No Story to Tell (20 page)

“Bobby! She wants to see you. You haven’t been there for ages.”

He grimaced into the rearview mirror. “Guess it has been a while. But I told JJ I’d be by to see his tranny today.”

“Well, tell him you’ll see it next week.”

“Shit.” He frowned darkly. “All right, where you want me to meet you? How long you need to get the groceries, half hour?”

“At least.” She slid from the truck as another horn blared and a whiskey-voiced woman yelled epithets foul enough to wilt a dandelion. “Maybe give me “till about three. Pick me up at the grocery store . . . and don’t be late, okay? Mr. Graves gets grumpy if I hang around too long after I’m done shopping.”

“All right already, I got it. Hurry up and grab your purse. People getting right pissy back there.”

“Don’t be late, Bobby, okay. Please,” she added, as she pulled her purse out of the truck sending a snowstorm of wrinkled invoices and candy wrappers onto the street. She bent down and hastily gathered up a handful of what seemed somewhat important and shoved it back into the truck.

“Hurry up and close the frickin’ door,” Bobby bellered, bull-like, as she did so, dropping her purse in the process and spilling its contents onto the road, a super-plus Tam-pax rolling to a flattened death under the tires of a black four-wheel drive. Gathering up papers, lipstick and most of her change, she stuck frozen fingers into her thin parka pockets, set her jaw and walked past the gawking eyes and whispered exchanges on the sidewalk.

“Victoria, wait!”

Her heart soared then sunk. Whirling around she saw Elliot crossing the street toward her. She searched his smiling face as he got closer, trying to ascertain whether or not he’d witnessed the embarrassing fiasco she and Bobby had just created on Main Street.

“Hi! Hey, how’ve you been?”

“Fine. You?” She kept her smile controlled, her face neutral, aware that the town’s eyes were on them, observing, speculating, judging.

“Great! Busy. Took a little road trip this fall to do some painting.”

“Oh. Where?”

“Up north, mostly,” he answered vaguely.

She looked at him sharply, trying to imagine him on the other end of that strange call, whispering through the static of a bad connection from a dingy hotel room.

“Hey, I ended up with a really nice painting from that day we went up McCully Hill. You should come out sometime and see it.”

“Um . . . sure.”

“Bring your husband too, if you want.”

Averting her eyes, she shifted her purse from one shoulder to the other, hoping to obscure a confused frown.

“Sure.”

“I’ve been thinking about you a lot this last while.”

Panicked, she scanned around them to ensure no one had come within hearing range.

“You have?”

“Ya. Been wondering if you’re going to open that studio.”

She felt a tinge of disappointment.

“Still thinking about it.”

He grinned gently. “That’s good. Be even better when you quit thinking about it and just do it.”

She grinned back at him, a shiver rippling through her.

“You’re cold. I should let you go.”

“Ya. I probably should get going,” she agreed, knowing the more they stood there and talked the more questions started arising in people’s minds.

“It was really good to see you again, Victoria.” His eyes lingered softly on hers.

“You too,” she said lightly as they waved goodbye and continued going their separate ways down the street.

Pressing open the door into Mrs. Barlow’s department store, she was announced by a melancholy door chime that long ago had used up the best of its vocal cords. This department store was somewhat of an anomaly, containing no departments, no sections and very little in the way of even a basic order. Better described as an ongoing garage sale, items not sold were shuffled, turned and rearranged until they were either covered over by oily dust or buried among new and more enticing stock. As such it was a difficult place to actually shop in, and most people resorted immediately to Mrs. Barlow’s assistance, which was given, but never offered.

“Well, look what dragged home the cat. Ain’t seen you a long time fer. What’s bin keeping ya?”

Mrs. Barlow’s voice, thick as January molasses, flowed out from the shadows. Her peculiar form of verbal dyslexia forced Victoria to hesitate before answering as her brain flip-flopped the words back into place.

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Barlow. I haven’t been up to much. A little knitting lately. Need some more wool.”

