My brother-in-law never seemed to mind that I was there, eating his food, usurping his couch and his privacy. Cal wouldn’t allow me to pay rent, or buy groceries, but at least she let me baby-sit the twins and buy pizza on occasion from Mama’s Pizzeria as my way to settle the debt.
Before long, however, it was plain to me at least that I needed a place of my own. I broached the subject over a dinner of tuna noodle casserole, after I’d been at the
Truth
for about a month.
“Oh, let me set you up with Abigail Fairchild,” Cal pointed her fork at me. “She’s a real estate agent, and she just knows where all the deals are.”
“I don’t know that I’m ready to buy a house.“ I had visions of a pushy woman with big black glasses, big hair, and a short skirt chanting location, location, location, and cringed. “I’m just looking for an apartment. Maybe I’ll go back into Chillicothe to look.”
“No!” Dodd and Deena chorused. “Don’t leave, Uncle Marcus! Stay here! Stay here!”
Cal waved her fork. “Quiet you two. Marcus, you’re not going to find many rentals in this place. You might as well buy something and put down some roots.”
I gulped and stared at my plate. Buying a house would mean I’d given up on Kay and, in some ways, a career. I had no intention of spending the rest of my life as the
Docetville Truth’s
editor, even Group Publisher Steve Hamlin had said this little weekly was a training ground, and he expected me to move on at some point.
“I don’t think so,” I managed to choke out.
There was silence around the table.
“Marcus, it isn’t like we don’t want you here. You’re welcome to stay for as long as you like,” Dave said. “Of course, if I said anything else, Cal would have my butt in a sling.”
Calpurnia stood up to take her plate to the sink and playfully smacked Dave across the shoulders as she passed. “He’s right, I would. But the kids sure like having you around, and buying a house doesn’t mean you’re stuck here forever. You buy a house, you find another job down the road, and you sell the house. Simple as that.”
“I suppose so,” I conceded.
“Then it’s settled.” Calpurnia wiped her hands on a dishtowel and reached for the phone. “I’ll call Abigail right now and have her come down Saturday, and we can all pile in the car and go look at houses.”
Everyone started talking at once. Dave said something about getting a big kitchen because women liked big kitchens. Calpurnia said no, that wasn’t true; it had to be an efficient kitchen, and, in the event I found something I liked, she’d be glad to help me paint. There was a big sale right now on interior latex at the Chillicothe Wal-Mart. Dodd wanted a swimming pool because his best friend Jimmy had a pool with a wooden deck at his house. Deena asked me if I was going to put a swing set in back for when they came to visit.
“Hold on! Hold on!” I cried over the din. “I think this is something I need to do on my own, okay? Just have this Abigail call me at work, and we’ll go from there.”
That night, after Dave and Calpurnia turned off the news and headed to their bedroom, I pulled the stack of pillows and blankets out from behind the couch and made up my own bed. Lacing my fingers together behind my head, I stared at the ceiling.
This isn’t a bad little town, I guess,
I thought. It was nice to have family around. There was something so uncomplicated about it that I never had with Kay. My niece and nephew were good kids, not much older than Andrew and Lillian and unencumbered with their emotional baggage. My father and I seemed to have come to a truce, as well. I’d seen him showing off my byline to a customer who came into the garage one day. We even sat beside each other on the bleachers, when we went to Dodd’s T-ball games.
My job was easy. My life was easy. It had been four months, since I left Jubilant Falls. To be truthful, until the house-buying thing came up, Kay hadn’t crossed my mind in a couple weeks. Maybe I was healing. Maybe I had let her go this time.
Then why did I still feel so empty inside?
* * *
“I understand you might be interested in buying a house.”
I looked up from my computer screen briefly, to see a lithe, young blonde woman standing in front of my desk.
She certainly didn’t look like your average real estate agent. Her hair was cut short just below her ears and her curls swung toward a bright, open smile that seemed to light up her whole face. She wore tailored white cotton pants, a simple, pastel tee shirt with matching leather sandals, and carried a clipboard with a list of available real estate. A small pastel macramé bag hung across her shoulder. She could have been a kindergarten teacher, or somebody’s mother, like Calpurnia.
