Yellowcake (25 page)

"Kayaking, Lily? What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking, Fred," and she takes a breath, "that a hands-on vacation, one where we're forced to interact in all ways, physically, emotionally, all ways, would be so much more invigorating than one where we listen to a tour guide and ride around on a bus."

Fred, wide-eyed, stares at her, amazed but smiling. "Kayaking." He shakes his head. The waitress refills his coffee cup, pours some for Lily, and takes their orders. Lily is surprised that Fred doesn't order eggs Benedict as he usually does. Even though they've been going out for less than two months, she has begun to feel really comfortable with him. She feels as if they have "usuals." If they went on
The Dating Game
she would say with confidence "eggs Benedict" when asked what he likes best for breakfast, just as he could say, with confidence, "granola and low-fat yogurt" for her. But today he surprises her and orders granola himself. She wonders if he's dieting. He actually said something yesterday about wanting to drop a few pounds. She says nothing, though. She read somewhere that calling attention to a dieter's food choices can stymie the best intentions.

"Have you ever kayaked before?" he says.

"No. But that's the point. They say their trips are designed as perfect introductions to the sport. Plus, Fred, it's amazingly inexpensive. We could go for fifteen days, camping most nights, and they provide the food. Twelve hundred dollars each, and that includes airfare."

Fred shakes his head. "Nope. You might get me in a kayak, but you're not getting me to sleep on the ground. You and me, Lily, will be sleeping in beds. Big beds." He nods once. Lily puts her elbows on the table, props her chin on her fists, sticks out her lower lip, then laughs.

"Okay. No camping trips, but..."

"Yeah, yeah, we're going to do it your way, I've been thinking about it, it's a good idea, interacting, physical, emotional, whatever it was you said. You decide. I just insist that we eat in restaurants and sleep in beds, private beds with private baths." She smiles at him. He winks, stirs the yogurt and granola, spoons a mouthful, and chews.

Really, it amazes her how well they get along. As she drives home, she thinks about how much fun it is to disagree with Fred, because it's not like a disagreement at all, just a friendly spat, almost like he's only pretending to disagree. He is the only man she's ever met who seems completely comfortable with himself.

She has a lot to do. She's got to find the perfect tour, one that will combine day hikes, perhaps some boating, and dancing at night. He told her not to look at the cost—whatever it is, it'll be fine. He is so generous. She's buying the plane tickets, he's taking care of everything else.

As she turns onto Crestview Drive, she decides not to do this over the phone but to make an appointment with the travel agent. It's time to make some preliminary reservations, and she'd rather do that in person. She notices but doesn't really pay attention to the old truck parked in front of her house, a truck that on second glance seems familiar.

She pulls into her drive, hits the remote to open the garage door, and stops breathing. Sam is sitting on her porch.

 

"You look good, Lily," Sam says.

He sits across from her at the breakfast bar, turning his coffee cup around in its saucer. "So do you, Sam," she says. In fact, he looks precisely the same as he had the last time she saw him, and yet utterly different. His face is completely unlined, though his eyes seem more deeply set, eye sockets protruding, eyebrows thin and white, and his hair is snow white where it used to be white-blond. It's jagged, as if he cuts it himself. And he shakes occasionally. It's almost undetectable, like a very subtle tremor shuddering through his body.

"Nice place," Sam says. He looks around, taking in the sunny kitchen with its oak center island, the stainless steel grate hanging from the ceiling on which she has hung all of her copper pots and pans, the Spanish tiled floor, all of it.

"Thanks." Lily massages the warm coffee cup. Her fingers are freezing.

Sam shakes his head, his lips pulling into a thin smile. He says, "Good for you, Lily. You're doing good."

And his eyes are suddenly kind and warm, a look she used to wait for and hardly ever saw. He looks out the window into her backyard. She has a quarter acre of Kentucky blue grass backed by a thicket of ponderosa pine. "Nice yard."

"It's a jungle," she says. "We've been getting bears this summer, coming down from the mountains. A couple of weeks ago I saw the cutest little cub with its mom. They're getting used to people because people are invading the high country. But they're—"

"How'd you do this, Lily?"