She said this into the general direction from which Mrs. Barlow’s voice had emerged and waited as her eyes adjusted. The gloom slowly revealed a menagerie of burned-out bulbs dotting a water-stained ceiling that appeared to be supported by precarious pillars of junk piled the length and width of all four walls. An Armageddon of flies dried on the wide sills of two filthy display windows looking out to the street, and a stinky brown dog, alive or dead was anyone’s guess, lay sprawled in front of a snorting, snuffing little wood heater.

“What kind of wool wanting ya?” the voice replied, pulling forth the apparition of large, lumpy Mrs. Barlow. She sat in a recliner behind the front counter. Her blue-daisied polyester dress formed an almost perfect square as she rolled up onto her feet. “Your crops this year, how did they come?”

“Not too bad, really. Prices were down though.”

“So I hear. Joe and Phyllis didn’t git much fer their’s either. A tough year be it. And Phyllis that girl spends money like trees. My poor Joey, wishing he listened me to now, I tell ya. Hard-working boy, is he. Just like your Bobby. Work himself to the bone. Not like yer maw’s family, no-sir-ee. Now there was some shiftless bunch. And weak in the head, too, somes them.” She eyed Victoria suspiciously, as if checking for any emerging signs of insanity. “Darn lucky to get yer pa, she was. Even if he were a touch mean. I tell that Phyllis just yesterday—”

Victoria sighed, resigned herself to hear again Mrs. Barlow’s painfully slow and lengthy summation of her daughter in-law’s many faults. An outsider would have assumed she had no use for her son’s wife at all, but the opposite was true. She quite liked the girl and had a self-replenishing list of odd jobs she’d have her do and redo, then do over again. Victoria waited impatiently as Mrs. Barlow droned on, her nerves still zinging excitedly after her unexpected encounter with Elliot. She thought again about how triumphant she’d felt when she had challenged Bobby about opening a studio, but now an insidious shadow of doubt began to crawl up her spine. Maybe he’d been right. Maybe it was impossible. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to get enough students to have her own studio. Maybe she should have left well enough alone. Fortunately, Mrs. Barlow could only talk so long without breaking for a cigarette. She smoked as regular as most people breathed and any long-term disruption in her pattern left her short of breath. Sure enough, mid-sentence she began to wheeze and gasp and broke off to light up. Victoria jumped in to repeat her request, time ticking off in her head as she mentally ran through the list of errands in her purse.

“I think I’ll just need one ball of wool. Are they still in the back corner?”

Mrs. Barlow inhaled a quarter inch off the cigarette then stood stroking the hanging folds of her double chin as the smoke slowly seeped back out of her nose. She tilted her head to one side, examined the roof for guidance.

“Wee-ell, let me remember. Some is. Some ain’t. What color wants you?”

“Yellow. But it’s got to match this.” She fished into her purse and produced a pale yellow strand. Mrs. Barlow bent toward it, squinted, then scrunched up her piggy nose.

“What’s fer it?”

“Pardon?”

“What’s fer it?”

“Oh. A baby sweater. For Diana Gainer. Guess you heard she’s expecting again?”

Mrs. Barlow received this question as a bit of an affront, feeling herself somewhat of an authority on the town’s gossip. Being best friends with Millie Miller, the doctor’s secretary, clearly gave her a hands-down advantage in the medical department, and with her husband Bill behind the counter at the local bar, there wasn’t much happening in Hinckly where she wasn’t one of the first to know.

“Gourse’n I knew. Knewed fer a long time, I did. Due early March.” She moistened her lips to receive the cigarette, slowly took a drag then shook her head as she expelled it. “Heard you about Diana and Tom’s eldest, did you? Got caught up in Benny Olson’s hay barn and his daughter with.” She stopped for another long drag followed by an even longer shaking of her head. “Is a bad one, that boy. Chased him straight off with his shotgun, Benny did.” She fell into a wheezy chortle that ended in a gut-wrenching hack she appeased with the last of her cigarette.

“Come here to the back with me. Some have I, maybe for sure.”

