B000FCJYE6 EBOK (30 page)

She laughed. “See, that’s how it ought to be done. Dale was like that the first time, with Davey. But when he came home from the service, it was a whole different thing. Aside from the fact that he’d started sleeping downstairs.” She shivered. “He’d come in at night, not say a word. Leave. Then, surprise, I got pregnant. I don’t think we even talked about it until I was six months.”

“How in the hell?”

“Just never mentioned it. I got bigger and bigger, and then one day me and him and Davey are sitting there at supper, and he says to me, ‘Well, what do you plan to do with it?’”

“He did not.”

“Oh yes he did. And I was so pissed I didn’t say a thing. So he says, like he does, ‘Donna. See you got yourself all swole up again.’”

I snorted. “All by yourself, I guess.”

“Guess so. Neat trick, huh? So I said, ‘Looks that way, don’t it?’ And he says, ‘Well, how you plan to feed another mouth?’”

“Good Lord. That man has a way with words.”

“Doesn’t he? Mr. Romance. After that was when I moved into the spare room for good.”

“He say anything?”

“Nah. What’s he want with some swole-up woman anyway?” She laughed shortly. “Now, he wants some, he just barges on in.”

I didn’t say anything. I thought about the way, when I was pregnant with both Esau and Kate, Arnold and I had laughed our heads off in bed, trying to figure out what to do with my belly, which was somehow everywhere. I’d never felt so pretty in all my life.

“Now I just tell him if he wants another mouth to feed, go right ahead,” she said. “That usually puts a damper on his business.”

We laughed. We walked across the flooded parking lot at Frank’s, the neon sign wavering in the thick rain. There weren’t even raindrops. It was just water, pouring down.

We swung open the double doors and stepped into the crowded, steamy, smoky room, shaking our hair out. I saw Donna’s eyes scan the room and her face light up like a little girl’s. She turned toward the wall, hung my jacket and hers on hooks, and pushed her hair behind her ears.

She turned back to the room, tall and pretty and alive, now that all eyes were on us. She could have a few hours of her own now before she had to go home and play dead.

We threaded our way to the bar and took the stools vacated for us by a couple of men who tapped the brims of their wet hats. Frank poured us a couple of old-fashioneds and waved an irritable hand at my pocketbook. He whipped his cloth out of a back pocket. “Dripping on my nice clean bar,” he muttered, wiping it off and grinning his upside-down grin.

I looked up at the Coca-Cola clock. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock. Somebody put Johnny Cash on the jukebox. Jamie appeared, throwing his arms around my shoulders and Donna’s, and said, “Game of pool?”

“All yours,” I said, lifting my glass to Donna. I watched Jamie’s hand hover near the small of her back as he cleared their path toward one of the two tables.

The thump and fall of the balls, the crack of the rack and the break, and Johnny Cash. The clatter of glasses and bottles, the rumble of voices, the barks of laughter and the shouts.

First time we went to the bar after Arnold died, the room went still. The few last voices were suddenly loud in the gathering silence and got shushed. I froze by the door and Donna shoved me forward, sticking close by my back as we made our way to the bar.

“Well, what in the hell’s the matter with you fellas,” Frank shouted, angrier than I’d ever seen him. For that matter, I’d never seen him angry. “Take your damn fool hats off. Act like you never seen a lady in your life.”

Frank was such an odd one. He was a powerfully handsome man, that was the first thing you noticed. You couldn’t help but notice. I, for one, had often found myself wanting to stare at him for longer than was right. He was tall, not as tall as Arnold, but tall enough, and built more solidly than Arnold had been at the end. Arnold had shrunk to half his size, and as I sat here now at the bar, watching Frank pour me a drink, I noticed the veins in his arms, and his habit of clenching his jaw; a little tic near his temple, pulsing, as if he had something he might just say, but then again, might keep to himself. He was a quiet man. Not a lot of words, just a few, carefully chosen, here and there. It was said he was an eccentric, and private, both strange things in this town where you knew everyone and everything about them, for better or for worse. He ran the bar but rarely drank. He listened to every man in town, all day, every day and late into the night. Everyone trusted him, almost; his privacy alone was suspicious. An upright sort of fellow, like a bookish old man trapped in the body of a youngish bartender. He reminded me of Esau.