“You must be Abigail Fairchild.” I said, standing and leaning over my desk to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you.” Her hand was small, soft, and warm; I couldn’t resist wrapping both my hands around it.
“Yes.” She smiled, and I reluctantly released my grip. “I attend the First United Methodist Church with Calpurnia. We’re in United Methodist Women together. She said you might be interested in settling here in Docetville?”
I caught a whiff of perfume, a light, lemony fragrance, clean and refreshing and, I suspected, awfully like her. She hooked a lock of blonde hair around her left ear, and I noticed she didn’t wear a wedding ring. “Well, I can’t say that in complete honesty—” Something about this Abigail Fairchild demanded honesty. “—but I can say I think I’ll be here for a little while. Cal says there’s not a whole lot of rental places.”
“She’s right. There’s a few houses right here in Docetville that I can show you right now. Do you have some free time? They’re within walking distance.”
“Sure.” I shuffled some papers around on my desk and grabbed my jacket from the nicked and chipped coat tree in the corner of my office. “Let’s go.”
Docetville’s downtown had a hardware store at the south end of Main Street, followed by Mama’s Pizzeria, Linda’s Home Cooking Café, the post office, Heidman’s Grocery and Video Rental, and several antique and junk stores. The
Truth
and the First National Bank sat at the north end. Abigail pointed south.
“There’s a house I think would be just right for you, off Riley Street,” she said, checking her clipboard.
There were about 4,400 Docetville residents, with most of them living off the few streets that ran like spiders’ legs from the main drag. Docetville was too small for zoning; many of the houses had been built in accordance with the owner’s personal style or ability, during the time when dusty, wagon paths from the outlying township were still the main thoroughfares. There were older, clapboard houses, a few doublewide trailers, a few more shacks, and a couple brick ranches built in the 1950s.
At the edge of town, a federally subsidized apartment complex was located, housing the chronically infirm and unemployable, but it was nothing like the east side of Jubilant Falls. Amongst a couple blocks of older, well-kept homes sat a new village and township government center of nondescript concrete, home to village and township offices, the sheriff’s substation, township fire, and EMS equipment.
When the good times came to Chillicothe, a small coterie of middle class homes began to spring up at the north end of Docetville, within comfortable commuting distance of large employers like the Mead paper plant and Peterbuilt and a short drive from Docetville’s downtown. This was Dave and Calpurnia’s neighborhood.
“I need to make one thing clear to you, before we get too deep into this.“
“Yes?” Her large, doe eyes fixed on mine, and her lips parted slightly to reveal perfect white teeth. An overwhelming urge to kiss her filled my head, a need to see if she tasted as sweet and lemony as she smelled.
I inhaled sharply and shook my head. This was not the reaction I was supposed to have. “Um, I, ah, I’m not planning on staying in Docetville for the rest of my life right now,” I managed to stammer.
“Oh, I understand. Calpurnia told me that when she called me. I’ve found a couple properties that might interest you. The property owners will rent to you for a year. Then, if you’re interested in buying the house, a portion of your rent can go toward the down payment. That way, if you get another job soon—Cal said that you reporters move around a lot—you won’t be stuck with a house you have no equity in.”
I nodded, relieved. “Why do I think you and my sister have planned my life out for me?”
Abigail blushed. “Let’s go look at houses.”
We looked at three that afternoon, all, like she said, within a comfortable walking distance of the
Truth
. I don’t remember any of them; I just remember by the end of the afternoon, leaning over a kitchen counter, looking into those beautiful, trusting, brown eyes and, as I softly kissed her lips, thinking I could feel again.
* * *
For our first date, Abigail insisted on cooking me dinner at her place. I was a little surprised, knocking on the door of her apartment, the converted second floor of one of Docetville’s antique shops.
“You mean to tell me that as a big successful real estate agent you don’t own some sprawling compound outside of town?” I asked, as she took my coat.
Abigail blushed endearingly and smiled. “I own this building, and the rent from the store downstairs pays my mortgage. That way, I can spend most of my income on what I really love.”