"Do what?"

"This is a big house. You got a job? You didn't used to work."

"Oh." She shrugs. "Some lucky investments. That's all. My half of your pension got me started."

He gazes at her with an expression that almost looks like admiration. "Good—for—you." He nods after each word. "You know what, Lily, we were all wrong, weren't we? You're so much better without me."

She gets up and walks to the stove, where the coffee is on a warmer. "Well, we were young. You want something to eat, Sam?"

"Yes, we were. No thanks."

"Seems like a lifetime ago. How about you, Sam? Everything okay?" She takes the coffee to the table, pouring some into his cup, then hers. He's scratching his hand, up and down, up and down, like he used to when his eczema bloomed occasionally, a warning sign, always a warning sign that he was about to disappear, that she could expect to sleep alone for a while. Tics. She studies him. Every one of his little tics used to send her on an emotional journey that left her achy and weak. All the tics are still there. The scratching that would terrify her, the sudden kindness that would melt her, the shabbiness that would make her want to mother him. But she watches them from a distance. He seems like a dear toy that she has put away.

"Yeah, not bad. Everything seems so long ago. I was downtown this morning. Went over to the old neighborhood. You know where Little Santa Rita used to be? Now it's a park."

"Santa Rita Park."

"It's a different town," he says. "Where the mill was? They've put some kind of shopping center or something right where the tailings pile used to be. Remember that?" He laughs. "Remember me planting grass up there after we closed the mill?"

"And now Ryland's sick."

"Hell, we're all sick one way or another. Maybe not you, though, Lily. You've weathered well."

"So what are you doing in this part of the country, Sam?"

He tells her he came to watch Maggie get married. Which she didn't want to hear.
That
she didn't expect. Sam at the wedding. Meeting Fred. She has already played the wedding out in her head, introducing him to Rosy, to Ryland—but not to Sam.

Scratching. "Lily," he says, his voice hitching up a notch. "Lily, I was wondering, do you have any of my old records? Birth certificate? Army discharge papers? Things like that. Because I don't. I don't know where they are."

"I think so. I might. They might be in storage. I don't think I threw anything away."

He nods, his shoulders moving with his head. "I'd like to get them." He stands up.

"Okay. Well, I'll go out there and look. They're in a storage unit. I'm pretty busy today, but—" She starts to say she'll go tomorrow but thinks again. She doesn't want to see him tomorrow. It's very, very odd, because for years she imagined running into him, fantasized about him rounding a corner somewhere, rehearsed the encounter again and again. She'd gone into therapy. The therapist said that she and Sam never had closure, and that was a problem. It's time, she decides, for closure with Sam. "I'll go out today, Sam. I know right where to look. I can meet you this afternoon. At the park?"

"Okay. When?"

"Two o'clock. No, four." She has to call her lawyer. She hopes he's not on the golf course. "Sam? Well, this is a little awkward, but—" She doesn't know how to begin about the divorce papers, but now she's certain, absolutely, that it's time to get that business taken care of. Last week she ran her hypothetical situation by her lawyer, and he'd told her that a person would have to draw up new papers because the papers have to be filed within a certain period of time. She wonders how long it will take.

She begins haltingly to tell Sam about the little snafu with their divorce papers, and how she'll need his John Hancock again, and hopefully she can get everything together for him to sign by this afternoon. He listens, standing in the kitchen doorway, head down, staring at the floor. "So four o'clock?" she says.

He says nothing.

"Sam?"

"Lily?" His voice is a hoarse whisper. "What are you saying?" He looks at her now, eyes earnest and questioning.

"It's just a technicality, Sam."

He blinks several times, shaking his head, his mouth trembling, and suddenly he's laughing, holding himself, falling against the door frame, almost losing his balance, almost falling down, his eyes tearing. He sputters, "Lily, Lily, Lily," reeling around and staggering, knocking over a dining room chair in his rush to get out of the house and out the front door. Lily hurries after him. From the porch she calls, "Four o'clock, then." He waves his hand over his head, a two-fingered salute.

