Circle of Three (3 page)

“Hey, Mom, did you know that when you pet your dog, it lowers your blood pressure?”

“Mmm.”

“But the cool thing is, they found out it also lowers the
dog’s
blood pressure. Don’t you think that’s cool? Can we get a dog?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Oh, honey. We just can’t.”

We couldn’t before, either, because my dad was allergic to anything with hair—dogs, cats, gerbils, whatever. I was just thinking maybe now…“Jess has four dogs,” I said, “and about fifteen cats. And a crow that comes up to his back
door and lets him feed it. Jess would give us a kitten, I bet. Cats are easy.”

“Ruth.”

“I know, but he’s got all these animals and we don’t have any.”

“Jess lives on a farm.”

“So?”

Jess is great. He’s a friend of Mom’s from the olden days when she was growing up in Clayborne, and he has a farm right on the Leap River that’s over six hundred acres with about two hundred Holstein cows. Last year I had to do a civics paper on a local industry, and I picked Jess’s dairy farm and learned all about cows. Then for my science fair project I decided to do a working model of the four stomachs of the cow (the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasum), and he helped me with that, too. I love to go out to his farm and just hang, although I haven’t seen him since Dad died—Mom’s been too wasted. I miss going there. I miss seeing Jess.

She rolled over, and we stretched out next to each other. “That was great,” she said. “Thanks. And by the way, this room is a sty.” We smiled up at the ceiling. She made me a mobile that hangs from the light, seven horses galloping or cantering or loping, cut out of thin wood and painted in different colors. It’s from my horse phase. I should take it down, but I still like it.

“Mom? Christmas is going to be sad, isn’t it?” Thanksgiving was bad enough.

She said, “Yeah,” and I was glad she didn’t lie. “Because it’s the first. But we’ll be okay. Some things—we can’t go around them. I’m afraid we just have to go through them.”

“Do you miss Dad a lot?”

“I do.”

“Me, too. Will we still go to Gram’s for dinner?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And we’ll still have presents?”

“Absolutely. Although…”

“I know.” Not as many.

“The main thing is that we’re together. We’ve still got us.”

“Yeah.”

Except I don’t have her. She’s still got me, but she’s about half the mother I used to have. When Dad died I lost him and part of her. I’m almost an orphan.

She says she’s getting better, but I say not to the naked eye. Well, maybe Christmas will miraculously cheer us up. But I don’t think so. I think she’s right. Some things we can’t go around, we just have to go through them.

T
HE PHONE JOLTED
me out of a comatose sleep on the living-room couch. I answered instantly, heart pounding, forgetting to clear my throat first and say hello cheerfully. “Carrie honey, is that you?” my mother’s worried voice asked. “What’s wrong?”

This happened all the time. Something about my phone voice; if I didn’t make an effort to sound bright and clearheaded, people thought something was the matter with me. Are you sick? Were you sleeping? Have you been crying? Today I could’ve answered yes to all three.

“Oh, hi, Mama. No, I’m fine, how’re you? How’s Pop?”

“What are you doing?”

“Right now?” The mantel clock said ten after twelve. “I was just getting ready to go out. On my way, in fact. Chores, got things to do, the bank, post office, this and that…” I carried the phone into the kitchen and sank down in a chair at the table. Out of steam.

“I was going to run over before the women’s club luncheon with one of these casseroles I made. It’s Ruth’s favorite—scalloped potatoes.”

“Mmm. Well, that—”

“I’ve got enough for an army. You’ll be there another half hour, won’t you?”

I put my head down on the oak table. God, look at all the crumbs and jelly stains and water marks. How long since I cleaned this table? My nightgown sleeve was stuck to it. “Um, you couldn’t just drop it off, could you? Since I’m going out…” My mother made wonderful scalloped potatoes. They’d get me through the day. The logistics would be embarrassing, though; I’d have to hide upstairs and wait for her to come in, stick her casserole in the refrigerator, and go away. No, no, it wouldn’t work anyway, I realized—she’d see the car.

