Warm Wuinter's Garden (6 page)

Nita hesitated before giving him her
briefcase.

“You don’t look too good. Food? Flu? Let me
drop you off somewhere.”

Nita whispered, “No. I’m okay.”

“That’s perjury, counselor.”

“Really?”

“Where’s your car?”

She pointed.

Herlick wedged his arm under her elbow and
walked her to her car.

“You want something cold? Why don’t you sit
here and I’ll go find some water or something.”

“No, no, thanks. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. It’s your call.”

“Thanks.”

“No sweat.”

“And sorry.”

“For what?”

“Back there. Being catty.”

“Cats aren’t bad. I like cats. Especially,
when they purr. See you around, Koster.”

Nita sat back as still as possible against
the warm leather seat as her car went through a digitized
synthesized equivalent of Herlick’s nattering. She wondered about
the culmination of American technological civilization being a
narcissistic car eagerly relaying mostly useless information about
its
ﾁ
seat belts,
its
fuel reserves,
its
temperature, and the status of
its
doors. Nita was more concerned with how she, rather,
than the car, felt. She thought that if the automobile
manufacturers were smarter they would install sensors that would
measure the blood pressure, stress and pain levels of the car’s
occupants and make some accommodations for those factors. How nice
it would be to get into her car after a long horrible day and have
it say, “
Your
fuel reserves are low. Eat a snack.” Or,
“
Your
battery is low. Go right home and take a nap.” Or,
“
Your
generator is malfunctioning. Go shopping. Treat
yourself.” The voice chip could be etched with the digitized
version of the owner’s mother’s voice. Whatever were the owner’s
family bromides for anxiety, fatigue, or depression, they could be
programmed onto the chip. Nita mused how, once in awhile, it would
be nice to be told what to do. It would be welcome if, right now,
her car were to tell her to go home to bed rather than to go back
to the office to finish the rest of the day’s work that she had
scheduled for herself.

As Nita lay back surrounded by the comforting
hum the car made as it lowered
its
temperature, Nita thought
of how nice it would be to have someone put cold compresses on her
head and rub her stomach.

When Nita’s periods first began, the pain
kept her in bed for, at least, one and, usually, two days each
month. Bett would minister to her. It had become a ritual that
every few months, as she rubbed away the spasms in Nita’s body,
Bett would tell Nita how sorry she was. She had wanted another
baby. She had done what the doctor had suggested. No one had known
the problems that DES would cause. Nita would reassure Bett that
one or two days of pain a month was a very small price to pay for
such a wonderful mother. Bett would expiate; Nita would absolve. In
all of the hours of intimacy, as the mother tended to the
daughter’s pain and the daughter reciprocated, there had never been
a moment so intimate that they discussed the fact, that eight years
after Nita was born, Bett accidentally had become pregnant with
Lise and had carried her to within two weeks of term without the
help of DES.

The guilt each carried for the other’s hurt
grew smaller after Nita found that Naprosyn relieved her worst
pains. It grew smaller still the following year when Nita reached
twenty-five, the magic cut-off point, without developing uterine
cancer. For both, it had felt so good to have the guilt gone that
they tiptoed around each other to prevent a recurrence. As Nita,
free from fear, added entry after entry to her collection of men,
as she passed thirty unmarried, as research grew stronger on the
difficulty DES babies had in carrying their own babies to term,
and, then, when she stopped going out with anyone, she and her
mother talked of other things.

Despite the throbbing of her body, Nita was
glad to be having the pain alone in her car rather than with her
family at Clarke’s Cove. Being sick at home gave her a strange
feeling. It was the same sense of aloof intimacy, of removed
proximity, that she had when she was being crushed in a crowd of
strangers in a subway car.

Nita considered how as she grew older more of
life felt like a subway ride. As she drove to her office, she
wondered at the price she paid to stay aloof, to stay safe.
Inviolability was expensive. It protected her, but in the shadow of
protection grew isolation. As her past grew longer and its
tentacles rooted her, as they insinuated themselves into all that
was to come, as the weight of her habits grew more immovable, would
she end up cold, safe and alone? No one even to hold her arm. She
was startled to hear a small anguished sound fill the car for just
a moment before being absorbed into the plush upholstery. She
pushed a button to let the late afternoon August heat rush
inside.

