The Progress of Love (10 page)

“I was thinking yellow. Then I thought red always looks good on a Camaro.”

“We’ll get the paint chart and hold it up in front of Lynnette and let her choose,” said Glenna. “Okay, Ross? Whatever she points to? Will we do that?”

“Okay,” said Ross.

“She’ll point to red. She loves red.”

“Take it easy,” said Colin to Lynnette as he went past her into the house. She started to complain, not too seriously. He got three bottles of beer out of the refrigerator. During the winter, they had worked inside the house, pulling off wallpaper and tearing up linoleum, and they had got the place now to a stage where all the innards were showing. There were batts of pink insulating material held in place under sheets of plastic. Piles of lumber to be used in the new partitions sat around drying. You walked on springy wide boards in the kitchen. Ross had shown up regularly to help, but had not offered since he started on the car.

Glenna had said, “I think he started thinking about the car when he realized he wasn’t going to live with us in the house.”

Colin said, “Ross always fooled around with cars.”

But Ross had never cared so much before about what a car looked like. He had cared about the getaway speed and top speed and whatever menacing or ridiculous-sounding noise he could force out of it. He had had two accidents. Once, he rolled his car into a ditch and walked away without a scratch. Another time, he had taken a shortcut, as he said, through a vacant lot in town and run into a heap of junk that included an old bathtub. When Colin came home from college on the weekend, there was Ross with purple bruises along the side of his face, a cut over one ear, and his ribs taped.

“I had a collision with a bathtub.”
Had he been drunk, or high?

“I don’t think so,” said Ross.

This time he seemed to have something else in mind than gunning the engine and fishtailing down the street, leaving a trail of burn marks on the pavement. He wanted a real car, what the magazine he read called a “street car.” Could that be to get girls? Or just to show himself off in, driving in a respectable style with an occasional flash of speed or powerful growl when he took off at the lights? Maybe this time he could even do without a trick horn.

“This is one car isn’t going to be run up and down the main street like a maniac or hittin’ a hundred on the gravel,” he said.

“That’s right, Ross,” said Glenna. “Time you graduated.”

“Beer,” said Colin, and put it down where Ross could reach.

“Ross?” said Glenna. (“Thank you,” she said to Colin.) “Ross, you’re going to have to rip the carpet off the doors. You are. It looks okay but really it stinks. I can smell it. Over here.”

Colin sat on the step with Lynnette on one knee, knowing he wasn’t going to bring up the matter of being on time, let alone the hats. He wasn’t going to remind Ross that this was the first job he’d had in over a year. He was too tired, and now he felt too peaceful. Some of this peacefulness was Glenna’s doing. Glenna didn’t ally herself with anybody who was completely weird, or with any futile undertaking. And there she was, looking at her face in the caps, sniffing the carpet panels, taking Ross and his car seriously—so seriously that when Colin first got out of the car and saw her squatted down, polishing, he had felt like asking if this was the way things were going to go all summer, with her so involved with Ross’s car she wouldn’t have time to work on the house. He’d be kicking himself now if he’d said that. What would he do if she didn’t like Ross, if she hadn’t liked him from the start and agreed to have him around? When Ross said what the one thing wrong was, at their first meeting, and Glenna smiled, not politely or condescendingly but with true surprise and pleasure, Colin had felt more than relief. He had felt as if from now on Ross could stop being a secret weight on him; he would have someone to share Ross with. He had never counted Sylvia.

The other thought that had crossed Colin’s mind was dirty in
every sense of the word. Ross never would. Ross was a prude. He glowered and stuck his big lip out and looked as if he half felt like crying when there was a sexy scene at the movies.

On Saturday morning, there was a large package of chicken pieces thawing on the counter, reminding Colin that Glenna had asked Sylvia and Eddy and her friend—their friend—Nancy to come over for supper.

Glenna had gone to the hospital, walking, with Lynnette in the stroller, to get her hay-fever shots. Ross was already working. He had come into the house and put a tape on, leaving the door open so that he could hear it.
Chariots of Fire
. That was Glenna’s. Ross usually listened to country and Western.

