Into the Valley (7 page)

16.

The next morning, in the motel bed, she fingered the collar of the powder-blue dress. She had not meant to sleep in it. There was a coffee stain at her breast and a pungent dampness under her arms. The night before she'd had the intention of washing her underthings. She'd laid out her bra and panties next to the sink and found her Woolite travel packets. Then she'd sat on the bed and the intention had lost its keenness. She must have lain down.

The already-warm morning air smelled faintly of green onion. (There was a kind of onion grass wasn't there? Did it resemble chives? The question nagged her.) She watched the line of blue sky through the curtain. It made her think of the sky through the magnolia trees from the day before. The cottages shared the same compactness of the lake house, the same shade and light, she thought. She had lost something in the lake house. She lay in the motel bed contemplating the line of blue sky and what it was she had missed, but she could not grasp it.

When she got up from the bed finally, she smoothed down her hair, limp from the over-washing and wind. She wiped the makeup from under her eyes and applied new lipstick and mascara.

She made sure the bills were tucked into her purse and left the Mustang in the motel parking lot to walk toward the center of the town. It was early, so she stopped in a small park and sat on a bench. The freshly mown grass shone darkly from sprinklers. An old man sat at the other end of the park feeding bread to small brown birds. B. imagined herself coming here to read or picnic. She thought perhaps she could even be like the old man, quiet and serene tossing crumbs of bread.

But a sense of pale familiarity descended on her. Why would the park be any different from the ones in the city? What would she tell people she was doing there? Her head spun. She rose from the bench and walked across the lawn, pieces of wet grass sticking to the bone-colored heels, and tried to calm her breathing. The old man's birds took flight. She walked past the main street, to the river, low and brown. The onion smell had evaporated, the heat of the day already inescapable. She walked along the river until her breathing evened and the spinning slightly lessened.

She found the real estate office. It was a storefront with a few photos of houses in the window. A woman sat at a desk flipping through papers. She had styled, shoulder-length hair and a tan dress belted at the hips. She studied B. for a beat before she smiled.

“Can I help you?”

“I'd like to look at houses for sale in the area.”

The woman lowered her reading glasses to her nose and scanned B. “Are you visiting from the city?”

“Do you have time to show me anything?”

The woman hesitated. “I can take you round a couple places, although I find it helpful to have both of you along, to ask questions, get things clear,” she said. “Should we wait for anyone?”

“No. I'm ready to go now.”

Again the woman studied B. and seemed after a moment to make some assessment that allowed her to stand up from her desk.

“I'll drive us out.”

They walked to the woman's car in back, the steering wheel and dashboard, seats and doors of which were lined in an immaculate white calfskin. B. hesitated to sit on it. The woman warmed up once they were in the car. “My husband and I were both planning to move to the city, you know, before we met. Funny how life works out. His plans fell through, and so did mine, and otherwise we would never have met.

“I still love to visit, though,” the woman went on. “Seeing the bay is a thrill. Although I'm not sure these days it's the safest place.” She hmmmed in agreement with her own observation.

“It's a small town, but our schools are good, and we have strong clubs and community groups. It's right to get out of the city, I think, once you've decided.” Her voice fell into a conspiratorial tone. “I know how hard it is to get them to stop thinking big big big, to stop them wanting to be in the game. It's something caveman-ish in them, I think. Ronald still talks about moving to the city—at thirty-seven! Thinking they have to be where the action is. But if you can steer the boat the right way, it's the best thing.”

B. knew she was expected to offer some personal story here, some hint of her plan, but she said nothing, watching the faded stores and buildings pass by.

The woman eyed B. “Do you think you'll be starting a family soon? These are the kinds of things it's best for me to know, so you don't settle in and find out you need a nursery.”

“I'd rather just see something first.”

“Suit yourself. I've only been in real estate for thirteen years.”

They were on the highway now, alongside a line of sharp-edged pink and white oleander, and suddenly the town was behind them and they were back in the fields. It was a development, with a main artery and small streets shooting off, low beige mirror-image houses and thin new trees around the perimeter. Each had a new lawn and a two-car garage and, B. imagined, a swimming pool out back.

“It's not what I want,” B. blurted out.

