Sweet Water (4 page)

A
fterward, except for our breathing, there was silence in the small room. It was almost dark. I lay without moving on the damp cotton sheet, staring at the outline of a framed museum print. Four flights below, the noises of the city blended like an orchestra. I strained to hear each instrument: the rumbling of heavy trucks and buses, the muffled hum of cars, the blare of horns and the faint wail of a distant siren. I studied a crack in the wall, watching how it splayed into branches across a corner of the ceiling.

“Christ, Cassie,” he said. “You might have feigned a little interest.”

I inhaled thin, cool air from the air conditioner in the window above, its breeze mingling with the smell of our sweat. Flecks of light fell into the room, sprinkling the white sheets and my bare, pale arms. Moving my fingers, I watched the light slide over them like mercury.

“I’ve decided to leave,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m going to Tennessee. I wanted to tell you first, before you heard it from anybody else.”

He sat up and looked at me, rubbing his short dark hair with his hands. When I reached over to touch his shoulder, he flinched as if an insect had landed on him.

“Look, I’ll help you find someone for the gallery,” I said. “I won’t leave until you’ve got somebody trained.”

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his
striped boxer shorts on the floor, putting them on in one fluid movement.

“Adam—”

“It’s a big gamble,” he said, standing up stiffly, his eyes flat and expressionless. “Good luck.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything. You’re taking a big risk, that’s all. I admire you for it.”

“What’s so risky?”

“Well, this is it, right? Make it or break it. What if it turns out that all that talent you’ve been keeping on a back burner isn’t there?”

“That’s not the point. That’s not why I’m going.”

“Oh, really?”

“I just need to get away. It’s not a matter of proving anything.”

His mouth turned up at the corners. “Look, Cassie, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. It’s just that usually when people pick up and move they’re either going toward something or running away.”

“It’s not like that.”

“You sure?”

“For God’s sake, Adam, if you’re not going to even try to understand—”

“I am trying. I just think you need to be certain that you’re doing the right thing. For yourself, I mean.”

I drew back. “I wasn’t really asking for your approval. I just wanted you to know. For the gallery.”

Adam picked a T-shirt off the floor and turned to leave the room. I watched him make his way down the narrow hall, switching on the light with his shoulder as he veered into the living room at the end. After a few seconds I could hear a canned voice talking about the Yankees. I sat against the headboard, dragging the sheet up around me.

After a while I began to get dressed, gathering my bra and underwear and large brass earrings, which were scattered around the room. In the smattering of light from the window, I groped for the
black dress and slingbacks I wore to work, then shook my hair over my head, combing through the tangles with my fingers. I wiped the mascara from under my eyes. Trembling a little, I went down the hall to the living room.

“Is three weeks’ notice enough?” I asked Adam’s back.

He kept his eyes on the TV, now tuned to
Jeopardy.

“Hollywood Romance for six hundred, Alex.”

“This famous couple’s romance ended tragically when she died in a plane crash in 1942.”

“Gable and Lombard,” Adam said.

“Who are Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier?” said the contestant.

After a few moments an ad for dishwashing detergent came on. “I assume you can let yourself out,” Adam said.

I paused for a second, examining the front door. “Actually, I never did figure out how to undo all these locks.”

He stood up, as if with great effort, still watching the television. Without looking at me, he handed me the bottle of beer he was holding. He released the column of locks with a series of clipped, intricate maneuvers. “Sayonara,” he said.

“Please.”

“What?” He held up his hands.

“Come on, Adam. Give me a break. Don’t make this so difficult.”

He shrugged, looking over my head. The game show was on again.

“A hunchback, this nineteenth-century French painter immortalized cancan dancers.”

Adam murmured, “Toulouse-Lautrec.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I said.

“Who is Toulouse-Lautrec?” said the contestant.

He looked at me without focusing, and after a second the brown of his eyes darkened and he looked down. “Just leave, Cassandra,” he said, stepping back. “I’m tired.”