 

He's not there when she gets to the park a little before four. Nobody's in the park, which is not surprising, since it's the hottest part of the day. She sits in her car, the air conditioning running, watching the road for his truck. Her lawyer said he couldn't have the papers ready until early next week, a big disappointment. But at least Sam will be in the area for a while. She won't make him drive back up here. She'll make an appointment with him somewhere in Farmington and take the papers to him. She's got everything else he wanted, every scrap of paper she could find in storage that had anything to do with him. It's all sitting next to her in a box.

All day she's been rushing around, getting ready for this meeting, and now he's making her wait, just like old times. Was there ever a time when Sam waited for her? Never. She opens the car door, steps out onto the hot pavement, walks to the nearest picnic table. She's nervous, couldn't eat lunch. She's been on high energy all day, finds it hard to sit still. She leans against the picnic table, shading her eyes, watching the road, wishing she'd brought a hat. She looks at her watch every few minutes, wondering how long he'll make her wait and wondering just how angry he is, because certainly he is angry, which can't be helped. He's doing this deliberately, of that she's certain. Punishing her. She has waited days for him, lifetimes for him; this is just another one. She tries very hard not to cry, because she doesn't want her mascara to run, and she absolutely doesn't want him to know that he can get to her, that the old tricks still work. But she waits. And waits. And he doesn't come. When she hears the whistle from the narrow-gauge blowing into the downtown train station from Silverton, she knows she's waited long enough, that he won't come.

Driving back to the house, her throat constricting, she does not cry and not when she pulls into the driveway and waits for the garage door to open. But when it closes behind her, she sits there in her car, engine off, and cries until her stomach hurts.

At twilight she decides to go for a long walk, transferring keys from purse to fanny pack, grabbing a bottle of water, but she manages to go only half a block before she wants to flee, to be there in case he comes.

When Fred calls that evening, he tells her she sounds odd, far away, and she tells him she's just a little tired. It's a comfort to hear his voice, but she doesn't want to talk tonight, so she tells him she's not feeling well and she'll call him tomorrow.

Though she is exhausted and achy, it's a long time before she falls asleep. She sleeps fitfully. At one-thirty she wakes to something crashing, starts up from her bed, her heart thrumming, listening into the night. It's the bears. They've knocked over somebody's grill or trash again. She listens as the neighborhood dogs sound the alarm. They'll go on like that for an hour. She lies back down. Fred has helped her secure the house, she doesn't keep anything to attract them, but her neighbors insist on grilling on these hot nights. She falls asleep again to dogs barking.

She wakes late. Her head throbs. She feels waterlogged. She splashes cold water on her face, which is red, bloated, and creased with pillow lines. The lines are still there an hour after she gets up.

She has a huge list of things to do, but it's hard to muster the energy to leave the house. It's nearly eleven before she finally gets behind the wheel. Hitting the garage door opener, she starts to back up, but jams on the brake inches away from Sam's truck, which is parked in the driveway.

He is not in it. Her mouth is instantly dry and her heart quakes. She can't breathe. She feels as if she has rubber bands around her chest and forehead. She gets out of the car and creeps toward the garage door. She scans the yard, the street. Sam's windshield is badly pitted. The sun magnifies the pits, distorting the cab. He could be in there. She thinks she sees his head resting against the seat back. He could be sleeping. She creeps toward the driver's side.

"Lil?"

She whirls around. He's sitting on her porch.

"I think you left your keys in the car."

She notes, then, the ding, ding, ding coming from the garage. Yes. Her keys are in the ignition. The car door is open.

She retrieves the keys and takes several deep breaths before she goes to the porch, where he sits on the floor, his feet on the top step. He pats the space next to him, and because her legs are shaking, she sits down. "You scared me," she says.

"Did I? You scared me pretty good yesterday."

"I'm sorry." She clears her throat. "I'm an idiot. It's just a formality, Sam, filing the papers. No harm done."

"Well, I don't know. I've been thinking about it. It's not really just a formality, marriage. It's an institution. A sacred institution."

She laughs. "Never thought I'd hear you say that."