Suncatchers (26 page)

It was at that moment that Perry noticed the family seated at a table over by the calliope—he guessed that's what the big purple hulk was supposed to be. It had a yellowed keyboard and steam whistles of varying sizes rising from the back. The cabinet was painted with purple gloss, although surely it hadn't come that way originally. Perry wondered if paint stores kept that shade of grape purple in stock or if it had to be custom ordered. He could imagine the paint mixers at the paint plant joking over the order and wondering who in the world would want such a garish shade of paint and why.

Perry was facing the calliope, and from his side of the table, right between Eldeen's and Jewel's faces, he had a straight view of a family—or at least that's what he assumed they were at first—sitting at a table across the room. There were three of them—a man, woman, and child. The first thing that caught his attention was the woman, who was seated with her back to Perry. She had long caramel-gold hair that swayed when she moved her head—hair exactly like Dinah's before the awful haircut. The man had blond hair, too, and lean, chiseled features like a California surfer. He sat across from the woman and couldn't keep his eyes off her, it seemed. The boy, probably only five or six years old, was partly hidden from Perry's view.

As he pretended to study the menu, Perry kept glancing toward the woman. Once she bent forward and appeared to be writing or drawing something on the boy's paper place mat while both the man and boy watched her hands with fascination. Perry wished she would turn around so he could see her face. Maybe he could feign interest in the calliope, walk all the way around it for a closer look, and then peer over the brass pipes at the woman. He was chagrined to see a waiter pick up the woman's plate. They must be almost ready to leave.

He was beginning to realize that the man and woman probably weren't married. They didn't act married. When she spoke, the man fixed his eyes on her face. He touched her hand, he smiled, once he reached his hand forward toward her face. He had that openly devoted, attentive behavior not common among husbands. Besides that, they talked a lot more than most married couples. Perry shifted his gaze to a couple seated to his right—late forties maybe. They were both eating, silently lost in the buttering of rolls and cutting of meat. The husband and wife of a family over by the window were talking but not to each other. The woman was wrangling with a toddler, and the man was pointing to the menu, apparently negotiating orders with the two older children.

He looked back to the woman with the long hair. She reached down to pick up something from the floor, and he watched her hair swing out like a shining silk fan. The boy must be hers from a previous marriage, Perry decided. The man seemed to take very little notice of the boy, which wasn't a smart move in Perry's opinion. If the man was serious about wooing the mother, he'd better pay attention to the kid. That seemed only logical. A dark thought suddenly began to take form in Perry's mind—was Dinah going out to dinner with other men? He looked back at his menu and breathed in sharply. Glancing up, he caught Jewel's eyes on him, perplexed. She turned around quickly to look behind her, then dropped her gaze to her lap as if she understood and was sorry for him.

He realized that Jewel and Joe Leonard must have already given their orders to Stanley, and now Eldeen was giving hers. “But give me the dressing separate in a little cup or else bring me the whole bottle if you don't mind 'cause I like to dribble it on a little at a time instead of all of it at once. Last time the lettuce got all limp at the bottom from settin' in a puddle of dressing.” Stanley stood rigid and unblinking, his pen poised in midair as Eldeen continued. She was fingering the folds of the large pink gauzy scarf arranged around her shoulders. It was anchored with a huge rhinestone peacock that, she had explained earlier to Perry, had been a gift from her secret pal at church.

“And when I said white meat on that chicken, that includes wings. Fact is, I like wings more'n I do the breast meat of chicken, although there's not as much meat on them, of course. So maybe you could bring me a breast
and
a wing or two, and that'd be just fine—I just wanted to make sure that was clear 'cause some folks don't consider wings white meat even though it's right up there beside the chicken's breast.” She tucked one hand up close to her side to signify a chicken's wing and flapped it just slightly. Stanley's puckered lips relaxed for the briefest moment into a small tight smile, and he wrote something on his order pad with a flourish.