The elevator opened on the ground floor. As I left the gloomy lobby, I felt light-headed, as if I might faint. I stood against the side of
the building, my back and arms touching the cool brick, and I couldn’t help it, I started to cry. I put my hands over my face, hot tears squeezing out between my fingers, my shoulders shaking; and then I cried even harder, angry at myself for crying at all.

After a few minutes I straightened up, wiped my face with my hands, and reached into my bag for a tissue. I took one deep breath and then another, adjusted the bag, and started down the street.

Out in the open, the summer air was warm and solid. As I crossed to the other side I glanced back at the red-brick building, up the four flights to Adam’s bedroom window. I could see a light shining inside, probably just the dull glow from the television reflected down the narrow hall.

H
er hair was long and black, and her neck was the color of sand on a beach, of wheat bread rising. Her eyes were as dark and bright as a crow’s. She wore the newest styles of dresses in colors the rest of us were too well-bred to try—whorehouse vermilion, firetruck red, sunburst gold—and lipstick to match. Nobody else wore lipstick; we were all married and living in the country. We couldn’t see what for.

Bryce once said, confidentially, that she’d never really been friends with a woman as attractive and strong as she was before, not one-on-one. She said she thought it was a competition problem. Then she smiled her wide, wine-lipped smile and reached over and squeezed my hand.

“We’re alike, you and I,” she said. “We’ve got the same goals.” “How’s that?”

She patted her hair, tucking strands into the loose twist on her head, and then she looked me over slowly. “We’re not going to sit here for the next fifty years and go crazy, ringing the bell for breakfast and lunch and supper, marking time by what’s on the table. We’re not cut out for sitting at home while the world goes marching by without us.”

“What do you mean, Bryce Davies?” I laughed. “Amory and that little baby are the only parade I want to be a part of.”

She was shaking her head even before I got the words out. “For now, maybe, but you’ll see. Pretty soon whatever thrill you find in it is going to wear pretty thin. And stuck out here, too far from civilization
to even know what the fashions are! It’s a crime to do it to a woman, especially a city gal like you.”

“But Bryce, I’m the happiest woman in the world,” I said.

Our babies, Horace and Taylor, were asleep upstairs, and Bryce and I were on the front porch with a lemonade as the sun settled into midafternoon over distant western trees. It was the end of September. The air was warm and dry. Amory had come back from Baton Rouge a month earlier, and since then it was like I’d never imagined it could be. The house was our cocoon. I’d get up to feed Horace at two o’clock, three o’clock, and Amory would get up too, to throw a blanket over my feet and warm some milk for me on the stove. Then I’d rock Horace back to sleep, and Amory and I would go to bed, and as many times as not he’d kiss me and stroke me, in and out of my dreams. He would get up for work before the sun rose, and before he left he’d lean over and whisper that he loved me. He’d whisper my new name.

“We were that way too for a while,” said Bryce. “It gets old fast. Just you wait. He’ll get a bee in his bonnet about something, something’ll go wrong at work, and then all you’re good for is getting the food on his plate when he wants it, and maybe some fun late at night. If you’re lucky.”

I smiled, thinking of the night before. “That won’t happen.”

Bryce gave a dry laugh and smoothed the front of her silk dress, lily-pad green. “I said the same thing. Frank was like a honeymooner for a whole year. Then we got the mortgage to pay, and Taylor comes along and he’s working two shifts and dog-tired and yapping at me like I’m to blame.”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” I said. “That man loves you to death.”

“Maybe.” Her expression grew serious. “But love gets coated over, you know? Love and marriage are like water and oil.”

Her mouth twisted and she looked down, brushing imaginary crumbs off her dress in jerky motions, and then she put her face in her hands and started to cry. I went over and put my arm across her shoulders and squeezed.

