Maud's House (16 page)

“Nobody could love more than you and Lewis Lee.”

“You’re damn right. Nobody. What does he know about keeping a family together?”

The bell in the kitchen called.
Ding ding ding.

“He doesn’t know shit.” Freda studied the tip of her cigarette. “He doesn’t have an inkling of what it’s like to lose something important to you, something that keeps you going, that makes your day worth waking up to, that keeps you from going off half crazy and getting a job.”

“Lewis Lee’s got a job?”
Ding ding ding.

“Stuff it!” Freda yelled. She exhaled. “Driving trucks, logging trucks, to New Hampshire and back. He’s gone all the time it seems. I’m used to having him around.” She blew out a long, slow stream of smoke. “Maud, I got spoiled. My Lord, the fun we’d have in the afternoons watching the soap operas.”

“But why? Why did he get a job?”

Freda said Lewis Lee had had a change of heart about life. He lost his knife and couldn’t whittle any little figures for her and the kids’ Christmas presents so he decided to earn the money for gifts.

“I wanted to buy him another whittling knife but Lewis said it wouldn’t be the same. His father gave him that knife when he was a boy. It was his grandfather’s before that.” Freda puffed furiously on the cigarette and wearily exhaled. Her eyes watered as if the smoke had blown back into her face instead of drifting my way.

“I told him the kids and me don’t need gifts,” she whispered so softly I had to lean closer to hear. “But he won’t listen. I miss the old Lewis Lee, the one who didn’t crawl in bed too tired to even talk, the one who laughed under the covers and said silly things. I loved that man. This one just isn’t the same.”

Ding ding ding.

I patted Freda’s shoulder. “You’re right, some people don’t know shit about life.”

Odie unzipped his down parka, institutional green as it was part of the Round Corners Police Department’s official uniform; the nylon rustled as he reached for five sugar packets, tapped them against his finger, and ripped off the tops. All five went into his coffee.

“Pass on the cream, Maud. Arlene’s been nagging about my weight again.” Odie sipped his coffee. “Can you believe it about Harvey Winchester? Pretty damn sad when a man’s afraid to talk to his wife. Then again when Wynn’s the wife, it may be understandable. She can be a wild woman and pregnancy has not turned her into Miss Congeniality. Once I was in the shop for a haircut and she kept me waiting while she ripped out some stitches on that kid’s afghan.”

“Mothers,” Amos said.

“Mothers,” agreed Bartholomew.

“I think this whole town’s gone nuts,” Odie said. “I hope you ain’t been painting all this crazy stuff that’s been going on, Maud.”

I smiled. “I’ve been painting it; Ella’s been writing it. When we’re finished with Round Corners, it’s going to make Peyton Place look like kindergarten.” Odie sputtered, spitting his coffee across the counter.

Frank and Ella came in and took a booth behind Odie, Amos, and Bartholomew. Frank kept his back to the wall. It was hamburger steak night, Frank’s favorite.

“Two of the usual?” I asked, pouring their coffees.

“Yes,” Frank said.

“No,” Ella said.

Frank glared at her; she stared him down.

“I want something different. We don’t have to have hamburger steak all the time. The world isn’t going to end if I have a grilled cheese.”

“It’s a good night for grilled cheese,” I said. Frank and Ella remained silent. “And for hamburger steak.”

It was obvious that Frank and Ella weren’t talking to each other. Which meant they doubly didn’t want to talk to Odie. So I could have doused Odie with decaf when he leaned over and said, “Well, your employer has gotten himself in a mess now, Ella.”

Ella ruffled up like an offended bird. She had given up trying to explain to Odie that the postal service was a private business and not a branch of the United States government. Odie subscribed to selective memory and identification. When the government did something he agreed with, it was “his country.” When it did something he considered absurd, it was “Ella’s boss.”

“Oh, really?”

“Can’t turn on the news without hearing about that cruise ship being held hostage out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”

Sea-jacked by terrorists, The Star in Heaven, the special cruise filled with the world’s greatest astronomers, had hogged the headlines for days. Thomas was supposed to have been on that cruise, but changed his mind. He wasn’t ready to leave Round Corners yet, he said. So he missed the boat.

“Oh, that,” Ella sighed. “Terrible, isn’t it?”

