Small Blessings (26 page)

“I have to check something in the oven,” Rose said. “You want to come with me?”

“Sure,” Agnes said. They moved together into the kitchen. It was even more primitive than the living room. Agnes hadn't seen appliances like these since the eighties. The early eighties. “Do these things still work?”

“So far. It's pretty amazing, isn't it?”

There was so much color in the room it looked like a Matisse. Blue checked curtains, deep purple cupboards, harvest gold refrigerator, avocado stove, black and white linoleum squares on the floor. A rather adorable antique clock with a very loud tick was perched atop an old pine pie safe. A lime green covered pot of something simmered on the stove. Whatever it was smelled good enough to make Agnes realize she was hungry for the first time in over a week. “So, what are we having for lunch?” she asked.

“Chili. My mother's uncle's recipe. He taught me how to make it when I was a kid. We used to visit him every summer on his scrubby little ranch in the Texas panhandle. Of course, to follow the recipe faithfully, you're supposed to throw in some kind of rodent, but I had to leave that out.”

“Pity.” Agnes lifted the lid and looked in. She could see meat and tomatoes, but there had to be other things swimming around in there she could only smell. “What is it that smells so good?”

Rose shook her head. “I'm not telling. Uncle Luther would haunt me if I did.” She looked at Agnes with great innocent eyes.

“Ah yes,” Agnes said. “I understand. The ever-present departed, keeping us in line.” Could she possibly
believe
such nonsense? It wasn't like her to even consider it.

Rose bent over and opened the oven door. The unmistakable smell of biscuits escaped. Rose poked at them with her finger, then straightened up again. “These'll be ready in about ten minutes. Would you care to sit here or in the living room while we wait? I've made some iced tea if you'd like something to drink.”

“Brewed or instant?” The words were out before it occurred to Agnes that she might not know Rose Callahan well enough yet to be quite so direct. But the inscrutable, tousle-headed minx appeared undaunted. Why, Agnes wondered, had her daughter never been able to look like that when someone had given her a hard time? “What do you think I'd serve you?” Rose eyed her saucily.

Touché. A small hit, but a hit, nonetheless. “I'll sit right here and have some tea, thank you very much.” Agnes sat down at the kitchen table.

“I'll get us some, then.” The ancient refrigerator's motor kicked into action when Rose opened the door, making a muffled thumping sound. Agnes watched her get ice out of a blue bowl in the tiny freezer, get glasses down from a purple cupboard, pour tea from a yellow crockery pitcher. Color, color, everywhere. Even on Rose herself, today decked out in a purple T-shirt and voluminous ocher pants. From some angles she was almost beautiful; from others she was as plain as a stick. Her hair, Agnes noticed, was under no better control today than it had been at any other time.

Agnes leaned back cautiously, her wooden chair teetering on the uneven floor, or maybe it was the chair's legs that were uneven. None of the chairs grouped around the table matched. They looked like individual rescues from junk shops. So here she was at a ladies' luncheon—of sorts, anyway. What on earth were the two of them supposed to talk about? Please, God, don't let it be Marjory. Perhaps Henry? Although what would they say? Neither one of them actually knew that much about the boy. It was obvious they both—both what? Loved the boy? Was it possible to love anyone on a five-day acquaintance?

Rose set a glass of iced tea in front of Agnes and sat down across from her. “So,” she said, her eyes bright with expectation—or maybe more mischief—“you're a lawyer. What do you think of Alberto Gonzales?”

Politics!
Agnes was overjoyed. She did not think much at
all
of Alberto Gonzales.

She was off, in hog heaven, as one of her favorite pro bono clients would have said. Agnes hardly noticed when she began eating, she was so intent on pointing out the current administration's legal chicanery. Rose nodded and prodded and plied her with chili—which was extremely good, as were the biscuits (made with just a tablespoon or so of lard unless Agnes had completely lost her palate). There was real, honest-to-God, unhealthy butter for the biscuits and rich, gooey lemon bars for dessert. But the main sustenance was conversation, carried forward without effort or calculation. When the meal was over, Agnes felt almost completely happy. “So,” she said, tipping back dangerously far in her rickety chair, “how come you're so interested in politics? Is your father a politician, back somewhere in Texas, doing righteous battle in the land of the Bushies?”

