Talk of the Town (11 page)

"There's no room in anyone's life for 'em," Harley said from the doorway, startling her. It was a favorite game of his since childhood. "They're too big. I've been telling you that. Who's going to put something like that in their living room?" he asked, long-legging it across the concrete floor, assuming that she'd been talking to her sculptures. "They're okay. I mean, they're not a piece of sheet metal with four holes in it, not as lame as most of 'em in that book of yours. They're sort of interesting. Different. But they aren't beautiful, Mom. Not like the others." He wrapped a supportive arm around her shoulders and added, "You can talk to 'em all you want, but I don't think it's gonna help. They're not like flowers, you know."

~*~

"Those flowers out front are beautiful," she told Lu one morning. "When did you plant them?"

"They're perennial. They come up every year."

"They do?" She looked out the window at them. "Were they there last year?"

"Every year since I bought this place. Where have you been?"

Rose couldn't tell her.

~*~

She spent too much time Wednesday morning wondering what to wear. Generally she wore her red apron over jeans and some sort of shirt, with her worn-out sneakers. But for no reason she wanted to think about, that particular Wednesday she felt like wearing something a little different, a little nicer. . . . For no good reason.

Her room looked like Harley's by the time she decided to go with her newest blue jeans, a green plaid cotton oxford shirt, and her good white sneakers with the black smudges across the toes. She'd have to be careful not to get gravy or spaghetti sauce on them. You couldn't blast Lu's spaghetti sauce stains out with dynamite.

"New shoes?" Danny O'Brian asked when she entered the diner. It was three in the afternoon, and he was still out to lunch.

"No. They've got smudges. See?"

"Sure look new," he insisted.

"Well, they're newer than my old ones, but they're not brand new."

Lord above. You'd have thought she was wearing diamonds and pearls. Any minor deviation from the norm, and tongues started wagging. Next they'd start thinking she was dressed up for something special.

"That's a nice plaid with that red hair of yours," Emma Motley, Redgrove's postmistress, commented kindly.

"It's not new either. What is this sudden interest in my clothes? I wear shirts and sneakers every day, and you don't say anything about it. What's so special about today?" she asked, a bit testy. "I've had this shirt for six years. I just don't wear it often. . . ."

Her voice trailed off when she noticed that her attitude was drawing more attention than her clothes.

"You know," Lu said, poising a pencil at her lips thoughtfully. "I don't think I've seen you wear that particular shade of lipstick before. What's it called?"

She fought a sudden impulse to chew it all off.

"She don't usually wear lipstick, does she?" Emma asked, seeming confused. "Nor rouge neither, come to think of it."

"Who's this we're talking about now," Lucy Flan-nary asked, entering the diner. She walked up to her usual stool at the lunch counter and set her purse on the seat beside her, saying, "Martin is driving me crazy today. We ordered in some new summer cottons, and he's over there mixing and matching the colors with all the blues here and the reds there, and the oranges and the yellows, and ‘is this more red or more orange?’ he asks me. ‘Is this one more green or blue?’ I rue the day that man retired. I swear he's going to drive me to drink. I'll have a cherry cola, Lu. Now, who doesn't wear rouge?"

"Rosie," Danny and Emma said together. Emma nodded, "Nor lipstick neither."

Lucy considered Rose for a moment, then said, "Well, sure she does. What's the matter with you? Not that she needs to with that fine redheaded complexion she's got, but she always looks really pretty on Sundays when she brings Harley to church and when she goes down to see that artsy fella in the city and for the church socials and . . . well, for most special events."

They all looked at Rose. She could almost hear the gears in their heads grinding and screaming, metal against metal, as they tried to recall exactly what it was that was so special about that particular Wednesday. It was deafening.

"It's lipstick, for crying out loud!" she exclaimed, her hands palm up in front of her. "A little powdered blush. That's all." She pointed an accusing finger at Lu.

"She wears it all the time. And eye shadow too."

But you're not Lu
was written all over their faces.