Lise Koster squinched her face into a tight
knot of tanned and freckled flesh. Ever since she was a little
girl, the youngest of four, always listening to more grown-up
conversation, she had found squinching helped her to
understand.

“So what’d you do?” she asked.

“I snarled back.”

Brad Denoit hunched his back. His mane of
long black hair fell forward from his shoulders. The hair combined
with the expanse of white teeth he had exposed by pulling back his
lips gave him a feral look.

Lise tipped her blond curl-topped head
sideways to offer up her jugular vein.

“What’d he do?”

“Turned tail. But, not for long. A few
minutes later he was back again. I pretended not to notice. He got
even closer this time. He must have been within a yard of my
ankle.”

“That gives me the shivers.”

“He took another half-step. I whipped around
and barked so loud my throat cracked.”

“Did he leave?”

“Not really. He went back out on the
sidewalk. Shepherds can be so stupid. But, tenacious. He sat out
there snarling. I’m trying to get my tent repacked, but every time
bend over to make a fold, I can feel him getting ready to go for
me. He kept snarling and inching closer. I gave up. Slammed into
the house, got my forty-five, stuck it in my pants and came
slamming back out.”

“You didn’t shoot him, did you? My God,
Brad.”

Lise grabbed Brad’s tie-dyed tee-shirt sleeve
to implore him that the story not end in the dog’s death.

“I came off the porch staring at him. He
stared right back. A contest of wills. So be it. I pulled out the
gun, kicked off the safety, chambered a shell and pointed it right
at him. That gave him pause. He stopped snarling. He could tell
something was different. I started walking toward him with the
barrel lined up on his nose. When I was about five feet away he
started up again.”

Brad growled.

“I took another step. The barrel was this
close to his head.”

Lise dropped Brad’s sleeve and backed up two
steps to get some distance from the tragedy that she knew was about
to happen. Her voice broke as she asked, “And?”

“He started quivering. I don’t think he
himself knew whether he was going to charge or run. I moved. Just
inches. He barked. Kind of strangled. He moved. BOOM!”

“You killed him.”

“No. He’d chickened and ran. I shot past him.
Blew a big chunk out of the street. His owner was down the street.
He heard the sound. Looked up. And saw that pissant killer of his
motivating hard toward home.”

“I can’t believe you shot a gun off in town.
Yes, I can. You’re lucky he didn’t call the cops.”

Lise’s voice teetered between disgust and
admiration.

“Hey, Lise, the guy a jerk.
ﾁ
He knew what the dog’s about. Probably
trained him. He’s a skinhead. Probably has a lot of interesting
ideas. Jack boots, uniforms and snarling dogs. He understands
intimidation. If that dog’s not in my yard, he’ll be fine. You
know, he’s not been back. If only students learned their lessons
that well.”

Lise had closed up the distance between Brad
and herself. She wrapped a small hand around part of his bicep.

“It was a nice lesson in that tent.”

A foot taller than Lise, Brad had to look
down to find her eyes hidden under her mop of corn straw hair.

“We’ve reviewed your progress and you’re up
for a merit badge, Scout.”

“I think I earned it. I know my camp
craft.”

“You did. You do. And I need to earn my
assistantship. I’ve got to get some work done on my lectures. I
can’t believe classes start in a week. I still don’t know what I’m
going to do in that ethics class.”

Lise stretched her mouth wide as if she had
bitten into the alum of a grape seed.

“What’s the word I told you I never can
remember? You know, the laundry soap one.”

“Oxymoron.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Forget it, Lise. Business ethics isn’t one.
Most business people are pretty straight. Academic ethics or
professional ethics, like legal ethics, now, those are oxymorons.
I’ve got to run. I’ll give you a call later.”

“Avoiding a discussion?”

“No, Lise. I’m just busy. If you hear a loud
noise and see a chunk of road fly for sub-orbit, then, you can be
sure I’m avoiding a discussion.”