“Lord, Connie, I’m just not meant for this. I didn’t know it was going to be this way. How could I? I was a poor farm kid, and he was throwing a lot of money around back then. I thought we’d always be dancing till dawn.” She hit the porch rail with the palm of her hand. “Jeez, and now I’m stuck here. I hate this place to death, and everybody”—she choked back a sob—“everybody in it.”

“Oh, Bryce, it’s not that bad. We have a good time, don’t we?”

“Bridge teas,” she sniffed.

“You’ve got friends and family who love you,” I said.

She pulled a comb and a mother-of-pearl pin out of her bun and let her black hair fall down around her shoulders, running the comb through it to smooth it. “There’s that word again. Love.” She made a face like the word tasted bitter. “I tell you, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Taylor?”

“Well, of course, but that’s different. She can’t hurt me. Not yet, anyway.” Bryce stood up, bent her head and shook it, then flung her hair back. It was thick and wild. Her eyelashes were dark and shining with tears. “It’s quicksand, Connie. We’ll never get out. It makes me want to do something crazy.” She leaned against the railing, looking out over the hills sloping down from the house. She seemed like a small, isolated ball of fire, burning up with its own heat while everything around it went on as usual. I felt sorry for her, but I didn’t really know what to say. I liked my life fine.

“Well, Bryce,” I said finally. “The Lord put you here for a reason. All you can do is trust in Him.”

“Hmmph,” she said.

Horace had started to cry upstairs. I excused myself and went inside, lingering in the dark hallway for a minute. I didn’t want to go out again, to face the heat of her frustration in the static warmth of the day. Even then, before my fears had any grounding, she made me uneasy. There was something thrilling in her dissatisfaction, something glamorous about her disdain for the town, and the fact that I was her confidante set me apart. If she said it to me, I wasn’t one of them. But at the same time I sensed down deep that if she could feel all those
things and say all those things and still smile so sweetly at the farmers market on Wednesdays and hostess bridge with such easy charm, there must be in her something that would always need to undermine and deceive, to erode the base of what seemed solid and good because it didn’t have anything to do with her, anything to do with making her happy. I thought, even then, that I would have to be careful not to let her draw me in. If I got too close the fire would blind me and I wouldn’t be able to tell when she had had enough, when she started whispering to a newly married young arrival words that bit and chewed and spit me out.

I went upstairs and got Horace and changed his diaper, and then Taylor woke too, so I cleaned her up and brought them down to the front porch, one on each hip. By the set of her shoulders I could tell Bryce was brooding, but when she heard the screen door open she turned toward us with her face arranged in a mama smile and her arms outstretched. She took Taylor from me and cooed at her and undid the buttons of her dress with one hand, lifting her breast for Taylor to suck. There was no one around, so I did the same. We sat on the porch with our babies, not speaking and Bryce’s body softened, finally, the way it always did, around Taylor’s tiny form.

    
This is the story I told Bryce Davies.

“May 17, 1940. Bryce—Without preliminaries I will tell you that I found a letter from you to my husband in his shirt pocket this morning. I do not want explanations or excuses. Its intent was clear. My husband knows I found it and swears to me that he will never see you again. All I have to say is this: I could forgive the fact that you have lied to me, but you have also betrayed me as a friend, and that I cannot forgive. Do not come near me again. But most of all, stay away from my husband. If you cannot do that, I promise with all my heart that I will find a way to keep you away.”

But that was only the beginning.

W
hen I got home from Adam’s I called my father and told him we’d broken up.

“Good,” he said. “Good for you. It’s about time.”

“And there’s something else.” I paused. I didn’t know how to say it.

“If it’s what I think it is, I don’t want to hear it.”

“What do you mean, Dad?”

“What do
you
mean, Cassie?”

I gritted my teeth. “Well … I was thinking of taking that land. You know. Moving down there.”

I could hear him sighing all the way from Boston. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Daddy,” I said, coaxing.

“I just don’t think it’s smart. You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

“Yes, I do,” I said. But I was curious. “What are you so worried about?”

