The Lonely Polygamist (37 page)

“It’s a present,” he said, blushing hard. “To you from me.”

There was a couple seconds’ hesitation before she took it and carefully turned it over in her hands as if checking it for booby traps; like a sweet bun just out of the oven, it was warm and a little sticky.
To Love a Scoundrel.
By the frayed, dog-eared look of it, it had been consulted often and at length.

She stared at it for a moment, attempting to arrange the appropriate expression on her face, and then she knew: he’d taken the book from his mother. It was a badly kept secret that Rose had an addiction to romance novels. How many times had she come upon her sister-wife hiding in the laundry room or the upstairs kitchen at Big House, her face pressed so deeply into a book it looked like she was trying to
taste
the thing? Trish had never called her on it, never asked what she was doing; she had a pretty good idea why Rose liked such books, aside from their questionable entertainment value. Rose read them because she wanted to know how the other half lived. The half who insinuated themselves into palace politics of the opulent high courts of Prussian royalty and danced away the blossom-scented nights at Civil War–era cotillions and patrolled the woodlands of Normandy in the company of brigands and knaves. The half who, instead of settling for a life of subservience and boredom and disappointment, were not afraid to reach for the forbidden fruits of adventure and passion. The half who, on occasion, were known to have
sex
.

Trish took a good look at the cover, which featured a busty bimbo being wrestled into submission by a shirtless ne’er-do-well. She smiled. “Well, I suppose a sincere thank-you is in order.”

Rusty made a grandly dismissive wave. “And you don’t have to get me a present or anything, even though my special birthday is coming up. I just wanted to get you something. Because I like to get people things, that’s all.”

“You didn’t have to, but thank you anyway.”

“I think you’ll enjoy it. After the dictionary and the Bible, it’s probably my favorite book.”

The crunch of tires on gravel outside brought them to the front window, where they could see June pulling up in his old pickup.

Rusty said, “What’s
he
doing here?”

“Got me,” Trish said, sliding
To Love a Scoundrel
behind one of the couch cushions. “He’s been so nice, though, fixing up whatever needs fixing.”

“He was just supposed to fix the toilet and that’s all.”

Trish held open the door for June, who came in cradling some kind of mechanical contraption with wires hanging off it.

“Hey, everybody,” he said. “Oh, hey there, Lance.”

“It’s Rusty,” Rusty said, an edge to his voice. “I already told you.”

“Rusty? Right, yeah, sorry.” He turned to Trish and grinned. He held up the contraption. “A little present for you.”

June’s presence, and that shy, aching smile of his, had made blood rush to her face and to hide this fact she covered her cheeks with her hands in a show of mock, blinking gratitude, saying, “You shouldn’t have, June! Really now!” Then she noticed Rusty, who had fixed June with a murderous glare.

“You were only supposed to fix the
toilet
.” He made an indignant snort. “You weren’t supposed to keep coming back.”

June turned to him, surprised. “I’m just, uh, helping fix a few things around here. Yeah, this is a fan motor for the swamp cooler.”

“As if,” Rusty said darkly.

“What? I came across it today at the salvage yard.”

“Oh
come on
,” Rusty said.

“What?” said June. He looked at Trish for help. “What?”

Watching these two, Trish was taken back to her high school days, when young suitors had shadowed her in the halls, asked her on dates, plied her with gifts, and competed awkwardly for her affections. She had forgotten just how good those days were.

“Rusty, honey, please,” she said. “He came to fix the swamp cooler, before it gets too hot around here. He’s trying to do us a kindness.”

She tried to put a hand on his shoulder but he pulled away and made for the front door. His voice breaking, he shouted, “And what about Big House? Huh? Everything there needs fixing, and who’s going to do that? Huh, June? Doesn’t anybody care about that?”

He pushed open the screen door, letting it slap shut behind him, and mounted his bike. “I hope you’re all happy!” he cried as he pedaled into the scarlet remnants of a sunset, socks flapping. “I hope everybody’s happy!”

A WOMAN WITH NOTHING TO LOSE

The old winery had disappeared; now there was nothing but a single bowl of flame feeding on what seemed to be the faint memory of a building, a ghost-image traced in glowing, white-hot lines. The low, flat-bottomed storm clouds had passed and now hovered on the eastern horizon, as if pausing to watch the spectacle, roiling and grumbling and throwing down the occasional stick of lighting.

