The luxury of sleeping with someone threatened Arnold’s punctilious habits. It was his first experience of sustained intimacy, and it had its consequences, which weren’t necessarily bad but were quite disruptive. Arnold was a homely man, and one local view had it that his homeliness was what had driven him into the arms of men. He had big ears and curly hair that seemed to gather at the very top of his head. He had rather darty eyes except when he was with Mary Elizabeth or when he was issuing instructions at the bank. His previous love had been the only lawyer in town who had much of a standing outside of town, and whatever went on between them did so with fastidious discretion. Their circumstances made it certain that they would never have any fun.
“Where is he now?” Mary asked.
“San Juan Capistrano.”
“And that was the end of your affair?”
“Here.”
“You know I don’t mind.” And she didn’t. The sea of predators who had rolled through the Butt Hut had seen to that.
“I’d like to be a good husband.”
Arnold was the vice president of the family bank and dressed like a city banker, in dark suits, rep ties, and cordovan wing tips. He had a severe, businesslike demeanor at work that put all communications, with staff and customers alike, on a formal basis. He and Mary Elizabeth lived thirteen blocks from the bank, and Arnold walked to work, rain or shine. If the former, he carried an umbrella, which was an extremely unusual object in town. Everyone knew what an umbrella was, of course, but it seemed so remarkable in this context that, on rainy days, it was as though the umbrella, not Arnold, was the one going to work. In any case, what anyone might have had to say about Arnold in town, no one said to his face. People were confused, too, by the motorcycle he rode on weekends. He did a fifty-yard wheelie down Main Street on a Saturday night that really had them scratching their heads. When Mary asked him to wear a helmet, he replied, “But then they won’t know who it is.”
The last thing Paul Tanner did before he died was send Mary off to be trained in banking skills. She’d told him that she wanted to work. She went to a loan-officer and mortgage-broker boot camp and returned to town well versed in the differences between F.H.A., V.A., and conventional forward mortgages, as well as reverse mortgages and loan models. And she was going to have a baby. Arnold said, “I hope he’s a nice fellow.”
“We don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl!”
“I mean, the father.”
“Sweetheart, that was a joke.”
“Okay, but who is he?”
Mary said, “What business is it of yours?” But she quickly softened and said, “You, Arnold, don’t you see?”
Paul Tanner died in his sleep, of an embolism — or something like that. Arnold wasn’t sure. He and his father had never been close and had viewed each other with detachment since Arnold was in kindergarten. Paul had been so anxious to see Mary’s baby that Arnold concluded that his father’s hopes were skipping a generation and was more pissed off than ever. But now Arnold was president of the bank, which was merely a titular change, as he had run the place for years and run it well, with a caution that allowed it to avoid some of the ruinous expansions that had recently swept the banking community. With Paul gone, Mrs. Tanner was slap in the middle of their lives, and Mary knew from the beginning that Mama was going to need a major tune-up if they were to live in peace.
It happened when Mary’s water broke and labor commenced. Arnold promptly took her to the hospital and sat by her bed, grimacing at every contraction. His mother arrived in a rush and with a bustle and consumption of space that indicated that she intended to be in charge. After she had removed her coat and scarf, tossed them over the back of a chair, and bent to pull the rubbers from her red shoes, she made a point of seeming to discover Mary and said, “Breathe.”
“I’ll breathe when I want to breathe.”
“Of course you will, and no one is at their best going into labor.” Mrs. Tanner went to the window and raised her arms above her head. “I’m about to become a grandma!”
Arnold and Mary glanced at each other: it was ambiguous. Was Mrs. Tanner happy to become a grandmother? Hard to say. Mary groaned through another contraction unnoticed by Mrs. Tanner, who was still at the window, craning around and forecasting the weather. Arnold was keeping track of the contractions with his wristwatch while Mary dutifully gave a passing thought to the stranger at the loan-officer school who was about to become a father. She hoped that Arnold was having a fond thought for his friend in San Juan Capistrano and that the arriving child would help to sort out all these disparate threads. Family-wise, Mrs. Tanner already stood for the past, and it was urgent that she bugger off ASAP. Arnold knew of Mary’s aversion to his mother and had survived several of Mary’s attempts to bar her from their home. “We can’t just throw her under the bus,” he said. This was an early use of the expression, and Mary took it too literally, encouraged that Arnold thought such an option was in play.
Mrs. Tanner turned from the window, beaming at everything and animadverting about the “new life.” Arnold winced at these remarks as sharply as he did at Mary’s contractions. Mary was just disconcerted by the number of unreciprocated statements, more bugling than dialogue. Arnold held her hand, and then leaned across so that he could hold both of her hands, while Mrs. Tanner strode the linoleum. He loved to hold Mary’s hands: they were so strong. He thought of them as farmer’s hands.
Mary owed her hard hands and a confidant horsemanship to her childhood on a ranch a mile and a quarter from the Canadian border, a remote place yet well within reach of the bank that had seized it and thrown Mary and her family into poverty. The president of the United States had told them to borrow, borrow, borrow for their business; thus, the bank had gotten the swather, the baler, the rock windrower, the tractor, the front-end loader, the self-propelled bale wagon, and eight broke horses and their tack, while the family had hit the road. Mary used to say that “bank” was just another four-letter word, but eventually she’d put that behind her, too.
“Mrs. Tanner,” Mary said, “I seem to be oversensitive tonight. Could you stop talking?”
“Is it a problem?”
“ ‘Is it a problem?’ ” Mary repeated. Arnold’s face was in his hands. “Mrs. Tanner, it is a huge problem. This is a time when people want a little peace, and you just won’t shut up. I’m about to have a baby, and you seem rambunctious.”
Mrs. Tanner reassembled her winter clothes and departed. Mary looked at Arnold and said, “I’m sorry, Arnie.”
The boy was born at two o’clock in the morning. Mary was exhausted and so was Arnold, who was both elated and confused but truly loving to his bedraggled wife. They had never chosen a name for the baby, thinking that it was presumptuous to do so before seeing whether it was a boy or a girl. They agreed that a list of gender-based alternatives was somehow corny. But Mary’s suggestion, based on a sudden recollection of the aspirant at loan-officer school, startled Arnold.
“Pedro? I don’t think I’d be comfortable with that, Mary.”
They settled on Peter, which left Mary with her glimmer of rationale and pleased Arnold, who liked old-fashioned names. Mary’s affectionate name for him, however, would always be Pedro. And, without question, he had a Pedro look to him.
Mary bought a horse and, as Peter grew, Arnold spent more and more time in San Juan Capistrano; the day came when he told Mary that he would not be coming back. As foreseen as that must have been, they both wept discreetly to avoid alarming Peter, who was in the next room. They tried to discuss how Arnold would spend time with Peter, but the future looked so fractured that they were forced to trust to their love and intentions.