“Well,” she said, “if you’re not even going to be there, never mind.” Affronted. “Maybe after my luncheon’s over, although I can’t promise they won’t eat everything.”

“That might be better. And if you come late enough, you can see Ruth.”

That perked her up. “How’s my baby? I want you two to come to dinner next Friday night, Carrie. You need to get out of that house.”

“Friday…”

“Just you and Ruth, a family dinner. It’s been ages.”

“It’s been four months.” To the day. Since Stephen died.

She realized it, too. She said too quickly, “Friday night for sure, we’ll have a good time, I promise. And now I’ll let you get on with your important chores.”

“So—you’re coming by later?”

“Only if it’s not too much
trouble
. If it won’t put you out.”

I tried to balance the phone on my ear without touching it, so I could drop both arms and go limp. Stay like that all day, lax and drooling, head a complete blank.

“Carrie? I was kidding, I could come over right now if you want. Honey, do you feel like talking?”

I couldn’t even make my tongue work. Did I feel like talking? Involuntarily, I snorted into the phone. I turned it into a cough and said, “I’m fine, I’m better today, actually. I should go now, but I’ll definitely see you later, okay? ’Bye, Mama.”

I would love a vacation from my mother’s mind. If she would bump her head—not seriously, nothing fatal or
painful or long-lasting, just something to give her amnesia for about six weeks. Lovely, lovely, no calls, no visits, no casseroles, no life advice. No bullying. When I’m in my mother’s head, I’m only half myself; she sucks out the other half and swallows it. And I’m so weak these days, I’m lucky if it’s only half.

I hung there over the table until my neck hurt. Then I got up slowly, a little dizzy—low blood sugar? pressure? Low something. I put a cup of water and a tea bag in the microwave. Couldn’t drink coffee anymore, too harsh; I wanted to
be
awake, not slapped awake. I carried the cup and a handful of Fig Newtons into Stephen’s office. Slumped in the doorway, I stared around at the mess I’d made of it.

Six weeks ago I had an idea it might be a comfort to turn his sanctum, his favorite room in the house, into my new flower-arrangement-and-wreath-assembly workroom. A way to stay close to him, I thought, keep his memory vivid, not be so lonely when I was alone. Wrong on all counts, and now I’d ruined his room. He’d kept it neat as a laboratory. I littered his pristine techno-gray carpet with Scotch broom branches and wild grapevine, tansy and goldenrod stalks, crown of thorns, witch hazel. Except for his desk, every surface was covered with pods, nuts, branches, stems, twigs, flowers, containers, driftwood, twist ties, pipe cleaners, wire, silica, sand, salt, borax, clay, vermiculite. And over everything an invisible mist, an allergy sufferer’s nightmare fog of dusty dried flower and seed pod detritus. Stephen would’ve died in here.

But I never touched his desk. Why not? Directly in front of his steel-and-vinyl chair were the notes he’d been taking for a paper on the computation of definite integrals. I hadn’t given his clothes away, either, or cleaned out his side of the medicine chest or his bedside table. Ruth said nothing, but she had to think this was bizarre behavior. I thought so, too. I wasn’t sure what was behind it, but I didn’t believe it was my sad, wistful way of holding on to my husband a little longer. Something more complicated. Less commendable.

I sat down on the floor in my usual place. Even with the blinds open, the light was poor, but I hadn’t gotten up the energy yet to drag a floor lamp in from another room. I kept forgetting. Until recently, Margaret Sachs had been paying me eight dollars apiece for dried wreaths and Christmas arrangements, which she sold at a comfortable profit at Clayborne Crafts ’N Candles, her shop on Myrtle Avenue. Last week I began to run low on supplies, so I had to switch to miniatures. I had no choice, it was either downsize or go out into the world and look for more materials, the cattails, teasel, laurel branches, etc., etc., that were the tools of my not-very-lucrative-to-begin-with trade. I couldn’t face it. Some kind of agoraphobia; I hoped it was temporary. At any rate, now Margaret was only paying me four dollars per arrangement.

