Crooked Hearts (19 page)

“No, I’m not finished.” She flapped her hand, and he assumed she was dismissing him. “Wait—don’t go.”

“You want me to stay?”

She shrugged. “Don’t you want to talk to me?”

“Sure. You bet.” She was definitely
shikker,
but at least she wasn’t slurring her words. He retreated to the w.c., lowered the lid, and sat down. From here he could see only head and knees again. “What are we celebrating?” he asked genially.

“It’s the twelfth of June.”

He nodded sagely, waiting.

“Six years ago today, I lost my Joe.”

He pondered that for a time. Was Joe a person? Maybe “joe” was some female expression he wasn’t familiar with, a girlish euphemism for virginity. “How’d you lose your … Joe?” he ventured.

“We were going to get married.” Her face turned pink, and fat tears welled in her eyes.

“Who?”

“Me and Joe. We—”

“Wait now. Is this before or after Giuseppe?”

She frowned. “Who? Oh—Giuseppe.” When she giggled, he saw that the wine had stained her teeth purple. “Joe
is
Giuseppe. Was, rather.” The tears spilled over. “He wasn’t really a count,” she confessed, smearing her cheeks with the back of a wet hand. “He was just a summer hand on my stepfather’s farm.”

Stepfather? Farm? “I thought it was a vineyard.”

“No, a farm. It’s called Willow Pond. It
used
to be a vineyard,” she sniffled, “but now it’s a farm, and a no-good one at that. Henry’s the worst farmer in the world, and I’m the second worst.”

“Tell me about Joe,” he urged, fearing more tears.

“Ah. Joe.” She heaved a huge sigh and wiped her eyes with the washcloth. “He had black hair and blue, blue eyes, and muscles
everywhere.
He was the handsomest boy I ever knew.”

“What happened to him?” he asked coolly, beginning to conceive a dislike for brawny, blue-eyed Joe.

“It’s a long story.” She sat up to tell it, and Reuben stopped breathing. She held the wine bottle up to the light, squinting to see how much was left. Only a swallow. She finished it off, then emitted a ladylike belch. “Excuse me,” she apologized, facing him, bare-breasted and oblivious. To keep from laughing, he propped his elbows on his knees and covered his mouth with his knuckles.

“By the way,” she said, peering across at him blearily. “This wine?” She held up the dead soldier and wagged it at him. “I found it on the callow side. But under its awkward, childlike surface, I sensed a real willingness to please.” She pounded her fist in the bath water, sending a wave over the side of the tub. The joke doubled her up, snorting and snickering, convulsed with mirth. “Aha,” she sighed at last, in an exhausted falsetto. “What was I saying?”

“Joe,” he said helpfully.

“Joe.” She wiped her eyes, sobering. “It was a long time ago. He came to help out on the farm in the spring. My stepmother didn’t trust him, wouldn’t even let him in the house. Poor Joe had to eat his meals by himself, sitting out on the back porch. I fell in love with him right away.”

“Naturally.”

“He did, too. We used to meet down by the creek whenever I could get away from the house and he could get away from his chores.” She gazed, dreamy-eyed, at her big toe, which she’d stuck in the faucet nozzle. “I was so happy. That was the happiest time of my life.” Her nostalgic smile faded slowly. “Then …”

“Then?”

“One day my stepfather caught us. Just
talking,”
she pointed out, disgusted, “not even
doing
anything.”

“That time.”

“That time,” she agreed. “He told Joe to clear out, be gone by the next morning, or else he’d take the bullwhip to him. This is my pious
Christian
stepfather, mind you.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen and a half. So that night Joe climbed up the rose trellis and knocked on my window. He said to come away with him and we’d get married. Of course I said yes. We kissed. For the last time,” she said dramatically, one hand on her heart. “He started down the trellis, and I heard a crack. Like wood snapping? Then he let out this surprised yell—I’ll never forget the sound—just before his head disappeared below the sill. I heard an
awful
noise then,” she mumbled through her fingers, and started to sob in earnest.

Reuben got up and went to her. When he sat on the edge of the tub, she reached for him with both hands.

“I thought it was the trellis, but later I knew—it was his neck! Joe broke his neck!”

“Shh,” he comforted, drenched. She was half in the water, half in his lap. The feel of her warm, wet, slippery skin under his hands helped him beat down a horrible impulse to laugh.

