Читать книгу Dark Wine Waters - Frances Simone - Страница 12
ОглавлениеI drank the water from your spring and felt the current take me.
Rumi
I live in currents. I am often caught and carried to places other than where I thought I was headed.
That’s how, at thirty-four years of age, I found myself waiting for my first date in eighteen years. A blind date, no less, because on impulse I’d called a stranger from Texas and invited him to my rented cottage in the woods, off a dirt road on a cold October evening in a town where I knew next-to-no-one. In retrospect, that wasn’t wise. But I had misplaced my sense of propriety because I felt like a love-starved teenager who’d been dumped by her boyfriend.
I had recently moved to Charleston, West Virginia, with my five-year-old son, Matt, and a broken heart. My divorce loomed ahead. The push-pull of a breakup-and-makeup ten-year marriage had depleted much of my native goodwill and emotional energy.
One day my then husband announced “enough.” He’d moved out of our home and in with his girlfriend, and purchased a Datsun 280 ZX. Armed with a new PhD, but toting a shattered ego, I couldn’t decide whether to remain in Chapel Hill or look for a teaching position elsewhere. Back then, jobs in college English departments were in short supply. So I vacillated. My soon-to-be ex was a great dad who adored his young son. And I still loved him. But could I handle the humiliation of his shacking up with that other woman, a colleague from work? Chapel Hill is a small town and the university community even smaller. Stay, go. Go, stay. Then one day I decided to pop in on a friend to chew over the pros and cons of “the decision” once again. As I turned in to my friend’s driveway, I spotted my husband’s Datsun, alongside his girlfriend’s red Volvo. I bet they’re splashing around in the backyard pool, I thought. Maybe hugging and kissing underwater like two lovesick teens, while I’m drowning in jealousy and fear. My hands gripped the steering wheel. I shook and sobbed. I hit the gas and sped away.
The next day I began applying for jobs out of state. A current carried me to the heart of Appalachia, a place where I never would have imagined that I would wash ashore.
On a humid, late August morning, I slipped into a cool, dim auditorium for my first faculty orientation at a college in Stonehill, a coal mining town forty-five minutes from Charleston. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I spotted a striking-looking African-American woman near the back. She was dressed in black, with a kente cloth scarf draped around her neck. Her thin wrists were covered in silver bangles. She looks interesting, I thought, as I sank into a seat beside her. “You new, too?” I whispered. She smiled.
“Yes, my name’s Marlene.”
“Mine’s Fran.”
We turned toward the stage for the business at hand. Two hours later, Marlene and I plunged into the noon heat and fumbled for cigarettes and matches (Marlene was a light smoker, always on the verge of quitting; I consumed a pack of Salem Menthols a day).
“Did you understand even half of that stuff?” I wondered aloud. “Why do they have to go on and on about procedures and policies? Can’t they just send us a memo?”
“Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out how I landed in Stonehill, West Virginia,” Marlene said. “The place seems so backward and primitive.”
Like starving animals, we gnawed at the college’s deficiencies. Big city girls with attitudes—Marlene from Detroit, Michigan, and me from Queens, New York—we picked that campus apart over coffee and cigarettes in the faculty lounge during that first semester. Little escaped our scrutiny. Not the ancient campus buildings stacked like crates stuck onto the mountainside or the dank, musty offices in the administration building. Not the quirky faculty, like the humanities professor who kept a family of pet rabbits, all named Junior, in her cluttered office for many years. One cocky professor wore his Harley Davidson gear to class: black leather jacket complete with the logo, leather pants, boots, and long, stringy hair. It was rumored that this hell-raiser tried, with little success, to hit on eighteen-year-old coeds. And during lunch hour, a fraternity of staff members lumbered into the lounge, day after day, season after season, year after year, to play duplicate bridge.
Although the students from surrounding towns were earnest and friendly, many were unprepared, as evidenced by the abundance of remedial English and math courses offered each semester. I was assigned five sections of “Developmental English.” Facing a class of twenty-plus students, many with brains but little preparation for college work, was a challenge, and I hardly knew where to begin. Not only did my students lack basic literacy skills, but many also lacked motivation, which was confirmed by their frequent absences and bogus excuses for missing class and turning in assignments late. During that first year of teaching, I treaded in rough pedagogical waters. But I learned more about teaching that year, from both my many failures and few successes, than during the subsequent thirty years (as I managed to stay afloat).
