas, different lettuces.

“Did your mother always keep a garden?”

“Oh, sure,” Shelley said. “He liked the taste of her stuff, too. I started coming to get fresh peas. I even had her planting the herbs he liked.”

“I know you're a good cook,” Bea said. “Not just from what Bill says, but once he brought a scrumptious rhubarb pie you made into the office.”

“Oh, that,” she said, looking down. “I was just trying to make it taste the way we ate rhubarb out here.”

Why did she look embarrassed?

“How was that?”

“Oh, just we cut it with a knife and our ma would give us a little pile of sugar on a plate. We'd dab it in and eat the stalk. The way kids do. Sugar'd get all pink. Yah, they didn't cook anything fancy. We'd just stand there and eat peas off the vine.”

On a clothesline tied between two pines hung clean T-shirts, white and navy blue, white socks, underwear, flannel button-downs, and big, long jeans.

“I bet your parents married for love,” Bea said. That was what she'd thought looking at the neat display of laundry, and it just came out.

“Round here, back then, there wasn't much else to get married for. None of thems had any money.”

There was a new redwood structure in the backyard, an octagonal enclosed porch, walled with window screens.

“They can sit at night outside without the bugs. Hear the birds,” Shelley said, opening the door.

And inside this rough octagon, the sound did seem different. The noise from across the road hushed. Thinner sounds magnified. Birds became individual, single voices.

They sat on the wooden furniture Shelley's father had built.

“So you want to leave Green Bay,” Bea said.

“Yah. I like it like it was around here when we was growing up.”

“I remember it, too,” Bea said. “I used to come out and pick up June. When I first saw June's house, I was surprised. She told me she came from a poor family. I'd only known her at college. And then it was so beautiful out here.”

“If they was poor,” Shelley said, “I don't know what that makes what we were.”

Bea looked at Shelley, remembered the baby she'd once seen, and considered her life for possibly the first time.

“You may get married and have kids,” Bea said softly. “And you'll want to raise them somewhere with land like this.”

Shelley closed her mouth in a small, mocking smile. “Not me, not anymore.”

“Why not?” Bea asked.

But she didn't answer.

What was she? Twenty-five? Maybe thirty? “It's not too late for you.” Bea actually touched the girl's hand. It was long and hard as a man's.

Shelley looked at her with no expression; then a large smile cracked open. “I got a place to sell.”

“Another place? Oh, well.”

“You know the Kaap house?”

“The Kaap house. Oh.” Bea couldn't help but whisper, “He died, then.”

“Oh boy, I thought you knew. They called me from the police. Found him a block from Bosses, sitting on a wall by the sidewalk. Just somebody's yard. They said he must've felt a pain and stopped to rest. The lady who lives there found him when she went out to get her paper. All dressed up like he was going somewhere important, she said. Just his head down and his clothes all soaked from sweat. Holy smokes.” She frowned. “He knew I'd sell it. When he told me he was giving it, I said, ‘Well, don't expect me to live there and clean that whole thing. All them floors.' ”

He left her the house! The Kaap house!
Bea heard the old familiar ring in the air—her gossip's instinct—but there was no one left to tell, leaving this silver fact limp, useless.

June was gone and her mother was gone, too, all her listeners. The women she'd been able to make laugh.

“But there was nothing going on between us. He was just doin it to be nice.”

Bea looked up at the girl, who was biting her bottom lip.

If June were still around to call, if her mother were here, Bea wouldn't have looked at the girl again and seen—what she saw now—a crooked face telling the truth. Of course, Bea reminded herself, she was the only one who'd believe it.

“You can take what you want of those books or the records. CDs. I
never could understand that music. He always said you got his jokes. I'm just going to box that all up for the church. There's an envelope with your name on it, too, on his desk. Some kind of ticket with something hard in it. His watch, maybe.”

“Well, you helped him,” Bea said. “Made his last years kinder.”

Bea supposed that was what she had done for her mother. And here she was with that house.

And Shelley was planning to sell. With the money, she wanted to buy up where the water tasted better.

She pointed out the bushes planted along the screens. They were all hollies that fed the birds.

Shelley offered to take her for a drive in the red Jeep. They could head north, look at some land. Bea got in carefully, a hand on the roof as she clambered up the high running board.

Before, she may have wondered—certainly her mother would have—how it looked to be Shelley's passenger in this vehicle everyone knew who'd paid for.

But today she opened the window. Inside, they were very high up, with wide views. Her hair, which she'd set all her life to straighten, was probably blowing right now into curls.

A L S O   B Y   M O N A   S I M P S O N

~

A Regular Guy

The Lost Father

Anywhere But Here

T H I S   I S   A   B O R Z O I   B O O K

P U B L I S H E D   B Y   A L F R E D   A.   K N O P F

Copyright © 2000 by Mona Simpson

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf and Borzoi Books are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Simpson, Mona.

Off Keck Road / Mona Simpson. — 1st ed.

p.     cm.

 

1. Women—Wisconsin—Green Bay—Fiction.    2. Mothers and daughters—' Fiction.    3. Female friendship—Fiction.    4. Green Bay (Wis.)—Fiction.    I. Title.

PS3569.I5117 O35 2000

813'.54—dc21               00-040569

eISBN: 978-0-375-41263-9

v3.0