Rose had been reaching for another lemon bar but stopped with her hand hovering over the plate as though she meant to bless instead of eat them. It was an odd, awkward moment. Rose remained absolutely still, even to her disorganized hair. She reminded Agnes of the Kewpie dolls of her childhood, staring off into space with oversized, unseeing eyes. This was the trouble with good conversation. It had a life of its own that carried you along, willy-nilly, into the first, tricky stages of intimacy.

“Rose,” Agnes said, “forgive me. I didn't mean to ask a personal question. I was simply curious about your interest in politics. I haven't met many women—or men, for that matter—who are interested enough to listen to me rant. Honestly, I wasn't trying to pry.”

“I know that.”

Rose's voice was expressionless. With half her face illuminated by the strong light from the window, she looked a bit like that Parmigianino painting,
Madonna with the Long Neck.
Why did Rose Callahan make her think of paintings?

A single bird began to sing outside the window. The ever-busy, peripheral, fact-gathering part of Agnes's brain registered that it was a cardinal. Long ago, a client had given her a record of bird songs, and she'd gotten quite good at recognizing them. It was part of what she thought of as her vast store of irrelevant knowledge. The birdsong broke the spell—or whatever it was that had frozen Rose's hand over the lemon bars. “It's nothing I'm at all ashamed of,” she said, lowering her hand, turning to look out the open window, or perhaps to listen more closely to the bird's song. Her face still gave nothing away. “It's just—I think, anyway—it's just that I don't want people to misunderstand Mavis.”

“Mavis?”

“Mavis Callahan. My mother.”

“Oh?”

Rose squinted at the window as though trying to see something at a great distance. “I suppose it's a bit like what you told me about the morning your husband was killed. You know, out on the back porch.”

Agnes nodded and waited for Rose to go on.

Rose was concentrating on her point in the distance very, very hard. “When you told me about that last morning you had with your husband, when you had that spat, I thought then about this thing that Mavis used to say after a long night of pouring drinks behind whatever bar she was tending. She'd come upstairs after hours and hours of listening to people cry on her shoulder, and she'd sit on the edge of my bed and shake her head and say that it was good for those lonely people to have someone to unburden themselves to, that we're all only as sick as our secrets. And I suppose that applies to me, too, although I've never thought of myself as someone who has secrets. But I do, I suppose. One, anyway. At least I have something I've never talked about to anyone, and I suppose that makes it a secret. You see, I don't know who my father is—and neither does Mavis. And I mean that quite literally. She really has no idea. She used to tell me that I was the child of a whole generation of love, which always sounded quite magical to me. And what I've realized just now—just as we've been talking—is that I couldn't bear to have my mother criticized for that, for the way I was conceived. She took very, very good care of me in her own post-hippie way. It was a lot of fun moving around the way we did. We were very self-sufficient and happy together, although I'm sure it accounts for a lot of my peculiarities as well.”

This was the moment, Agnes decided later, when her great fondness for Rose Callahan began, while she sat there with no idea what to say to this strangely composed creature who'd just told her that she, perhaps like Henry, had no identifiable father because her mother had been, what? Promiscuous? A groupie? A flower child? Agnes found herself thinking about Russell Jacobs's silly insistence on knowing what people other people came from. And about that peculiar woman in the registrar's office who prided herself on the fact that her family had been right here in this provincial little county since the eighteenth century. And about her own in-laws, who'd gone on and on about their distant connection to Thomas Jefferson. And here was this self-contained Buddha of a woman, blown along with her mystical sidekick Henry into their neat, well-documented lives like tumbleweed. What difference did any of that historical pretentiousness make beside Rose Callahan's—and really Henry's—rare and fearless capacity to be themselves?