Both college and coal mines define Stonehill, sandwiched on a strip of bottom land between steep hills, adjacent to the Kanawha River. CSX trains carry coal along tracks that slice the town’s midsection. Over the years, both the college and the mines had experienced a downturn.
During that first semester, Marlene and I figuratively picked over the male species like shoppers fingering fresh produce at a farmer’s market. Each of us stood squarely at opposite ends of the love boat. Marlene was a blissful bride, and I, another casualty of divorce.
“What do you think my chances are of meeting a decent single male around here? Not that I’m quite ready yet.”
“I hate to tell you, but things don’t look too promising on this campus. Most of the male faculty are married. Then you have your total nerds and some weirdos. But there is a guy who works with my husband at Legal Aid. Just out of law school someplace in Texas. He’s been here about a month. Came over to our apartment for a few beers after work last week. Kind of cute in a boyish way. Laughs a lot. Good sense of humor. And he doesn’t have one of those funny accents.”
A cute guy with a sense of humor? Okay . . . . But a Texan. Hhhmmm? I’d never set foot out West, with the exception of Los Angeles, which had overwhelmed me. My take on Texas was gleaned from grainy black-and-white cowboy movies that my father had watched on the old Philco TV back in our living room in Queens. Daddy sat wearing his clean white tee shirt, on the left side of our plastic-covered green couch, with a pack of Chesterfields on the coffee table, the hot ash of a half-smoked butt disintegrating in a lead-crystal ashtray. It seemed as if John Wayne starred in every Western. Those taciturn cowboys said, “Yup” and “Ma’am,” wore ten-gallon hats, packed pistols, tied their horses to hitching posts, and fought in saloons. My dad loved to watch the good guys chase the bad guys. We cheered as the sheriff’s posse sprang over chasms in a perfect arc from one mountain top to another in pursuit of the outlaws.
I tucked Marlene’s Texan into the back of my mind as I raced to prepare my classes and settle Matt into kindergarten and our new mountain home. I lucked into a one-year lease on a furnished cottage while the owners, the Higginbottoms, spent a year teaching in Egypt. When I first came upon it, this shingled cottage glistened in the morning sun. Set deep in the woods, it reminded me of Snow White’s house. Rather than the Seven Dwarfs, this abode was occupied by King, an elderly collie-shepherd mix. Soon King and Matt were inseparable, but I drew the line when Matt wanted to sleep with our rent-a-dog.
Matt and I spent a lot of time cooking, coloring, and reading books together in the kitchen with its long red Formica counter top and knotty pine cabinets. A baby grand piano dominated the small living room where a couch and a wing-backed chair, both covered in a yellow floral print, were arranged in front of a stone fireplace.
From the window above the kitchen sink, we watched sparrows, chickadees, finches, and cardinals land at the feeder in the yard. I kept a generous supply of suet and seed in the pantry. Matt was enthralled the day we spotted a family of white-tailed deer grazing in the front yard. During that year, I ran through three cords of firewood because cold air leaked through ancient casement windows. Later that year, we welcomed the warmth and colors of spring: trillium dotted the hillsides, forsythia twisted skyward, and jonquils graced meadows. There were also West Virginia’s ubiquitous, plastic Easter egg trees which delighted my son: “Oh, Mommy, can we get one of those trees for our yard?”
Although Matt missed his father, he adjusted quickly to his new school and surroundings. He adored his kindergarten teacher, Mr. Pauley, a gentle man who, with humor and love, tamed a rambunctious tribe of five-year-olds. Matt and his school buddies spent hours in the front yard climbing up, down, and around boulders that served as fortresses, jails, castles, and speedways, depending on the boys’ fantasy of choice. They tussled with old King and raced their Hot Wheels up and down the gravel driveway.
I adjusted less well. I missed my friends, my comfortable contemporary home on its wooded lot on the outskirts of Chapel Hill, and the security of marriage, even one that had been unstable for several years. I still harbored faint hope that my husband and I might reconcile.