Victoria followed in the slowly waddled path, picking up and replacing pots and clothespegs and books as they were rubbed or bumped or hip-checked onto the floor. Mrs. Barlow swayed to a stop. She looked under, over and through the cluttered shelves then shook her head quizzically, tugged at her chin fat and pursed her wet lips.

“So. Did ya heard about Mrs. Spiller’s latest bad guy?”

Victoria nodded her head quickly but to no avail.

“Nutty old bird thinks her money the gypsies are stealing! Gypsies! Not gypsies tell you me. Nope. Old man Graves, now he’s a stealer. Selling that crazy old coot all them groceries, them damn cats just to feed. Should arrest him, I say.” And with this proclamation her energy was depleted, and she slumped against a stack of boxes trying to recall what it was she’d been looking for. “Let me think now a minute.”

They stood silent, listened to Mrs. Barlow’s nasal wheezing and waited for the reluctant revelation to reveal itself. After a nonproductive moment, the older lady pulled a pencil from her scraggly faded red bun as if hoping to joggle the memory loose.

“Oh! Now I know. Over here, come.” And she again waddled forward on stumpy legs that called up visions of bloated bratwurst. She traversed one aisle then the next with the speed of a glacier, finally stopped and began rummaging between cans of paint and some toasters.

“What color?”

Victoria again scouted out the piece of wool from her purse and again was met by Mrs. Barlow’s disapproving scrunched up face.

“Not such a nice color that.”

She turned to the box of wool in front of her, and Victoria noticed her push past several balls that may have worked, obviously intent on finding a color that was more in accordance with her own tastes.

“How about that one, Mrs. Barlow? Looks pretty close.”

The suggestion was cast off with a grunt as she pulled up a lime-green ball and turned to Victoria, quite pleased with her find.

“This one, how’s about?”

“Hmm. That’s nice. But maybe a bit too bright. I think it needs to be a bit paler.”

“Paler? Pale enough babies are. Dead you make ’em look with pale. Here, this one how about?”

She pushed an equally atrocious fuchsia into Victoria’s hand, a smoke-stained smile splitting her fat cheeks.

“Good, huh?”

Victoria held her temper, smiled through gritted teeth. “Okay, and maybe if you don’t mind, I’ll also take that one back there, back behind the toaster.”

“Sure,” Mrs. Barlow beamed agreeably as she reached back and grabbed the soft yellow ball, happy in the knowledge she had just doubled her sales for the day. Cheerfully she led the way back up the aisle to ring in the purchase.

“You ain’t no kids got ya, strange thing sure enough. But not all bad it is. Spoiled these days kids are, get by with too much. A smack’s the thing, it is. I tell you, my boys—”

Victoria tapped her foot impatiently through several minutes of advice on how to raise the children she’d never had followed by almost fifteen more of Hinckly gossip old and current, but certainly not new. By the time Mrs. Barlow paused to light up her third cigarette, she all but lunged for the door with a backward goodbye.

Her exit was impeded by Diana, her bustling entourage of children stampeding noisily through the door Victoria held open.

“Oh, hi Vic. Thanks for getting the door. Girls, you can look, but no touching, okay?”

Turning back to Victoria, she shifted a youngster from her hip into the waiting arms of an older sibling as she prepared to make small talk.

“So, how are you? Haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Me? Oh, I’m fine. How about yourself?”

“Good. Crazy busy, as usual. Preggers again, did you hear?” she asked happily, smoothing down her shirt to expose a rather obvious belly.

“Wow! Congratulations. Must almost have enough for your own baseball team by now, hey?”

“Well, maybe if the girls played.”

“I don’t want to play bayth-ball,” lisped a young girl who had entwined herself around Diana’s left leg.

“And who is this?” asked Victoria, smiling down at an irresistibly cute little girl who blinked back with shy blue eyes.

“This is Lily. Lily wants to be a ballerina when she grows up. Don’t you Lily?”

“Really?” Victoria smiled, surprised at her fortunate timing. “That’s wonderful. I was just—”