Our Daily Bread (11 page)

“Well, good evening, Ivy, Tom. This is going to be lovely.”

“Nice of you to take her, Mrs. C.”

“Nonsense. I'm happy for the company. We shall have great fun. Rice crispy squares are in the offing and then Ivy is going to beat the pants off me at Crazy Eights.”

“No, I won't,” laughed Ivy. “I'll let you win.”

“Oh, you mustn't do that, young lady. And I shall be watching you closely. Besides, once you trounce me, I will have the opportunity to return the flogging at a game of Scrabble.”

“Sounds like you've got it all planned,” said Tom.

“What is that around your neck, dear?” Dorothy asked Ivy.

“That's my whistle. From Dad.” Her skin turned faintly pink. “It's a kind of protection.”

“A Boy Scout whistle, isn't it? Oh, very sensible. My husband was a Boy Scout leader, you know, and he had one of those. Loud enough to call up the cavalry if I recall and excellent if one is lost in the woods.” She turned to Tom. “Now, you and Patty have a wonderful evening.” Dorothy ushered Ivy inside. “And don't worry about us at all. I'll drop Ivy by in the morning after breakfast. Waffles, I think, don't you?” she said, addressing this last bit to Ivy.

“They're like pancakes, aren't they?” said Ivy.

“Far superior, to my mind, if made correctly. Now, off you go, Tom, off you go. Your wife is waiting for you.”

“Thanks, Mrs. C. Really. Thanks a lot.”

She shooed him and closed the door.

As Tom got back into the car he saw Dorothy and Ivy at the window, waving. He waved back as he started the car up again. “You could at least wave,” he said as he backed out of the drive.

“I waved. I waved. She's got a nice house,” said Patty, with a trace of wistfulness as she gazed at the small white front-gabled gothic revival with dark green scalloped gable trim and finial and a graceful porch with flattened arches. A neatly trimmed boxwood hedge ran along the sidewalk and a climbing rose grew up along the porch columns. A brass wind chime tinkled prettily in the evening air.

“Maybe we should plant a climbing rose.” Tom set the car toward the Delaware River.

Although Tom had not corrected Dorothy when she said “wedding anniversary” it was not, in fact, the anniversary of their wedding, since Patty had resolutely refused to marry him. Rather, it was the sixteenth anniversary of the night she'd agreed to come back to Gideon with him. Every year since then Tom had marked the day in some way. A rose on her pillow, a bottle of perfume, an impromptu bottle of wine and a waltz in the kitchen, a picnic if the weather permitted, and occasionally, a dinner out, like tonight. But tonight, Tom was hoping, would be even more special. Until he'd talked to Mrs. Carlisle he hadn't known exactly how it would happen, only that he'd saved for months for this dinner. Doing without lunches and without a couple of beers after work with the boys. He'd done without new underwear and without new work gloves. They would have wine with dinner and dessert and anything else she wanted.

During the forty-five-minute drive he tried to keep the conversation going. He talked about the kids: Ivy and her interest in rock collecting, what a strange hobby that was for a girl; about Bobby's sudden interest in basketball and some new group of friends he seemed to be with all the time; how he'd like to know a bit more about them. Maybe they could watch him play sometime? Sure, she said, sometime. Well, Tom said he was pleased Bobby had new friends. And then he tried to find something else to say, but couldn't and so the last minutes of the drive were spent in silence, watching out for deer.

When they'd arrived at the Blue Moon and parked the car, Tom made Patty wait until he went around and opened the door and made her take his arm so her heels wouldn't slip in the gravel pathway. He held the restaurant door open and bowed slightly, clicking his heels. He was rewarded when she laughed and told him not to be an ass, and he felt the evening might be fine, after all.

They were seated at a good table halfway down the room, not too close to the swinging doors of the kitchen, or to the hall leading to the bathroom in the back. Tom held Patty's chair. The room was filled—lots of couples and a few families, who were set up near the back where the noise of children wouldn't bother anyone, and a couple of tables of friends. The lighting was low and jazz piano drifted from speakers suspended in the corners of the room. The tablecloths were white and the water glasses were cobalt blue with gold moons on them. Small white candles in gold holders sent light glinting off the moons and the water and Patty's green eyes. The waiter asked if they wanted a drink before dinner and Patty said yes, please, she'd have a Manhattan, and Tom had a scotch and soda. They looked over the menu.