I rationalized the cutback by telling myself I could make twice as many in the same amount of time, so I wasn’t really losing money. But that wasn’t true—if it were, I’d run out of supplies in half the time, wouldn’t I? No, I was just in a miniature frame of mind.

The afternoon dragged by. I could drift into a trance when I made these little arrangements. When I floated up from it because I was out of pinecones or it was too dark to see or my rear end had gone numb, I’d find I had made six or seven tiny floral compositions and they were all identical. Round, fan-shaped, S-curved, pyramid—whatever design I’d chosen for the first, all the rest were exact replicas of it. I found that vaguely appalling. Margaret thought I did it on purpose—“Oh,
these
are cunning, they’ll go like hotcakes,” she’d say, and ask me to do more of whatever shape I’d unconsciously mass-produced. But I didn’t. Not on purpose, anyway.

Hunger nudged me out of my trance today. Stiff-necked, stiff-legged, I hobbled into the kitchen. Almost three; Ruth would be home soon. The cottage cheese had a funny smell, but I scraped off the top and ate in the middle, staring out the window over the sink at my neighbors’ house. In our shared driveway, Modean Harmon was unloading her one-year-old from his car seat and carrying him and a bag of groceries inside
. I wished I’d thought to ask her to pick up a few things for me while she was out. She was wonderful about that. Wonderful about everything. Modean was shy and quiet, younger than me, very reserved; it was only since Stephen died that we’d become friends. And I wasn’t much of one; she did all the initiating. Stephen never cared for Dave, her dentist husband, so we never socialized as couples. But after the accident, Modean was a lifesaver. She didn’t say much, and she never tried to draw me out. What she did was leave groceries in the refrigerator, rake the leaves in my yard, drive Ruth to school when she missed the bus. I tried to repay her later by taking care of Harry when Ruth wasn’t available, but that was no hardship even for me. He was a big grinning egg of a baby, all he wanted to do was laugh. The hard part was giving Harry back when his mother came home.

The doorbell rang.

Who?
I thought, tiptoeing into the foyer.
Who’s torturing me now?
It couldn’t be my mother, she never knocked, and if the door happened to be locked she had a key. Long stained glass panels bordered the door on both sides—I’d taken a class and made them myself, last year, when screening visitors wasn’t a priority. All I could see through the soldered yellow and blue panes was a tall shadow. I opened the door an inch or two. Jess Deeping peered in at me, then took a step back, gray eyes startled. “Hi. Is this a bad time?”

I put him in the living room and excused myself to go make coffee. Wouldn’t Ruth revel in this?
I told you
, she’d say,
I told you to get dressed
. I looked ghastly anyway, but more so in Stephen’s red Bulls jersey over my oldest, rattiest flannel nightgown. I wasn’t vain, but I still had some pride, a shred, a vestige. Measuring coffee into the maker, I watched two fat, humiliated tears spatter on the counter. They weren’t remarkable; I cried almost every day about something.
Maybe this is as low as I’ll go
, I thought hopefully.
Maybe this is the bottom
.

When I came back in the living room, Jess was bent over with his hands behind his back, studying some small water-colors I did of Ruth when she was a little girl. They weren’t very good, but I couldn’t part with them; I framed them and put them in a grouping behind the gateleg table, half hidden by the tole lamp. He’d taken off his heavy coat—I’d forgotten to ask him for it. He’d dressed up; he wore pressed slacks and a blue crewneck sweater that looked brand-new. A Christmas present? He had no family, no wife anymore. Who gave Jess presents? His hair was a little thinner now, and darker, a caramel shade, but when we first met, age eleven, he was a towhead blond. In high school it was streaky gold and down to his shoulders. In my illicit dream, the one I can’t forgive myself for, it came down around the sides of his face, and my face. It covered us like a tawny curtain.