Colin was just home from the builders’-supply store, where they didn’t have his ceiling panels in yet, in spite of promises. He went out to look at the grass he had planted last Saturday, a patch of lawn to the side of the house, fenced off with string. He gave it some water, then watched Ross sanding the wheels. Before long and without quite intending to, he was sanding as well. It was hypnotizing, as Glenna had said; you just kept on at it. After they were sufficiently sanded down, the wheels had to be painted with primer (the tires protected from that with masking tape and paper), and when the primer was dry, they had to be scuffed off with a copper pad and cleaned again with a wax-and-grease remover. Ross had all this planned out.

They worked all morning and then all afternoon. Glenna made hamburgers for lunch. When Colin told her he couldn’t do the kitchen ceiling because the panels hadn’t come, she said he couldn’t have worked on the kitchen anyway, because she had to make a dessert.

Ross went uptown and bought a touch-up gun and some metallic charcoal paint, as well as Armor-All for the tires. This was a good idea—the touch-up gun made it a lot easier to get into the recesses of the wheels.

Nancy arrived about the middle of the afternoon, driving her dinky little Chevette and wearing a strange new outfit—rather long, loose
shorts and a top that was like a bag with holes cut for the head and arms, the whole thing dirt-colored and held at the waist with a long raggedy purple sash. Nancy had been brought in that year to teach French from kindergarten to Grade 8, that being the new requirement. She was a rangy, pale, flat-chested girl with frizzy, corn-yellow hair and an intelligent, mournful face. Colin found her likable and disturbing. She came around like an old friend, bringing her own beer and her own music. She chattered to Lynnette, and had a made-up name for her—Winnie-Winnie. But whose old friend was she? Before last September, none of them had ever set eyes on her. She was in her early thirties, had lived with three different men, and did not think she would ever marry. The first time she met Sylvia and Eddy, she told them about the three men and about the drugs she had taken. Sylvia egged her on, of course. Eddy didn’t know what she was talking about, and when she mentioned acid, he may have thought she was referring to battery acid. She told you how she felt every time you saw her. Not that she had a headache or a cold or swollen glands or sore feet, but whether she was depressed or elated or whatever. And she had an odd way of talking about this town. She talked about it as if it were a substance, a lump, as if the people in it were all glued together, and as if the lump had—for her—peculiar and usually discouraging characteristics.

“I saw you yesterday, Ross,” said Nancy. She sat on the step, having opened a beer and put on Joan Armatrading, “Show Some Emotion.” She got up and lifted Lynnette out of the playpen. “I saw you at the school. You were beautiful.”

Colin said, “There’s stuff lying all around here she could put in her mouth. Little nuts and stuff. You have to watch her.”

“I’ll watch her,” said Nancy. “Winnie-Winnie.” She was tickling Lynnette with the fringe of her sash.

“Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux,” she said. “I had Grade Three all looking out the window and admiring you. That’s what we decided to call you. Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux. Monsieur of the Two Hats.”

“We do know some French. Strange as it may seem,” said Colin.

“I don’t,” said Ross. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Oh, Ross,” said Nancy, tickling Lynnette. “Aren’t you my little honey bear, my little Winnie-Winnie? Ross, you were beautiful. What an inspiration on a dull dragged-out old Friday afternoon.”

Nancy had a way of making Ross turn sullen. To her face behind her back, he often said that she was crazy.

“You’re crazy, Nancy. You never saw me. You’re seeing things. You got double vision.”

“Sure,” said Nancy. “Absolutely, Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux. So what are you doing? Tell me. You taking up car-wrecking?”

“We’re painting these wheels, at the moment,” said Colin. Ross wouldn’t say anything.

“I once took a course,” said Nancy. “I took a course in elementary mechanics so I would know what was going on with my car and I wouldn’t have to go into the garage squeaking like a little woman.” She squeaked like a little woman, “Oh, there’s this funny noise and tell me what’s under the hood, please? Good heavens, it’s an engine! Well, so I wouldn’t do that I took this course and I got so interested I took another course and I was actually thinking about becoming a mechanic. I was going to get down in the grease pit. But really I’m too conventional. I couldn’t face the hassle. I’d rather teach French.”

She put Lynnette on her hip and walked over to look at the engine.

“Ross? You going to steam-clean this?”

“Yeah,” said Ross. “I’ll have to see about renting one.”

