Small Blessings (41 page)

First of all, there was the fact that she was naked, and Tom Putnam (also naked) was in bed beside her. That, all by itself, was quite a lot to sort out. But to make things even more complicated, a wild-eyed Russell Jacobs was staring down at her from Tom's side of the bed while Iris Benson hovered behind him saying, “I'm sorry, I couldn't stop him,” over and over like some talking doll whose computer chip has malfunctioned.

There was movement beside her as Tom propped himself up on his elbows. “Are you all right?” he asked Russell, which was unnecessary as Russell was obviously
not
all right.

Rose decided to stare at the ceiling for a while, at that long crack that suggested the Florida peninsula. It struck her as odd that Tom sounded so
normal
talking to Russell, like someone who, against all available evidence, remained confident that God was still peacefully tucked up in heaven and all was right with the world.

Footsteps sounded. Here came Iris, rounding the bottom of the bed, fluttering her arms like a distressed chicken. “… and I'm so sorry, Rose. I woke up and there he was. I let him in, and he barged right past me and came in here.”

Rose decided to smile at Iris. “It's all right. No harm, no foul.”

This reassured Iris enough for her to snap to and realize Rose was not alone in bed. She clapped her hands in delight. “I didn't know you two were lovers. Why, that's … that's
luscious
!”

“Isn't it?” Rose said.

Iris did a little dance of joy. “Who'd have thought old Tom Putnam had enough gumption to snag a woman like
you
!”

Rose felt Tom grasp her hand under the covers. “Thank you, Iris,” he said happily. “It
is
pretty amazing, isn't it?”

Tom reached out his other hand to high-five Iris, who then offered a high hand to Rose.
Why not?
Rose thought, smacking Iris palm to palm.

All eyes turned to Russell.

My goodness,
Rose thought,
something really bad has happened to him.

Russell Jacobs's wild eyes were shifting rapidly from her to Tom and back again. Rose had seen similar looks in the eyes of roped calves on Uncle Luther's ranch.

Was that bourbon she smelled? Had Russell been drinking? She'd never seen the man so much as sip a glass of sherry. Of course, the only time she'd really been around him socially was that night at the Putnams'. For all she really knew, having booze on his breath at first light was business as usual for Russell Jacobs.

Iris evidently didn't think so. In a fit of what Rose took to be unaccustomed selflessness, Iris trundled back around the end of the bed and put a hand on Russell's arm. “You look even weirder than I feel. Do you need some help?”

Russell opened his mouth again to speak, but nothing came out. His eyes stopped their roaming and fastened on Rose. He raised both hands in mute appeal.

And then he was gone, so rapidly he was out the front door before anyone else could move.

*   *   *

Tom Putnam walked happily through the golden light of a bright new morning, heading home. At the top of Faculty Row, he stopped for a moment to prepare himself for whatever was coming. Tom felt fairly certain that both Henry and Agnes would be pleased by his decisive action in the romance department—Henry, openly and immensely; Agnes, less openly, but no less immensely. The only real cloud in the sky was Mr. Brownlow. If he found out, would he think him irresponsible for taking off in the middle of the night to go sleep with Rose? But then, how on earth would he find out? Henry and Agnes certainly wouldn't tell him.

“Good morning, Professor Putnam,” a cheery male voice sang out from the other side of the street.

It was Mr. Brownlow, naturally, proving again that life was essentially a comedy. His own, Tom thought, tended toward farce, full of improbable situations and ridiculous complications that still somehow managed to lead logically one into the next. “Good morning, Mr. Brownlow,” he said, acutely aware he was wearing jeans and a pajama top.

Mr. Brownlow came toward him, indicating they should walk together. “I've been invited to your house for breakfast. You're certainly out early.”

“Yes,” said Tom. “I am.” Would Mr. Brownlow expect him to say
why
he was out at seven thirty in the morning, wearing jeans and a pajama top?

