“Yes, that’s—”
“I had that once. In my case it was a question of not wanting to remember. In fact, I remembered something here in this spot that I hadn’t thought of for years.”
“Was it for a gladness or the same old Sunday coming down?”
“No, it wasn’t the same old Sunday coming down. I can’t say it was a happy memory but I was glad I remembered. I feel much better. You will too. Thank you for the water.”
“You are — Are you?”
“I brought you something.”
“What?” She noticed the brown bag. “Oh, I don’t need. I am fine though I was in the hospital for — it is the time I can’t remember.”
“I know.”
“I was somewhat suspended above me but I am getting down to me.”
“Good.”
She was about to say something but she saw in his eyes that he had drifted away.
They stood in silence. It was not for her like a silence with another person, a silence in which something horrid takes root and grows. What if nobody says anything, what then? Sometimes she thought she had gone crazy rather than have to talk to people. Which was worse, their talk or their silences? Perhaps there was no unease with him because he managed to be both there and not there as one required. Is it possible to stand next to a stranger at a bus stop and know that he is a friend? Was he someone she had known well and forgotten?
“Are you—?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you my—?”
“Am I your what?”
For a moment she wondered if she had considered saying something crazy like “Are you my lover?” Or “Are you my father?”
She sighed. “You said the bag.”
“What? Oh yes. I brought this for you.” He gave her the bag.
She opened it. “Avocados? I think. And — what? A little square can of—” She read: “—Plagniol.”
He watched her.
“What a consideration! But more than a consideration. The communication is climbing to the exchange level and above. And the Plagna is not bologna.”
Gazing at her, he almost smiled. In her odd words he seemed to hear echoes of other voices in other years. One hundred years ago Judge Kemp might have said on this very spot: “How considerate of you!” with the same exclamatory lilt. But there was another voice, something new and not quite formed. Did she mean that his consideration (being considerate) was more than just a consideration (a small amount), more than exchange (market value of the Plagniol), which was after all baloney?
“I think you will like that olive oil. It is very good. Some friends brought the avocados from California. They’re the best kind, not hard and green, but a little soft and brown. They’re very good for you. You’re too thin. Fill a half with olive oil.”
The avocados were as big as coconuts. “I’ll plant the pits in the greenhouse,” she said. “No tricks with toothpicks.”
“Right. Plant them in soil.”
Later she tried to decide why she felt so free to talk or not talk with him. Was it because of her, that in her new life she could have gotten along with anybody? Was she just lonely? Or was it a certain tentativeness in him that waited on her, like the dog, even now and then cocking an eye in her direction? Or could it be a Northern awkwardness in him that brought out her Southern social graces because she was ha ha her mother’s daughter after all?
Her fingers felt the rough pebbled texture of the avocados. “Why are they here?”
“Why did I bring them? I thought you might like them. For another thing—”
“Yes?”
“They are the most nourishing of all vegetables.”
“What is entailed with you?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You seem somewhat pale and in travail. Is the abomination at home or in the hemispheres?”
“I don’t know. Maybe both. You mean my brain. I don’t feel very well, to tell the truth.”
Later he irritated her and she got rid of him. He was standing by while she told him what she meant to do with the stove. There it was hanging from a rope suspended between two chimneys. It looked like a small iron house ripped from its foundations, pipes and connections dangling. She explained.
“I bought the thing which is called a block-and-tackle. I tied the ropes on the chimneys which have shoulders like steps.” Listen to me talking good, she thought. Perhaps in order to talk all you need to do is do something, then explain what you have done. “Tomorrow the stove will go from here to there.”
He stood, hands in pockets, looking up at the stove from under his eyebrows as if it had descended from another world.
“How?” he asked.
She did not reply.
“What—?” he began and stopped.
He is in some kind of distress, she thought.
After a moment he said: “You got that thing up there all by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“How are you going to get it over there?”
“It’s downhill.”
“I know, but—” He stopped.
“Yes?”
“Ah, why do you want it over there?” He sounded as if he had a hundred questions and picked this one at random.
“To keep warm.”
“You’re going to put it in the greenhouse?”
“Yes. What type of stove do you call it?”
“It is a cook stove.”
“Does it burn wood?”
“Yes.”
“Will it both keep me warm and cook?”
“Yes. It also has a water tank.”
“Then it will have hot water?”
“If it gets cold water and then you feed it wood.”
She clapped her hands without smiling. “The climb is underway.”
“Yes, right. The climb may be underway, but”—he turned toward her, shoulder turning with his head, but did not quite meet her eye—“you see, it has pipes which you connect with a plumbing system. And I don’t believe—”
“I can bring water down from the rock.”
“Well, yes, you could if—”
“Do you have my dossier?”
“Your what? Oh, you mean how do I know about you?”
“You look like you know about me.”
“I know something about you.”
Her eyes tell. Forehead muscles pushed her eyebrows down into a shelf. Then he had come from her parents.
“Then the word came from the bloard.”
“Bloard?” He didn’t know what she meant. From the board? the broad? blood? blood kin? bloody broad? All these?
What she meant was board and bored, meeting of her father’s board which was boring because it bored into you.
“Look. I’ll be back in half an hour.”
“No no. Naw.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m going to get a golf cart from the club and a trailer and a couple of men and we’ll put the stove where you want it.”
“Oh no.”
“No? Why not?”
“Because there I will be with people having put the stove where I want it. And that’s the old home fix-up which is being in a fix. Then what? The helping is not helping me.”
“I see.” After a while he said: “You mean you would rather do it yourself.”
“The arrangement is the derangement. When the arrangement is arranged, then you know what the ensuement is.”
“No, what is the ensuement?”
“The ensuement is: then I am with the arrangement.”
“Yes, I see that. But does that also mean that you can’t accept anything from anybody?”
She tightened her arms around the brown bag. “The contents are intense and also tense.”
“Why is that?”
“Because of the thanks. After thanks come blanks.”
“Not necessarily. The avocados are yours. You don’t owe me any thanks. But if you did thank me, it wouldn’t take anything away from the avocados. They wouldn’t become blank. They’re solid.”