Going to Bend (22 page)

“He wants to publish your book, Rose.”

“Oh.” She raised her hands to her mouth. “Oh!”

Gordon reached over and pressed her wrist with both hands. “He loved it. He loved your voice—the way you talk through your writing. His whole staff did. They want the book to come out next fall. Which will be a push, I’m warning you, because there’s a lot of work left to do. But
they’ve sent me back with a contract. Two, really—one for me as editor of the book, the other for you as its writer.”

“I don’t know what to say. I hope they haven’t made a mistake. I’m no writer, Gordon, you know that. I’m not even a cook. Petie and me, we’ve been making soup for years because it’s what you make when you don’t have any money and there won’t be any coming in till the end of the week. You’ve got to give your kids something. You and Nadine treat it like it’s gourmet food but it’s not.”

“Sometimes the ones who aren’t writers are the best of all,” Gordon said. “Your voice comes through like a clear bell. But since you won’t believe me, let’s talk about your contract instead.” Gordon reviewed the terms, the amount Rose would receive as an advance, what rights they were buying and which ones Rose retained, what percentage of each sale she would receive and how many additional recipes they wanted her to come up with.

“And Rose, there’s one more thing. They want the book illustrated,” Gordon said when he was done. “Would you happen to know anyone? They’ll want one cover illustration, eight or so large illustrations and a couple dozen small accent drawings—a bunch of carrots, a bowl and whisk, that sort of thing. There won’t be much money in it, but he’ll have quite a bit of artistic freedom. It will be a beautiful book.”

Rose immediately said, “I know—and oh, it’ll be perfect!”

“You know someone? Of course you know someone. I never cease to marvel. Who is it?”

“Petie, Gordon! Petie could do it.”

“Petie?” Gordon said doubtfully.

“Oh, I’m
so sure
of it. You probably haven’t ever seen her drawings.”

“No,” Gordon said with growing alarm.

“Well, she doesn’t show her things to people.”

“Then what makes you think she’d draw for us, for this book?”

“She needs the money.”

“Ah.” Gordon sighed. “Look, isn’t there someone else who might be more, ah, more reliable? Someone who’s had experience?”

“No,” Rose said flatly.

Gordon watched her for a long minute. She fairly vibrated with conviction.

“Look,” he said. “Go ahead and talk to her about it, and if she’s interested bring me some samples of her work. But I can’t make any promises, Rose. You’ll both need to understand that. I don’t want any of us to be put in an awkward position, but I can’t compromise my judgment.”

“Well, you’re already in an awkward position, aren’t you,” Rose said, smiling gently. “I know you, I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that Petie can’t draw but I don’t know it, or that I
do
know it but hope you won’t. It’s not like that, Gordon. She’s good. She’s very good. It’s very personal for her, though, very private. I’m not sure she’ll even let me bring you anything, but if she does I want you to consider her. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Fair enough.” The cafe door was thrown open and a family blew in with the rain. Rose stood to greet them and fetch menus. As she left, she touched his wrist, where the little purple lesion was still faintly visible. “Gordon,” she said.

“Hmmm?”

“Thank you.”

·   ·   ·

Rose stopped reading aloud from a yellow legal tablet and sipped ruminatively at her diet cola. “Do you think we can use it?” she asked Petie, who was up to her elbows in flour and yeast. “I mean, do you think anyone but us would ever want to make it?”

“We made it, didn’t we? Hell, Ryan and Loose still ask for it sometimes.”

“I know, but they’re kids, they don’t know any better. Would someone want it who’d actually pay for a cookbook?”

“We’ve bought cookbooks. Hell, I know for a
fact
that I once bought a cookbook for a quarter at Connie Neary’s yard sale. I’ll probably be getting around to reading it soon. In my free time, which I don’t have any of.”

“I think I’m going to leave it out.”

“Don’t leave it out.”

“It’s out.” Rose tore the recipe in half, and in half again. “I want to ask you about something.”

“I did
not
drink three beers at the Wayside last Friday, if that’s what you want to know. Did Schiff tell you I did? He wasn’t even there most of the time.”

“You were at the Wayside last Friday with Schiff?”