“Oh, Cassie, those awful relatives of your mother’s, for a start.”

“But I wouldn’t have to deal with them, would I?”

“Oy vey.” He sucked air through his teeth. “Your aunt Elaine called today.”

“She
called?
She never calls.”

“Well, this is the first time. Come to think of it, this may be the first time in her entire life that she’s placed a phone call above the Mason-Dixon line.”

“And?”

He went into a singsong. “She told me about the land and the house and how Horace would be willing, bless his heart, to take it off your hands. She said she reckoned it was more of a burden than a blessing and you’d probably just as soon they handle it for you. Of course, I told her she’d better hold on for a while until she heard from you. I had a terrible feeling you might get some cockeyed idea.”

“I haven’t really been thinking about them,” I admitted.

“Well, they’re worth some serious thought. I loved your mom, but that family …” He sighed again. “They thought I was from another planet.”

I tried to recall what I knew about them. Horace was the oldest, Elaine the youngest. My mother was the middle child. I had no idea what either of them looked like. Last I heard, Horace had two boys, and Elaine and her husband had adopted two kids because they couldn’t have any of their own.

For ten years or so after my mother died, Elaine dutifully kept my dad up-to-date with Christmas cards—Hanukkah cards when she remembered or could find them. Sometimes she sent the same card two or three years in a row. Several featured a red robin perched on a branch, with musical notes coming out of its beak and snow glitter on its wings. Another favorite was a snowman smoking a pipe, with a wreath around his neck. The accompanying messages were scrawled in a large, looped hand.

“Edgar,” one of them said. “We are fine, thank the Lord. Mom and Dad are healthy now. Dad had a herniated disk in September but he’s recovered fairly well. Horace and Kathy moved down the road from us into a big house with a pool. Last summer Horace finished building a complex over near Madisonville and named a road Ellen Lane. My Larry’s got a church in Soddy Daisy now and an AM radio show and we keep busy. The kids are fine. Take care of that little girl and God Bless. Elaine Burns.”

Eventually the notes got shorter, and after a while they stopped coming altogether. I never asked my dad if he had written back.

“Have you told Adam you’re leaving?” Dad was asking.

“Yeah, I told him.”

“And these new plans of yours have nothing to do with him?”

His knowing tone irritated me.
“No,
Dad. I’m just tired of the city. I’m sick of my job. I’ve got a chance to try something totally different, maybe even work on my own stuff for a change. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it.”

“I thought you might be proud of me.”

“I am proud of you, honey. I just think you should take a good hard look at what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.”

I started to protest, but I stopped myself. The phone call wasn’t going the way I’d planned. On the subway home I’d imagined that I’d tell him and he’d gasp with surprise, shout the good news to Susan, offer to help me move.

“Well, I’ve got to go,” I said. “Thanks for the support, Dad.”

“Aw, Cassie, come on. Just think about it, is all I’m saying.”

“I
have
thought about it.”

After taking down Elaine’s number I hung up and slouched into a chair. I grabbed a magazine off the floor and flipped through it gloomily before tossing it back on the rug. So maybe he was right. Maybe I was leaving to get away from Adam. So what? Anyway, that was only part of it, not the whole thing; it was much more complicated. I wanted to get away from Adam, yes, and the city, but it was more than that. What had Adam said?
It’s just that usually when people pick up and move they’re either going toward something or running away.
Yes, I suddenly decided, I was running toward something, something I’d been running from all my life.

I hadn’t seen that before but I saw it now, and I was filled with a sense of my own power. I was certain that if I could explain it to my dad that way, he’d hear the strength in my voice and understand. I decided I’d call him again in a few days, when he’d had some time to think it over. When it would be too late for me to change my mind.

* * *

“Dear Mrs. Clyde,” the letter began. “You don’t know me, but—”

I tore the paper in two and started again.

