Once Upon a Day (24 page)

“Sure, it’s possible. This was twenty years ago, but there are still guys like that. Some of them don’t think women should work at all.”

“Yes, this is what Jimmy wants me to ask Father the next time he calls. Should women be employed.” She sighed. “He thinks if I ask that question I will see that Father’s view is very different than I think.”

“You sound a little reluctant.”

“It would be different if I could tell Father why I was asking.” She placed her palm on the foggy window. It was raining and the defroster wasn’t keeping up. “It feels manipulative, even dishonest.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t do it then.”

“I have to. I told Jimmy I would.”

Stephen could hear the sadness in her voice. He knew she felt like she was having to choose between them, and he felt irritated with Jimmy for doing this to her, but then he decided it was really O’Brien’s fault. The man could send twenty thousand dollars without blinking, but he’d never bothered to answer basic questions about their past.

He took her hand. “Want to go to the library on the way to dinner?”

He knew Dorothea would say yes: the library was her new favorite place to be. He’d only thought to take her there on Friday, but she immediately fell in love with it. She said someday she was going to live right next door to a library. “That way I can always have another book the minute I finish one.” The fact that the books were free amazed her, and Stephen had to admit it was pretty incredible. He didn’t have a library card, but he signed up for a temporary one that allowed him to check out two books and they’d each picked one. Stephen hadn’t even cracked the cover of his, but
somehow, probably while he was sleeping, Dorothea had already finished hers. It was a popular novel about a girl who was murdered and went to heaven, which made Dorothea cry, though she insisted it was actually very happy, since most novels don’t have heaven at all. She also loved that the story had what she described as “a charming coincidence involving an icicle.” “You don’t see that every day,” she’d said, and he couldn’t disagree.

They had to run by the apartment first, to get the card and the book to return. They’d gone up the stairs and were just rounding the corner—when Stephen saw his parents. They were standing outside his door, arms loaded with groceries. His dad had two bags; his mom had one, and a sack of potatoes clutched in her other hand.

He knew this was his own fault. Whenever his parents didn’t hear from him for a while, they inevitably showed up, and always with groceries, as if the only possible reason for his not calling was starvation.

“There you are!” his mother said, but she dropped the potatoes when she noticed Dorothea. The sack burst and the potatoes spilled out onto the floor. His father leaned down to start picking them up and the bread fell out of one of his bags, a can of soup out of another. Dorothea giggled like she always did at slapstick on television. Stephen wished it seemed funnier to him.

He managed to introduce everybody. He cleaned up all the potatoes. He let his parents come inside because he couldn’t very well keep them out, even though he knew Dorothea’s things were all over the apartment. A pair of her shoes under the coffee table. A sweater draped over the couch. A white belt she’d decided didn’t go with her skirt thrown on a chair. One of her bras drying on the shower curtain rod.

It looked like she was living there, which, since they’d never even heard her name before, naturally surprised the hell out of Bob and Lynn Spaulding.

If they’d just been surprised, Stephen could have handled it. But
they were just
so glad
about everything. So glad to meet you, Dorothea. So glad you like mushrooms/potatoes/eggs/steak/you name it, and they did name almost every item as they took it out of the grocery bag and displayed it for her approval. So glad you know our boy, Stephen (they actually said “boy”). Where did you two meet again? The bus station. What a nice place.

“It’s not nice, Mom. It’s a shithole.”

“Don’t cuss in front of your mother,” his dad said, which he hadn’t said since Stephen was probably eight. But he was looking at Dorothea, and his real meaning was: Don’t cuss around this woman we are so glad to see you with, finally.

“He can cuss around me, Bob,” his mom said, also looking at Dorothea, winking. “We don’t mind a little salty language, do we?”

Dorothea was sitting on the bar stool, with her legs crossed at the ankles. “Actually, I’m very fond of the word ‘shit’ since Stephen introduced it to me. I didn’t know curses were referred to as ‘salty language’ though. I love that. So one could say about a person: his talk was
peppered
with
salty
language.”