“No, I was at the Wayside last Friday with Eddie. Schiff showed up, Eddie took off before I’d finished my second beer, so Schiff gave me a ride home.”

“You better be careful,” Rose warned. “You know how Carla is. Remember that time when she thought Lee Ann Hafner was trying to start something with Schiff, so she ran Lee Ann off the road at the state park and made her swear on a Bible that she wouldn’t ever again so much as look at Schiff, so help her, okay, God? It scared the crap out of her, and all she’d been doing was talking to him about getting Pepsi at a discount for the Cub Scout jamboree.”

Petie snorted. “Don’t you just wonder what Carla was doing with that Bible in her car in the first place? She’s the most unholy person I know, honest to God. So, what? Does she pray on the Bible for a lucky streak at video poker? Maybe she reads psalms over her fourth wine cooler. Shit, Carla Schiffen’s nothing but spare parts and she has been for years.”

“Well, you ought to be scared of her,” Rose said. “Hell, even
Schiff’s
scared of her. She’s one of the most vengeful people I’ve ever heard of. I’m just saying you need to be careful.”

Petie scowled.

“All right, we’ll talk about that another time. What I wanted to ask you about has to do with the book.”

“They’re not paying you enough. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.”

“They’re paying me plenty, Petie, for God’s sake. I have no idea what I’m doing, half the recipes aren’t really ours and the other half we made up out of leftovers. But I don’t want to talk about the money.”

“Do you need me to test the last couple of recipes?”

“No—”

“Because I’m not going to test Jeannie Fontaineau’s beef barley, I haven’t changed my mind about that.”

“Will you shut up? My
God
you’re twitchy. Anyway, this isn’t even about soup. They want someone to draw pictures to go with the book. I think it should be you.”

Petie stopped kneading. “What?”

“I want you to illustrate the book. Gordon said they need someone to do a drawing for the cover and a bunch of smaller things for inside.”

“What makes you think I can do it?”

“I know you can do it. What I don’t know is whether you
will
do it. Think about it—
us
, you and me, making a book. Wouldn’t that just be something, though?”

Petie slapped a ball of flabby dough onto the breadboard.

“Listen,” Rose said. “You know Gordon’s sick. Well, his friend who’s going to publish the book has AIDS, too. I don’t think they have a lot of time. We’re going to have to work pretty fast.”

“Gordon said that?”

“Of course not.”

“So what do they want—pretty little flowers and cottages and happy people and shit?”

Rose snorted. “No. At least, I don’t think so. Gordon said a lot would be left up to the artist. You could talk to him about it, at least. He said he’d love to see your work.”

“You already volunteered me? I can’t believe you fucking
volunteered
me.”

“I didn’t volunteer you, exactly, I just asked if you could apply for the job. That’s all.” Rose stood and pulled on her coat. It was time to go home and start supper. Christie liked his meals early and regular.

“Well, you shouldn’t have,” Petie said.

Rose sighed. “They’ll pay you fifteen hundred dollars.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not kidding.” Rose wrapped a scarf around her throat.

“Whoa.” Petie let out a long, low whistle.

“So come up with maybe ten or so sketches and drawings to show Gordon. If you do it soon—soon like tomorrow—you won’t have anyone competing against you. I want you to do this with me, Petie. I want both our names on the cover.”

“When would they pay?”

“Maybe some up front, then the rest when you turn in all the work. That’s what they’re doing with me. So think about it. And next time I see you I expect you to tell me everything about the Wayside on Friday. Something is definitely up with you.”

“Nothing is up.”

“I want to hear everything.”

“
Nothing
is—” The door slammed shut and all that was left of Rose was a gust of cold wet air.

“Shit.”

Several years ago they had sworn that neither one of them would smoke a cigarette except when they were with each other. They might get cancer, but if they did, at least they were going to get it together. Petie cheated sometimes; she assumed that Rose cheated sometimes, too. She tapped a fresh cigarette out of the pack and lit it.

Last Friday, long before seeing him at the Wayside, Petie had had lunch with Schiff again. They had driven in Schiff’s pickup to an old county landfill where no one ever went except to make out or dispose of a body or an old beat-to-shit appliance.