The realtor was listing the amenities of the houses, “
. . .
new double ovens, sunken living rooms, automatic garage doors
. . .
”

“I was in a neighborhood last night near your office,” B. said. “That's where I want to go. Take me back.”

“Downtown? That's old folks. Retirees and widowers on their own.” The realtor grimaced. “Don't you even want to go inside one of the new ones?”

“Take me back now, please. That's where I want to look.”

The woman scowled. Her fingers gripped the white calfskin of the steering wheel so hard B. was afraid she might soil it. She turned the car around in one of the new driveways. “Those houses are too small, you realize, not in any condition,” she said. “Really, they're falling apart inside. Not suitable for families at all.”

As they drove back along the sharp oleander the lake house descended on B. again. She had the feeling whatever she had lost there she could get back in one of the old cottages. A desperation climbed through her
to get to the cottages; she braced herself against the blaring white seat.
Hurry
, she thought,
hurry
. As they drove, she tried to calm herself with images of new curtains and a divan on which to read her books, a cookbook with recipes for fingerling potatoes and roasts, a sewing machine maybe. It seemed so simple.

“There's only one I agreed to show,” the realtor was saying. “I felt sorry for the children, you know, trying to move on with their lives. The father eating out of tin cans at the end, for pity's sake.” They parked in front of a white wooden cottage with green trim
and one of the large magnolias in front. Its suede leaves littered the dry lawn. The realtor led her up to the front door. B. tried to ignore a pang of disappointment at the chipped paint and the rusted knocker. The house was empty.
The realtor s
huttled her through the rooms, with square pale outlines on the walls of picture frames removed. “No dishwasher, no central air, no electric stove, here's the one closet you would share
. . .
” B. tried to rally herself by visualizing the bookshelves she could stain herself, the new curtains she could learn to sew. But
her heart sank at the cracked porcelain sinks and the splitting baseboards. She thought inexplicably of the girl's dirty bare feet on the magazine cover in the Sambo's. “Could you show me another?” she asked the realtor. “Nothing else is up in this neighborhood,” the woman said stonily. “That's what I've been trying to tell you. People stay until they die. They've been in there since their honeymoons, since the war.” She sighed. B. left her and walked back to the front yard. The houses all at once looked dilapidated, gardens dying. What had she been thinking? She couldn't buy a house on her own; she couldn't fix it up. The tightening seized her neck and head. The pale washed-out park of the morning hung before her. She saw that it was a version of every park she'd ever seen before, would ever see again. She bent over and brought her hand to her stomach and dry-heaved. She could not move from the dead lawn. Like a day in the city when she'd frozen in the middle of an intersection, immobile, realizing there was nowhere to go—backward, forward, it was all the same. The traffic light changing and the cars honking as she stared at a crumpled bus transfer, until a man stepped out and pulled her to the curb.

Through the haze of this memory, the realtor was making squawking sounds like a crow. Demanding to know where B. was staying, how she had gotten there, if she was going to be sick. When B. understood this last question she wanted to tell the woman that she was not, that if she could be sick, it might be better.

“I'm sorry but I can't help someone in your condition.” The squawking now arranging itself into sentences. “I try and keep up with the times. I like the city. But we're different out here. We have morals. It was strange enough that you were alone, but now
. . .
” An objection formed in B.'s mind, but she could not get it out of her mouth. Before she knew it, she was back inside the spotless calfskin and then deposited in the motel parking lot, waves of heat shimmering off the asphalt. A car door slammed and the realtor was gone and B. stood beside the Mustang, the blue metal searing.

She stumbled into her room and gathered her travel bag, leaving the Woolite packets, and left cash and her room key in the office. Her shoulders contracted into each other, her head spiraled. She climbed in the Mustang and exited the motel parking lot without any sensation of movement.

The one she found was new. A rectangular building finished in concrete. Carpet on the floors, blinds on the windows, all the furniture an approximation of dark wood. But the same innocuous, soothing tones, the same calm safe lines. She stood for a moment near the door, just breathing. She approached the island with deposit and withdrawal slips, ran her hand back and forth along the smooth counter until it steadied and filled out one of the slips.