Finally she stopped crying, distracted. “I told you not to look at me, Reuben. I’m
naked.”

He reached for the towel on the floor and tucked it around her. “There, now you’re all covered up.”

She snuggled closer, until she was in his lap and nothing was left in the water except her feet. “You’re being awfully nice to me,” she said affectionately. “I like you much more than I thought I was going to.”

“Such a flatterer. Do you want to brush your teeth or anything?”

She shook her head. “I think I’ll just get in bed now.”

“Good idea. Careful, there—”

“I can do it.” She swung her legs over his knees, bare bottom swiveling on his thighs, and managed to stand up. “Whoo,” she breathed, laughing, arms outstretched like a tightrope walker’s. The towel slipped. She clutched it to her chest, unaware that her backside was bare. Spellbound, he watched her wobble into the bedroom.

Perched warily on the edge of the bed, he tucked her in. She had a nightgown now—he remembered her pulling it out of the box from Henri—Henry, rather—this morning. But he didn’t feel up to helping her put it on right at the moment. He stroked the damp blonde hair back from her cheek and smiled at her. “You go to sleep now, honey.”

“Reuben, I feel
wonnnderful.”

“That’s good.” He didn’t have the heart to tell her that this was the best she was going to feel for a long time.

“You can kiss me if you want to,” she offered magnanimously, blinding him with a purple-toothed smile.

“Well, that’s a mighty generous offer. How about if I take a rain check?”

“Oh.” She stuck her bottom lip out, disappointed. “Not even a little one? Teeny-tiny?” She held up her thumb and index finger, a millimeter apart. “Eensy-weensy?”

He had to laugh. Against his better judgment, he bent over and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips. He meant to draw away immediately, but the light, tentative touch of her hand on the back of his neck kept him motionless a little longer. Even drunk, she was the
sweetest
girl he’d ever met. “Night, Grade,” he murmured against her soft mouth, and straightened.

“Night.” But she’d pinched a piece of his shirtsleeve in the same thumb and forefinger, and she was holding him still. “I’ve been thinking about your hands,” she said in a confiding whisper.

“My hands?”

“I’ve been thinking what it would be like. You know. To be touched by hands that can find the shaved aces in a deck of cards.”

He simply couldn’t help himself—he covered her cheek with his palm, watching her dreamy blue eyes close, feeling her softness and her warmth.

“Not there,” she admonished, yawning.

He swallowed with difficulty. “Where?”

Her answer was a soft snore.

Grace woke up four hours later. She couldn’t be sure what had awakened her: the pounding headache, the ravenous thirst, or the vivid, crystal-clear memory of how she’d disgraced herself. The room spun when she sat up; it slowed after a minute or two, but realizing she was naked made her want to lie back down and pull the covers over her head. The need to use the bathroom was too strong, though. She got up, pulled her nightgown over her head, and padded down the hall to the lavatory.

She brushed her teeth while she was there, and dried her tangled hair, which was still wet from her bath. “Moron,” she muttered to her sickly, pale-faced reflection in the mirror over the sink. “Damn blockhead.” Her skin was pasty, her eyes watery; she looked like somebody who hadn’t yet recovered from a near-fatal disease. It was a miracle she wasn’t sick to her stomach. In fact, she was
hungry.
This afternoon Mrs. Finney, Reuben’s landlady, had brought over a bowl of soup and a ham sandwich for her supper. She’d eaten the soup, but the sandwich was still sitting on a plate downstairs in the kitchen. The thought of it made her mouth water. But the thought of waking Reuben up and having to speak to him dried it up again.

Her stomach growled. Hunger won out. She found her dressing gown and tiptoed downstairs.

The sandwich was still there, but Reuben wasn’t. The door to his backyard was standing half open, and through it she caught a faint whiff of cigar smoke. Leaning against the door frame, pensively chewing a bite of sandwich, she peered out at the misty darkness. Behind her, a foghorn bayed. The lonely sound made her shiver a little in her bathrobe. She liked the feel of the cool, damp air on her skin, though, because she was burning up. When the mist thinned, she saw a pinprick of orange light in the distance. Reuben’s cheroot. She watched it come and go through the fog, moving and disappearing, appearing again. Swallowing the last of her sandwich, she slapped crumbs from her hands and squared her shoulders. Might as well get it over with.

