Margaret from Maine (9781101602690) (17 page)

“Just checking in,” Blake said, “and Donny wanted me to ask you about that biosolids deal. He thought he might be able to use it on a field he has under contract up to the Davidsons' place.”

“Emmett Davidson?”

“The one and only.”

“That northern pasture?”

“I guess. You'd know better.”

Grandpa Ben put down the nut and bolt he was fiddling with and pulled a rag out of his back pocket. He wiped his hands.

“What's he want to do with that pasture?” Ben asked.

“Turf, I guess. Donny has the idea he can grow turf up here and sell it down in the Boston area or over to Portland. Suburbs, I suppose.”

“Well, people from Boston will buy just about anything.”

“That so?”

“It's what I hear,” Ben said, giving her a dry smile. “But the biosolids might work on the Davidson place. It would make the turf grow pretty thick.”

“That's what Donny was thinking. He figures it's free fertilizer.”

“There's a lot of that around here.”

“You guys doing okay? Is Gordon getting excited for Margaret's return?”

“Oh, he's pretty pleased. He has trouble calculating the time, but he knows it's tomorrow. I haven't talked to her much. How's she doing?”

“She's fine. She's ready to come home, I guess.”

She watched him try the nut on the bolt once more. He wanted to be in the sun, too, she saw, and she marveled to realize that Ben, Grandpa Ben, had been a boy once, had been a young man, had had his days. Why had she never seen him in that light before? she wondered. When he looked at her again, he smiled.

“I'm glad she got away,” he said. “Life on a farm can wear you out unless you get away from time to time.”

“When do you get away, Ben?” Blake asked, seeing him clearly for a moment.

“Oh, not much. You take on livestock and it takes on you.”

“If you could go away, where would you go?”

“I don't think about it much.”

“Where would you go, though? If you could get away?”

He shrugged and turned a little in the sun. Blake realized she saw the source of the great kindness in the Kennedy men. They did not want or yearn after things they couldn't have. Gordon was the same way, just as Thomas had been. Was it contentment, she wondered, or philosophy? She couldn't say in any final way, but she smiled to see it and she watched him fiddle with the bolt. She wished she could borrow some of his acceptance.

“You'd go see the Red Sox, wouldn't you?” she said.

“I wouldn't mind.”

“You know, we could make that happen, Ben,” she said and felt a moment of great tenderness toward him.

“I've always liked a ball game.”

She smiled. She moved a little to remain in the sun. How funny the world was, she thought. How pretty in its unfathomable way. How good it was to have the warmth of the sunlight and to talk to Ben. She made a small promise to herself that she would see about Red Sox tickets. Donny knew someone who had an angle on them. She would mention it to Margaret, she decided, and she would volunteer to babysit if they needed her to. Or maybe, she thought, Ben would want Gordon with him. It was a male ritual to see a game with your dad, and Ben was as close to a dad as Gordon would have anytime soon.

“I should run,” she said, “and I'll drop Gordon by later. So you're saying the biosolids deal might work on that field?”

“If we're talking about the same one, it'll be right as rain.”

“Good luck with the tractor, Ben. When I come back I expect to see it running.”

“You can expect frogs to be princes, but that doesn't make it so.”

He smiled and she smiled back. Then he picked up his bolt and turned and tried to fit it into the engine block. Blake walked slowly back to her car. She hardly wanted to move out of the sun. When she climbed in behind the driver's wheel she was surprised to find the vehicle had grown hot in the short time it had been parked. Spring, then summer, she knew. For no reason she could pinpoint, she cried as she pulled down the driveway. For Ben, mostly. And for all of them, Gordon and Phillip and Margaret and Donny. And for Thomas living out his days in the home. Plants bending to the sun. That's all anyone was.

Chapter Twenty-one

“D
o you have any idea what kind of house you'll have when you get posted?” Margaret asked.

They had been driving most of the morning, their journey marked by stops to see more and more blooms. It was as if, Margaret felt, they had unlocked the secret of the blooms by finding the first pocket. Now, through the rest of the morning, they saw them everywhere, most of them held by gray fog. Occasionally they spotted them on a hillside or down in a hollow, their individuality blurred by the fog until they appeared as clouds of impossible hues.
Little low heavens,
she remembered. Informally, she was responsible for the passenger-side outlook, while he watched on the driver's side.

“They have pretty nice housing, I guess,” he said. “And I think most places come with a guard and a gardener and sometimes a cook.”

“How long is a post?”

