27
IN THE WEEK BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR’S they passed the long afternoons in the shed beside the alley. It was very cold in the shed and the sunlight came in only thinly from the single window. They lit candles on the table and the back shelf, and they had the blankets. For greater warmth they took to lying beside each other on the carpet in the patch of sunlight that fell in through the window.
They lay under the blankets on their backs and talked. Frequently now she talked about her mother. He recalled a memory of his own mother, how she once wore a sleeveless red blouse in the summertime, sitting in the shade on the back porch of a little house in Brush Colorado, and how she was wearing shorts and would stretch her toes in the dirt below the porch step. There was red polish on the nails of her toes and the dirt was soft like powder.
In return, she remembered how her father picked her up one time when she was a little girl and carried her on his shoulders, ducking through a doorway into the kitchen. Her mother was making white flour gravy at the stove, and she turned and smiled, looking at them both. Then her father said something funny, but she couldn’t recall what it was. It had made her mother laugh, she remembered that.
ONE AFTERNOON THEY WERE LYING ON THE FLOOR IN THE shed when she turned toward him and looked at his face in the weak sunlight. What happened to you here?
Where?
This little curved scar.
I ran into a nail, he said.
There was a white scar the shape of a quarter moon beside his eye.
I have a scar too, she said. She opened the blanket and put her shirt neck down for him to see.
SOME AFTERNOONS HE BROUGHT CRACKERS AND CHEESE from his grandfather’s house together with a thermos of coffee. He also brought them books, though he read more than she did. For some time now he’d been checking books out of the old limestone-block Carnegie Library on the corner of Ash Street, where the librarian was a thin unhappy woman who took care of her invalid mother when she wasn’t at work and who during the day conducted the library as if it were a church. He had found the shelves of books he liked and brought the books home every two weeks, summer and winter, and now he took to bringing them to the shed to read lying on the floor beside her.
She took more and more to the practice of daydreaming and wishing, more so now in the absence of her father and in the new desolation that filled the house since her mother had turned so sad and lonely. An hour might go by in the shed with little or no talking, and then watching him read she would eventually begin to tease him, tickling his cheek with a piece of thread, blowing thinly in his ear, until he would put his book down and push her, and then they would begin to push back and forth and to wrestle, and once it happened that she rolled on top of him, and while her face was so close above his she dropped her head suddenly and kissed him on the mouth, and they both stopped and stared, and she kissed him again. Then she rolled off.
What did you do that for?
I felt like it, she said.
AND ONCE HER LITTLE SISTER OPENED THE DOOR OF THE shed in the afternoon, late in that week of Christmas vacation, and found them reading on the floor with the blankets over them. What are you doing?
Shut the door, Dena said.
The little girl stepped inside and shut the door and stood looking at them. What are you doing there on the floor?
Nothing.
Let me under too.
You have to be quiet.
Why?
Because I said so. Because we’re reading.
All right. I will. Let me in.
She crawled under the blanket with them.
No, you have to be over here, Dena said. This is my place next to him.
So for a while the two sisters and the boy lay on the floor under the blankets, reading books in the dim candlelight, with the sun falling down outside in the alley, the three of them softly talking a little, drinking coffee from a thermos, and what was happening in the houses they’d come from seemed, for that short time, of little importance.
28
WHEN RAYMOND CAME UP TO THE HOUSE IN THE AFTERNOON of New Year’s Day after feeding in the winter pasture, shoving hay and protein pellets onto the frozen ground in front of the shaggy milling cattle, he removed his overshoes and canvas coveralls at the kitchen door and went back through the house to shave and wash up, then mounted the stairs to his bedroom and put on dark slacks and the new blue wool shirt Victoria had given him for Christmas. When he came downstairs into the kitchen, Victoria was cooking chicken and dumplings in a big blued pot for their holiday dinner and Katie was standing on a chair at the table stirring flour and water in a red bowl. Each had a white dish towel tied about her waist, and Victoria’s heavy black hair was pulled away from her face and her cheeks were flushed from the cooking.
She turned to look at him from the stove. You’re all dressed up, she said.
I put on your shirt.
I see that. It looks good on you. It looks just right.
So what can I do? he said. What else needs to be done here to get ready for dinner?
You could set the table.
So he spread a white tablecloth over the formal walnut table out in the dining room, where it was centered under the overhead light, and got down the old rosebud china his mother had received as a wedding gift so many years ago and arranged the plates and glasses and silverware about the table. The low afternoon sun streamed in onto the dishes from the unshaded windows. The sunlight was brilliant in the glassware.
Victoria came into the room to see how he was faring and looked closely at the table. Is somebody else coming? she said.
He looked at her briefly and turned to peer out the window toward the horse barn and corrals beyond the graveled drive. I guess you could say there is, he said.
Who is it?
It’s somebody I met.
Somebody you met?
You met her too.
Her? A woman’s coming to dinner?
It’s a woman from the hospital.
What’s her name?
Her name is Linda May. She was working nights when I was in the room there with my leg.
The middle-aged woman with short dark hair?
That sounds about right. Yes, I guess that would have to be her.
Victoria looked at the dishes and glasses ranged in order on the white tablecloth. Why didn’t you tell me?
Raymond stood with his back to her. I don’t rightly know, he said. I guess I was kind of scared to. I didn’t know what you’d think of it.
It’s your house, she said. You can do what you want.
Now that ain’t right, he said. Don’t say that. This here is your house as much as it is mine. It’s been that way for a good while.
I thought it was.
Well it is. He turned to face her. I can tell you that much.
But I don’t understand you not telling me about somebody coming for dinner.
Oh hell, honey, can’t you lay it to an old man’s mistake? An old man that don’t know how to do something he’s never done before?
He stood before her in the new blue shirt, with an expression on his face she had never seen or even imagined. She moved up beside him and put her hand on his arm. I’m sorry, she said. It’ll be all right. It’s just fine. I’m glad you asked her.
Thank you, he said. I hoped you wouldn’t take no offense. I just got the idea to ask her to dinner, that’s all it was. I never saw the harm in it.
There isn’t any, Victoria said. What time did you tell her to come?
Raymond looked at his watch. About a half hour from now.