Off Course (14 page)

“She collects teacups!” At a rack of knickknacks, Cress feigned interest in faded gold rims and hand-painted pansies, the closest thing to art in the room.

Quinn beckoned her down the hall, past the boy's room with its Dodgers posters, then the girl's with her pink ruffled curtains, not a single toy or hairbrush or stray sock anywhere. “Here's this.” Quinn opened a door at the end of the hall. “I know you want to see.”

The bed was king-sized, its baby blue spread a shiny quilted synthetic, slightly pilled. Matching nightstands, also Val U Mart items, held small, matching yellow lamps with pleated yellow plastic shades.

Quinn's arm and hip grazed hers; one move, and they'd be on that bed. She held back, with distaste. They had their own places.

He crossed ahead of her. “In here's where I make my messes.” He opened another door, to reveal a skinny bathroom with twin sinks, the faux-marble clear, unbesmirched by toothbrush or whisker.

A toothbrush or a whisker, Cress knew, was the mess he talked about. What the wife swept away.

“Satisfied?” he said.

No! She was not satisfied. Any insight into the daily texture of their lives—to say nothing of their marriage—had been thwarted by an obliterating, hotel-maid tidiness. How on earth did Quinn, who often looked as if he lived in a bark lean-to with a pet bear, emerge from this domestic nullity?

Back in the bright, disinfected kitchen, he stopped. “Listen. Hear that?”

The refrigerator purred. A car hummed on the street. The highway, farther off, produced a steady sound like wind. “No,” she said.

“Exactly. That silence?” he said. “That's what I live with.”

*   *   *

In the garage, as he rummaged for tools, Cress walked around idly. Above his workbench she found a row of small whittled animals: a swaybacked mountain lion, a coyote in a guilty skulk. A family of bears. The tallest piece was no more than three, three and a half inches. “Hey! Are these your dad's?”

Quinn came over. “Some his, some mine, some other people's.”

“God, Quinn. They're fantastic! Why don't you have them out?”

“I do.” He lifted his hand.

“I mean, in the house.”

“Just more dustcatchers.”

“No worse than teacups,” said Cress. “You should build a vitrine for them! Put them where people can see them.”

“They keep me company here,” he said. “You can touch.”

A beaver's rounded paddle had tiny scales; the narrow face, with its long, yellowed teeth bore a wry, comic expression. “I love him!” said Cress.

“That's my uncle Evan's. My dad's older brother.”

“Who your son is named for?”

A sharp look. “Your memory!” he said. “He's who got us all whittling in the first place. He'd haul out a box of basswood chunks, we'd make piles of wood curls, tell each other lies. That was a long time ago.”

“He's gone?”

“Kilt himself in '67.”

“Jesus, Quinn.”

“The Morrow solution to everything,” he said.

And you named your son after him?
she wanted to say.
Some legacy!
She picked up a two-inch squirrel, tail curled over its head.

“That's mine,” he said. The bear family was also his: parents plus two cubs, a beguiling shagginess to their coats. A spiky porcupine, a detailed turkey.

“People should see these!” she said. “You could show them in a gallery. I'm not kidding. You could sell every last one in a second flat.”

“Why would I sell them?”

“To distribute pleasure and delight! To make the world at large a little more beautiful! Why make art nobody sees? I can't believe you don't have them out where people can enjoy them. Doesn't Sylvia like them?”

“She does.”

Cress touched the pink nose of the mountain lion. “They're so full of life. Don't they make you happy just looking at them?”

“Not so much anymore.”

She wanted one, and hoped he'd offer.

“Let's get going,” he said.

*   *   *

They drove across the valley floor, through orchards and sorghum fields, along canals with concrete banks, past packinghouses as large as airplane hangars. They slowed for the hamlets of Rooster Bend, Murdock, and Thompson's Corner, and stopped in Fountain Springs at a barnlike bar with an empty stage. “Open mikes here some Sundays,” Quinn said. “Always a few Buckaroos or ex-Strangers on hand. Dad and Caleb used to get up with 'em. Some good music's played here. Some good times.”

They sat on one side of a plywood booth, Quinn's hand on her knee. “That little beaver you liked? That was Uncle Evan's pet.”