His parents seemed a little confused, but they were still smiling. They sat down at the kitchen table and asked Dorothea the usual questions: where she was from, what her parents did, what schools she went to, where she worked. No matter how bizarre her answers must have sounded to them, they continued to smile. His dad even nodded approvingly when Dorothea said she was looking forward to working someday because she thought it would be “wonderful.” This from a man who’d worked forty-four years behind a desk at an insurance company before he retired, a job he’d said he’d hated most of the time.

“Isn’t she a pretty girl?” his mother whispered to his father. At least she thought she was whispering, but their hearing wasn’t what it used to be. Dorothea let out a nervous giggle.

“How long have you been in St. Louis?” his mom said.

“All right then.” Stephen stood up. “Don’t you guys need to get going before it gets dark? I know you hate driving in the dark, Dad.”

“But we’re just getting to know her,” his mom said.

“We’re in kind of a rush anyway,” he said.

“Yes, we’re going to the library,” Dorothea offered.

His mother said they’d never make it since the library closed early on Sunday. “So we have lots of time to talk,” she said, before asking Dorothea again how long she’d been in St. Louis.

When Dorothea answered with the truth, his mom said, “Did you say eleven months?”

“Oh, I wish,” Dorothea said. “It’s only eleven days, but it feels like much longer.” She smiled at Stephen.

“Isn’t that interesting, Bob?” his mom said, but her face fell.

“Eleven days?” his dad said, looking at Stephen. His voice was frankly mystified. “And you’re already living with her?”

“We’re not living together,” he said. “It’s a long story, but it’s not like that.”

“No, it’s not like that,” Dorothea echoed, though Stephen wondered what she thought she was saying.

His mom and dad acted like they both had to go to the bathroom, immediately, together, which could only make things worse—that bra hanging over the bathtub. In the few minutes they were gone, Stephen didn’t say anything and neither did Dorothea. When his parents returned, his father said to him, “Before we leave, come downstairs and take a look at the Chrysler. The engine is stalling out again.”

“It’s raining, Dad. I know next to nothing about engines.”

“Come on. It’ll just take a minute.”

He exhaled. “Mom, why don’t you and Dorothea come too?”

“In the rain?” His mother laughed. “We’re too sweet, we’ll melt.”

“All right,” he finally said, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair. “Let’s go.”

No surprise, they were barely out of the apartment when his father admitted that he just wanted a chance to talk to him. They stood in the hall by the window that faced the street, both men with
their hands shoved in their pockets. Father-and-son chats weren’t normal in their family. In fact, Stephen couldn’t remember ever having one until after the accident, when his parents started worrying that he was throwing away his life.

“Dad, trust me, you don’t need to get involved in this,” Stephen began. “I know what I’m doing.”

He rubbed his beard. “Okay then, what are you doing?”

“She’s a nice person. Initially, I was trying to help her.” Stephen looked out at the rain. “Her brother’s in the psych ward at County. It’s a long story, like I told you. She won’t be here much longer, a few days, maybe another week, tops.”

“But she’s been staying with you in this little apartment for eleven days?”

“Yes.”

“Have you driven your cab at all? For fares, I mean.”

“Not much, but it’s up to me when I work. It’s not like I need the money.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. You two have been together solid for eleven days, morning, noon, night? You’re sleeping with this woman too?”

“What’s your point?”

“I’m just concerned.” His father peered into his face. “What’s going to happen to you when she leaves?”

“I’ll go back to driving. Watching TV, eating, walking. Same as before.” It sounded pretty lonely, even to him. He forced a smile. “Coming over to your house for dinner once a week, so you and Mom won’t worry so damned much.”

“Any chance she’ll be coming back to St. Louis?”

“I don’t know.” He turned to face his father. “Look, what do you want me to say?”

“Well, say you care about her, if you do. Maybe you could talk her into coming back.”

“I don’t know. I really can’t think about it.”

“Why not, son?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated. He took a deep breath. “I just can’t.”