“There, I guess that's it for me,” Eldeen said, closing the menu firmly and handing it to Stanley. “I don't believe you were here last time we came, but you're doing a real good job, so don't be nervous.” She patted his hand lightly. Stanley looked bewildered and said nothing. He moved nimbly around the table to Perry and stood beside him, his legs close together, the toes of his feet pointing in opposite directions. Perry had seen ballerinas stand that way.

Perry ordered quickly and then noticed with disappointment that the woman with the long hair was getting up to leave. The man was standing, too, reaching inside his back pocket and taking out his billfold. The little boy was over by the gum machine next to the cash register. Why it was so important for him to see the woman's face Perry couldn't say, but he couldn't stop to think about it now. Even while he scoffed at himself—“You idiot, get control of yourself. It's not Dinah”—he heard another voice retorting, “Lighten up, I know it's not, but I just want to
look
, for pete's sake,” and he knew he couldn't stop what he was about to do.

“Excuse me,” Perry said, standing suddenly. “I'll be right back.” The men's room was off a little hallway right behind the cash register. He strode to it briskly. As he pushed open the door, he turned and looked back at the woman. She was pointing to the antique musical instruments displayed on the wall behind the cashier, and at first Perry thought she was pointing straight at him.

“See that?” she said to the boy. “It's a lyre.”

If he had been a different kind of person, it would have been a good moment for a witty bit of playacting. “I beg your pardon,” he could have said with a broad, comical sweep of the arm, letting go of the rest room door and stepping toward her. “I'm
not
a liar, and I highly resent being slandered by a total stranger. I demand an apology.” But he didn't do it, of course.

As he turned the faucet on full force inside the rest room, he closed his eyes and saw the woman's wide-set eyes, her wide smile, her high, white forehead—none of it at all like Dinah, but still pretty in its own way. He also heard Brother Hawthorne's fervent reading during today's Mother's Day sermon of a quotation by a seventeenth-century theologian named Jeremy Taylor. “A good wife is Heaven's last best gift to man—his angel of graces, his gem of virtues; her smile, his brightest day; her kiss, the guardian of his innocence; her arms, the pale of his safety. . . .” As he watched the water gushing from the faucet, he noticed how easy it was to imagine that the water was flowing in the opposite direction, being drawn upward from the drain back into the faucet by a powerful suction.

Another man entered the rest room, and Perry quickly rinsed his hands and turned off the faucet. He hit the knob of the dryer and stood for a moment kneading his hands beneath the warm current of air. It occurred to him again, as it often had during recent months, what pitiful creatures men were—not humankind in general, but males.

As he walked back toward the table, he scanned the faces of all the men he saw. They were pathetic in a way. All their posturing and swaggering and windy boasts—all of it at the mercy of women. How funny, how very, very funny—none of it was worth a plug nickel without the attention of a woman. He saw a man just exiting the restaurant behind his wife, trying to fit his wallet back into his hip pocket. He was overweight and the seat of his trousers looked uncomfortably snug. For some reason Perry felt a wave of pity sweep over him at the sight.

He arrived back at the table, and as he pulled out his chair to sit down, he saw Stanley approaching with their salad plates, taking small light steps. Perry felt himself recoil and immediately rebuked himself. He was supposed to be the kindhearted social libertarian, wasn't he? He had studied homosexuality in depth in one of his graduate courses, had even written a paper on it. These other people—the hatemongers at the Church of the Open Door—were supposed to be the ones repulsed by someone like Stanley. Maybe, he told himself, Stanley should be praised for his independence from women. Then again, maybe Stanley was the ultimate example of dependence on women.

“Well, looka here,” Eldeen said, “both our men is arriving back at the very same time!” She beamed up at Stanley as he set the plates around, and while he was refilling their glasses, she said, “Joe Leonard can say the blessing for us today if it's all right with you, Perry.” Stanley's eyes darted around the table, and he pivoted swiftly and left.

It was right after Joe Leonard's prayer, during which he thanked God for this special day and for his mother and grandmother, along with the food, that Eldeen attacked the subject of Troy. Perry wondered if Jewel had said something while he was in the rest room about his interest in the people at the other table or if Eldeen had just come up with the idea by herself.