Hunters had killed the mother; Evan found the baby huddled by the skinned carcass. He took him home, named him Cump, after Tecumseh Sherman.

That Cump, Quinn said, was as smart, as affectionate as a dog. He lived in the house and followed Quinn's aunt Rose around all day. He slept on Evan's lap after dinner. His tail felt like a thick rubber mat. They had to trim his nails and give him wood to chew so his teeth wouldn't grow down into his chest. “We kids fed him carrots—he'd eat a willow stick like it was a stalk of celery.”

“He didn't chew up the furniture?” said Cress.

“He got at the piano bench once and Uncle Evan had to turn a new leg.”

And once, Evan and Rose came home to find the sofa pulled apart, the blankets dragged off the beds. Somehow, a bathtub tap was left on, or Cump somehow turned it on. Since every cell in a beaver's body is designed to stop the flow of water, that's what Cump set out to do. The first towel or rug plugged the drain, so everything after that served as a sponge. The bathroom and part of the hall was a compacted, sodden mass of pillows and bedclothes. After that, whenever Evan and Rose left the house, they put Cump in an outside pen.

“How long did he live?”

“Oh God, they had him for years. After Uncle Evan passed, one of my cousins took him.”

“And then?”

“Never cared to know more than that.”

*   *   *

They ate Mexican food at a café overlooking the canal. “Won't Caleb be wondering where you are by now?”

“He'll forgive me anything for this.” Quinn tapped a large combination plate in its Styrofoam container.

*   *   *

They returned through the Meadows' back entrance. Just inside, Quinn pulled over and shut off the engine. “I enjoyed today.” His beard smelled of cumin and onion. “Being with you.” She closed her eyes, slid a hand inside his jacket, around his ribs and staunchly beating heart; you could get closer to a lean man, she thought, nearer to his soul.

Even through her closed eyes, the flash registered. Quinn broke away. “Shit.” She slid across the bench seat. When the beam bounced over them again, she'd flattened herself against the passenger door, the armrest gouging her ribs.

Quinn turned on the truck and in its headlights stood Rick and Julie Garsh. A box torch hung from Rick's hand. Hard to know what they'd seen.

Quinn drove up, rolled down his window. “Nice night,” he said.

“Everything okay?” said Rick.

“Got them bevel bits I needed,” Quinn said. “Found this one out walking after dark.” He thumbed in Cress's direction.

Cress waved listlessly from the far side of the seat. Rick raised his chin. Julie stared, her small mouth curved downward.

“All right, then.” Quinn lifted a palm, drove on.

Cress said, “That wasn't good.”

“They don't care.”

“Julie was bent.”

Quinn patted her thigh. “Rick needs me even more than I need him.”

*   *   *

Alone in the A-frame, Cress built a fire and sat down with a book, a thick popular history of the fourteenth century. She dozed off on the love seat. The phone made her jump. “Rick here,” Rick Garsh said, and before she could say hello, he pushed on: “Think I'll be making the town runs from here on out. Appreciate your help this fall. I'll drop a check off tomorrow. I'll stick it under the mat if you're not home.”

 

Eleven

She waited until after three, then walked alone. She did not mind at first. She liked to stick her nose in pine trees and had been too self-conscious to sniff them around Quinn. She lingered in the first meadow for a long time watching a rufous-sided woodpecker. How did it feel to bang your head so resoundingly against wood? To get in such a long, staccato, reverberative run?

A small sick feeling came over her at the Bauer cabin when he still had not materialized. Yesterday was a lot. Ten hours in each other's company. He probably needed a breather. Or he regretted putting his family's house on display. Or Rick Garsh had fired him, too. Or maybe—this cheered her up—he was working straight through to dinner, knowing he'd see her later, at poker.

*   *   *

Cress scalloped potatoes with chunks of ham and drove the hot casserole in her mother's silver-plated pan holder to DeeDee's, where Kevin was splitting logs on the porch with enviable ease. Inside, extra leaves were in the dining table, the poker chips and cards set out.

“You made so much,” DeeDee said. “There's only seven tonight.”

“Who bailed?”

“The brothers.”

“What happened?”