“I had coffee at the Hot Pot this morning, me and Bob Harle,” he told Petie after he’d parked the truck under some dripping trees and Petie had divvied up the sandwiches. “We’re just sitting there talking and this family comes in—overweight woman, balding guy, teenage daughter, you know, nothing special, a farm family. They sit right near us, keep looking at us, and then after a few minutes the girl comes up to me and says,
Are you Ron Schiffen?
So I say yes. She says,
We stopped at the Pepsi place and they said you might be here. We were looking for you
.”

Petie chewed, watching him through her bangs, that silky Indian hair Schiff sometimes found himself thinking about when he shouldn’t; that hair and her small tough body. No one had ever watched him like that before. “So who were they?”

“Wait. So she says,
Are you Ron Schiffen?
And I say yes, and then she says,
Well, I’m Angel
.”

“Oh my God, Schiff.”

He was breathing quickly, remembering. “I didn’t even recognize Mary. I could’ve walked right into her and said excuse me and walked away again without ever realizing she was someone I knew. She was just sort of, I don’t know, faded, nothing special. And she used to be a
goddess
.”

“But what about the girl?”

Schiff tapped his fingernail on the dashboard. “That child was beautiful. When I left her she was
beautiful
, like an honest-to-God angel—I used to swear that if you looked at her with the lights out she would glow like a goddamn candle.” He wiped his mouth with care on the napkin Petie had brought, folded the napkin in half and in half again, and then unfolded it and smoothed it over his knee. “But the thing was,” he said, “she wasn’t beautiful at all. Nice girl—pretty hair, braces. Ordinary; hell, not half as pretty as Randi. She’ll probably be pregnant in another year. I used to think her and her mom hung the moon and stars, and then I run into them and I don’t even know who they are. Even once she
told
me who she was, I couldn’t see it.”

He looked at Petie with the dumb eyes of a field animal. “I just couldn’t see it.”

“So then what?”

“Then they left.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, you know, she said it was good to meet me, and I asked about how she was doing in school and shit. I got her address.” He fished a Post-it out of his shirt pocket and looked at it with amazement, like it had revealed the face of Jesus, maybe, or glowed with a heavenly light. “She was the closest thing I ever had to my own kid and I tell her to, you know, take care, be good, and I cannot think of
another single goddamn thing
to say. Her mom and me, we didn’t even talk.”

“So, what, they burst your bubble?”

Schiff frowned at her. “What bubble?”

“The one where you’re the cowboy and they’re the helpless woman and child you left behind. The one where everyone adores you and they never grow up and they never change and none of it’s your fault.”

“I knew Mary would change,” he said hotly, and then subsided. “Jesus, though, not
that
much.”

Petie looked out her window, as though she could actually see through all the breath fog. “You tell Carla about it yet?”

Schiff sighed heavily. “She won’t like it. Carla, she doesn’t want to talk about other people. Anyway, I never told her about Mary and Angel.”

“You’re kidding.”

Schiff shrugged. “She don’t like to know about things that happened before her.”

Petie ate in silence, drank her Pepsi. Schiff watched her out of the corner of his eye. “Aren’t you afraid I might take advantage of you, out here where no one’s watching?” He leered halfheartedly. “An attractive woman like you?”

“You don’t have to do that, Schiff.”

“Do what?”

“Proposition me. Do the macho sex thing.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“It wasn’t until now,” said Petie.

“Then what
was
I doing?”

“Telling a story, Schiff. You were just telling a story.”

“And what were you doing?”

“Listening,” Petie said.

“Is that okay?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Petie gathered the odds and ends of their lunch things and stowed them by her feet. “Are you ready to go back?” she asked.

“No,” he said, turning the key in the ignition and easing the truck into gear.

N
OW, THREE
days later in the middle of her kitchen, Petie stubbed out the last cigarette and listened for noise. She found Loose right away by following the sounds of two pieces of wood being knocked together out in the side yard where he often played, oblivious of the rain and cold, a tough child at home. It was harder to locate Ryan, but at the foot of the stairs Petie could hear the low murmur of a child reading out loud to hear the music of his own voice wrapped around the taste of someone else’s words. Unobserved, Petie picked up the phone and dialed.