Because the power had not yet been restored and it was too dark to continue on with her afternoon séance and scripture-reading session, Faye had come out to watch the fire and feed the turkeys a bag of Fritos.

Moving with the caution of a man approaching a poisonous snake, June took a couple of sideways steps and squatted down next to the girl, to meet her at eye-level.

“Stay back,” she said, without looking his way.

Slowly, he retreated a few feet. “How’s this?”

“That’s okay.”

“So,” he said, “you like turkeys, then?”

“No,” she said.

“I don’t either,” June agreed.

“You’re just saying that.”

June gave Trish a quick, uncertain glance. “No, I’m—”

“Yes, you are,” said Faye. “All grown-ups lie to children, you included.”

Trish knew that June had absolutely no chance of getting into Faye’s good graces—nobody did, nobody ever had—but it was sure nice, she thought, to watch someone giving it a try.

It didn’t take long for everybody to become bored with the fire, including the turkeys, who were more interested in Fritos, and the volunteer firemen, who now appeared to be sitting on top of their water truck playing cards.

Trish turned toward the house, and as if a spell had been broken, the turkeys began to disperse. June looked up at the purple sky as if noting the weather. He nodded. “I should probably be getting going…”

“You’re welcome to stay,” Trish said. “At least let me get you something to drink. I haven’t offered you anything.”

“If you want I could go ahead and install the fan motor I brought by the other day.” He kicked at the dirt beneath his boots, gave the fire one last look. “I’ve got a couple hours free.”

“Nonsense,” Trish said, guiding him by the arm toward the house. “It’ll be dark soon and the power’s still out. And I can’t let you go tromping around on top of the house in this weather.”

June looked down at his boots as if consulting them. “All right. Maybe I’ll stay a minute or two.”

He stayed most of the evening. The electricity still off, they roasted hot dogs over the stove’s gas burner and popped popcorn in an industrial-sized pot. At some point there was a knock at the front door, which Trish opened to reveal a nervously grinning Maureen Sinkfoyle. Trish took up a territorial stance in the doorway and had to fight off the urge to slam the door in the poor woman’s face.

“Hello, there!” cried Maureen, who wore a wrinkled windbreaker and was cradling something in her arms. Her hair, normally poufed to the limit, had collapsed in the bad weather, which gave her the sad, flopping aspect of a deflated hot-air balloon.

“What can I do for you, Maureen?”

“Oh! Well, I was just stopping by to see if you and your girl were doing all right. I brought some candles”—she showed Trish the bunch of emergency candles she was clutching against her chest—“just in case you needed some, looks like the power might be off through the night, I already dropped off some at Rose and Nola’s, my husband—
ex
-husband, I mean! I keep forgetting that!—he used to be big into emergency preparedness, I mean before he abandoned me and the boys, which was an emergency none of us were prepared for! Ha! So we had a whole box of these things lying around and I thought—”

To put a stop to this speech Trish stepped out from behind the screen door, accepted the candles, and quickly retreated to her original position. Maureen was a pitiful figure, abandoned and desperate, pathetic in her ill-fitting clothes and dismantled hairdo, who reminded Trish, in altogether too many ways, of herself. So why couldn’t she work up any empathy for this person? Why did she view her as nothing but a threat to the contentment and security she didn’t really possess? Why did she want to wrench the screen door off its hinges and scratch the poor woman’s eyes out?

“I’ll help you light them…if you want,” Maureen said haltingly, no doubt unsettled by the look on Trish’s face. “I’m not doing anything else right now.”

Trish took a quick glance into the family room, where June’s work boots were visible from the entryway.

Maureen said, “Is somebody here?”

“What? No.” Trish crowded the door and lowered her voice. “No, no. It’s just me. Me and Faye.”

