No Dark Valley (26 page)

He was finally discovered hitchhiking somewhere in West Virginia, and his parents drove up from Georgia to pick him up and take him home. His mother called Celia to tell her he had been found and to let her know they were coming to the college to pack up his things before heading home. Celia didn't even see him to say good-bye. She made sure she was holed up in a distant corner of the library the morning they came. How curious a thing their friendship was. With a great sense of wonder, she kept remembering how only months earlier he had almost torn someone's arm off for what he took to be an insult to her. And now that he was leaving college, the only feeling she could muster was relief.

Shortly after Christmas that year, a holiday Celia had spent mostly alone on a deserted campus, her grandmother sent her a newspaper clipping telling of Ansell's death. He had taken his father's car to Florida and driven it off a bridge somewhere. “Alcohol and drugs were thought to have played a part in the accident,” the clipping reported at the end.

It had always puzzled Celia somewhat that she hadn't felt more guilt and responsibility over Ansell's death, but after a brief shocking jolt, she had put it behind her. He had made his own choices—that was a fact. It saddened her but also educated her. When it came to friendship, nothing was certain. You could think you were close to somebody, but then it could all fall apart in the snap of a finger.

After Ansell was gone, she changed her major from literature, which had been totally his idea, to journalism. Not that she was unhappy with her major—she actually liked it quite a lot—and not that she was all that interested in journalism, which seemed pretty dry in comparison, but the simple act of changing her major gave her a feeling of independence she hadn't felt in a long time.

Celia looked down at the bowl of popcorn and was surprised to find it nearly half gone. She glanced out the kitchen window and noticed that the sky, which had been as bright as day when she had arrived home less than an hour earlier, had grown suddenly darker. Upstairs she heard water running and heavy footsteps going down the hall. Must be time for Milton's bath. Patsy had told her once that Milton liked to take bubble baths, and Celia had always thought less of him for that. Men should take showers and leave the bubbles to kids and women. She would never marry a man who—

She stood up from the table suddenly and dumped the rest of the popcorn in the trash. She wondered if she would ever stop setting these ridiculous standards for prospective husbands. Why should she care what kind of baths Milton Stewart took? Let him sit in mounds of scented bubbles for all she cared. Let him make a holy ritual of it if he wanted. Let him light aromatic candles, use perfumed soaps, and listen to Enya as he soaked all night.

She took the empty bowl to the sink and ran water into it, then walked back into the living room and looked at the three boxes on the floor. She wouldn't think of those now. She would unpack her suitcase first and worry about the boxes later. Maybe she would take a hot bubble bath herself before bed. She pushed the boxes against the wall, then carried her suitcase into the bedroom and set it on the bed.

Her digital alarm clock was flashing, which meant the power must have gone off while she was away. She checked her watch so she could reset the clock and was surprised to see that it was only a minute shy of seven. It seemed more like midnight. She sat down slowly on the edge of the bed and picked up the clock. She was surprised at how heavy it felt. Having to punch the reset button enough times to get to seven o'clock suddenly struck her as a monumental effort. As she sat staring at the flashing display, she heard two things, one right after the other.

First, her doorbell sounded, followed almost immediately by a deep rumble of thunder, neither of which was a welcome sound. She didn't want to talk to anybody right now, and she hated nighttime storms. As the years had gone by and many of the other reasons for wanting to get married had evaporated, this one remained: A husband could gather you in his arms at night and hold you until a storm had passed. So far, however, she had never found a man she wanted to put up with during all the other times of the day and night for that occasional comfort.

The doorbell sounded again right away. Whoever was at her door was impatient. Celia was tempted to ignore it. Who could it be, anyway? People hardly ever came to her door, since it was at the back of the Stewarts' house. Patsy Stewart surely wouldn't be coming around to her outside door. She would come down through the basement if she needed to see her, or else she would call on the telephone.