I thought of our conversation at the beach: He knew all the stories. He was the repository of everyone’s joy and boredom and grief.

What did he know about me?

He set my drink in front of me and smiled, his odd crooked smile lifting to the left. His fingernails were chewed down to the quick. His hands were rough. I watched him turn away to pour another drink, lifting his hand to smooth down his silvery hair.

Donna called me to the pool table. I grabbed my drink and, feeling a little giddy, went over. I dropped the dime, bent down to rack, lifted the triangle, looked up, and damned if I didn’t see Jamie kiss Donna’s ear.

I went to the wall to get a cue and chalked it. Over my shoulder, I said, “Somebody break.”

I turned and Donna came over to my side. “We’re shooting doubles. Us against Jamie and Hank,” she said. I nodded and watched Hank break. I winced as two solids and a stripe went down.

Donna played well when she was nervous, even better after a few drinks. She ticked the clustered stripes off one by one into the lower corner pockets, walking around the table, chalking between each shot, leaning down. I glanced up at Jamie. It was hard to tell whether he was watching her or her shots. She got cocky and tried to bank an easy shot into the side, missed by a mile, and sank the cue.

“Damn!” she said. “You want anything?” I shook my head and she headed for the bar.

By the time Donna got back, we were down to a stripe, two solids, and the eight. She took a sip, set down her drink on the high table by the wall. She chalked. She took the stripe out easily. Then she leaned down over the lower corner, looked up at Jamie, and smiled. She steadied her cue. And shot the eight into the corner pocket by his crotch so hard he jumped.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” I shouted. Hank and Jamie busted up. I went off to the bar to sulk and leaned there while Frank grinned and polished his bar.

He opened the register and pushed a quarter across the bar to me. “Put something pretty on the jukebox,” he said. “If I hear another country song, I swear.” He smiled briefly at me, and turned away. I wanted him to turn back and smile again. It did something to my stomach that I hadn’t felt in years. I watched his back for a moment, broad in the shoulders and solid under his shirt.

I thought suddenly of Arnold, bent here at the bar, a double scotch glowing gold between his palms, a pack of cigarettes and matches just to his left. A little trinity, his hands folded around the glass as if in prayer. I thought of him calling out to Frank, talking to Frank, telling him things he didn’t need to know. Telling him things that at this moment, watching his back, I didn’t want him to know.

I slid off the bar stool, flushed.

I flipped through the records and played my favorites. I leaned back against the wall, ate the cherry in my drink, and wondered if I’d ever go dancing again. I looked around the crowded room. Who would I want to dance with? I wondered. Idly, my gaze shifted from Jamie, to Hank, to Kittie’s husband, to Frank.

Good Lord, I thought.

It was my shot. I ran the table and put down my cue. “I’m done,” I said. “Table’s yours.” I crossed the room to sit down in one of the booths. Donna followed me.

She was giddy, and she was drunk. “What’s with you?”

“Nothing, thanks. Careful,” I said, moving my drink out of her way. She put her chin in her hands and heaved a great sigh, smiling. “You having fun?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Oh, you’re not either. What’s the matter?” She turned and looked around the room. “All these nice fellows here, and you’re being a stick-in-the-mud.”

I snorted. She looked at me. “That supposed to mean something?”

“No.”

“Well,
I’m
having fun.”

“Honey, that’s plain as day.”

“’Scuse me?”

“You heard me.”

She eyed me over her drink. “You got something to say, say it.”

“I don’t have a thing to say.”

“You sure?”

I nodded.

“’Cause you look like you got something to say.”

I shrugged.

“Something about Jamie, maybe.”

I looked at her and put an ice cube in my mouth.

“Something about how maybe I should watch myself, maybe.”

“Maybe so.”

She nodded slowly, sat back in the booth, and ran her hand through her hair. “Maybe so,” she agreed. “Maybe I just should.”

But you won’t, I thought.

She smiled, reached across the table, and took my chin in her hand. “Such a worrywart,” she said. She smacked the table and stood up. “Come dance.”

“I’m all right.”

“Come
on
,” she wheedled. “Or else I’ll be out there dancing with myself, and how silly is that?”

Jamie and Hank showed up. “Ladies?” they said, holding their hands out. Donna dashed off to the dance floor. I stayed where I was.