“Would you have a minute or two to chat, then? All this time, and we’ve never really had the chance to talk—”

“I’m so sorry,” Trish said. As she spoke, she gradually nudged the door with her foot, as if it were closing on its own accord and there was precious little she could do about it. “I’ve got things on the stove and Faye, she isn’t feeling very well, and thanks so much for these candles, Maureen, it was really kind of you…” Then the latch clicked shut, and Trish waited, holding her breath, until Maureen stepped off the porch and could be seen crossing the lawn toward her car.

Sighing, her arms full of candles, Trish stepped back into the family room. June was on the couch, studying
To Love a Scoundrel
, which, in her hurry to get out of the house earlier this afternoon, she had left on the coffee table, right out in the open. It was past dusk and the room was filled with an eerie dimness tainted with the smoky glow of the still-smoldering fire, and in the semidarkness June was holding the book right up next to his face, reading the back cover.

Trish dropped the candles. “That thing,” she said. “That’s not really mine, it was a gift…”

“I’m sorry,” June said, putting the book back down on the table and then quickly picking it up and offering it to her, his face turned to the side. “I didn’t know it was anything…” She took it from him and tried to think of a good place to put it—maybe toss it in the trash, act like it was something that had blown in with the storm and needed to be disposed of. She looked at the ridiculous cover and then at June, whose eyes were open wide with alarm, and she laughed. She said, “You ever read one of these things?”

“Which things do you mean?”

“Trashy romance novels. Like this one here.”

“Only—only every day,” June said. “Usually, you know, right before knitting club.”

“Oh, so I guess you’ve probably read this one, then?”

“Probably. Yeah. Which one is that again? I’ve read so many I get confused.”

“
To Love a Scoundrel
by Alice M. Montbeclaire.”

“Oh yeah, yes, a classic. Up there with
Beowulf
and, uh,
Gone with the Wind
. Remind me what
Scoundrel
is about.”

“Well, you have Sir Nigel Mountcastle, of course…”

“Oh my gosh, Sir Nigel Mountcastle! How could anyone forget him?”

She put a hand on her hip. “Do you want me to tell you or not?”

June inserted an imaginary key into his lips and turned it. “Please proceed, yeah, I cease to interrupt.” She filled him in on the basics: how Sir Nigel Mountcastle, the Scoundrel of the title, had freed Lady Jane Welshingham from an Irish insane asylum, in which she had been confined under mysterious circumstances, with the agreement that she would become his personal maidservant for a year. Of course, Lady Jane falls for Sir Nigel’s rakish charms, even though he humiliates her at every turn, requiring her to feed him by hand, powder his wigs, and give him his weekly milk bath.

“Ah yes,” June said, eyes closed, trying not to laugh, “the milk bath. It’s all coming back now.”

“The milk bath is for his constitution, of course.” She described how during one of the weekly baths Lady Jane simply couldn’t help herself and ended up stealing a sip of milk from the hollow of Sir Nigel’s collarbone. They were locked in their first passionate kiss, sloshing around wantonly in a tub of milk, when the Earl of Buckington, Lady Jane’s husband, burst in and had them arrested on trumped-up charges of adultery and treason. By the time she had finished the explanation about how Sir Nigel and Lady Jane escaped from Newgate Prison by covering themselves with lamp oil and squeezing through the bars, Trish and June were both laughing so hard their eyes watered and June was punching a pillow with his fist.

Once she had come up for air, Trish held out the book. “You know where I got this thing?”

“
Where?
” June said, his voice pitched and girlish, and for some reason this sent them into another round of laughter that had them grasping at their stomachs and gasping for air.

“Rusty,” she said, finally, breathing hard. “That’s why he went away so mad the other day. He gave me this as a present and then you stopped by and one-upped him with the motor for the swamp cooler.”

June sobered considerably. He sat up on the couch and wiped his face. “I did? I didn’t mean to.”

“I know,” Trish said. “Don’t worry about it. I think he may have a little bit of a crush on me.”

“Well, that’s…” June nodded and inhaled deeply. “That’s completely understandable.”

The moment the words came out, June stiffened and there was a sudden increase in atmospheric pressure: the easy hilarity drained away in a second, leaving behind a wire of tension pulled tight, waiting to be plucked. June stood, looking around, patting at his pockets as if searching for a way to tactfully withdraw.

“I should really…” He pointed to the door. “Thanks for the hot dogs and everything. Good popcorn!”