“Depends, I imagine. A couple years. Sometimes less. They don't like to go to the expense to get you over there, then move you right away. It's a whole world, I guess, the politics of moving and posting.”

“That should be exciting.”

“I'm looking forward to it. I'm pretty stoked. I like travel. That's one benefit of the war. I learned I like to travel.”

“Even under the circumstances?”

“Well, not for the war, of course. But I like the perspective of seeing America from a foreign country. It sounds crazy, but it feels like a big vacation to me. I don't know why. I guess part of it is in America everyone is running around after money and promotions, but when you step out of it you see it isn't particularly important after all. The whole mall culture we've developed, the television shows, I don't know. There's something I enjoy about stepping out of it. It feels more real overseas sometimes. I think a lot of soldiers feel that way and they don't know what to do with it.”

“I think I know what you mean.”

“Have you been overseas?”

“No. I've wanted to go, but I haven't done it. Thomas always said if you say you want to do something, but then don't do it, maybe you didn't want to do it in the first place. You think that's true?”

“My dad used to say we all get exactly what we want. He said that's a much more frightening proposition than the other way around. I never knew if I agreed with him, but sometimes I see what he means.”

“So I guess I have to accept that I didn't want it as much as I thought I did.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Who knows?”

“I think we're too high for blooms now.”

“It would be beautiful up here without the fog.”

“I feel like it's our own little world. Like we're living in a cloud.”

“Do you want to call Gordon soon?”

“Yes, next time we get cell reception I should.”

“He'll be crazy to see you.”

“It's good, though, to have a little separation. This trip has taught me that. I don't want to smother him and it's important that he learn independence. He's fine without me and now he
knows
he'll be fine without me. Most of the parenting books advocate adequate separation. That's my guilty vice. I read a ton of those parenting books.”

“That's a good thing, isn't it?”

“Mostly. Sometimes they contradict one another, and then what do you do? But they're helpful. I lean on Ben a lot. He's been wonderful and he adores Gordon. In the end, though, I'm a single parent. I wish Thomas could sit up and talk to me about discipline and a dozen other topics, but he can't. So I read books when I have time.”

“Do you and Blake have similar parenting styles?”

“Oh, more or less. She may be a tiny bit more lenient than I am. I'm a tyrant. My grandma always said there is nothing worse than a poorly trained dog or child, and I think she may be right.”

“Let me pull over here and you can see if you have enough bars.”

Where were they? Margaret wondered as she dug in her purse for her cell phone. The fog had removed landmarks and made the entire day's journey feel dreamy and unreal. Even now she could discern that they were parked near an overlook, but the fog joined with the clouds and held the afternoon light hostage. She pushed the button on her phone and stepped out of the car as she did so. She leaned against the rear fender and waited while the connection rang through to the farm. She watched Charlie move off down a small trail that apparently led to an overlook. He had the binoculars in his free hand.

“Hello,” she said when Gordon picked up. “Who is that on the phone?”

“Mom?” Gordon said.

“Hi, sweetheart. How are you doing? You home from school?”

“Mm-hmm,” he agreed.

“Is Grandpa Ben cooking dinner?”

“Not yet. He said he will later.”

“Good. Did you have a good treat?”

A good treat meant an apple or piece of fruit as opposed to a cookie. She listened while her son tried to think of a way to dodge the question.

“A cookie,” he said.

“Okay, but you'll lose a star for that. It's important to eat good food, right?”

She heard the phone move and guessed he had nodded.

“I'm going to be home tomorrow and I can't wait to see you. I won't make you a special dinner tomorrow night because I'll be home too late to shop, but the night after . . . what would you like?”

“Shepherd's pie,” he said instantly.

“Okay, shepherd's pie it is. Will you help me mash the potatoes?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how much I love you, sweetheart? I love you like corn,” she said, playing an old game with him.

“I love you like salt.”

“Like . . . potato chips with peanut butter.”

Then he was gone. Just like that. Either he had inadvertently hung up or the satellite connection had fuzzed out, but regardless of what happened he was gone. She considered trying to call back, but then figured there wasn't any point. Ben would know she had called; Blake had doubtless told him the itinerary. Let it go, she told herself. Gordon is fine and the house is fine and you are fine, she reminded herself. She slipped the phone into her purse in the car, then followed Charlie's track down toward the overlook.

And what happened next? She wondered that a thousand times afterward, but when she saw him standing beside a railing, his face staring down at the banks of fog spooling and purling away from the mountainside, she called him by her husband's name.