To help Matt during this difficult transition, I purchased a “special calendar” and marked each weekend that his dad would visit. Matt carefully placed a gold star on the date of each visit. Just after his bedtime story and before he went to sleep, he checked off each day, anticipating his dad’s first trip in early October.
Matt’s dad arrived on an unseasonably cold day, the kind with wood smoke in the air. As I opened the front door, Matt bolted toward his dad, who scooped him up, kissed his cheeks, and stroked his curly hair. After an awkward exchange with my soon-to-be-ex-husband, I handed Matt his Snoopy backpack, kissed him, and waved goodbye. Father and son departed in a rented car. I lingered in the front hall and faced my first weekend alone. More than forty-eight hours to fill. What to do? Best get busy.
I unpacked a few boxes, ran the vacuum, folded laundry, wiped down the kitchen cabinets, and walked King. Then I tackled student papers and littered the margins with “awk, frag,” and question marks. I tried to untangle mangled English syntax. What in the hell did these kids do during four years of high school English? Around 5:00 p.m., I fixed a tuna sandwich and flipped through the entertainment section of the newspaper. The Saturday evening TV lineup wasn’t promising; besides, reception on the mountainside was no better than the grainy images on my dad’s old Philco. Normally a voracious reader, I couldn’t concentrate on what I judged to be the “fluff” in the Life and Style section of the local newspaper about people and places I didn’t even know yet. I debated whether or not to phone my Chapel Hill friends and dump more of my angst. Although I hadn’t tired of venting, surely they were tired of listening to me, swimming in circles over my impending divorce.
An evening road trip, even to the local Mom-and-Pop roadside store to pick up milk, wasn’t feasible, as I feared driving the winding roads that were covered in mud and littered with ruts. What if my car careened into a ditch or a deer darted in front of my headlights? Besides, I didn’t need any milk.
Clearly my options were limited.
I didn’t welcome the idea of another evening wrapped in a bundle of regrets. So I smoked and paced, wishing I were anyone but me, and anywhere but in this cottage on a dirt road five miles from town and light years from Chapel Hill.
Then I recalled my conversation with Marlene about the lawyer from Texas. In seconds, I shifted from idle into overdrive and weighed the relative merits of contacting this total stranger. Would his phone number be listed? Could I call out of the blue? Was that too pushy? Would I come across as needy?
Then again, I was needy, and lonely too. But to admit it was degrading.
Can I pull off “casual and confident”?
I reasoned that the Texan was new, maybe lonely too.
Then again, he might have a girlfriend back home where the buffalo roam, a former cheerleader or drum majorette. A beehived blonde with cowgirl boots and big boobs. But Marlene would have known if he was seeing someone. What’s the worst that could happen? He might be a rube. Or some loudmouthed good ol’ boy.
I’d heard that some of those Billy Bobs could be pretty insufferable about their allegiance to the Lone Star State. Maybe he went by initials only, like PC or JB, or worse yet, a nickname like Bubba. (When I first moved south, I’d met a Bubba Levy, so I knew it could be.) Then again, he might not be too keen on Yankees, let alone one with a New York accent. Could I—should I—dive in and phone this guy? So what if I’m blown off by the Texan? Could I handle another rejection? Rejection? I don’t even know this guy! Enough, already. Either call the guy or forget about it.
And so I inched up to the phone, bit my finger, contacted the operator, gave her the Texan’s full name, wrote down his number, took a breath, and dialed.
You will hang up after only five rings, I told myself.
He answered on the fourth.
“Um . . . hi . . . is this Terry? You don’t know me but Marlene gave me your name and number. She said you were new here, too. I thought you might like to get together some time.”
“Marlene? Oh, yeah, she’s married to David from work. What was your name?” His voice was soft and smooth, without a trace of a Southern accent.
“Fran, my name is Fran. I’m teaching at Mountain Tech. That’s where I met Marlene. We work together. I moved here from Chapel Hill last August with my son, Matt. He’s spending the weekend with his father, so I was wondering if you might like to get together. It’s the first cold night we’ve had and I’m planning to build a fire.”
Am I crazy? Get together? Build a fire? What the hell is that supposed to mean?
“Well, I guess I could. I was supposed to meet some friends at a bar in town, but things got mixed up at the last minute. Looks like I don’t have anything else going, so I’m available. I live downtown. Where are you?”