His father didn’t say anything for a while. The rain was coming down harder, and it was getting dark. Stephen felt a gloom coming over him, and he decided he wasn’t up to going out to dinner tonight, after all.

“I think you do have feelings for her.” His father smiled a half smile. “Your mother told me so, and you know she’s never wrong.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.” He nodded in the direction of his apartment. “Can we go back inside?”

His father said yes, but before they made it to the door, he threw in that Dorothea seemed so nice. “It’s really too bad. We just want you to be happy.”

When they walked back into the apartment, Stephen could tell his mom had been having a heart-to-heart with Dorothea. They were sitting together on the couch, so close their arms were almost touching, but whatever his mother had said didn’t seem to have upset her. Both his parents hugged Dorothea good-bye and his mom hugged him, but his dad gave him the customary slap on the back. He tried to give them money for the groceries, but as usual, they protested. Normally, he would have kept pushing them, but this time he let it go.

And then they were gone, and he and Dorothea were alone, just like they’d been for eleven days—except it didn’t feel the same at all.

He told her he didn’t want to go out to eat, and she said fine. “But I’ll cook something,” he said. “We have lots of choices, thanks to my parents.”

“They’re lovely people,” she said, following him into the kitchen. “I’m very glad I had a chance to meet them.”

He opened the refrigerator. “What did you and my mom talk about?”

“Primarily, the thing we have in common,” Dorothea said.

“What’s that?” he said distractedly, as he looked around for something he felt like making. He wasn’t hungry, even though he knew he should be. They hadn’t eaten since this morning.

“Silly—you, of course.”

He pulled out ham and cheese and offered to make her a sandwich. “I’m going to wait,” he said. “I feel a little off.”

“I can make my own sandwich,” she said, and smiled. “I’m not completely helpless.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I know you didn’t,” she said slowly, and paused. “Is something wrong?”

“Let’s watch TV for a while,” he said, knowing he was probably disappointing her. They hadn’t watched any television since the first night they had sex. They were too busy talking and reading to each other and just having fun. But now he felt the old need for oblivion. “I’m sure I’ll be all right soon,” he added, though he wasn’t sure, since he didn’t know why he wasn’t all right now.

He went into the living room and left her making her sandwich. A few minutes later, she joined him and they watched one of the crime shows in Sunday night repeats. Then a movie came on and he told her he wanted to watch that too. She said fine, but she moved closer, and during the commercials, she talked, like they always had. He tried, but he couldn’t come up with much to say in response.

The movie was almost over when she said, “I told your mother about my angel moon. She agreed that it was not ‘new age hocuspocus.’”

“Not sure I follow,” he said, because he wasn’t really paying attention.

“Remember when we were watching that wonderful movie, and I told you that life is about what you believe as much as what seems to be reality?”

He knew the movie she was talking about: an old seventies flick called
They Might Be Giants.
He’d rented it because Dorothea had read the box and told him she’d love to see a movie about Sherlock Holmes. It was only when they started watching that he realized the main character wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, but a guy who only
thought he was Sherlock Holmes after he went crazy when his wife died. The point of the movie was pretty similar to what Dorothea said: that beliefs can be real if only you believe hard enough—but of course Stephen noticed what Dorothea didn’t seem to, that no amount of believing could bring back the crazy man’s dead wife.

“I remember,” he said, still looking at the screen.

“I told your mother about the angel moon that I was planning to use for demonstration, and how it proved my theory. And she told me it was very true.” When he didn’t respond, Dorothea said, “Would you like to hear it?”

“All right.”

“You have to come to the window.”

“Why? There’s no moon at all. It’s too cloudy.”

“All the better,” Dorothea said, taking his hand.

Her hand was so soft in his, and yet he wanted to pull away. He didn’t want to stand this close to her. He didn’t want to smell her hair and the new perfume she’d bought; he didn’t want to think about touching her body, how much he always desired her.

“When my brother and I were children, I was very afraid of the dark. I slept with several night-lights and I would ask Father to replace the bulbs every few weeks, for fear that one of them would burn out.”