He was in the tiered garden, sitting in the same love seat where they’d had their first tete-a-tete. She stopped twelve feet shy of him, tongue-tied. He didn’t speak, but she thought he might be smiling at her. From here, she couldn’t tell what kind of smile it was.

“I didn’t think you’d be home so early,” she opened, outwardly cool, inwardly mortified. “I thought I’d have my annual wake for Joe over with before you got back. Sorry you had to see me like that, Reuben. It must’ve been … very tiresome for you.”

Whatever kind of smile it was, it got broader. “Tiresome isn’t the word I’d use,” he said in a soft, rumbling voice. “For seeing you like that.”

She folded her arms and hugged herself, stuck for a response.

“How are you feeling?”

“Dreadful.”

“Want some water?” He gestured, and she noticed a glass on the table in front of him.

“No, thanks.”

“Shot of whiskey?”

She shuddered.

“Come over here and sit,” he invited, patting the space beside him. She hesitated. “Come on, I’m harmless.”

It would’ve been a mercy if the whole evening was one long blank in her mind; but unfortunately, she remembered everything. In particular she remembered sitting on Reuben’s lap stark naked, snuggling in and telling him how much she liked him. And later, asking him to kiss her. And touch her. Oh, he was harmless, all right, but she wasn’t. She was a danger to herself and others.

After a long minute, she accepted his invitation and sat down beside him, drawing her cold bare feet up on the seat and tucking her robe around them. To make conversation, she asked, “What time is it?”

“Around midnight, I think.”

“What are you doing still up?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” He took a last puff on his cigar and flicked it into the grass. When he settled back in the seat, their shoulders brushed. She stiffened for a second, then relaxed, feeling silly. The touching of clothed shoulders was the least of her worries. Besides, his warmth felt good. Comforting. The silence between them seemed remarkably easy, all things considered. Even when Reuben broke it, his question didn’t take her by surprise. “Did you really love Joe?”

She nodded. “I did. As much as I could at sixteen years old. I was lonely, and he really was a nice boy. I know I loved him partly to spite my stepparents, and I know if we’d really gotten married it probably wouldn’t have worked out very well. But I did love him. And every year on the anniversary of his death I … remember him.”

To her surprise, Reuben put his arm around her and pulled her close to his side. She shouldn’t be surprised, though—he’d been nothing but kind and comforting all night. She laid her head on his hard shoulder, ruminating on the odd circumstance that even after all that had happened, sitting here beside him in the damp gray haze she felt closer to him than she ever, had before. And even though she missed Henry every day, and Ah You, and Willow Pond, not once since she’d come to San Francisco had she been lonely. Not once.

“If Mark Wing really gives us a lot of money for the tiger tomorrow, what will you do with your share?” she asked after a long time. “Once you pay off the Croakers, I mean.”

“Move farther west.”

“Farther west? But there isn’t anyth—”

“Keep going, all the way around the world. Just keep going. Keep on moving.”

She felt a sinking in her stomach, a hopeless, dismayed kind of emptiness whose meaning she had absolutely no desire to examine. “What would you do when you got all the way around? When you got home, I mean, back to Sweetbriar.”

“Sweetbriar?” He said it as if he’d never heard the word before. Then he put his head back against the bench and laughed, without a bit of humor. “Then I’ll start all over again. And when I get tired of moving, I’ll stop and buy myself a big spread somewhere. A cattle ranch like Edward Cordoba’s. And I’ll sit out on the veranda drinking iced champagne all day, watching other people work. For me, of course.”

“Really?” She didn’t quite believe it. She peered at him in the dimness, trying to read his face. “Don’t you want to make something of yourself?”

“Sure. I want to make myself rich and idle.” He smiled down at her. “What about you? What do you want out of life, Grace?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, honest for once. “Something, but I’m not sure what.”

“A husband and children?”

“I have a husband,” she reminded him softly.

“Kids?”

She shrugged, murmured something vague, and looked away. The old sadness reared up like a hand from a grave, but she pushed it back down.

“Don’t you want to be rich and idle?” he pursued.

“Rich and idle,” she repeated slowly, thinking about it. “Rich would be nice. But idle … I don’t think so. Wouldn’t that be boring?”