One Heart (9 page)

And that night back on the bus, Raelene and Anthony kissed in the seat behind me. His hands all over her. I could see them in the reflection of my own window. I rode and watched them. Finally I turned around. I said, “If you need to do that, go sit somewhere else.” And Raelene pushed the boy away. Looked up at me with big eyes.

Then they went and sat somewhere else.

I watched the road in the dark.

A
PERSON MIGHT WONDER HOW
I
ENDED UP WALKING OUT
of my kitchen job and into my garden job and that's the easy part to explain so I'll start there. I just had to get away from the townie fellow who temporarily replaced the man who replaced Gladys after she'd left on a bus with Raelene. I had to get away from the second replacement not because he looked like a young Merv Griffin, which he did to the point where I had to ask him if Merv was his long-lost brother, but because he was boring me to tears with talk of gubernatorial races in a nasal voice and at the time I couldn't see any good qualities in him. I'm a person who can usually see a good quality or two in most anyone without even trying, but somehow Gladys leaving for so long made me less of a friendly soul. I was lonely without her and angry that her travels were lasting so long and surprised that she could get on so well without me. Standing on my feet for a total of seven to nine hours each day in a kitchen so hot I ate salt tablets like candy began to hurt in a different way without Gladys there to share the burden. And Merv Griffin had the habit of leaving sharp knives in sinks filled with soapy water, which anyone who ever worked a minute in a kitchen knows is the most inconsiderate mistake you could make. I almost cut my finger off one day. Life didn't feel quite normal.

Not that I wasn't still counting my blessings. My son, Louis, visited and brought me sixteen dolls from Thailand, for one thing. “Dang, you look great!” he said when he saw me. “Like a twenty-five-year-old! What's your secret?” You'd think it was flattery, but he weren't that type, he actually thought I looked great and it is true a little extra weight on a woman my age can smooth out the face and make her young looking, plus I had Shine for Life on my hair. I lined the dolls from Thailand on the kitchen shelf and they looked real pretty until he left and they started seeming too alive, like they were watching me, and the quiet in that house started sounding like a loud noise in my head.

So I abandoned poor Merv (I privately called him this in my mind) in the kitchen one morning and walked all the way up the mountain to the cabin where Brent Quinn lives; Brent's the boss of the whole camp—fact, his father was “old money” and he owned it way back when, and started up the winter school, too, where Brent used to teach. And now Brent's sixty-some years old, and calls himself “your basic old lefty escaping the madness,” and he liked me enough not to ask too many questions about why I had to quit the kitchen work. He gave me a cup of coffee and I sat and talked to him in his old striped pajamas and he told me I belonged in the garden and feeding the animals. “I can see you in the garden,” Brent Quinn said. “Fresh air, the company of children, shorter hours, it'll do you good. You can be there until the fall really hits us. And by the way, stop by and visit me if you want sometime. Must be lonely without Gladys.”

“I will.” I liked him, and once a few times a year I'd drop by to drink some beer with him, and I never minded when he went on his art history tangents, fact I liked it, he was educational.

So I started that garden job the first week of July, which meant I had to wake up at five in the morning and walk down to the dewy garden in the dark and wait for the children to poke their sleepy faces out of tents like little hatchlings. They were nice enough children, most of them eight or nine or ten, and I felt for them, since they'd been shipped out by parents for a whole summer. The parents wanted to travel in foreign lands without any nuisances. About 5 percent of the kids were scholarship campers from the inner cities, mainly black kids, and they didn't generally mix in too well with the others. In the old days I'd sneak the city kids donuts. Then I got yelled at, certain counselors saying donuts are bad for their teeth and doing them special favors would make them feel more like outcasts, so that was it for my donut sneaking days.

As we all picked the peas, the green beans, the first peppers, and the last of the strawberries, I can't say I felt too good about the new job initially. It hurt my back to bend so much and my hands ached too. I was using different muscles than my cooking muscles. It wasn't so hot as the kitchen was, though. And each day it got better and finally I came to stop dwelling on Gladys and when she might return. I had my own life and my health and this garden job, which was more than a lot of people had. I never was one who felt too smart complaining.