Oh, God, here goes . . . don’t let him be a serial killer . . .
“I’m renting a house up in the hills. On a dirt road, kind of out of the way. A few miles from town.” Great. If he is a serial killer, I’ll make a terrific victim; the lonely college teacher, living up in the hills! Oh, Lord, what am I doing?
But I pressed on.
“I’m not familiar with the roads around here. In fact, they scare me to death. And my sense of direction is pretty lousy. But I’ll do my best with directions and hope you can find me.”
“What time?”
“How about 8:00 or 8:30?”
“See you then.”
Of course it was unwise, even dangerous, to have invited a complete stranger to my isolated home. But an impulsive current had overtaken me. I craved some male attention because, frankly, I no longer felt desirable. After all, my husband had flat-out rejected me. But as soon as I hung up the phone, I was tempted to call the stranger back and cancel. However, I was lonely, and didn’t want to spend the evening alone, feeling sorry for myself. So emotions trumped reason, as they often did back then. Months later, Terry admitted, “You know after you called it crossed my mind that I might get lucky and score that night. Your invitation was mighty seductive.” He grinned and patted my arm. I blushed.
I had two hours before his arrival. I ran water for a hot bath and soaked in bubbles. Then I powdered my skin, curled my hair, polished my nails, dressed and undressed. And re-dressed. Like a frazzled designer before a fashion show, I rifled through my meager wardrobe. Too baggy, wrong color, too formal, too flimsy, too hippie, too dowdy, too flashy. (Too tight wasn’t a problem, as I was down to ninety pounds from my normal weight of 125, probably from the stress of the impending divorce.) I finally settled on a turquoise turtleneck, bell-bottomed jeans, plain gold hoop earrings, a gold bangle bracelet, beige socks, and tan sandals. After dressing, I pirouetted in front of a full-length mirror like a debutante. Not bad, I thought. The jeans fit snugly, but not too tight, and the nipples of my small breasts were visible beneath my shirt, but not brazenly. (This was during my—and seemingly the entire country’s young, female population’s—braless phase.) Understated, casual, “appropriate for the occasion,” as my mother used to say.
As I carefully applied my powder, blush, a dab of mascara, and lip gloss, I felt like a fourteen-year-old on her first date. My first date? Irish Teddy Riley. We went to a movie in Flushing. Exodus with Sal Mineo? Or was it Ben Hur with Charlton Heston? Teddy from Brooklyn with his blond hair, blue eyes, and pug nose. After high school, he joined the army and was stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, for basic training. I started dating his best friend, Bobby. We wrote a few times, lost touch. Years later, my cousin Cosmo told me Teddy was a fireman, married, with a child. First date, first kiss, first love, you never forget them.
And now my first date in eighteen years.
Just before eight o’clock, I put a bottle of wine on to chill, built a fire, and fiddled with a stubborn curl as I checked and rechecked my image in a mirror.
8:30. The Texan didn’t show.
9:00, 9:15, 9:30. Still no Texan.
I stared at the fire and cursed my impulsivity. I might have been dumped, but I’d never been stood up. Then again it might not be such a bad thing. After all, this guy could be a thug, a psycho, or a deranged vigilante like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. My embarrassment was tinged with relief. Maybe I’d been “asking for trouble,” as my mother often warned me. These days, I’d kill one of my nieces for even contemplating such a move. But back then, I paced before the kitchen window, scanning the road for an approaching car. Seated briefly, I flipped through old magazines. Standing again, I poked resignedly at the dying fire . . . and then . . . .
A knock.
At 10:00 p.m. A smile. An apology.
“Hi. Sorry I’m so late. I really mean it. I got completely turned around in these hills and couldn’t find my way back to the main road. Couldn’t even find a house so that I could call you on the phone. No offense, but you live way out of nowhere. Look, I know it’s late and I can leave right now. I’m really sorry about all of this.”
“Well, I’d just about given up on you. Come on in, it’s freezing out there.”
