“What in the hell!” Marshall said, shaking his head. What was he doing here, as if he had any part in this? He hardly knew McCallum, and had no desire to know about the intricacies of his life.
“I’m still ashamed,” McCallum said to Cheryl. “I dumped your mother for no good reason and broke her heart. It’s still painful to think about.”
“Unbelievable,” Marshall said. “Why couldn’t you have given me a little background before we showed up here? What is this about that I’m constantly dragged into your life and your problems like my feelings don’t matter? You think I love your revelations, or do you have trouble levelling with anybody?”
“Cowardice,” McCallum said. “You continue to misunderstand me.”
“We’re both cowards,” Cheryl said. “I didn’t tell her you were coming.”
“You didn’t?” McCallum said. “You said you would.”
“I changed my mind. I thought I’d leave it up to you — have you call her yourself if you were so sure it was the right thing.” She looked at her untouched coffee as if she were considering something small and sad. “She has ten children, you know. She’s at the free clinic with one of my brothers tonight, waiting to get his arm x-rayed. She’s got enough troubles. I don’t know how to say this except to say it: I don’t know what happened in Boston, in spite of the fact that Livan turned out to be a real nut case. On the chance that you did that, though, I could hardly want you back in my mother’s life. Your track record is that you proposed to her, asked her to wait for you, then took off with somebody else.” She looked around the restaurant. The dancing man and his friend were sitting slumped forward with their arms around each other’s shoulders. No sign of any waitresses, as they waited for everyone to clear out. “What do you think can happen?” Cheryl said. “You think you two are going to fall into each other’s arms like all these years never happened? If she’d wanted to do that, why didn’t she make an attempt to get in touch with you when she drove me to Benson?” She didn’t wait for McCallum to answer. “I told her about Livan Baker — what she accused you of. She wanted to know why I’d felt under so much pressure; I told her exactly what I’d been through. Courtesy of her white knight.” Cheryl shook her head. “She was so horrified. I guess—” She pushed the coffee aside. “She clearly didn’t think you would have done such a thing,” Cheryl said, in a very matter-of-fact tone. “You say you didn’t. Let’s say you didn’t.”
“Let’s take her home and give her a bowl of cornflakes,” the woman said to the man. “Tomorrow’s a workday.”
“Don’t need to remind me of that,” the man said.
“They’re closing,” Marshall said, stating the obvious, looking around at the too-bright, sparsely populated restaurant.
“I want to say one more thing,” Cheryl said. “Two things, actually. Up until a few years ago she was still very pretty. Her hair’s gray now. She hasn’t lost the weight she gained with the last baby. She’s had one medical problem after another since Sara was born. I don’t want you to be unprepared. The other thing I want to say is something I’ve already told Marshall. If you don’t talk to him about what’s so meaningful in your life, maybe he doesn’t keep you posted. It’s not such a big thing, but I think you need to hear it. The things Livan said you did to her. Does he know where she got a lot of those things from?” Cheryl said.
“No,” Marshall said.
“Does he know you kissed me that night in the car?”
McCallum smirked, raising an eyebrow in Marshall’s direction.
“He didn’t until now,” Marshall said.
“Well, the thing is, I’m pretty sure my mother had a lover. Either that or she and this man had a crush on each other. My mother got religion a while back, and she had me baptized. She would have baptized the older ones, but two brothers are gone and the other one put his foot down, and Daddy backed them up. I wrote Marshall that this boyfriend, or whatever he was — he was somebody she’d met at church. She got all excited about the idea that he become my godfather. When I was going to look at colleges, he drove me to a couple of places not too far away — we’d go there and come back the same day. I didn’t like him. On one of the rides, before we got there, he said he felt sick; he pulled off the highway and said he needed to take a walk. I went with him. He raped me in the woods.”
“They don’t talk to you in school about being a vegetarian, do they?” the man at the table said to his daughter.
The answer was inaudible. The two men from the counter picked up their jackets and started out, slapping each other on the shoulder, trading insults about how ugly the other one was. One waved to the man at the table, the other picked up a free real estate guide from a stack inside the door. “Put that back, you ain’t buying nothing,” the man at the table hollered. “You expect some tree to have got chopped so you can wipe the ice off your window?” Behind them, the waitress sponged the counter.
“The reason I’m telling you is because considering that man, and considering my father, it makes me think she doesn’t have great taste in men. I’m not saying you’re that man. Livan apparently thought you were, or decided to make you into him. But she didn’t even know him, and I did. He was singing in the choir the next Sunday, and afterwards when we were filing out, he looked right at me when she stopped to talk to him, swung one of my little brothers up on his shoulders and looked at me like nothing had happened. A whole year went by before he tried it again. That time I told him I’d tell my brother in the marines, and my brother would kill him. He would have, too. He was betting on me being too ashamed to tell anybody, but when he found out I would, that was the end of it. I’m over it now. He comes in here and I let somebody else wait on his table. I mention all this because I still have that brother in the marines, and if you do anything that upsets her, you’re going to wish you’d died when your wife meant you to.”
“Think about it,” McCallum said. “She’s still got my picture, she’s having a rough time — how could I come all the way here and not call her? What’s that look for? She got in touch with me when she needed a favor, didn’t she?”
“You know, Marshall,” Cheryl said, touching her scarf, “it would be bizarre if I hadn’t stopped kissing you. If I’d gone to bed with you”—she looked at Marshall, whose attention had been drifting, but whose eyes immediately shot open—“and then, after that, if my mother got together with your best friend. Everybody willing to fuck everybody else. It could have been the way it probably was for you guys in the sixties.”
“It was such an awful night,” Marshall said. “It was one quick kiss. You only imagine we might have slept together.”
“Describe it to your wife,” she said. “See if she’d draw the same conclusion.”
“Temper, temper,” McCallum said.
“It really is unbelievable that you’d think about coming back into her life,” Cheryl said to McCallum. “She’s married. She has—” she faltered. “She has a life, and everything about it is difficult enough without you.”
“Think about it: you want to maintain the status quo. You’re also pretending I have power I don’t have. Do you really think that against her inclinations I could take her away?”
“You’d have to take her away, because you could never hack it in Buena Vista,” Cheryl spat out, gesturing around her as if the restaurant represented the entire town. Which it might, Marshall thought. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine his house in New Hampshire. Instead, what came back to him was the green bedspread in the motel room, the bed sagging under him like a badly inflated float.
“Cheryl,” McCallum teased. “Have I made you feel insecure? Are you afraid you won’t be my Dulcinea?”