“How about oysters to start?” he said.

“Oysters?” She made the suggestion sound sexual. “Oh, you want me to have oysters, do you?”

He couldn't tell if her teasing was in fun, or if she was irritated. “Might be interesting,” he said.

“Can I have the lamb?” she asked and read from the menu, “Roast baby rack of New Zealand lamb with mustard and basil crust. Piquillo pepper and hummus tortilla, roast garlic and green peppercorn au jus.”

“Sounds good, maybe I'll have that myself, although I don't know what the hell piquillo pepper is, do you?”

“No idea.”

“No oysters?”

“I'll have a salad. I need to lose weight.”

Tom reached across and took her hand. “You're the size of nothing. You don't need to lose weight.” He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her palm. It smelled of roses. “Change nothing. You're perfect.”

“Why do you love me so much?”

“How could I not?”

The waiter arrived and brought their drinks. He said he'd be back to take their orders and Tom said they were in no hurry whatsoever. Patty sipped her drink and said it was good, so good she might have two. Tom proposed a toast. “To us,” he said, raising his glass. “To you. To another fifty years together.”

The light from the candle flashed in her hair, in her eyes and on the drop of liquid on her bottom lip. “To us,” she said.

They ordered wine to go with the meal. Red wine. A Shiraz the waiter recommended. The food, when it came, was served on white and gold plates and was fragrant with basil and pepper and the jus from the lamb pooled against the hummus. They talked about how good the food was and drank their wine. Knowing he was driving, Tom only had one glass and Patty drank the rest. Maybe that was what made her mood change. One minute they were talking about putting in a vegetable garden in the back of the house and the next Patty said, what was the point?

“I mean, why bother with any of this?”

“Bother with what? Gardening?”

“Sure, that's it.” She snorted. “Gardening.”

“I thought you liked that climbing rose at Mrs. Carlisle's. It did make the house look nice. I've kind of let our yard go of late. Used to be real pretty when my mother took care of it.”

“Of course, I'll never be as good as your sainted mother,” said Patty, pouring herself more wine.

“That's not what I meant.”

“Have you ever thought what it's like for me, living in a dead woman's house? Sleeping in a dead woman's bedroom?”

“I thought that's why we got all new furniture and painted—”

“We got
some
new furniture. Some. And that was sixteen years ago. It's hardly new now.” She put her fork down. “Why can't we have anything new? You sit in that chair of your father's every night. It's actually disgusting, now I think about it. It's like all the molecules and cells of these dead people are still around, and you're morphing into them.
I'm
morphing into them.”

“You want me to get rid of the chair?” It was like having a handful of water, watching it slither through his fingers with no idea how to stop it.

“Oh, God, Tom. It's not the fucking chair.”

A woman at the next table glanced over at them. Tom's eyes met hers for a second and he could have sworn he saw pity in her expression. “Then what is it?” he said quietly.

“Forget it.”

“No, I want to know.”

“Well, maybe I don't feel like talking about it. Maybe I don't feel like talking much at all. Maybe I'm all talked out, Tom. Jesus. Everything is such a battle with you. We just don't see things the same way, do we? Maybe that was what I liked about you. We're so goddamn different. You remember that night we first met?”

Liked?
Past
tense?
“Every minute of it.”

“You looked like such a hick. A big corn-fed hick right off the plough.” She chuckled. “Everybody looked at you when you walked into the Horse, wondering what tour bus you'd fallen off.”

“I never claimed to be anything but what I am.”

“I know. I couldn't believe it when you sat front and centre and wouldn't be budged. You made me feel self-conscious. Did you know that? You made me feel like you were hunting me or something. But then, I figured I'd keep singing as long as you were handing out the cash.” She looked at him as though she didn't see him every single day, like she didn't sleep next to him. “I never figured I'd end up here.”