Celia's doorbell was generally put to use only when she was dating someone, which she certainly wasn't doing now, thank goodness. As it rang a third time, long and insistent, she got up from the bed and walked into the living room, wishing she hadn't left so many lights on. She could hardly pretend to be away from home or asleep when every room was lit up like a ball park. At least the blinds were closed.

The last time she had heard someone ring the doorbell this relentlessly was when that funny old woman had come to Al's door the night she broke up with him. For an instant the woman's scary-looking smile flashed into Celia's mind, and she wondered if the Muffin Lady was still making her rounds in Al's neighborhood. She wondered if the old woman, from her post by her front window, had noticed that Celia no longer went over to Al's house. Maybe she had taken him an extra batch of muffins as a gesture of consolation.

Milton Stewart had recently installed a motion sensor light at the back of the house, so Celia's doorstep was illuminated when she looked through the peephole to see who it was. She didn't recognize the man at first. Big smile, tall, good-looking—or at least she thought he probably was. It was a little hard to tell with his face stretched out so wide from the optical distortion of the peephole. A silly thought ran through Celia's mind. What would this man do, she wondered, if she threw open the door, flung herself into his arms, and cried, “You're just in time, Prince Charming! Please hold me till the storm passes.”

It took a moment for her to register surprise that the man was actually standing there waving at her, or rather at the peephole. Somehow he must have sensed that she was peeking out at him. He took a small step back so that his face turned into a size that fit the rest of his body, but he continued to wave. He cocked his head, and Celia could see then that the smile was of the wistful, apologetic sort, with maybe a touch of despair mixed in.

That was when the thick dark hair triggered a memory—yes, she had it now. It was the man who had visited her apartment a while back, the one who was moving in next door, who looked like Mr. Darcy in
Pride and Prejudice
, except for his scars. Celia knew they had been doing a lot of work next door during the past weeks. She had seen cars in the driveway on the other side of the house and boxes of trash left out by the curb. Bruce, that was the man's name. Kimberly's husband and baby Madison's father.

All foolish notions of Prince Charming having now vanished, Celia opened the door. Besides the fact that he was a married man, it was clear as soon as he spoke that his mission was anything but romantic. “Do you have a plunger?” he asked. Another sudden clap of thunder made them both jump, and almost simultaneously Celia heard a loud crack, as if lightning had split a tree. Bruce evidently heard it, too, for he leapt forward toward Celia's threshold, then immediately looked embarrassed. It was already raining, Celia noticed, the raindrops pattering against the leaves of the backyard trees with a sound like a roomful of distant typewriters.

“Here, step inside,” Celia said at exactly the same time that Bruce said, “Sorry, I hate lightning. It scares me to death.” So much for this guy comforting anybody during a nighttime storm, Celia thought. She imagined him curling up beside Kimberly at the first rumble of thunder, whimpering and shaking like a puppy until it blew over.

The screen blew shut as Bruce stepped inside. Behind him Celia could see the trees tossing and swaying. The tall pines always made her nervous during storms. Several years ago one blew down in a neighbor's yard during a high wind and fell on the Stewarts' house and crashed right through the bay window in their living room.

“Uh, about that plunger,” Bruce said. “We've got a plugged toilet, and, well, I can't seem to find—”

“Yes, of course I have one,” Celia said, whirling around. “Hang on. I'll get it.” Bruce was wearing a half-untucked wine-colored golf shirt, she noticed, with an unusual satiny sheen and a little zipper affair at the neck. If she had seen it on a mannequin in a store, she would have immediately pronounced it tacky. She wondered why he didn't wear turtlenecks to hide the burn scars on his neck.

Another violent boom of thunder sounded as she headed back to the bathroom closet. When she returned with the plunger, Bruce was standing even farther from the door, over by Macon Mahoney's painting,
Through the Blinds
. He was stooped down a little, studying it, or at least pretending to.

