How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life (20 page)

“Abby?”

I look up. Todd is walking toward me carrying a tray. Fried dough, lemonade, hot dogs, onion rings, a pink cloud of cotton candy. Junk food for junk hunters. I smile. I wave. I am ravenous.

It’s after six when we finally leave the field. Todd has interviewed more dealers. He’s bought three more knives and an old BB gun. “Boys’ toys,” he excuses with such unabashed glee as to make the peaceloving, guys-can-cook and girls-can-hammer enlightened males I’ve grown up with seem to be missing a key chromosome. In the eight hours we’ve been here, I’ve delivered enough of a treatise on collecting, searching, digging, bargaining, verifying to qualify for a doctorate. Todd has gone through two notebooks on my words alone. It’s amazing how eloquent you can be when your every syllable is recorded, if not for posterity, then for a daily newspaper with a daunting circulation and an online version that people the world over could conceivably download. Whenever I sag, whenever I catch myself in an infelicitous phrase or dumb observation, I stop. “You’re not going to put that in?” I caution.

“Not if you don’t want me to,” he assures. “But remember, it’s all good publicity for your booth.”

If only my father could see me now, a woman overcoming her shyness and personal privacy for the sake of her booth. A woman with an eye on the prize who will not be derailed by misgivings, depositions, and the betrayal of an old and now-guttering flame. Even more, a woman who will never, in turn, betray that flame, however deserving of the spilled beans he himself has already spilled. Would I ever divulge a confidence? Would I ever reveal the secrets of those close to me? No! My father needs to take a long, hard look at his rod-of-steel backboned daughter. I am a woman in charge. A woman who can control her own spin.

Not to mention a woman who’d never let a reporter down. For Todd Tucker’s sake, I’ve trudged from table to table putting on a good show, but with none of the fire in my belly for any other gewgaw or rusted artifact carefully laid out on an ironed cloth or varnished board. The corn sheller—favorite, pet, best-in-show—commands all my loyalty.

Todd locks our purchases in the VW’s trunk. We collapse into the front seats. He tosses his hat into the back. He runs his arm across his brow. “Phew.” He sighs. “I’m in awe of you. How do you keep up this pace?”

Has anyone ever been in awe of me? I allow myself a humble shrug. “This isn’t something I do every day,” I remind him. “Most of the time I’m sitting in my booth, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for a sale.”

“Thank goodness. Otherwise you’d qualify as some kind of god.
Goddess,
” he corrects. “Not that you don’t have goddesslike attributes.”

Name them, I want to demand. List my attributes so that in some deep dark despairing night of the soul I might scroll through them like a self-help tape and feel buoyed. Instead, I shake my head. I shut my lips.

Gestures that have no effect on Todd. Can he read my mind? He holds his right hand up. He snaps his fingers out, one at a time. His mouth flies open. “Let’s see. A great eye. A good appetite. Business acumen. Persistence. Endurance,” he reels off. Then he hoists his left hand. He taps his thumb. “Plus a love of poetry.”

Is that all? a lesser person might ask. A person more susceptible to flattery. The kind of person who’ll fish for a compliment. “I suppose we should be getting back,” I say instead.

He drops his head on the steering wheel. “I owe you dinner. But considering what we’ve just consumed…”

“I, for one, will never eat again.” I groan.

“Eating again should be delayed as long as possible.”

I pat my stomach, now roiling with fried dough and lemonade and FDA-unapproved additives. I loosen my belt. “The later the better.”

“Agreed. But the prospect of three hours on the highway…” He shudders. “Let’s get a drink first.”

“Drink and drive?” I ask. Prissy words I regret the minute they’re out of my mouth.

He grins. “I haven’t lost an interviewee yet. One drink. Lots of coffee. I know an inn nearby with a big front porch.”

The porch
is
big. The inn is painted a blazing yellow with green shutters and petunias spilling out from window boxes. We sink into the kind of Casablanca wicker chairs that once might have supported Sydney Greenstreet’s white-suited, Panama-hatted corpulence.

“I’ll have a mart,” demands Todd to the fresh-faced student-slash-waitress in khaki shorts and lime-green polo shirt.

“Pardon?”

“A martini,” he spells out. “Grey Goose. With an olive.
And
a twist.”

“I’m not sure…” The waitress drops her pencil.

