Look How You Turned Out (7 page)

I turn slowly. "Good then. That's…great," I say. That's great she'll stay. Like a Golden Retriever.

I quickly let myself in the house. I want to let out a breath, but my chest is too tight.

"Bedilia?" Dad says from the living room.

Juney's little Marcus-like-child-like face appears around the arched doorway that leads from the hall to the living room.

"It's her," he says, a piece of red licorice hanging out of his mouth. He's gone.

It's her. Am I crazy? I hear so much in those little words. He's happy. Juney is happy to see me. He's proud…to see me.

Like I'm partly…his.

I hurry past the living room doorway and up to my room. Holy crud.

I had words with Marcus. Words that…grown-ups speak who…feel intensely…about the words they say.

I want to comb over each and everything, but I can't come down to the moment, I'm suspended on this surfboard, above the room, the house even, I'm riding a wave of…ohmygod. But it's a big mother, this wave. It's serious.

Myron White was right. I knew that. Didn't I? When I lied, when I told him I couldn't marry him because I loved someone back home, when I reached back there…home…for a lie…for a reason…why I couldn't love this perfectly wonderful man, when I reached back for the lie and wouldn't look at or acknowledge what, who I'd grabbed onto. Wouldn't look directly at those green, penetrating eyes.

Marcus.

I awaken to the hollow sound the awl makes as it's smashed along the grain of the wood, ripping it into pieces that will fit in the fireplace and the wood stove that connects from outside and helps heat the house.

I know it's him. I look at the clock on the nightstand and holy crud it's five a.m.

Yeah, he does this, cuts the wood. I've watched him…countless times, covertly, overtly, I've watched him wear a flannel shirt in weather that freezes the sweat in his hair, watched him raise the sledgehammer over his head and beat that awl, beat it down the upended sections of trunks and limbs he carts home in his truck. I have watched him stretch long like a big cat and kablam that splitting sound of broken wood, the tumble of the sections off the big stump he cuts on. I've watched him so many times.

Like now. It's still dark, but he's got a lantern. Probably hasn't slept. Doesn't sleep much I've heard him say. He likes this, the chopping. Artie always lets him work it out here. Whatever. This morning I think he's working me out of his system. I strongly suspect he means to.

I've crossed the hall into my room. It overlooks the backyard. I've been sleeping in the front…it's closer to his house…to him. But now I'm here, and so is Juney, sound asleep in my bed. I'm looking down on Marcus and somehow…I think I own some of him…like Juney does with me…somehow we're all entwined.

I have my hand on the glass, the blanket around my shoulders. I never touch the glass cause it'll leave prints and I hate washing windows. But my hand is there now, over his image. I want to touch him.

Smash and split. He resituates the log and smash and split again. Shoulders heaving like a bull-man's might he brings down that hammer like he's pulverizing world hunger.

I can will him to look, and I think that and he does look, well, he's wiping his mouth on his sleeve, sledgehammer posed on the stump like a cane, both hands resting on it, and when he wipes his mouth, he looks up, right at my window. There I am like a ghost, like a waif, and I wonder how many times he's looked here before, and there was nothing.

But he's still, and I know it's hard to see, but Juney has the nightlight on, so it's enough to let him know…I'm watching.

He grabs that tool and sets another chunk of wood on the stump, and he places the awl, and he drives it and drives it through with two well-placed swings like he's ringing the bell at a carnival show.

Here I go again, running around like a fool trying to find my warmest clothes and get dressed enough to run out there and try to stack, to be by him again before it's too late…for something.

When I have enough on over my skin, my boots are the last, still in the mudroom where I left them thinking I'd never wear those things for a hundred years, and here I am. I get them on, and I'm pulling on my gloves when I get outside. He sees me, hard not to with my big red cap, but he doesn't stop, he whacks and whacks and whacks.

I go to where that wood litters the ground all around him. I bend and start to fill my arms and I take it to the stack already running along the back and set that green wood on the orderly pile.

He's stopped now, and he's breathing good. I look at him, I don't smile either, but I gather some more and take it to the pile, and he's just all out watching now.

So we work like that, like a hundred times before, and it feels familiar but not as right as it usually does. The sun is just sending the first smudge of gray into the inky darkness.

A deer bolts out of the nearby trees and tracks its way across a thin crust of snow that fell during the night. It disappears by the side of the house. I look at Marcus. "Wish I had my rifle," he says, then he swings that hammer overhead and brings it down again.

He wants to be ornery, but I can tell by his voice he's let go of most of it, that terrible anger he showed last night.

"You better get inside and warm up. Juney can do this later."

I nod. I just wanted to see…how it is between us. If he's going to talk to me still, I can live with it, I guess.

I start for the house, and he calls me. I turn. "I'm sorry for saying every…stupid thing…last night."

I nod again. "I'll make some breakfast," I tell him, and I go in.