Psychologists who study such things report that people feel positive or negative within seconds of a first encounter with a stranger. The reaction is visceral, immediate and, most times, permanent. My first impression was favorable: short guy, curly brown hair in need of a cut, kind amber eyes framed with wire-rimmed glasses, small hands, stubby fingers. He looked like a young Richard Dreyfuss without the nervous edge. Cuddly like a stuffed bear from my son Matt’s animal kingdom. He wore faded blue jeans, scuffed white sneakers, a denim shirt, and a brown-and-beige checkered lumber jacket. His voice was gentle, without the trace of a Southern accent. A definite plus, for this Yankee. I detected a faint smell of Old Spice, which reminded me of my father. Another plus.
The Texan carried a six pack of Bud and a small paper bag.
We stood in the dim hallway and searched for words to wrap around those first awkward moments.
“Cold night.”
“Yes, some frost. Didn’t expect it so early.”
“Nice place, but pretty far out.”
“Yes, I got lost when I came to look at it to rent.”
“You have a son? What’s his name?”
“Matt. He’s five, just started kindergarten. Great kid. I’ll show you his picture.”
He followed me to the kitchen and placed the beer and the bag on top of the worn Formica counter.
“Would you like a glass of wine or a beer?”
“Wine’s fine, thanks.”
As I poured two glasses from a half gallon of Gallo, he leaned against the counter and handed me the paper bag. “Here, this is for you.”
“Oh, how nice. What a surprise,” I bubbled. “I love surprises. Should I open it now?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
Why did I ask him whether or not to open the bag? He must think I’m an idiot. Stop acting like a fourteen-year-old at a junior-high dance. What’s in this bag anyway? Pot? I hope not!
I closed my eyes and warily slid my right hand into the bottom of the bag, cupped an object the size of a small stone, and fingered its smooth surface.
“I’m not sure. It feels small, and rounded, and kind of silky.”
“Why don’t you sneak a look?”
I opened the top of the bag, reached down, and grabbed a handful of . . . chestnuts.
“Thought you might like these. You said you were going to build a fire. You know ‘chestnuts roasting on an open fire,’ Nat King Cole?”
Curious gift, I thought. Not a bottle of wine, or a box of chocolates, or a pot of mums. Chestnuts. This guy’s thoughtful. And clever.
He hooked me right in with those nuts.
For the next five hours, we sipped wine and outlined the surface of our lives, our conversation as seamless as the river that flowed through this mountain valley. We spoke of our childhoods, his in a suburb of Dallas, mine in a suburb of New York City. He spoke fondly of his undergraduate days at Austin College in Sherman, Texas.
“I graduated in 1971, in the middle of the war . . .”
“Oh. Vietnam . . .”
What was there to say about that terrible conflict?
“Um-hmm. I was about to be drafted. In fact, I was number five in the lottery.”
I grimaced.
“You were in Vietnam?”
“No, no. Rather than go over there as cannon fodder, I went into a Presbyterian seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.”
“You became a minister . . .? I thought Marlene said you were a lawyer.” I hoped I didn’t look as confused as I felt. Terry smiled.
“No, preaching’s not for me; I realized that after I spent some time working with some Catholic nuns in a poor section of town. But it was a stimulating experience. So I headed to Austin and law school at UT.”
Then it was my turn. I told him about my extended Italian family, my Catholic education, and time at City College in New York. I rattled off the names of the grammar schools I’d attended, including the one called Fourteen Holy Martyrs.
“You’re kidding, aren’t you? That was the name of a school? What exactly did the fourteen of them do?”
“No, I’m not kidding. That was the name of the school. I have no idea what they did, probably burned themselves in oil or jumped from a mountaintop to avoid temptation of the flesh. The Catholics are big on temptation.”
“So are the Southern Baptists. My mother used to send me to Sunday school at Walnut Hill Baptist Church.”
“Sounds lovely.”
“Well, it wasn’t too lovely when they warned us that we’d surely land in hell if we drank and gambled. Guess it didn’t take, because I played a lot of poker when I was in college. Drank a whole lot, too.”
We touched on geography.
“I grew up in Bayside, near Long Island. The ocean is in my blood. Someday I’m going to live by the sea.”
“Then you’d better plan to head out of these mountains someday. You know, I didn’t see the ocean until I was eleven. My mother and I drove from Dallas to visit relatives in Oregon. That was one of the few trips I took as a child.”