"It's nothing. A whim. Oh, you people are impossible. Think whatever you like," she said confidently, knowing that Gary wouldn't come until closing time and that her lipstick would be long gone by then. She took a clean red apron from the linen cupboard and snapped it smartly before tying it around her waist. Her arms akimbo, she addressed Lu in a businesslike fashion, "What's the dinner special?"

Strange. Fried chicken with potatoes and thick, sticky gravy, kernel corn, and biscuits seemed to appeal to almost everyone in town that night. Lucy left to close up the fabric shop and returned with Martin to have dinner at the diner. Danny O'Brian called his wife from the hardware store and said he'd treat her to a dinner out if she'd meet him at Lulu's about six-thirty. Some of the fishermen came straight from their boats at sundown, families in tow. Several lumberjacks, old buddies of Earl, moseyed in with their wives and children.

By eight Lu had called Harley and Earl on the phone and sent them after buckets of the Colonel's chicken in Arcata. And could they stop at Safeway for potato flakes and instant gravy? Maybe a few more cans of corn and those tubes of biscuits too? And be sure to come to the back door. . . .

Rose was too busy to be suspicious until she noticed that they were lingering over their desserts and she was pouring gallons of coffee by the cup. Why weren't they leaving? She looked at the clock. Nine-thirty. They closed at ten-thirty. Gary said he'd come late. If they didn't start leaving pretty soon, they'd all be there when he came and ...

Oh no. Instant headache.

She heard Lu chuckling in the-kitchen and looked up as she plopped a cherry atop a root beer float.

"What's so funny?" she asked, praying Gary wouldn't do anything stupid like . . . smile at her when he got there.

"I was just wondering if you were planning to wear lipstick again tomorrow. The special is liver and onions."

She gave her a torpid look.

"Why are they doing this to me?" she whispered miserably. "Don't they have televisions? Don't any of them collect stamps or go bowling or knit or have anything else more interesting to do than to watch me?"

"In a word, no,'' she said. The look on Rose's face tore at her heart, and she took mercy on her. "Look, honey, don't let it get to you. They love you."

"Right."

"They do. And you've been asking for this for . . . well, for at least the ten years I've known you."

"What are you talking about? Asking for what?"

She set the float on the counter and leaned into the window as for as she could. "I haven't done anything."

"My point exactly. Rosie, honey, you've been walking a very fine, very straight line for the past fifteen years. You've kept your nose too clean, your life too quiet. Too mistake-proof for too long. Gary's the first exciting thing that's happened to you since Harley was born. They just want to share it with you, is all."

"Is all?" She would have said more—something about the right to privacy and the unprincipled practices of small-town gossipmongers—but the bell over the front door jingled and she had a temporary heart attack.

Harley and Earl walked in, looking around the diner with great curiosity. Several people at the lunch counter moved down a space so they could take the last two seats side by side.

"Hey, Mom. What's happenin'?"

"Nothing. Is your homework done?"

"Yeah. What's goin' on here?"

"Nothing. What are you doing here? Why aren't you getting ready for bed? Earl, do you want an iced tea?" The old man gave her a quick nod.

"He was worried," Harley said, speaking of his grandfather. "Couldn't figure out why there were still so many people over here at this time of night. Thought you might need more chicken or somethin'."

"I don't know why everyone's still here, honey," she said, extra loud. "You'd think they were all watching for a circus to come through town."

Harley grinned, a Redgrover born and bred.

"Well, it's not coming," he shouted back at her. "The ringmaster called to say he couldn't make it tonight. He'll be here tomorrow."

The low moan of disappointment that rumbled through the diner set Rose's cheeks ablaze. And when people started reaching for their jackets and sweaters and pushing their sleepy children to stand and leave, tears of embarrassment gathered in her eyes. The words "stood up" drifted through the air once or twice, and she wished the linoleum floor would open up and swallow her.

The jingle of the bells over the door set off an angry alarm in her head.

"The special tomorrow night is liver and onions," she called to her neighbors as they left. "And if you stay for the show, you'll have to buy tickets!"