“Thomas is fit to be tied,” I said. “He’s glued to CNN.”

“You can’t blame him. All those innocent stargazers.” Ella tutted.

Odie shook his head. “The government has to make a move. Send in the frogmen or something.”

“They don’t want to endanger the passengers,” Ella argued.

“I’d send in sharpshooters myself. They have guys who can plug a hole right through those terrorists’ tonsils. They’d never know what hit them.”

“How would they get close enough to the boat?”

“I’d send them in on dolphins. They’re the smartest creatures in the world.”

“Too smart to get mixed up in that harebrained scheme.”

“So what’s your idea? Talk them into trading a luxury cruise liner for a cozy little jail cell? Read them a poem? Appeal to their literary sensibility? Ella, all I got to say is: It’s a good thing the world isn’t run by pacifist poets like you. I don’t blame Frank for barricading that door one bit. Should have done it years ago.”

Ella gasped. The whole town knew about Ella and Frank’s terrible fight. The root of the argument was Frank’s misguided remarks about Ella’s memory. Actually, it was not the remarks themselves, but the fact that Frank had yet to apologize for making them. Ella could excuse words uttered in the heat of the moment, but she could not forgive ill-manners.

Each day his words ate at her until one morning she reached the point where she didn’t care what kind of eyes—hotcakes, Quaker Oats, or lumpy Cream of Wheat—Frank looked at her with, he wasn’t getting anything.

“Aren’t we having breakfast this morning?” Frank said.

“I am,” said Ella, pulling a hot plate of bacon and eggs out of the oven. She took the plate to the table, sat down, and arranged a napkin in her lap.

Frank could see the steam wafting off the fluffy scrambled eggs. He smelled the dash of vanilla Ella always used. His wife made the best scrambled eggs.

He peeked in the oven. “Where’s mine?”

Ella ignored him.

Frank looked at the scrambled eggs again—they practically were smoking—and headed for the shower. As he passed behind Ella, he said in a casual voice, “I think I’ll have breakfast at the store. I feel like some of those gooey, flaky bear claws.”

Ella’s fork clanged against the plate. He knew she loved bear claws better than life itself, almost. Certainly better than Frank Snowden at that moment.

She rushed to the bathroom door and banged on it. No answer. Just the sounds of waterfall, pouring out of their new Shower Massage attachment, and Frank singing. Each morning he used every last drop of water in the tank rehearsing barbershop quartet songs. Ella hammered again with her fist.

“Frank, I’m tired of performing my ablutions at night because you use all the hot water in the morning, and I’m tired of you performing those awful songs at the crack of dawn.”

The shower shut off. Silence. Ella placed her ear against the door. No singing, no buzz of electric shaver, no rattle of the loose towel rack. Suddenly, the door was flung open, and Ella almost fell into the bathroom. Frank strolled out of the bathroom in a waft of steam and hothouse nonchalance.

“Ella,” he said, “I’m going to eat the whole box of bear claws myself.”

Before it was over, Ella ended up at my house, blubbering while she posed, retelling the whole story again and again as if her broken heart was a broken record. Meanwhile, Frank drove to Snowden’s General Store and set to building a barricade of cans and boxes—beans, spaghetti, toilet paper.

Customers came in and Frank said, “What do you need” without so much as a hello. Peanuts, Pringles, they said, and stamps. “I can help you out with the peanuts and Pringles,” Frank said. “But you’re on your own for the stamps.” Frank swung his head to point next door. If they wanted stamps, they had to trudge all the way back outside, climb over the snow bank, and enter the post office through the main door. The shortcut, between one side of the big old building and the other, between grocery and post office, between Frank and Ella, was gone.

I closed up the Round Corners Restaurant without a sign of T-Bone. Thomas was waiting for me in the parking lot. When he saw me, he jumped out of his van, walked over to mine, and opened the door. I regarded him a moment, then climbed in. Thomas followed me home.

We built up the fire in the wood stove, turned off the lights, and for the first time in a week, I tore into a six-pack. I tossed Thomas a beer, and we curled up on opposite ends of the sofa. We drank in the dark, the curtains open, the snowflakes dancing in the spotlight of the outside lamp. I kicked off my shoes and rubbed one foot. “Here, let me,” Thomas said, swinging my feet up on his lap. He massaged the arches and ankles and toes. I sighed and closed my eyes.