“Also, I lived with a guy who was involved with cars and you know what he did? When he had to rent a steamer, he used to ask around to see if anybody else wanted it done, and then he’d charge them ten dollars. So he made money on the rent.”

“Yeah,” Ross said.

“Just suggesting. You’ll need a different radiator brace, won’t you? V-8s mount the radiator behind the brace.”

After that Ross came out of his sulk—he saw he might as well—and started showing her things.

•   •   •

“Come on, Colin,” Nancy said. “Glenna says we need more whipping cream. We can go in my car. You hold Lynnette.”

“I haven’t got a shirt on,” said Colin.

“Lynnette doesn’t care. I’ll go into the store. Come on. Glenna wants it now.”

In the car she said, “I wanted to talk to you.”

“I figured that.”

“It’s about Ross. About what he’s doing.”

“You mean him going around in those hats? What? What did Davidson say?”

“I don’t mean anything about that. I mean that car.”

Colin was relieved. “What about the car?”

“That engine. Colin, that engine is too big. He can’t put that engine in that body.”

Her voice was dramatically deep and calm.

“Ross knows quite a bit about cars,” Colin said.

“I believe you. I never said Ross was dumb. He does know. But that engine, if he puts it in, I’m afraid it will simply break the drive shaft—not immediately but sooner or later. And sooner rather than later. Kids do that a lot. They put in a big powerful engine for the pickup and speed they want, and one day, you know, really, it can take the whole car over. It literally flips it over. Breaks the shaft. The thing is, with kids, something else often goes wrong first or they wreck it up. So he could have done this before and gotten away with it. Thought he was getting away with it. I’m not just doing the big expert, Colin. I swear to God I’m not.”

“Okay,” said Colin. “You’re not.”

“You know I’m not? Colin?”

“I know you’re not.”

“I just could not bring myself to say anything to Ross. He is so steamed up about it. That’s what they say here, isn’t it? Steamed up? I couldn’t come out with a major criticism like that. Anyway, he might not believe me.”

“I don’t know if he’d believe me,” said Colin. “Look. You are dead sure?”

“Don’t say dead!” Nancy begged him, in that phony-sounding voice he had to believe was sincere. “I am absolutely and undeniably sure and if I wasn’t I would not have opened my big mouth.”

“He knows he’s putting in a bigger engine. He knows that. He must figure it’s all right.”

“He figures wrong. Colin, I love Ross. I don’t want to upset his project.”

“You better not let Sylvia hear you say that.”

“Say what? She doesn’t want him killed, either.”

“That you love Ross.”

“I love you all, Colin,” said Nancy, pulling into the Mac’s Milk lot. “I really do.”

“This is what I did, I’ll tell you,” said Sylvia, speaking mostly to Nancy, after a fourth glass of rosé. “I gave myself a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party. What do you think of that?”

“Marvellous!” said Nancy. Sylvia had just told her the joke about the black man and white man at the urinal, and Colin could see that it had given her some difficulty.

“I mean, without a husband. I mean, he wasn’t still living with me. I wasn’t still living with him. He was still living. In Peterborough. He isn’t still living now. But I said, ‘I have been married twenty-five years, and I still am married. So don’t I deserve to have a party?’ ”

Nancy said, “Certainly.”

They were sitting at the picnic table out in the back yard, just a few steps from the kitchen door, under the blossoming black-cherry tree. Glenna had spread a white cloth and used her wedding china.

“This will be a patio by next year,” Glenna said.

“See,” said Sylvia. “If you had’ve used plastic, you could scoop all this up now and put it in the garbage.”

Eddy lit Sylvia’s cigarette. He himself had not stopped smoking throughout the meal.

Nancy picked a soggy strawberry out of the ruined crown of meringue. “It’s lovely here now,” she said.

“At least no bugs yet,” said Glenna.

Sylvia said, “True. Strawberries would have been a lot cheaper by next week, but you couldn’t’ve ate out here because of the bugs.”

That seemed funny to Nancy. She started laughing, and Eddy joined in. For some unstated reason—with him it would have to be unstated—he admired Nancy and all she did. Sylvia, bewildered but good-humored, with her face as pink as a tissue-paper rose starting to look pretty crumpled round the edges, said, “I don’t see what’s funny. What did I say?”