He knew then the question he had hoped to ask again, and hoped maybe, just maybe she'd answer differently than the other times he'd asked it, would go unspoken. He felt it drift down like a body sinking in water, down to settle at the silty bottom.

They were supposed to be talking about what was right. How right they were together and how much they meant to each other. He could see now how foolish he had been to think of asking her, again, to marry him. It had been years since he'd brought it up, so long perhaps even he'd thought it no longer mattered—so many people never bothered these days, as Patty assured him. But to him it did matter. And he was slightly ashamed of that knowledge, for what did a paper mean? Was it ownership he was seeking? Some sort of legal right? Something he could brandish if need be? She would throw her food in his face if she knew what he was thinking. But he wasn't the only one, surely, who cared about such things? Married mattered in this town. Not married was merely shacked up. And then there were the kids. Nobody had ever said anything to him, but that didn't mean they hadn't said anything. Neither Ivy nor Bobby had ever asked to see wedding pictures, but they would one day. It was a wonder they hadn't already.

So, no question tonight, or at least not
the
question. But certainly others must be asked. “If not here, then where did you figure you'd end up, Patty?” Every word out of his mouth felt like something sticky pulled from between his teeth.

“Honestly? I don't know, Tom.”

His throat closed over. He hadn't expected it, this strangling emotion. He removed his hand from the stem of his wine glass, afraid it might snap. “Excuse me,” he said, in a choked voice, and stood.

“Tom?”

“I'll be right back.”

In the men's room, he sat on a toilet while tears burned and finally fell down his cheeks. He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes until geometric patterns collided behind his lids. His chest was on fire and he briefly wondered if he was having a heart attack and then wondered if he cared. They would end up like all the other couples, sitting across from each other at brightly lit tables in the food court at the shopping mall, staring at their food, not talking, not touching. It was enough to make you want to stick a fork in your eye. In fact, he could picture just that. One moment you're sitting there at your weekly outing to the mall, poking at the lunch special of chicken-noodle soup and salad, having just picked up those boxes of cereal on special at the Piggly-Wiggly, wearing your orthopaedic sneakers and Depends, and one of you just snaps under the weight of all the unrealized dreams. One of you picks up the fork, wipes it on a napkin, and ends it all. Death by heavy sag of the dream deferred. Nod to Langston Hughes. You had to laugh, didn't you?

He couldn't sit in the john all night. He wiped his eyes with toilet tissue and stepped out of the stall, thankful no one else was in the bathroom. He ran cold water over his eyes and, looking in the mirror, he thought he would do. It wasn't such a bad face, was it? Not an altogether unattractive face, surely. He turned sideways to the mirror. No gut. Shoulders still broad. Arms still muscular. He splayed his fingers and regarded his hands. Meat packers, his father used to call them. “Shame you don't like football, boy,” his father had said. “You'd make a hell of a wide receiver with hands like that.” But he hadn't liked football, had he? Hadn't liked the bone-crushing violence he could very possibly do to another boy. You had to be careful with strength. You had to know when to use it, and when to keep it tucked up under your arm.

As he stepped out of the men's room, he saw Patty had turned in her chair, as though about to get up. He saw the worry in her face. Such beautiful worry. The fire in his chest died down to embers. She worried about him, and that was something.

She stood up, the way a man would when a woman approaches the table. As he came near her he saw there were tears in her eyes as well, her cheeks bright with wine flush. She put her arms up like a child, up around his neck and she nuzzled there. “I'm sorry, baby. Don't pay any attention to me. I'm a bitch, ruining this wonderful night. It's the wine. Forgive me?”

And he very nearly said, marry me. Instead, he said, “Come on, no harm done. Let's finish dinner. What do you want for dessert? We have to have dessert.”

They took their seats on opposite sides of the table and avoided each other's eyes while the waiter refilled their water glasses and then poured the remainder of the wine equally between them.

On the drive home, she refused to wear her seatbelt, snuggled next to him, and said she didn't care if they did hit a deer and she died now, because there really was nowhere else she'd rather be and no one she'd rather be with. He let her snuggle there on his shoulder and let her hand draw patterns on his thigh.