I'm in the mudroom toeing off my boots when he bursts in the door. I say bursts, but he really just comes in. It's just…he fills a place. That's how it seems.

So my boots are off, and my socks are wet, and I unzip my jacket, and he's taking off his boots, and it's just…everything feels like something else. I have on yoga pants and a misbuttoned flannel shirt, and my hair is in a fuzzy braid. I move past him to go in the kitchen, and he takes hold of my arm. I look at him and those eyes, God help me. He slowly pulls me closer to him, and his arms are around me. The set of his mouth, oh, and he hugs me like that and my arms are around him too. Finally. I'm shocked, but I'm so happy to bury my face against his cold shirt and feel his heat coming from the white t-shirt beneath. A big lump comes up my throat, and I feel him kiss the top of my head and hear him whisper my name, "Bedilia," and no one has said it like that like he names my soul.

"What's this?" Artie asks, standing in the doorway to the kitchen in his pj's and robe. "Marcus?"

"Just…," Marcus clears his throat, but we are still holding one another. He slowly pulls his arms away, "Bedilia told me…something."

Artie is nodding, looking from him to me. "Bedilia…I told you I'm in tip-top shape."

"I know," I say softly, my body still tingling…my blood as crisp running through me as my steps in the snow.

"You talking about…you know…Chicago and that boss of yours?"

"Dad," I say…I rebuke him. "That was…" I nod my head, my eyes wide like he should get a clue.

"Well, now Marcus is family. You should get his take on it."

"I don't think so," I say quickly. I go straight in the kitchen and search through the bowls. My own dad.

But he's still talking to Marcus as that one comes in the kitchen too.

"I say it's sexual harassment plain and simple, I don't care if he covered it with marriage you don't fire a woman from her job for turning down a proposal. Not in 2016 you don't. What do you think, Marcus?"

"What happened?" Marcus says, cop face, hands gripping the pressed back on the oak kitchen chair.

"Nothing," I say through my teeth.

"I knew it. I told you something happened," Marcus presses, mad again.

"Nothing did."

"Were you…did someone touch…."

"Stop copping me! Nothing happened. Dad you big mouth. I said that to you…no one else."

"Said what?" Marcus says coming around the table to stand right in front of me. "Bedilia…," he takes a deep breath, "sweetheart…you need to tell me."

Sweetheart? "Calm down. I told you I was fired."

"For turning him down. Her boss!" Artie says like an old wash-woman at the fence.

"Dad!" I rebuke.

"If he's in any kind of supervisory position he has absolutely no business…what did he do? Exactly," Marcus says.

"It wasn't like that. Myron White is a good…man." Me

"Called it a conflict of interest. Said that's what it was," Dad says.

"You bet it was a conflict of interest," Marcus says.

"Oh my gosh you are both crazy," I say looking one to the other. "Are you enjoying this Dad?"

He's not exactly smiling, but there's an energy that's just not explainable at this hour of the morning, even for him.

"Bedilia, you have to tell me everything," Marcus says.

"No, I don't. There's nothing to tell. He proposed. And I said no. He said I should go home and think about it. He said I was officially fired until I made up my mind."

"Bastard," Marcus says. "Is there a no-fraternization policy? Did you file anything with the grievance committee? You said no, right? Did you say no?" Marcus says shooting an outraged look at Artie.

"I said no," I repeat.

"Thank God," he says closing his eyes.

"Oh and he says it was a favor. He did her a favor," Dad continues.

"Did he say that?" Marcus asks me, his eyes open and full of righteous indignation.

"Maybe," I say heatedly toward my father.

"He better hope I never meet him outside of a courtroom," Marcus says, fist on the table, salt and pepper jumping.

Marcus hovers. Dad is getting ready to go to the station for a shift. "Somebody has to work," he jokes, standing in the kitchen buckling his belt and adding his revolver to the mix.

"Now Bedilia I meant Marcus," he corrects so I don't think he was digging at me.

"I know Dad," I say rolling my eyes. He means Marcus, the one who is making a production of eating his pancakes.

Juney isn't even up yet, and Dad bids us a farewell. I kiss his cheek like I'm Donna Reed or something, but I haven't done this enough lately…well, I've been gone. And he shouldn't have let my business drop to Marcus, but what am I going to do, shoot him?

I already tried to leave. We leave the people we love the most to go off and have adventures. What do we gain?

Adventures. But what's better than being with the people we love? Don't we always try to go home in the end? I have. I can have my adventures right here. In Lowland. I can make them, not look for them, make them. Right now my greatest adventure is mopping his last piece of bacon in his syrup. I really, really like the way his hair goes every which way and catches the bad kitchen light. I like the fact he hasn't shaved in a couple of days, and the shine on his lips he's working over with his tongue. I like his licker too. One thing, no matter how mad he makes me still he hasn't taken anything that happened to me in stride.