“Not see the ocean until you were eleven? That’s unbelievable. I’m a water baby. There’s a picture of me at Coney Island when I was only eighteen months old. A pudgy little thing with a pot belly sticking out, carrying a pail and shovel. And my grandmother had a summer cottage on Long Island, so we went to the beach all the time. I took swimming lessons from the Red Cross when I was five. I still swim laps at the Y to keep in shape.”
“Must work. You look pretty good to me.”
A surge of delight washed over me like a gentle wave, even though I had pretty much invited that compliment. But he hadn’t disappointed.
Terry mentioned the “big sky” out West. “I sure miss that.”
“All I know about the West is from the Westerns I watched with my dad when I was a kid. I’ve never been out there.”
Suddenly, Terry was gone, replaced by a pretty good John Wayne impersonator. “Now, missy, let’s get this straight,” he drawled, exactly like the Duke, even pushing an imaginary cowboy hat further back on his head, and hooking a thumb into his belt. “I’m partial to those movies too. After all, I’m a Texan, and damn proud of it.” (Like every Texan I’ve ever met, he felt entitled to bragging rights.)
This charming stranger could certainly make me smile.
And when Terry “returned,” we talked about our recent moves to West Virginia and speculated about how long we might stay. I rambled on too long about my impending divorce. He didn’t interrupt me. “Mind if I get another beer?” he asked.
I learned that he was a movie buff who favored classics like The Wizard of Oz, It’s a Wonderful Life, Citizen Kane, and The Maltese Falcon. It seemed that movie stars like Tracy, Bogart, Gable, Jimmy Stewart, and Cary Grant were as real to him as the trees that rustled outside the living room window.
“I actually wanted to go to UCLA to study film, but that seemed unrealistic for a poor kid like me. Also too risky. Not enough security.”
“You’re still young. Maybe you’ll change careers and go. I read somewhere that people might change careers three times in a lifetime. Are you sorry you became a lawyer?”
“Well, I’m no Perry Mason. But I’m not too shoddy either. I don’t make piles of money at Legal Aid, but I feel good about what I do. Poor people deserve to be represented. Besides, my office is clean and well lit.” He winked.
I later discovered that this sensitive child of an alcoholic had mastered the subtleties of nonverbal body language. This served him well in court and at poker games with his cronies. I soon learned that everyone who met Terry was warmed by that self-deprecating humor and calm, courteous manner that was charming me so on that first night. “Yes, sir” and “no, ma’am,” were part of his appeal.
Bathed in firelight, we lay on pillows in front of the fireplace and gorged on crackers, cheese, and conversation. When the fire faded, Terry hauled logs from the woodpile beside the kitchen door and carefully arranged them on top of the embers. Our eyes danced in the shadows of flickering flames. He sprinkled a fistful of chestnuts in a metal pie plate to roast in the fire. Once they had roasted and cooled, he peeled one and placed it carefully in my mouth. As I tasted the warm, grainy inside of the nut, Terry’s fingers brushed against my cheek. Then he circled the outline of my lips with his index finger and stroked my chin. He leaned forward to kiss me. Sweet, gentle, innocent.
Slightly embarrassed, we chuckled like kids caught in their own delight. Not sure of what to do next, I headed to the kitchen to replenish cheese and crackers. Terry followed and gathered more logs. We repositioned ourselves in front of the fire. Surely soft music played in the background, but I can’t recall a song or melody. Perhaps Johnny Mathis or Nat King Cole.
“Oh, my God. It’s so late; it’s almost 4:00 a.m.,” I said.
“Guess it’s time for me to be leaving. You won’t mind if I take this last beer with me? One for the road.”
As we stood face-to-face in the dim light of the entry hall, he whispered, “Can I kiss you again?” He lifted my chin, leaned down and kissed my lips. Again, sweet and tender. Then he grabbed his lumber jacket and opened the front door. As he turned to leave, he saluted me like Bogart.
“Here’s to you, kid.” He cocked his head and grinned. “Let’s do this again, sweetheart.”
I lingered in the hall, watching as he walked up the front path toward the road. Then he climbed into his ancient Plymouth Fury and revved the engine. Gravel rattled. My heart raced.
I tossed the empty beer cans into the garbage and thought, boy, that guy drinks a lot of beer. Then I glanced at Matt’s calendar. October 3—a gold-star day.