She led me through the living room and pointed toward a far wall, festooned with blue ribbons and photos, all a variation on the same theme: Abigail in English hunt clothing and holding a blue ribbon, standing beside a huge, muscular horse I assumed was a thoroughbred. More photos of her crouched low over her horse’s neck in mid-jump over a hedge, a white fence, or a small ditch, wearing a colorful polo uniform in another photo while riding a smaller horse, and leaning against a stall door and smiling for the camera, as the big brown horse nibbled a carrot from her hand.
“My, you’re quite the horsewoman,” I said. “I’m assuming that big fella is a thoroughbred?”
She nodded. “That’s Mayhem, my stallion. His full name is Fairchild’s Midnight Mayhem. The polo pony I don’t own any more. My goal is to own a ranch and raise thoroughbreds. After dinner, we can go out to the farm where he’s boarded, if you like.”
“I think I’d like that.”
“Well, let’s eat then. I hope you like lasagna.” She pointed to a small table in the corner of the living room, set with good china, wine glasses, and a single candle in a brass candlestick.
Our conversation was tentative and exploratory as we ate, negotiating that first date minefield. Like me, she’d been raised in the area and never married, but had come dangerously close. Shortly after graduating from college, she’d been left at the altar by the high school boyfriend everyone assumed she’d marry. They worked together at a Ross County bank; he been on the fast track to a vice-presidency; she been a loan officer. After the disaster, he transferred to another branch, and Abigail began her real estate career.
“Calpurnia said you had a bad relationship?” she asked.
“Yes. I was involved with a woman who lost her husband in a plane crash. She had two kids and a third she—I mean they—were trying to adopt, when he died.” No need to tell Abigail that I been sleeping with Kay long before her husband died or the sordid details of Aurora Development and the major’s extra-marital affairs.
“Three kids. That would have been a lot to take on.” Her brown eyes shone sympathetically.
“Yeah. There was a lot of baggage there, and it just didn’t work out.” Amazing how I could gloss over it now, when just a few months ago I felt as though my still-beating heart had been someone’s dinner.
Later that evening, we got into her Ford pickup and drove out into the countryside to the farm where Mayhem was boarded. In the semi-darkness of the barn, I drew her close and kissed her. Feeling her body against mine, her small, soft breasts and taut, muscular legs, I felt consumed with my need for her.
Looking down into her brown eyes, I ran my fingers through her blonde hair.
“You’re enough to make a man want to start again, Miss Abigail.”
And so I did. We spent every waking moment together: lunches at Linda’s Café, family dinners with Calpurnia, Dave, and the kids; evenings at Dodd’s Little League games, holding hands in the bleachers. We end each evening with a long, languid kiss at the door of her apartment.
“You know, you don’t have to go home,” Abigail whispered one night as we said our goodbyes. There was something slightly illicit about these goodnight kisses. Even though hers was the only apartment above the antique store and we had no fear of any other tenant walking in on us, our goodnight kisses seemed stolen and deliciously dangerous at her door at the top of the stairs.
Her lips were swollen and her lipstick smeared, as she leaned back into the doorframe. Her breath was sweet, and her blouse, slightly rumpled, showed the edge of a lacy bra.
I traced the lace with my finger and kissed the soft underside of her jaw.
“As much as I want to, I better not,” I whispered softly.
“Oh, why?” Abigail grabbed my lapels and didn’t let me answer for a moment. Like Sampson, trying to maintain the last of his strength, I planted both hands on either side of the doorframe. I knew if I let my hands slide inside that blouse, I’d be a goner.
Our lips parted again.
“Please, baby, stay,” she asked again. Visions of waking up beside her began to dance through my head. A night of delight, her soft skin against mine, falling asleep with her head on my chest, sated from sex; waking early, as the sun came up and leaning over the bed to trace the soft shoulder with kisses until she awakened.
Suddenly, it wasn’t a blonde smiling face that turned over to face me in my fantasy. It was Kay’s red hair fanned across the pillow and her face, her blue eyes, one framed by that small scar that rolled toward me.
“I can’t,” I rasped. “Not yet.”
Abigail stuck her lip out in a mock pout. “All right, if you say so—this time.”
“You realize, when it happens, I’ll have to put it in the paper,” I managed to joke, adjusting my jacket and stepping back from the doorframe, putting about a foot of thick, sexually-charged air between us.