Ordinarily Perry would have deflected any discussion about his personal life. Shrugs, nods of the head, faraway looks, and silence—they were all useful in discouraging further questions. Most people got the hint easily. But not Eldeen. She never tiptoed toward a subject anyway, and once she lunged in, she apparently had no intention of climbing out.

“When was the last time you talked to your little boy, Perry?” she said abruptly, spearing a cucumber. Then she locked her attention on his eyes as sternly as a schoolteacher on a troublemaker in the back row.

No one spoke as Perry moved his salad greens around with his fork for a while. He could feel Eldeen still looking at him. He shrugged a little and stabbed at a cherry tomato but didn't eat it. He rolled the tomato around in the dressing for a few moments, then sighed. “Oh, I guess—let's see, it was . . . in February, I guess.”

“You mean before or after you came to live at Beth's?” The cucumber must have been very fresh, for Perry could hear the crisp crunching as Eldeen chewed it.

“Well, before. It was, I mean I . . . well, I said good-bye, you know, before I left.”

Eldeen grunted, then poured some white dressing onto her salad. Perry quickly put the cherry tomato into his mouth and hoped she was finished. But she picked her fork back up and waved it at him. Her thick eyebrows bristled as she scowled at him.

“Do you mean to sit there and tell us you haven't heard the sound of your own child's voice for all this time? That's a crime! I tell you, it's a crime!”

Jewel reached over and placed her hand on Eldeen's lap. “Mama, you're attracting attention,” she said softly.

Eldeen snorted. “Well, somebody sure
needs
to attract attention to this sad, sad situation,” she said. “Here sits a man who's not even allowed to talk to his own flesh and blood! His own little boy! Why won't she let you talk to him?” she asked, jabbing her fork into her bowl.

Perry remembered seeing thin, stooped men along highways poking at pieces of litter that same way. Part of him tried to focus on what Eldeen was saying, and another part wondered if those men ever came up with something valuable on the nails at the ends of their sticks—maybe a gift certificate or a twenty-dollar bill.

“She must be a hardhearted woman not to let you speak to your boy that's as much
yours
as
hers!
'Course I know I don't know the whole story, and I shouldn't be sittin' here passin' judgment, but it just riles me, that's all. Does
she
always answer the telephone when you call?” Eldeen asked.

“Well . . . yes—yes, she does,” Perry said. How could he admit that he had called her only three times since he'd been in Derby? And all three times he had broken out in a sweat and been unable to utter a word when he had heard her voice. And all three times she had repeated, “Who is this? What do you want? Who is this?” before she finally hung up.

“That rankles me good,” Eldeen said, chewing energetically. “That's not fair, not one bit fair.”

Jewel spoke up. “Isn't there an agreement on paper about that? You could ask your lawyer, couldn't you?”

All three of them stared at him, waiting for his answer. Joe Leonard picked up a package of crackers and opened them without ever taking his eyes off Perry.

There didn't seem to be any way out of this. Perry set his fork down and looked up at the ceiling. A wavery organ rendition of “Moon River” was playing in the background. “There's no written agreement,” he said, shrugging, “because I never got a lawyer.”

“Well, that still doesn't give her any right to—” Eldeen began, but Perry interrupted.

“ . . . and it's not that she won't
let
me talk to him,” he said. He realized how weak and spineless this was going to sound. “I just . . . well, I was afraid that . . . no, not really afraid, but just . . . well, it's been hard to know what to do. I thought maybe it would be better for them if I . . . oh, it's too much of a mess to explain.” He stopped and picked his fork back up and stared at it. He couldn't force himself to look them in the eye.

“You thought it would be easier to just walk away than to fight, didn't you?” Jewel spoke quietly, and when he lifted his head, he marveled again at the piercing blueness of her eyes.

“Well, go home today and
call
her,” Eldeen demanded. “And tell her plain out that you want to talk to your little boy—what's his name?”