“Dear Grandmother, I know how surprised you must be to get a letter from me after all these years. To be honest, a month ago I never would have guessed I’d be doing this either.”

I sat back in the chair, gnawing the top of my Bic pen. Then I crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it on the floor.

“Dear Grandmother …”

I’d been trying to write the letter for an hour. At first I had planned to call, but every time I dialed her number I put the phone down before it started to ring. I didn’t know what to say; I didn’t know how to say it. I looked up at the clock. Seven-thirty. I was supposed to be at Drew’s for dinner at eight.

“I hope that you are doing well! It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you. You may have already heard from Crystal at the courthouse that I’ve decided to come to Sweetwater to live in the house on the Ridge Road property. I hope that’s all right with you.”

I read it over, groaning to myself. I drew a line across the page. The problem was tone. I wanted to sound upbeat, positive, friendly, but the letters kept turning into apologies. What was I apologizing for, for God’s sake? It was my land. Why did I feel like such an interloper?

“Dear Grandmother, After much deliberation I’ve decided that instead of selling the land I would like to come to Sweetwater to live on it for a while.”

I crossed out “for a while.”

“I plan to quit my job and try to make a go of it as a sculptor.”

Reading this sentence over, I laughed aloud. Then I marked through it.

“I will arrive in Sweetwater on August 2. I’m sure you are as surprised about this as I was. Please don’t feel that you have to go out of your way to do anything special. I look forward to meeting you, and Aunt Elaine and Uncle Horace and everybody else. Yours sincerely, your granddaughter Cassandra.”

I copied the letter over, shoved it in an envelope, and sealed it before I had a chance to think about it again. I stuck a stamp on it and took it down to the mailbox on the corner of Seventh Avenue. Once it was out of my hands I felt a great relief, like I used to feel when I’d finished exams at college. It didn’t matter how I’d done; it was over, I could relax for a while.

Continuing down the street, I stopped at a liquor store to buy a bottle of wine, and then turned down Garfield to Sixth. It was a Friday night, and the streets were busy. A radio blared several flights up; I could hear a baby crying somewhere. The air was humid, hazy. Streetlights began to flicker on.

At Drew’s building I pressed the button for 3C.

“Yes?”

“It’s me.”

“What’s the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” he asked, his voice static.

“African or European?”

He buzzed me in.

“You’re late,” he said accusingly, looking down at me from the third-floor landing as I came up the stairs.

I trudged up the final steps and handed him the wine. “Chardonnay. Will that appease you?”

“Remains to be seen,” he said, peering into the bag.

I walked past him into the apartment, which smelled of garlic and basil. “Mmmm. Drew, you are the best.”

“Where have you been?” He followed me in and shut the door. “I was begining to get concerned.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. Nowhere, really. At home. Writing a letter.” I was a little embarrassed. “To my grandmother.”

He took down two wineglasses and got out a corkscrew. “You’re late because you were writing Lulu?”

“Not Lulu. The Absent Other.” These were names Drew came up with in college for my grandmothers. Lulu’s name was really Naomi.

“Oh, her,” he said. “Did you ask for the money to be delivered in a
calfskin suitcase lined with velvet, in crisp hundred-dollar bills like in the movies?”

“Not exactly.” He uncorked the bottle and poured two glasses, handing me one. “In fact, I’m not so sure I’m going to sell that land.” I took a deep breath. “I mean, I’m definitely not going to sell it. I’m going to keep it.”

“Keep it? What does that mean?”

I sat down at the table and looked up at him. “It means I’m going down there to live, Drew. On my land.”

“Holy shit,” he said. “I’ve got to check the fish.”

    “You’ll be cruising convenience stores for excitement.” We were sitting across from each other at the small kitchen table, a low-burning candle and the empty bottle of wine between us. “You’ll meet an auto mechanic named Joe who’s a Really Nice Guy.” Drew got up to clear the plates. “Is that what you want out of life, Cassie?” he said over his shoulder. “Three squares a day and a home entertainment center?”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic? I just want to try something different. I want to have a studio, do my own work for a change.”