Hank and I chatted while the night ran on. A few rounds later and it was time for me to be getting home.

Donna was gone.

I went into the ladies’ room. She wasn’t there. I stood at the back of the room, scanning it with my eyes. The crowd had thinned out. I sat down at the bar.

“They left.” Frank’s voice was low. He washed glasses in the sink below the bar. His eyes lifted for a second, then went down.

The last dancers came off the polished floor, grabbed their raincoats and hats off the wall, and called out their good-byes. By ones and twos, the rest of the tables cleared. Still I sat there, watching the Coca-Cola clock. It was after twelve.

“Want a cup of coffee?” Frank asked me.

I hesitated, then nodded, and he set a mug down. The last jukebox record clicked and went silent.

“Night, Frank. Claire.” The wooden door swung shut.

I sipped my coffee, profoundly aware that I was alone with a man. The seconds on the clock ticked by as Frank came out from behind the bar with a broom. Suddenly, with no bar between us, I was conscious of how this would seem if anyone heard that I had lingered at the bar long after everyone had left. “Well,” I said, standing up and heading for the door. “I guess that’s that.”

Frank turned his head. “Don’t go,” he said. “Here, just let me sweep up.”

I stood there like a fool. “Well, all right.”

While he swept, I put another dime in the jukebox and jumped back, startled, when the loud chords of the Beatles crashed into the quiet room. Frank laughed.

“She thinks I disapprove,” I said, still staring at the jukebox, punching buttons aimlessly.

“You want more coffee?” he asked. “You didn’t drive, did you?”

“No. Yes, I’d love more coffee.”

He poured two cups and nodded toward a booth. “Have a sit,” he said. He set a mug down in front of me and settled himself in. He stretched his head first one way and then the other, wincing. “Well,” he said finally. “Do you?”

“What’s that?”

“Do you disapprove?”

“Oh.” I thought about it. He was forthright enough to make me squirm. I shouldn’t have been discussing it with him one way or the other. It was just so easy to tell him what was on your mind. “Well, no,” I said. “That’s not it. I just worry.”

He nodded. “I can see that.”

“I mean, shit, excuse me, Frank. But she’s married to Dale.”

“That she is.”

“And I hate him.”

Frank looked at me. He took a sip. “He’s not a happy man,” he said. He chose his words slowly, as if selecting them was a process requiring care and concentration, and their combination a matter of extreme importance.

“I hate him something awful. I do. I wish I didn’t. But there it is.”

“There it is.”

“So, hell no, I don’t blame her. But I worry about what Dale’s capable of.”

“Tell you,” Frank nodded. “I worry ’bout the same thing.”

We sat there drinking for a minute and then he spoke. “Not a lot of times I think someone ought to just leave. Myself, I’m maybe old-fashioned that way. Not that I got any business, myself. But I figure, you get married and you make it work. But that one, I don’t know. I don’t think there’d be a way.”

“It’s killing her.”

He looked at me. His jaw moved slightly. I could see the shadow of his beard coming in. His eyes had a hooded intensity that reminded me of a hawk.

“Living like that,” I explained, looking away.

He nodded. “I know it is. It was the strangest thing, Claire. When I looked up tonight, saw them like that. You know.” He laughed. “You can always see it coming. Tend bar, you might as well call yourself a fortune-teller, you can see things coming so far off. Anyways,” he said, waving his words away, “I saw them like that, and I swear it made me happy. See her smile.”

I studied my hands. “What’s it like, Frank?” I said. “Keeping all these secrets to yourself.”

He laughed. “Don’t know. Everybody’s got their tales.” He shrugged. He squinted when he was thinking, and tilted his head back just a little, as if to read you.

“Why’d you and your wife split up?” I asked, and regretted it, and felt like a fool. He laughed at the look on my face and said, “That’s all right. It was a long time ago.”

“How long?”

He looked at the ceiling, thinking. “Twelve years.” He looked back at me and shrugged. “Weren’t married but five.”

“You must’ve been just kids.”

“That’s the truth. I suppose that’s why we split up. Didn’t know my ass from my elbow, is what,” he laughed. “She deserved better.”

“Than what?”

“Than me. I wasn’t but nineteen. What’d I know about how to treat a woman?”

“What do you know now?”