The little banker's round face would have made a perfect Buddha mask; cheerful inscrutability made human. He was unexpectedly decked out in madras pants
(madras pants!),
a bright blue polo shirt, penny loafers, and a London Fog windbreaker. When did he think it was, 1962? “Is that a pajama top you're wearing?” Mr. Brownlow asked mildly. “Or some new style of shirt I'm not familiar with?”

Tom briefly considered lying, but what was the point? Mr. Brownlow was no dummy; he wouldn't believe any lame whopper Tom came up with. “It's a pajama top.”

“Ah!”

Mr. Brownlow began walking again. Tom wordlessly fell into step beside him, Mr. Brownlow's “Ah!” dragging on his happiness like Marley's chains. Halfway down Faculty Row, he could stand it no longer. “Look here, Mr. Brownlow, you might as well know. I spent the night with Rose Callahan.”

The little banker regarded him evenly. “I see,” he said, without breaking stride.

Tom trundled miserably alongside him, his eyes firmly fixed on his own feet. This impenetrable
impenetrability
must be what Mr. Brownlow laid on customers he suspected of trying to hustle him.

Just then Mr. Brownlow touched Tom's arm very lightly. “Good for you,” he said in his cheery way, giving Tom's pajama-clad arm a little pat. “Good for you.”

Of course it's good for me,
Tom thought miserably.
But do you also think it's good for Henry?

*   *   *

Rose was not a fastidious housekeeper, but she
did
keep house.

Iris evidently did not. Her cabin was one enormous room with closets and a bathroom. Stuff was everywhere; books, notebooks, junk mail, dirty dishes, dirty socks, dog toys, empty wine bottles. Rose got a trash bag from the box she'd brought with her and went to work. Iris took one look around and immediately shot out the back door.

A great and joyful yelping commenced immediately.

One filled trash bag later, Iris marched back inside, muddied but, Rose thought (with a nod to Gertrude Stein) with much more
there
there. A few moments with her dogs had restored some of her Iris-ness. There was, Rose suspected, real toughness and single-mindedness in Iris Benson that would serve her well as she worked out who she was without booze.

Who
was
Iris Benson without booze?

Now that she thought about it, who was Rose Callahan without flight?

Iris had pointlessly wiped her feet before stepping onto the cabin's grubby floor. “I'm letting the puppies run in the woods for a while. They're good about coming right back when I whistle.”

“Good idea,” Rose said. Was Iris, she wondered, scared of the future? Did she realize that sobriety would change everything about
everything
?

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you're trying to figure me out or something.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Iris shrugged. “What are you sorry for? You're not doing anything I'm not doing. I'd like to figure me out, too. Although the people this weekend kept saying that
thinking
about things was the stupidest thing I could do at the moment.”

“They did?”

“Yeah. Can you imagine that? Telling an academic not to think is like telling a fish not to swim.”

Rose stared at the other woman. Iris was supposed not to
think
? What else was there to do in a crisis? She did, of course, often end up thinking about why she was thinking about what she was thinking about. “What are you supposed to do if you're not supposed to think?”

Iris snorted. “This is the beginning and the end of what those bozos had to say about
that:
One fucking day at a time, don't drink, go to meetings, and wait until you get over the shock of not drinking and going to meetings. Period. End of story. God bless us every one.”

The question was out before Rose could stop it. “Are you scared?”

“Of not drinking?”

“Well, more of the huge change that not drinking represents in how you go about … about everything? I guess what I'm asking is, are you afraid of such a huge change?”

Iris didn't hesitate. “Hell, yes. But the people this weekend took pains to point out that
anything's
an improvement over publicly upchucking in the Book Store at ten o'clock in the morning.”

Anything's an improvement over …

Rose thought of her bedroom walls, of all those photographic remnants of lovely people she'd allowed to slide out of her life. What had ever made her feel that
photographs
could sustain a heart?

Iris was checking her watch. “It's ten minutes after nine. Didn't you say we needed to get out of here by nine thirty?”