Brad turned toward the door.

“Oh, I almost forgot. Did you talk to your
dad?”

“About the bank stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. He said fine. He said it wasn’t
something that he knew a lot about, but he’d be happy to talk.”

“That’s great. Even if he doesn’t know that
much, he’s sure to know some people who can help. This could be
some great research. I’m excited. Thanks.”

Brad noticed Lise’s squint.

“What?” he asked.

“What about the mountains?”

“Either’s fine. You choose. I really gotta
get moving.”

Lise growled at Brad’s back as he left the
lab. A few minutes later she was staring into the eyepiece of the
electron microscope without attending to any of the kaleidoscopic
swirl of organic material caught on the slide. She fidgeted. She
pulled her knees up high enough that she could wedge the heels of
her sneakers on the top rung of the lab stool. The zebra-striped
high top sneakers and black men’s socks looked incongruous with her
white lab coat. Where the coat fell open, deeply tanned knees and
thighs showed until they were covered by the black and silver
spandex of a pair of bicycle pants. Lise pulled the collar tabs of
her lab coat up higher so she put them into her mouth to chew. She
always thought better when she was chewing on something.

Brad wanted to go to Rhode Island with her
for Labor Day weekend. He wanted to meet her family, and talk to
her dad. Lise wasn’t sure that was such a good idea. It might be
too soon in the relationship to drop him into a vat of Kosters.
Dilly would follow him around all weekend with a pair of scissors
trying to trim his hair. Dilly’s husband, Bill, suspecting an
inverse relationship between length of hair and intelligence, would
ignore him. Nita would just be cool. There would be the kids
zooming around. Her father would pass on to Brad, as if they were
heirlooms, the family’s collection of strange things that Lise had
done. Her mother, as always, would be wonderful. She would know
where to seat Brad, what to feed him, and how to make him feel
welcome. That he had shoulder length hair, that “Vincit Veritas”
was tattooed on the skin over his heart, that he was an avid
hunter, that he had drifted around the country and in and out of
school and jobs for almost ten years before deciding that he wanted
a doctorate in business, all that, all information which would be
of the utmost importance to Dilly or Bill, would be less important
to her mother than whether Brad made eye contact when he spoke to
her.

If they didn’t go to Clarke’s Cove, they
could spend three days hiking. Maybe where the most easterly peaks
of the White Mountains tumbled over into Maine north of Lake
Sebago. Of course, they could expect that the holiday traffic up
and down Route 95 would be overwhelming. Unless they avoided
traveling on Friday evening and someway missed Monday afternoon and
night. Probably not a prayer for a camp-site this late. The trails
would be crowded. As noisy as a shopping mall parking lot. At
least, until they got into the higher elevations. But, if they
persisted, they would be rewarded with the deafening quiet of
rushing air and the awe-filled vertigo of looking down at three
thousand feet of gray rock and green leaves falling out from under
their feet. Somewhere along the path, sitting on a cool outcropping
eating cheese and chocolate or after breaking out of a stand of
pines into a bush-pocked lea, they would have one of their
discussions.

Despite how much physical fun they had both
in and out of bedrooms, to Lise, the best part of their
relationship was their discussions. One would pull out an idea,
long stored away from the ridicule of those more commonly wise, to
offer to the other. The giver would wait for the other’s response
with the same guardedness that a cook has when serving a new dish.
A taste. A smile. And the talk would begin. Intoxicating talk. That
was the best.

The previous week, on a drive out of Boston,
she had noticed a preternaturally early pumpkin sitting at the base
of a shock of still green corn. She had complained of the rampant
commercialism of having the trappings of Halloween displayed in
August. Wasn’t anything sacred? Brad had told her that that was the
scientist part of her talking. For all their talk of freedom, most
scientists hated rule breakers. Ruled behavior ruled them. They
were really only comfortable with the accumulations of the past.
Tradition. In contrast, business people, at least entrepreneurs,
were rule breakers. They hated the past. That was what capitalism
was all about. Dumping tradition. Dreaming something new. Trusting
in the power of a dream.