"Harley!" She yelled loud enough for him to hear her at the back of the garage where he'd been banging a basketball against the wall for the past two hours. She was holding a heavy piece of six-inch metal tubing above her head. "Har-ley. Come help me." The pounding on the wall stopped, but the throbbing in her head continued. "Hustle it."

She caught a movement to her left through the small window in her mask. "I broke my vise. See if you can find another, will you? And hurry, please, this is heavy." Tools clinked and clanked behind her, arid her arms grew weaker by the second. "Hell's bells, just forget it," she snapped with instant regret. Earlier he'd likened her disposition to Godzilla on PCP, and it was extremely irritating every time she proved him right. "Come hold this and I'll find it."

The weight was released immediately, and she looked up to make sure he had a good hold, but the hands she saw weren't Harley's. She twisted her neck sharply, and painfully, to meet Gary's eyes through the window of her mask. Her heart jumped into her throat.

"Where'd you come from?"

"What?"

"Where'd you come from?"

His eyes twinkled in at her. "Heaven?"

She let go of the pipe, stepped around him, and pushed up her mask on the way to her work table.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Nothing much. Until you started screaming, I was shootin' hoops with Harley. But then I came running in here to rescue you."

That wasn't what she meant, but she knew he knew that. Why couldn't he just answer her questions? Couldn't he simply start explaining the whys and the wherefores without her having to ask specifically where he was and why he hadn't come the night before? She kept her back to him, torn between an everlasting gratitude that he hadn't shown up at the diner, and eternal loathing for having stood her up in front of nearly everyone she knew. She vacillated between an unmistakable joy and excitement at seeing him again, and the dull ache of common sense in her head that was advising her to run for her life.

Okay. She was a little confused.

She tossed heavy tools back and forth on the table, then glanced over her shoulder at him. "How long have you been here?"

"A couple hours, I think You were working, so the kid offered me the opportunity to work up a good sweat." He didn't look sweaty. He looked big and healthy and handsome. "He's got one hell of a slam dunk. He's good."

"He should be. I've spent a small fortune on basketballs for him to bang against that wall over the last nine or ten years. It's a wonder they haven't come all the way through yet," she said, though she had never really begrudged Harley his basketballs. Last season he played on the varsity team as a high school freshman, and no mother could have been prouder than Rose Wickum.

"Not to change the subject," he said mildly. "But I hear you missed me last night."

"What?" Her voice broke and squeaked as she spun around to face him. Would this nightmare never end?

He chuckled, adjusting his hands on the pipe so he could turn and see her better. "Would you mind taking your hood off? All I can see is your eyes. You look like an owl in there."

"Yes, I would mind." Her face was on fire. "I'm working."

"Is that what you're looking for there?" he asked, holding the pipe with one hand and waving a finger of the other at the table.

"Don't drop that now," she said, scanning for the spare vise in a hurry. "I don't have a solid weld on it yet." She found it. "And I didn't miss you. I was glad you didn't show up. Did Harley tell you what happened?"

He bowed his body to let her in front of him, closer to the joint she was working on, and watched her long, thin fingers deftly fit and fasten the clamp. He liked her hands. They were graceful, strong, and sure. They were talented hands.

"He said the whole town missed me last night. I guess I assumed that meant you did too."

"That's your problem," she said, grunting as she tightened the clamp with all her strength. "You assume a lot."

"Humph. I wasn't aware that I had a problem. Another false assumption, I assume."

The digging humor in his voice told her that if he thought he could get away with it, he'd put his fingers to her ribs and tickle a smile to her lips.

She took a deep breath.

"At least this way we can talk in private," she said, turning to face him. "You can let go now."

He did, and he let his arms fall down behind her, skillfully catching her in his embrace.

"Are we going to talk serious?" he asked, peering through the opening in the mask at her.

"'Yes," she said, acting indifferent to his nearness while her pulse raced. Fighting him would only make him think she cared, or was a little too excited, or that she enjoyed being there too much. Indifference wouldn't tell him anything. "Very serious. This has got to stop. I can't—"