“You know, I wish I had seen it.”

“What?”

“The house.”

I didn’t open my eyes. “It was something else all right.” Thomas’s fingers felt so good. “When I was a child, it seemed such a natural place. No matter where I was, if I got the urge, I just pulled a crayon from my pocket (I always had one) and made a picture. It was much like little boys taking a leak in the garden.”

Thomas pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Why do I miss everything? Vietnam, the demonstrations, sit-ins, streaking, this house. My mom and dad tell such great stories of the way things were.”

“After I married George, I always felt like I was fiddling with it, like a woman who can’t help straightening her husband’s tie. Of course, George’s ties were never crooked. And it was impossible to find any lint to pick from his lapel.”

“I wish I had seen it.”

I leaned forward and patted his cheek. He grabbed my hand and held it in place. His eyes, in that moment, were like George’s, so expectant, so clear, so simple. He pulled me close.

His lips were soft and gentle, almost hesitant. I felt the experienced one. There was a part of me standing back, uninvolved, observing. I was ashamed that I had time to think other thoughts, that the kiss did not command all my brain cells, that I had energy left over to plot fantasies. I wanted to be mindless. I wanted to be flame. I wanted to wiggle like a tadpole.

I put my mind to the kiss, frightening Thomas. He paused then continued more confidently. I must have done all right. In the end, I don’t think Thomas had a clue what was on my mind: how nice the words “moon drop” are, how many colors of red there are, how long the smell of paint lingers in a room.

“You coming to bed?” Thomas asked.

I smiled. “In a bit.”

“Oh.” He stood uncertainly, then headed for the door.

“Thomas?”

“Yes?”

“I wish you had seen the house, too.”

Long after Thomas turned in, I sat by the fire, staring out the window at the snowflakes caught in the dark by the magic of the porch light. In a snowstorm, there is great aloneness. There is coldness even though your back is up against the wood stove. Suddenly, I wanted to be near T-Bone. I pulled on my boots and gloves, zipped up my parka, and drove to his farm.

No one answered my knock. I plowed through the snow around the house. The light in the office shone warmly in the windows. And there was T-Bone, snoring on the sofa. Cat rode his sleeping chest. I wanted to pound on the window and scream, where the hell were you? Instead, I stood there, my toes growing cold then numb. I stayed until my fingers tingled and hurt. I stayed—finally understanding the loneliness I had brought him all these years—to watch over him and to listen to the sizzling silence of the snowflakes.

C
ontrary to popular belief, we do not have Clydesdales hanging out on every corner in Vermont. We don’t slice through the snow in curlicue sleighs drawn by big draft horses with jingling harnesses. We get to the grocery, the laundromat, the bowling alley like most people do—with front wheel drive. But you can’t tell the tourists anything.

To them, this is Clydesdale Country. This is, according to Hollywood, the home of holiday nostalgia; the good old days are still good here, still scented with pine wreaths and spiced cider. The cold evenings smell of smoke from the wood stoves. Sleds lean against the back door. Meals are long and the drink is potent. Guests are not eager to leave the table, bundle up, pump the cold accelerator, and arrive home just as the heater warms up. So they stay and they laugh and the children play nicely under the Christmas tree.

That, says George and Hollywood, is the stuff of beer commercials. George was not alone in his belief in marketing the New England mystique. Round Corners lost its first bid for fame five years ago when a beer company that shall remain nameless chose a town to the east as the site for its seasonal filmmaking. George insisted then that the Round Corners business community simply hadn’t put together a competitive economic development package. He whined about how the other town had offered free accommodations for the film crew at the local ski lodge, an attractive tax-incentive package, and a year’s supply of Vermont maple syrup for the producer.

And so, naturally, George was miffed when Round Corners caught the eye of Hollywood (or is it Milwaukee?). A year after George the economic developer died Round Corners was selected as the site for “Clydesdale II: The Sequel.”

Rotten luck, George, to die like that before you even had a crack at stardom. All right, I’ll tell you about it. I won’t leave out a thing. I’ll concentrate. I know details are important, George. Jesus, you’re talking to an artist.