Todd picks it up. “Never mind. Your standard martini, please.” He pauses. He points at me. “You, Abby?”

“Pinot Grigio,” I answer. I look at the girl. “House white wine,” I amend.

When the waitress comes back with our drinks, she sets them down on cardboard coasters printed with a Lake Winnipesaukee sunrise. Todd takes a sip. “Cheap gin. A country martini. A
New Hampshire
martini. Though it has its charms.”

I drink my wine. “In the right setting, almost anything does.”

He flashes me a boyish, aw-shucks grin. A bad-boy grin. His mother must have had a hard time resisting him, I imagine. Chocolate chip cookies between meals and unconditional use of the family car.

“What a great day. I must admit when I first proposed shadowing you at a flea market, I looked at it like some kind of hardship duty. Muddy fields. Boring junk. Boy, was I wrong.”

“It grows on you.”

“Especially when you have a knowledgeable, savvy guide.” He drains his glass. He fishes out his olive. He places the pit carefully in the middle of Lake Winnipesaukee’s rising sun. It looks like a belly button. “Thanks to you, Abby, I may have caught the bug. I may become a collecting fiend. It’s great how contagious another person’s enthusiasm can be.
Yours
in particular.”

I feel a wave of dizziness. It’s the wine, I’m sure, and not the words going to my head.

“Can we do this again? Can I come with you to your next tag sale?” He stops. He brightens. “Maybe there’ll be an auction. I’ve never been to one.”

“Haven’t you got enough for your story?” I ask.

“This would not be for my
story
.”

I remind myself to check the flea market/tag sale/auction schedule the minute I get home. Now is the season. There are probably two a day. I could plan another excursion next weekend. Or even tomorrow if Todd were so inclined.

He orders another drink. “How about you?” he asks.

“Oh, I might as well,” I allow. “It
has
been a great day.” If bad luck comes in threes, why not good? I have a lot to celebrate—one, my corn sheller; two, the present company, who extols my virtues and has yet to discover my faults; three, who knows? I settle back in the wicker chair on the New Hampshire front porch, the world beyond its banisters suddenly rife with possibility.

“Hungry?” my present company asks.

“Not in the least.” By mutual junk-food-stuffed consent, the bowl of peanuts on our table stays untouched.

He yawns. He stretches. “I’ve got an idea.”

I lean forward.

“Let’s get us a couple of rooms here for the night.”

I look at my watch. “It’s just eight. If we leave now, we can make it home by eleven; at the latest, half past.”

“I’m afraid my limbs don’t have the strength to hold the wheel, to press the gas.” He yawns again. His chest expands to show more adorable whorls of hair. “Unless you want to…”

I shake my head. “I don’t feel comfortable driving someone else’s car.” Which is news to me, who has operated automobiles of friends, relatives, neighbors, and mere acquaintances over the almost twenty years since I first got my driver’s license. And who holds the best safety record of any client of Rent-A-Wreck. “And perhaps,” I say delicately, “we’ve both had too much to drink.”

Considering his exhaustion, he jumps up with surprising pep. “Wait here. I’ll make the arrangements.”

In five minutes he’s back, dangling a key. “There’s a bit of a hitch.” He peers up at me from under Princess Diana–style, bashful half-closed lids. “The desk clerk says there’s only one room left.”

My eyes must widen in alarm because he rushes to add, “I can sleep in the car.”

I picture his little yellow VW Bug. He’d have to sleep curled up, pretzeled arms and legs. Let’s face it—even
summer
nights in New Hampshire can get really cold.

“Unless…?” he offers.

“Well…” I begin.

“I’ll be a perfect gentleman,” he promises. He salutes. “Scout’s honor. I can stretch out on the floor.”

As we head upstairs, we pass the reception desk. A middle-aged couple has just arrived, two suitcases in tow. “We don’t have reservations,” they apologize.

“No matter,” the desk clerk consoles. He checks the computer. “We can offer you a choice of queen, king, or two twins. It’s a slow night.”