“You don’t have to go a thousand miles to find studio space. There has to be some other reason.” He glanced over at me sharply. “You’re not pregnant, by any chance?”

I rolled my eyes.

“And this has nothing to do with Adam.”

I sighed. “Not really.”

“Not really.”

“God, Drew, you sound just like my father. What is it with you men? You can’t imagine a woman setting off on her own if she hasn’t been spurned first?”

“I was just asking,” he said, opening the freezer. “And you are a little touchy about it, if you don’t mind my saying. I’ve got Ben and Jerry’s
politically-correct-but-very-fattening ice cream or good-for-you dictator-grown grapes.”

“What kind of ice cream?”

“Um, Chocolate Fudge Brownie.”

“Well, then, I think we should boycott those grapes.”

“I admire your conscience,” he said. “And you take milk, right?” He poured two mugs of coffee and brought them over to the table. “Look, Cassie, maybe I could understand if it was a villa in Tuscany. I could see the appeal. But we’re talking a shack in Tennessee.
Tennessee,
for God’s sake.”

“It’s not a shack. I don’t think.”

“Let’s face facts,” he said patiently. “You’ve never been there. Your relatives haven’t bothered to get in touch with you, now or ever. You have no idea what this place looks like except everybody expects you to tear it down. And think of this,” he said, sitting down with the ice cream. “Your own mother got out of there as fast as she could.”

“I know, I know.”

“Well?”

I got up, restless, moved the dishes from the counter to the sink, and turned on the tap. “Haven’t you ever wanted to do something just for the hell of it? Just because it’s like nothing else you’ve ever done?”

“Yes, Cassandra. In my youth I had a great need to test boundaries.”

I made a face. “Look, my life here is just ordinary, you know that. Go to work, try new restaurants, run around to openings. All I’m doing is filling a little space I’ve carved out for myself.” I poured dishwashing liquid into the sink as it filled with water.

“I hate to be the one to break it to you, darling, but that’s the way life is. No matter where you are.”

“But nothing I do really
matters
here. When I leave there’ll be half a dozen twenty-seven-year-olds with severe haircuts and Danish
bags to take my place. Look at Veronica at the gallery. It’s as if I never worked there.”

“Now we’re getting into philosophy,” Drew said. “Leave those dishes alone and come sit down. Your ice cream is melting.”

I turned around to face him.

“Look, Cassie, it’s the same everywhere. It just seems different in small towns because you recognize people on the street and they act like they’re happy to see you. Maybe. If someone hasn’t been spreading malicious, narrow-minded rumors about you that everybody’s heard because the whole place is the size of a parking garage.”

“But they know you, at least,” I insisted. “That’s something.”

He sighed. “I just think you have an incredibly romanticized idea of what it’s going to be like. Too much
Little House on the Prairie
as a kid or something.”

“Well, okay, maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s a stupid, naive, ridiculous thing to do. Maybe I’m out of my mind. But so what? What do I have to lose?”

He licked his spoon. “Me. I’m what you have to lose.”

“Oh, Drew.”

“Really,” he said. “Not to mention the Met, Central Park, the Staten Island Ferry.”

“I’ve never even been on the Staten Island Ferry.”

“But that’s just it! You know it’s there.”

“I’ll call you,” I said. “I’ll write.”

“You won’t write. You never write. Where are all those friends you had in high school? In college? You never bothered to stay in touch, so you lost them. It’s out of sight, out of mind with you, Cassie. I’ve been there, I know.”

“My coffee’s cold.” I brought the mug to the counter and poured myself another cup. “How many high school friends do you still talk to? We go through life meeting people and exchanging addresses; it’s not the same as friendship.”

“Thanks for clearing that up for me.”

“Oh, stop it, Drew. You’re so boring when you’re peevish.”