We would work until nine in the morning, then go down and feed the chickens, goats, and baby calves, who most of the girls were mad for with their spindly legs and big sad eyes. “Aw! Look! Aw, isn't he cute!” They were getting early practice for the sad-eyed spindly legged boys they'd learn to love in a few years.

Then the day was mine, all mine, and what was I to do with myself? All my life I'd mainly worked hard, come home, relaxed, and slept. Any worrying I did was wrapped around Gladys. Now there was this space. This whole person named Ivy who was
there
now in a strange way I don't have words for.

I became a walker, walking each day into town dressed in a shift and sneakers and a nice hat and sunglasses, and I'd just happen to swing by Edgel Greely's garage, where he'd be working in his big blue shirts under cars or talking to his partner. Once or twice I brought Edgel Greely some iced tea and once or twice I convinced my heart it was falling in love but it weren't and I knew it. “Call me Edge,” he told me, but I couldn't. I did like Edgel but not like I liked him when he was in the far-off distance. He was like a house you pass on the road and think its pretty for years, then it goes on sale and you walk inside and think, This isn't the house I imagined, it doesn't have enough light and the ceiling's too low. Turned out Edgel was the sort who laughs too hard and too long at his own jokes, so you end up feeling all that laughter is privately tied up with things you'll never know about because he barely does himself. So there I'd be on one of them vinyl genuine barbershop chairs that Edgel Greely had two of in the corner of his garage, and I'd be feeling kind've sad for Edgel that he had to laugh like that because I don't imagine it won him many friends.

I gave up on dropping by the garage, which didn't feel real good because I'd been counting on Edgel as a kind of new interest for months and now there was nobody. This didn't stop me from being a walker. As I walked I felt light as a girl.

I lost some weight, enough so a few workers at camp called out, “Lookin' good, Ivy.”

One particular day as I was headed into town just breathing in all that blue air and watching the very beginning of August's red and yellow leaves in the sun, I heard a car slowing down behind me. It didn't scare me because I was in a fine mood and figured it was someone I knew stopping to ask if I needed a ride, or maybe some parent trying to find the camp, because the kids were going home now. The winter school kids would stay, and some new ones would come up. I was all set to decline the ride or give directions. I weren't at all set for the man who turned out to be at the wheel.

He slid his car up beside me. His window was rolled down and he was framed there in that rolled-down window and I just stared at him with the cat on my tongue.

“Touch the car and make sure I'm not a vision,” he said.

“Jimmy? James?”

He smiled at me and reached out the window to grasp my hand. His was clammy, not the strong dry hand I remembered. His dark blue eyes were heavier or maybe older looking, and his face more weathered and streaks of silver filled his hair. But he was still James, a man too tall for his own car.

“James G. Pittman. I'm not dreaming, am I?”

“Can I give you a lift?” he said.

“A lift?” I said. “A lift?”

“Into town.”

I got into James Gehrig Pittman's old Valiant, the same car he'd had when he left, with the same faint gasoline and old leather smell basically, and the same mixture of chaos and cleanliness.

“James, why the corduroy coat? It's summertime,” I said. I don't know why, but I wasn't calling him Jimmy like the old days.

“It was cold early this morning. I'm not used to the north anymore,” he said.

I had the oddest feeling in that car, like the tires underneath us were enormous, like we were up high in the air because the tires were so big. I don't know what that was all about.

James talked in the same old way with his jaw tucked down near his neck, head bent and blue eyes straight ahead. Every five seconds he'd glance over at me, half-smiling as we rode into town like two people in a stranger's dream on those big fat tires.

We were quiet for a while and then James tells me that two nights before he'd been visiting some friends in Clairton, Pennsylvania, and they watched a nice documentary about people and their pets. And he goes on to tell me all about this nice documentary of pets and the folks who loved them like they were children, just like he'd seen me the day before. I was glad this was how James was.