She heard herself making small talk—about the heat, about the girl's birthstone ring (“Topaz, it has healing powers. I would invest in some, Sag or not.”)—watched the girl stamp the check and place it in a drawer and deal out the cash. She stood there as the light softened, the blue veins in the teller's neck receded, the sallow skin under the girl's dyed-black hair pinkened, the spinning stopped.

But when she climbed back into the Mustang, the town was like a maze. She circled the surface streets without finding the highway. She passed the same liquor store twice, two old sunburned men outside, leering at her, she thought. The tight pulse returned behind her eyes. It had never come back so quickly. She sped up but the tightening only increased. She couldn't stand it; she turned the car around. When she reached the bank she stepped in and sat on one of the hard settees, clutching the ostrich-skin purse.

“Did you need something else?” The teller was beside her, smiling with a ghostly white lipstick B. had not noticed the first time. “I'm going on my break.”

“No, I'm sorry. I just
. . .
I was a bit lost
. . .
I'm not sure
. . .
” B. zeroed in on the girl's teeth. They were small and straight and attractive. She looked from the teeth to the clean desks to the beige-colored carpet.

“We probably have a map here somewhere.”

“No. I just need to rest. Thank you.” She spoke very slowly to the teeth.

The girl nodded sympathetically, but B. picked up in a corner of her eye the silver badge and white shirt of the security guard.

“It's nice and cool in here,” the girl said, nodding. “It can get outta sight, especially for someone from the city. Would you like a glass of water?”

“No, really, I'm fine. Thank you.” The teeth and the lines and the orderliness doing their work now. The cool expansive feeling returning, her pulse relaxing.

“Well, take your time. And thank you for banking Delta Savings and Loan.”

After the teller walked away, B. saw the security guard still watching her. She waited a few moments before she stood up, leaning against the slick beige wall. She exited as casually as possible out the glass door, the cool expansiveness pouring through her. She sat for a few more seconds in the car, noting the silver badge glinting behind the glass. This time she drove carefully, following the main street straight to the highway. Then she gunned the engine, eye on the rearview mirror.

17.

At one time B. had wondered whether marriage was the way things would “work out.” The girls at her small women's college had come to find husbands; a few had ambitions for publishing jobs or teaching positions, but most came for a ring or a promise, and sometimes they deliberately got pregnant. B. had not railed against or even chafed at this reality. It had seemed an acceptable fact. But remote, like growing old, something she could navigate later. She'd simply enjoyed reading her textbooks, about floral imagery in Japanese art or the brutal deaths of Roman emperors. She dated a few boys from the men's college, all perfectly fine, but the prospect of the dates always seemed more entertaining for her roommates, who dressed her and fixed her makeup and hair and talked about the boy's height or skin and told bawdy jokes about penises. B. liked to be touched and kissed by the young men but she did not feel in their brief interludes particularly engrossed by them. She could never overcome, the way her classmates seemed able to, her discomfort at the gap between what she was thinking and what she was supposed to say. (A boy had once told her “You seem like a real fun girl” at the exact moment she had been wondering whether Bloody Queen Mary of Scots still had feeling in her neck between the first and second hacks; she'd nodded to the boy, not wanting to embarrass him.) One boy wanted to see her often. They had a date at a soda counter and one at a movie where his large knee brushing hers made her groin surge; they kissed for long periods. After a few more dates no different than these, the boy proposed. He did not seem bothered by the fact that they had spoken probably an hour total to each other, that he had no idea what she'd really thought of the movie (sentimental) or why she typically avoided soda counters (a tendency to spill). She lied that she was already engaged and the boy had called her heartless. She'd watched his slumped shoulders with relief as he walked away.

But a few years later, living in Boston and working as a secretary, no longer studying Japanese art or Roman emperors or thinking about Bloody Queen Mary of Scots, B. wondered if the presence of another person every day could keep away the tightening and spinning in her skull. She looked up the boy who'd proposed and invited him for a drink. They saw each other for several weeks, but each night after he fell asleep the carsickness resurfaced as it had before, the boy's warm and prone body like an island unto itself, and she reeled in the dark. She broke it off with him again and this time he spat at her. After that she no longer wondered if marriage was the answer.

And so it had all become a haunting, really, the idea of things “working out.” As if she were missing the other half of a position. As if she had gotten herself to a ledge with no intention of leaping off.