Slow night for
some
people, you might snort. And expect me to call him on his lie. You’re a few steps ahead of me here. To you, it’s patently obvious there’s only one right response. You assume any sensible, ethical person will take appropriate action when she catches someone in a fib: rent a car. Call for a taxi. Get a bus schedule. Go to the front desk and demand her own room. Kick that good-for-nothing Todd Tucker out of her life. He’s not for you, you’ll tell me. You hardly know him, you’ll insist. A road-rage driver, a reporter, a dissembler, a heavy drinker (my two glasses of wine don’t count—good manners made me keep up), a flatterer. Look, you’ll point out, the column of negatives towers over the shallow pluses of good looks, charm, attentive interest, dog ownership, a burgeoning attraction to flea markets. It’s a no-brainer. Get rid of him.

Okay, you’ve made your point. Now I ask you: What would a
man
do? Would a
man
not bed a woman because she lied about a room? Would a
man
need an emotional connection to have sex?

Can I blame two glasses of wine for leading me to the Old Man of the Mountain Room? For collaborating with what you seem to see as the enemy? Can I blame my secret Willa Cather triumph demanding celebration? Can I offer the excuse of more wine? (He ordered a bottle sent up along with turkey club sandwiches.) One bed? Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things” on the radio? The kissing couple in a poster of Chagall’s
Birthday
hanging on the wall across from us? Low self-esteem? High sexual desire?

Just one of those things.

So we do it. And may I inform you that Todd Tucker is to foreplay what Chippendale is to the mahogany claw-and-ball foot. He proceeds systematically. He takes off my clothes. Shirt. Jeans. Utilitarian underpants. Each item he folds into a tidy isosceles triangle like the American flag given to the widows of veterans. He’s a veteran. A veteran of sexual combat, a soldier on the Masters and Johnson front line. He removes my necklace. Detaches the hoops from my ears. Slides off my bracelet. Unbuckles my watch. “Friction,” he explains. He lowers a strap.

If he’s not just-one-of-those-things spontaneous, he’s done his homework. Could there be a better practitioner of premeditated seduction? His scripted moves are so precise he can throw away the script. Ah, the choreography.
Fly me to the moon,
he hums while his hands fly all over my body, alighting here, then there. “This?” he asks. “Or that?” he invites, like an ophthalmologist trying to test the best lens to correct your stigmatism. “Like this? Or do you prefer that?”

Let me count the ways.

And you know what? Though my body pings like a Stradivarius in a virtuoso’s hands, though my body is having one hell of a time, my brain seems focused somewhere else. On corn shellers and Imari vases and piecework tablecloths. On grocery lists and to-do lists and to-read lists. I turn my head toward the night table. The Old Man of the Mountain calendar is taking on the profile of Ned.

Later. A lot later, we empty the bottle of wine and spoon postcoitally on our trampled aftermath-of-a-war bed. He whispers in my ear. “So tell me,” he says, punctuated by the darting in and out of a tongue.

“Tell you what?”

He sucks on my earlobe. “What happened afterward? With your chamber pot? I sense some tragedy there. Something very dark.”

“Nothing.”

His tongue moves down to my breast.

“Nothing.”

And keeps moving.

I blame the wine again. I blame a body missing a man’s—any man’s—touch. I blame the thumbscrews of pillow talk.

He slides between my thighs.

I name names. My mother. Henrietta. Lavinia. Ned. I hate myself.

He turns me over. “Did you love him?” he asks.

But my head has detached from my body. I don’t answer him. I
can’t
answer him. “This!” I groan. “That!” I demand.

After, he gets out of bed, stumbles around in the dark.

“What are you looking for?” I ask.

“My shirt. Oh, here it is.” He tiptoes into the bathroom. He shuts the door. I hear the lock click. I hear the toilet seat slam down.

He’s in there for a long time. I listen for the splash of the shower. The filling of the bath. Silence. Why does he need his shirt? I wonder. I picture the reporter’s notebook tucked into his breast pocket. His leaky pen. The black blob that marks his heart. Is he in there taking notes?

I pull up the covers. I slide my hip away from the wet spots on the sheet under me. Big deal, I tell myself. So what? We had sex. It’s amazing how body parts can carry on even if hearts don’t beat as one. Is it such a big deal that for a woman, this woman anyway, sex doesn’t scale mountains without an element of love? It still feels good. Why should I start entertaining thoughts of guilt?

When he comes back, he licks the nape of my neck. “One last question,” he says.

“No more. Let’s get some sleep.”

“What’s the title of Ned’s novel?”

“Over my dead body.”

“I’m a reporter. I can find anything out.”

“I made your work too easy. I’ve already told you quite enough.”