As soon as Dad is gone, "What do you want me to do?" the subject of my secret Marcus Stover admiration society asks as he wipes his shiny lips with a napkin.

I'm crushing pecans with the rolling pin, and it's quite therapeutic…kind of like splitting a cord of wood in its own way. I have forbidden him and Dad to talk about Chicago. I have made it clear I will not be suing anybody, and so they need to drop it.

But I know Marcus is not going to drop it. I had to tell Dad three times, but he has more right than Marcus to pry.

"You can peel apples," I say.

"Bedilia?"

I look at him.

"You were only gone five months."

"Six," I correct, "and you're still talking about it." In front of Artie, it was all moral outrage over the legalities, but it won't be that now.

"It's pretty much a cliché, right? Young girl from a small town, big city mogul hires her to be his 'private secretary?'"

"You're still copping on me when you did the exact same thing. Five months."

"Six," he corrects me now. "I waited how long to date? You told me you admired it or something. Now I'm what…some slick idiot who uses his money and position to overwhelm and intimidate young girls who are out on their own? Jessica is thirty-eight for your information."

I have my hand over my mouth. He got caught up and spilled the beans. Hand on mouth turns to fist on hip. "A cougar?"

He tries not to smile, tries to be stern. "This is all bull. White is what…thirty-five?"

"You Googled him."

"Google," he sneers. "You think we didn't run him through the system?"

"Andy and Barney. No wonder I couldn't get out of here fast enough."

He stands up and stares at me a minute. Then he takes his plate to the sink and leans there, folds his arms. "Is it over?"

I am now making pecan meal. Soon it will be flour.

"He's a jerk," he says.

I go to the frig. I am so stirred, so emotional suddenly, or still. I get the apples out of the drawer and throw the whole bag at him. He catches them against his stomach with one arm, and his knee comes up.

"Bedilia!" he says, approaching me holding the apples against him.

"Stay away from me." I mean it, but I'm smiling too, but it's evil…what I feel. He's teasing me about all of this? I don't think so.

"Hey," he says like he wants to be friends, "come on. I'm just a little pissed off," he says like that excuses him, "because our girl got railroaded by a rich asshole."

"No, no. You don't get to say I'm a cliché, a private secretary, and all the rest," I say.

"You're no cliché. He is. I didn't sleep last night…I keep thinking of what you said. Bedilia, are you just home licking your paws? Are you home for good?"

"First off no more names. You don't know him or how it was so…stop. Second, I got that job from hard work and a kick ass grade point average and sterling references from my professors so stuff your little damsel in distress and mustache twirling villain bit. And, what if I am home for good?"

He stares but he has the trace of a smile. "So how was it? With him."

"That's all that matters? How many times I let him hold my hand?"

"For starters. Did you fall for this guy?"

"What do you think?"

"After last night…I don't know what to think."

"Then don't," I say softly. "It's worked so far, right?"

He glares a little. "First off, I have a girlfriend. She owns a hair salon. It's gossip central in those places. I don't want to do it this way to you especially or to her."

"Do what?"

"Cheat. They'll blame me, but they'll crucify you."

They will. He's been chased, relentlessly chased and she came from behind and took the lead and caught him. But they're all invested. If they can't have him themselves, at least she's a member of their pack. I wasn't even in the running.

But…everything happens for a reason. Having survived the girls in Chicago when White pursued me openly and eagerly…these girls from Lowland don't even have stingers.

"What are you thinking of doing?" I say.

He gets closer until his forehead touches mine. I am literally dizzy from his nearness, this conversation, his touch.

"What would Artie say about…," he can't seem to finish.

"Us? You can say it. Us."

I hear him swallow, move my palm over his hammering heart. His pectoral muscle twitches.

"You asked me…if there was something between us. I thought you meant bad feelings. Then you asked if I am attracted.

I tried to be so careful about it," he says.

"Why did you let me go," I say, and his hand moves from my arm to my face.

"I never let you go."

He takes my hand from his chest and kisses it then, and finally, I feel his lips against some part of me. My eyes have closed, and my heart knows. He is utterly, completely mine. We ease back into the hug we'd started to share earlier when Dad interrupted. My ear is pressed where my hand had been. I can't imagine a better feeling than being against him, being held by him. I am no longer in this kitchen, I'm wrapped in him. He's what I'm in. The rush of love I feel is so overpowering I cling to him to stay on my feet. I never felt anything like this with Myron. Affection, yes. But I couldn't consummate with him. My muscles resisted him. I saw the doctor, thought maybe it was his size though I wasn't sure what a proper size was as I had no one to compare Myron too. But it was not his size, it was me. I couldn't do it with him. My body simply would not relax and receive him.

And still he put up with me, pursued me, wanted me, defective me.

Defective me…in love with someone else.

Always.