“Who cares? I won't have to split the pot with Caleb for once.”

“He leaves you half his winnings. More than half.”

“I want all of them.”

That sick sense came again, that Quinn probably regretted yesterday and now was pulling back. Because if anything else was wrong, he could've caught up with her on the trail or stopped by the A-frame to let her know. She'd been findable. Needing consolation, she turned to DeeDee. “Guess what, DeeDee? I'm seeing someone new. But it's a secret.”

“Hardly,” DeeDee said.

But she thought Cress meant Don Dare.

“Guess again,” said Cress.

River Bob? Freddy? Boots Stahl?

“A hint,” said Cress. “They couldn't come tonight.”

“Not Caleb?”

“No, no. Not Caleb.”

Cress expected a big DeeDee guffaw, incredulity, a hundred questions. Instead, DeeDee bent to take a chicken from the oven and clunked the roasting pan onto the stovetop. Keeping her back to Cress, she moved to the refrigerator, withdrew a head of iceberg. She set it on the cutting board, peeled off the outer leaves, and, picking up a large knife, split it with a juicy whack.

“What do you care?” said Cress.

“Must be a big-city thing.”

“What's a big-city thing?”

“Sleeping with another woman's husband.”

“DeeDee!” Cress cried out—and only then remembered that DeeDee's husband had left her for another woman.

“If you want approval for wrecking someone's marriage,” DeeDee said, “you're barking up the wrong ponderosa pine.”

“I'm not wrecking anyone's marriage,” said Cress. “That's the last thing either of us wants. We're just friends. With a little sex thrown in. It's an interlude, like you and Kevin. Quinn's lonely here. And it's good for me, too, after Jakey.”

As DeeDee carried the salad and Wishbone bottle out to the table, Cress trailed her. “And I'm working like crazy, for the first time since school. This has helped in a weird way. Energized me. I've never had such a fertile burst.”

“I'm sure Sylvia Morrow would be thrilled to know that.”

“Since when are you all Moral Majority?”

“Since all along.”

“It's not as if you don't have sex secrets.”

“I keep Kevin secret,” DeeDee said evenly, “so I don't get ribbed by my loudmouth boss for sleeping with his son. Who's single, like me.”

Without really thinking about it, Cress realized, she had equated DeeDee's secret romance with her own; both seemed equally illicit and compromising. She saw now that they were not. Even so, DeeDee shouldn't come down so hard on her. She wasn't the adulterer. She'd broken no vows.

“You are older than Kevin,” Cress said. “You have to admit, that's unconventional.”

“Unconventional, maybe. But we're not hurting anyone.”

“He is only nineteen.”

“Eighteen's the age of consent.”

“If you two are so guilt-free, why do you say you'll go to hell for it?”

“Because the only sanctified place for sex is within marriage.”

“Then we're all evil!” Cress said. “Everyone on this mountain. Except the old folks. And the Garshes, God love 'em.”

“Kevin and I may be fornicators, but we're not adulterers.” DeeDee kept her broad back to Cress. “You're breaking a commandment.”

“Is that what you say to Jakey about all his married bims?”

“Constantly.”

“Oh, for God's sake.” DeeDee's heathered blue cardigan presented an implacable expanse. “You know what? I'm not going to stay for poker,” Cress said. “I'll get my pan tomorrow.” The heathered shoulders shrugged.

She drove home past the Rodinger place. The windows of the small camp trailer glowed with their poignant yellow light. A blue Imperial with a white soft top sat in the driveway. Cress braked, rolled down her steamed-up window. A clank of dishes floated out to her on the frigid night air. A murmur of voices. Candy's trumpet bleat of a laugh.

*   *   *

Quinn intercepted her in the first meadow. She dodged his kiss.

The wives had surprised them with steaks and bakers. A boysenberry pie from Harvey's. On a whim, they'd parked the kids with Grandma, driven up.

No doubt they'd pulled on lacy underwear, too, Cress thought, and were extremely pleased with themselves.
Yoo-hoo! Guess who's here?

“You're not mad at me,” said Quinn. “Are you?”

She had no right to be angry—husbands and wives could see each other at will. “You might spare me the details.”