Rose got up and walked to the window. The cardinal sat on a branch of the lilac bush just outside, his red feathers bright against the blue sky behind him. “I know I'm put together a bit differently than most people. I … I never seem to expect much. People—and by that, I guess I mean men—say they never know what I want from them, and I guess the truth is I don't really want anything. This always seems to cause them problems, even though I don't mean it to.” She put a hand up to her hair. It disappeared into her unbridled curls. “May I ask you a question, Agnes?”

“You can ask one. I don't promise to answer it. Especially if it's about Henry.”

“It's not about Henry. It's … it's about your son-in-law.”

“About Tom?” Agnes was instantly apprehensive, not of any harm Rose Callahan might do her son-in-law, but of the harm Tom, the Great Innocent, might do himself because of Rose Callahan. “All right. Though I need to warn you, I don't gossip. About anyone.”

“I don't think this is gossip. Anyway, it's really more about me than about Professor Putnam. The thing is, he … he asked me to dinner tomorrow night, which was very nice, and I … I turned him down. The truth is, I … I
like
him, I really do, but I always feel so awkward around him. Do you have any idea why that is? Is it because of Marjory, do you think? I mean—she just died.”

You feel awkward around Tom Putnam because he has a great honking, adolescent crush on you,
Agnes almost blurted out, but even she, Lawyer Tattle the forthright, knew this wouldn't do. Looking up at Rose Callahan now, Agnes was mildly surprised to discover that she wouldn't mind
at all
if Tom eventually rode off into the sunset with this woman, wouldn't feel the slightest pang for Marjory's sake. But how likely was that? Tom was not a very probable candidate for romance. He was too indecisive. Agnes's own flyboy had met her, bedded her, and married her, all in three months. Tom Putnam couldn't decide which pair of shoes to buy in that length of time. Agnes could picture the two of them, inscrutable Rose, fuddle-headed Tom, perhaps mutually attracted, perhaps not, but certainly unable to process whatever it was they were feeling in any productive way. And then there was Henry stirring the pot. What he meant to each of them, and why he meant it, was a long, long way from being figured out. Anyway, Rose Callahan was probably already involved with someone. Agnes assumed this about every woman over twenty, except for herself and a few sad, buttoned-up creatures who reminded her of Marjory. And if Rose was involved, then surely Tom was toast in the romance department even before he had time to ruin things by being Tom.

Rose had turned back from the window and was looking at her as though she really would like an answer, really would like Agnes to explain why she felt so awkward around Tom.
What the hell,
Agnes thought.
People expect me to be peculiar and direct.
“I suppose you've got a lover, Rose?”

Rose's hand immediately moved to cover her heart. For the first time in their short acquaintance, Agnes thought she looked nonplussed. Agnes immediately filed this information away:
Nonplussed when asked about lover …

“No,” Rose said, “I don't. I mean, I did, but I broke up with him the day after I moved into this house.”

“Oh?” Agnes was surprised by how pleased she was to hear this. “Interesting.”

“
Interesting,” Rose echoed.

Agnes sat back and folded her arms. “I wouldn't worry too much about Tom. He's a bit bumpy around women, and it's easy to pick that up and feel it's somehow your fault. But it's actually my poor dead daughter's fault. I suspect Tom has forgotten how to be normal around any woman he finds attractive.”

Rose blushed ever so slightly and nodded. “I see. Thanks. That clears up a lot.” She smiled her Buddha smile. “About that lover, Agnes.”

“Yes?”

“Do you know what a monad is?”

Agnes thought for a moment. “Some kind of biological unit sufficient within itself?”

“Close enough. What I think I want to say is, I'm not sure long-term connection with another person is ever going to be for me. It never has been before. I think the truth is that I'm a bit of a monad.”

“I see.” Agnes considered this. She was probably a bit of a crusty old monad herself, except for the three years, four months, and twenty-seven days she'd lived with her husband. With that thought, Agnes had to reach for the table to steady herself, as there he was, her tall, reckless, very much alive flyboy, come to visit her right here in Rose Callahan's colorful kitchen. This time it was his touch that came back to her, the feel of his hands, of his breath on her neck, of the wonderful fullness of climax. She'd had sex with quite a few other men since, but it had always been just sex.