“So it was mostly dogs and cats these people were grieving?” I said.

“That's right. And there's animal graveyards all over this country. People go visit the graves and leave things like Milk-Bones and toys that squeak. Or sometimes painted portraits of themselves and the pet. Or one fella left a violin.”

“Is that right?” I said.

“These people were noble,” he said.

“Noble.”

“They were noble because of how much they loved. All that love was simple and ennobling.”

“Well I'll have to watch it sometime myself.”

“You should. The line I liked was
Animals are put on this earth to love and be loved
. I like the simplicity of that. I keep running it around in my head.”

So there we were after eight years of not seeing each other just riding along talking about this pet-lovers' documentary in his old Valiant filled with faded maps and hardback books he must've forgot to take back to the library. Or maybe he bought them at used stores, I don't know.

We headed past the big lake and James looked out across it, then back at the road. “Nice to see this land again. Nice to see mountains,” he said. “So how's Gladys?” he added, and I felt him tense up as he waited for an answer.

“She's still traveling,” I said. “She left with Raelene, this girl she knows. Did I mention her on the phone? The girl—well, it's a long story.”

“I'd like to have a drink somewhere,” James said. “Is the Little Moon still open?”

“Sure is,” I said. “Haven't been there since I last saw you. But I know it's still open.”

The Little Moon was your basic bar in the woods with a little door so you had to duck to get through if you were over five feet. Once you got inside you were fine. The two of us were struck by how much the same it was, with Seany, the old bartender, still doing crossword puzzles, and Mrs. “Sloe Gin” Kingston, a white-haired six-footer in her thick glasses, still writing letters at the center table to a man named Professor Danicki, who most people thought was dead. And on the old Wurlitzer were the songs we used to play. When James and I walked over to the booth under the high window with the dark red curtains I think we both felt the ghosts of him and Gladys. We just sat right down on the laps of those ghosts and had some draft beers.

James wasn't looking up much, and when he did he wasn't smiling exactly, and his eyes were friendly and worried.

“I have some things to tell you,” James said. “But you know me, it'll take a while. I'm adjusting to this now.”

“This?” I said.

“Everything,” James said.

“Where were you before you came here? Maybe you can start at the end of your tale and go backward. If you feel like talking, that is.”

“Louisiana,” James said. “It's a long story.”

“I got time.” I smiled at him. It was so good to see him.

“But I'll give you the short version. The long story is something I couldn't tell you. I can't even tell it to myself.”

“Long or short, it's up to you.”

He took a deep breath and looked sideways.

“A child grew close to me. Her name was Cecile, but they called her Pie Pie. I was with her mother for three years.”

James spoke in his quiet voice without much expression. You had to listen hard to him to figure out what his words meant, which ones were the most important. This wasn't how he used to talk, and I got the feeling he'd rehearsed this speech in his car as he drove.

“Pie Pie's mother,” I said. “What was her name?”

“Nicoletta Graves.”

“Nicoletta Graves,” I said. “With a girl named Pie Pie. Pie Pie Graves.” I was smiling.

James didn't smile.

“She grew real close to me, Ivy. Too close. She didn't look a thing like Ann, but all the sudden all I'm thinking of is Ann. It snuck up on me. Because Pie Pie was three years old going on four.”

Ann.

We never said “Ann.” Gladys never said it, so I never said it. I took a deep breath. All the sudden I wanted to say “Ann.”

“Three going on four,” I said. “Like Little Ann was.”

James looked down, wouldn't meet my eye.

“Like Ann,” I said again. I wanted to say it a hundred times.

“Pie would sit out on the dirt under the laundry line with her metal cars. She had three metal cars, and one metal ambulance, and one dune buggy, and one Barbie doll. That was her whole toy collection. She'd make that doll walk and leave footprints in the dirt. She'd sit out there by herself for hours in the evening and play in the dirt.”