“Here you go,” Celia said, handing him the plunger as an amusing thought came to her. It had once been a preoccupation of hers to imagine bizarre ways of meeting eligible men, to wonder if anybody ever met the man she was going to marry like
this
, or like
this
. And the thought that came to Celia now was
I wonder if anyone ever met her future husband when he showed up at her door and asked to borrow a toilet plunger
.

She supposed she'd never get over this habit of imagining weird ways of couples meeting each other, even though she had given up on it for herself. She thought now of Boo Newman, who ran the gift shop near the gallery, and how she and her husband had met when Boo had mistakenly gone inside the men's restroom at a gas station.

And a couple of years ago an acquaintance of hers, another stringer at the Derby newspaper named Joan Spalding, had met the man she ended up marrying by running into him, literally, by a pickle display at the grocery store. For several weeks after Joan told her about it, Celia had been highly alert every time she had gone to the grocery store, but she hadn't seen any available-looking men, much less run into any.

Oh yes, she had heard some pretty wild stories from people about how they met their spouses, had done one of her first newspaper assignments about that very subject—a Valentine's Day feature for the Dover paper one year fresh out of grad school. And she still found such stories interesting. Of course, there were plenty of dull, ordinary ways that people met their spouses, too. Patsy and Milton Stewart, for instance, had worked together at a Waffle House one summer, and Ollie and Connie had sat by each other in history class in college.

Celia had finally concluded, however, though only in the last year or so, that, first of all, you never found something you were actively seeking and, second, all the eligible men her age were significantly flawed. And, to be fair, in her heart she knew she wouldn't exactly be any man's dream girl, either. She might be okay to look at, but what man would want to marry someone who had blithely gone to a clinic to get rid of something
living
? It always, always came back to that.

Celia must have been frowning because Bruce looked at her quizzically and said, “Anything wrong?” She shook her head, and he laughed, holding up the plunger. “I guess we don't really know each other well enough to make jokes about this.” He headed for the door, pausing briefly to scan the sky. The storm was in full force now. “Don't worry, I'll bring it back,” he said, then opened the screen and ran toward his house, holding the plunger over his head like a tiny inverted rubber umbrella.

She should have offered him a real umbrella, but it was too late now. Celia watched him as he dashed across the Stewarts' backyard and headed toward the driveway. He'd be soaked by the time he got inside his house. At least the trees sheltered him from some of the rain.

Celia wondered why he hadn't offered to stay home and deal with the overflow in the bathroom while Kimberly went next door to borrow a plunger. That would seem like the gentlemanly, husbandly thing to do. Of course, then
she
would have gotten drenched by the rain instead of him, but even that would be better than having to sop up a toilet disaster. Celia's idea of the perfect man would be one who would stick around when things got messy, who would wade in and get dirty instead of running next door. She sighed as she realized she was making lists of qualifications again.

Celia stood at the door and watched the trees thrash around. It wasn't as frightening, she decided, to watch a storm in progress as it was to lie in bed in the dark and listen to one. She couldn't remember ever giving her full attention like this to a storm, facing it head on. There was something majestic about the unleashing of such power. The sky was still just light enough that she could see the seething charcoal storm clouds against the twilight sky and the lacy effect of the swaying treetops with their new growth of spring leaves. If you could separate yourself from any disturbing memories of earlier storms, it actually made a beautiful picture.

She observed the storm for several minutes. She even stepped out to stand on her little concrete square of a porch beneath the awning over her door. She closed her eyes for a few moments. Combined with the coppery smell of rain and the cool sweeping drafts of air, this could almost be interpreted as a restful experience. The wind blew rain into her face, and she could feel her hair lifting and swishing about. She opened her eyes again and stayed there watching until the lightning began fading to sporadic glints and the thunder to a low grumble.

She was opening the door to return inside when she heard a voice. It was Bruce again, loping across the Stewarts' driveway toward her, brandishing the toilet plunger. His wet shirt was completely untucked now, and his hair was untidily plastered against his forehead from the rain. “Hey, it worked!” he said. “Very efficient piece of household equipment.”