“Tom?” she called and the word was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

A bright red wave of embarrassment torched her face. She saw him turn—and it had happened too quickly for him to conceal anything—and watched the hurt cross his face. It all passed in an instant, less than an instant, and yet it had crossed his features. It was natural, she told herself, to think of her husband after a call home. Her brain wires had merely crossed, and the form of a man standing in the fog, going to him, had somehow touched the wrong memory cord. No one could blame her for that and she felt their eyes meet, his expression going from shock and pain to understanding, and she shook her head, trying to make it all go away. He smiled. His wonderful, warm smile, and she felt tears fill her eyes and she would have done anything, anything at all, to erase the memory of his initial hurt, the flash of pain she had seen there. He said something,
It's okay,
then a joke,
No, I'm Charlie,
and when she reached him he took her in his arms. But huddled next to his chest, the fog like a deep cloud around them, she knew something had slipped away, something had returned to remind them that all the king's horses, and all the king's men, could never put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

* * *

Charlie watched the redtail hawks float on the spring thermals above them. He had imagined they would run into redtails—they were predictable travelers, migrating merely by floating on wind that carried them northward—but he was pleased to see them anyway. He had never stood at elevation to watch them pass, however, and now, watching them float and glide by, their wingtips bent back with the uprising thermals, he took pleasure in their travel. He liked redtails; they had always been his father's favorite bird. His dad had purchased a taxidermy redtail, its chest mottled and slightly jaundiced, its beak fiercely turned in stillness, and it had remained on the kitchen mantel for years. It was probably there still, Charlie thought, though he didn't have a clear memory of it from his last trip home.

He lowered the binoculars and turned to check the rest stop ladies' room. Margaret had disappeared a moment earlier, before he had spotted the hawks. As he trained the binoculars on the hawks again, watching them effortlessly hover in the wind, he remembered the look on her face when she called him Tom. How quickly things had changed by that small slip. It was not a big deal, they had both said, but underneath they understood that it was. It was the pebble in the shoe. Thomas was alive and she was a married woman, and the fact that she had called him, Charlie, by her husband's name merely highlighted those central truths. That could not be erased or pushed to one side, and he could not think of the moment without wondering if Thomas had not been present for a moment in their company. Absurd, of course. Thomas lived in a bed near Bangor, Maine; he was not a phantom or shade who wafted in the foggy hollows of North Carolina like Hamlet's father patrolling the battlements in Denmark. Yet how heavily his presence had suddenly asserted itself into their exchanges! Margaret had been drawn back to her world by her son's voice, and in the fog for an instant he had reminded her of her husband. Charlie could not help thinking that all their words, all their passion, had been trumped by this small moment.

He put down his binoculars and called Terry.

“Hello, Charlie,” she said, her voice bright. “I was wondering when I would hear from you. How's everything going?”

“It's going great.”

“Are the rhododendrons out?”

“Maybe not in full force, but they're here.”

“Where's Margaret? Is she there with you?”

“Yes, but I thought I'd give you a call.”

“You okay? You sound a little punk.”

“No, I'm fine. We're in North Carolina now. She's going to fly out of Asheville tomorrow.”

“That makes sense. Then you can pop onto the interstate and make it home in a jiffy.”

“She's a wonderful woman,” Charlie said.

“I think so, too. From the little time I spent with her, I really do.”

“I've fallen for her a little bit, you know? I guess you knew that would happen.”

Charlie heard Terry become still on the other end. She had been doing something—he heard water running, and something clink—but gradually the background noise ceased.

“Oh, Charlie,” she said. “I was afraid of this.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, Charlie. Did something happen?”

“No, not really. I just kind of came up against a reminder that she's married, that's all. Nothing she did.”

“That was the risk going in, wasn't it?”

“Yes, I know.”

“What are we going to do with you, Charlie?”

“I'm okay. Just wanted to hear a friendly voice.”

“Will you come by tomorrow for dinner? You'll be back in time, won't you? The kids would love to see you and I'll buy you a drink. How does that sound?”

“That sounds great, actually.”

“Okay, that's a plan. Now, I hate to shoo you off, but I'm out the door and I've got to run. Keep your hands up, Charlie. Don't lead with your chin.”

“Thanks, Terry.”

“You're both good people, Charlie. Just keep that in mind.”

She clicked off. Charlie started to raise the binoculars again but paused when he saw Margaret crossing the parking lot toward him. His eyes met hers. Then it was there again, the former warmth, the woman he had taken to the French Embassy. He smiled and kept his eyes on hers. She smiled in return, and it was okay again, at least for this minute, for now, for the moment it took her to cross the last of the parking lot and step into his arms.