“These are good,” he said, straightening. “Why did you stop painting?”

“How do you know I did?”

“Ruth told me.”

“Ah.” Should’ve known. I sat down on the piano bench, crossed my legs, folded my arms. “I have a cold,” I said. True, but it didn’t explain half of what I wanted it to.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” he said carefully. “How’ve you been getting along?”

“All right.” I nodded a lot, trying to make it sound truer. Something old pulled at me to make him my confidant. How easy to say,
I’m dead inside, Jess. Ruth’s all that keeps me going, and I’m failing her.
“I’ve been all right. Getting by, you know. It’s hard,” I finally admitted. “But we’re okay, Ruth and I. Basically. Tell me about you, what have you been doing?”

He smiled a bit grimly, to let me know he hadn’t bought any of that. “Oh, the usual. It’s the slow time of the year, so I’ve been taking it easy. Getting lazy.”

“I doubt that. Don’t you still have to milk two hundred cows twice a day?”

“Not quite that many.”

“Ruth told me that. It’s not true?”

“I’ve got over two hundred head, but not all of them get milked. Maybe a hundred and fifty.”

“What happens to the other fifty?”

“Calves, stud cattle, heifers. A few old ladies.” He put his hands in his pockets and looked around the room. “I like your house.”

“It seems funny that you’ve never been here before.” Because I’d never invited him. Seeing him on his big, busy, wide-open farm, that was all right, and Ruth was always with us. But here in my house, just Jess and me? Not allowed. You didn’t have to say the rules out loud to know what they were.

“You did all the remodeling yourself?” He stood stiffly, rocking on his toes a little. Uncomfortable, I realized. Most unusual for Jess. I hadn’t seen him since Stephen’s funeral. He’d phoned one time. Ruth answered, and they talked for quite a while. I shook my head and waved my hands when she said, “So do you want to talk to my mom?” Then it was awkward, because he said yes and she had to come up with a reason, quick, why he couldn’t. “Gosh, she was here a minute ago. Well, I guess she went out. I guess she left while we were talking.” He hadn’t called again.

“Most of it,” I told him. “Ruth helps me paint sometimes. It’s not finished. I guess now…” I let that hang, weighing how frank I should be. Was it too personal to tell him I might have to sell the house? Ruth loved it, though. Even if we sold it, after only three years of ownership, there wasn’t much escrow in our overpriced circa-1880 money sink on the state of Virginia’s Historic Register. I smiled at Jess. “Some of my plans have been pushed back, put it that way.”

“You need a job.”

“God knows I do. Excuse me a sec…” I stood up and went to get the coffee.

He followed me into the kitchen. “This is amazing,” he said as I filled two mugs with coffee, adding milk to his.

“What?”

“This room. You did all this, Carrie?”

“Yep.” I painted the tiles behind the sink and stenciled the wallpaper borders, I even laid the antique bricks I bought cheap at an estate sale. I was quite the craftswoman. “Well, not the counters. I found the slates, but a man cut and installed them for me. And the cabinets were already here, I just refinished them.”

It was a great room, my favorite in the house. I could’ve made it bigger, knocked out a wall and extended into the pantry; that was even allowed under the strict rules of landmark ownership. But it was a 120-year-old house—who had big kitchens in its day? And there were only three of us when I was weighing the decision. And now only two.

Jess scuffed the toe of his shoe across the throw rug he was standing on. “And this?” He looked up and smiled, and raised his eyebrows, and rubbed the flat of his hand against his chest—a combination of gestures I knew very well. In different lights, from different angles, I could still see the boy in his man’s face. I felt such tenderness sometimes. It was dangerous, it wasn’t even true, but sometimes I felt that I knew Jess better than anyone, that I was the only one who could really see him. But that was only the power of nostalgia. And loneliness. The mind plays tricks.