“Yes,” Rose said. “I did.”

“Well then, as pleasant as it is just to talk, I better start packing. Believe it or not, I gotta teach two classes this afternoon. And I'm not teaching my first class sober without wearing something absolutely smashing!”

Iris waited a beat. When Rose didn't respond, she poked her in the ribs. “Get it, Rosie?
Smashing?
Since my problem is getting
smashed
?”

It took Rose a moment. “Of course.
Smashing.
Sorry. I wasn't
thinking.
”

It took Iris a moment to get that. Once she did, she broke into a huge grin. “My, my, aren't we a couple of smarty-pants?”

Rose gave up thinking about thinking and grinned.
Why not?
“I certainly hope so,” she said.

*   *   *

Russell's first drink remained the brightest of his teenage memories, standing out from the parade of small and large embarrassments that had constituted his adolescence. It had been a Thursday evening in his junior year. He'd just gotten his driver's license, and he'd been trying for hours to get up enough courage to call Sally Stutford, an attractive but unspectacular girl in his Latin class, and ask her to go to the movies with him on Saturday. Finally, in desperation, he'd gone to the low kitchen cupboard, where his mother kept her “hidden” vodka stash behind cans of Silvo and Bab-O and a welter of cleaning brushes, fetched out a half-full bottle and taken a goodly swig. A lovely, lightening warmth had instantly spread through his limbs, but what Russell remembered most vividly was how
hopeful
he'd felt; hopeful enough to march over to the kitchen wall phone, pick it up, and dial Sally's number. She'd answered, he'd asked, she'd turned him down flat. He'd put down the phone, gone back to the kitchen sink, fished out the bottle, had another slug, and not cared.

Not cared
 …

That was really what alcohol did for him, allowed him not to care. And now that he'd allowed himself to care, he needed alcohol again. Only this time, he didn't want alcohol to help him
not
to care; he wanted it to give him the courage to do what needed to be done
because
he cared. He'd started out to Rose's this morning thinking he would talk to her about his own confusion. And now here he was, back home, without a shred of doubt that the time for talk had passed and the time for action had come. Radical action, to be sure; action that no other person on this cautious little campus could even conceptualize, let alone consider, but then he wasn't any other person, was he?

Russell thumped the kitchen table with his fist and went upstairs to shower and shave and dress himself appropriately for what lay ahead.

 

chapter 20

Against all odds, Rose made it to work on time. She spent the rest of the morning and the first hour of the afternoon trying not to worry. Worrying, Mavis had always maintained, meant you were trying to control something you had no business trying to control.

William Shatner in his girdle and
Star Trek
outfit smiled knowingly at her, reminding Rose that, yes, she had boldly gone where she had never gone before.

Scotty
: [
the USS
Enterprise
is being sucked into a black hole
]
I'm giving her all she's got, Captain!

James T. Kirk
: All she's got isn't good enough!!

There it was, niggling doubt that would not leave her alone.
What if what she had wasn't good enough?

*   *   *

Around one o'clock, Rose was watching the espresso machine wand whipping two-percent milk into froth for a student's vanilla latte with extra syrup and whipped cream when Russell Jacobs came in. He marched right up to her, looking better than he had for a week, dressed in a rough gray tweed sport coat, one of his signature monogrammed shirts, lightweight gray wool gabardine pants, and spit-polished black shoes. Russell's hair was still long, but it was washed and brushed, and he was freshly shaved. He still smelled slightly of booze, but mostly of citrus cologne.

“Hello, Russell. What's up?”

Russell wasted no time in the usual Russellian banter. “Are you on Henry Putnam's approved pickup list from school?”

“Yes,” Rose said, her hand flying to her heart. “Is Henry all right?”

Russell gave her shoulder a reassuring pat. “I'm sure he's fine. It's just that Tom phoned to ask if you and I could pick Henry up from school and keep him at my house. It has something to do with the goings-on about his future.”