Suncatchers (39 page)

The booth vibrated with the women's laughter. “And after they finally got through to the other side, old gramps says to Charlene”—and the woman gasped out the punch line a word at a time—”‘Please—be—so—good—as—to—provide—me—with—a—bar—of—soap—next—time—Charlene.'”

As the women broke into a fresh round of laughter, Perry stuffed the rest of his hamburger into his mouth, slid across the vinyl seat, and headed for the door, dropping his trash into the large bin stamped
THANK YOU
. Walking past the Texaco station, he glanced into the square opening at the end of the car wash and felt a twinge of sympathy for the indignity Charlene's grandfather had suffered, and a flash of anger at the two fat women in Hardee's. Who did they think they were criticizing all the men of the world, calling them sorry and low-down, laughing at the mishaps they endured at the hands of careless women?

Perry hardly noticed the houses on his way home. The couple on the porch had gone inside, but the swing was still moving like a small steady pendulum. He still caught glimpses of the yellow moon through the treetops, but it was hazy now, out of focus, for the wind had shifted and clouds were blotting out the stars, covering them like wispy cobwebs.

When he arrived home, he went directly to the kitchen cupboard, got a handful of Oreos, and walked over to Jewel's backyard. At the sound of Perry's low whistle, Hormel came scooting out of his little house. So he hadn't waited faithfully beside the gate after all. “Didn't think I'd keep my promise, huh?” Perry chided, dropping three Oreos through the fence.

26

All Kinds of Wonders

“Well, would she like something dressy, do you think, or something like this—more casual?” the saleslady asked, pulling out a pair of western-looking jeans with a red bandanna-print belt threaded through the loops. “See here, we have this whole line, with all these different tops and even some little vests and these fun little skirts.” She was whipping out garments faster than Perry could respond, holding them up briefly, then returning them to the rack and grabbing something else. “Look at this little sweater that goes with the pants. Aren't those little cowboys the cutest things? And this little shirt—if you don't want to spend quite that much—see, it has the same little cowboys and broncos stitched on the collar and down the front? These little things are all just real popular with the ladies this season. Actually, it was a summer line, but we reordered it for fall because it went over so big.”

Perry wished he had gone ahead and ordered something from the L. L. Bean catalog as he had started to do—even if he couldn't figure out what colors “mesa sage,” “forsythia,” and “mango” were. This woman was confusing him with all her distracting
little
's. She looked so eager to please yet at the same time somehow slightly sinister, batting her incredibly long black eyelashes and fluttering her hands with their shiny vermilion fingernails in front of his face. Her little white teeth glinted with every swift smile, and she moved entirely too fast, jangling and tinkling with silver jewelry. She couldn't possibly be a native southerner, Perry decided. Southern women weren't this high-strung as a rule. As she straightened from picking up a wide-necked cotton top that had slipped off a hanger, Perry was embarrassed to find himself staring straight at her ample bosom. He looked away quickly.

“So what do you think?” she asked. “Can I fix you up with one of these nice little ranch ensembles?”

“Oh, well, I . . . I'm not really sure,” Perry said. He knew Dinah liked clothes—there was no doubt about that—but she was also particular. Only once before had he bought her anything to wear. He remembered her holding it up for a long time and finally shaking her head. “It's just not me, Perry,” she had said, kissing him. “It reminds me of something my mother would wear.” And sure enough when her mother had come over the next day, she had pounced on the dress with uncharacteristic ebullience, saying, “Oh, Dinah, what I'd
give
to have a dress like that!”

Perry looked back at the salesclerk. She was still smiling, but he saw her cast a sideways look at a woman browsing through another nearby rack. She looked back at Perry and widened her smile. “Can I show you something in a particular size?”

Perry took a deep breath. “I like the sweater and the skirt—that denim one with the buttons down the front,” he said.

“Oh, you mean this one with the darling little oval buttons?” the saleswoman said excitedly, pulling out the skirt. “And which do you like—the cardigan sweater or the pullover?”

Perry suddenly remembered something and felt immensely proud. A few months before he had left home—in fact, about a year ago exactly—he had heard Dinah say to one of her friends, “I'm going to take that black sweater back. I'm getting tired of pulling everything on over my head.”

“The cardigan,” he told the saleslady.

“Oh, that's a good choice,” she replied cheerfully.

Thirty minutes later he was sitting on a bench by a small fountain in the center of the mall eating a chicken sandwich and watching the Friday crowd. His packages were in an enormous bag beside him. He wasn't so sure about the outfit now—or rather, the two outfits, for the saleslady had talked him into the blouse, too, and then had pointed out that he could buy a vest for only sixty-eight more dollars, and “Then your wife can have two different little ensembles.” He could picture Dinah in the clothes. The long lines would suit her height, but now he worried that she'd think they were silly. “What's this?” he could hear her saying. “Don't you remember how I always hated those old John Wayne movies?”

The afternoon sunlight flooded in through the angled panes of the mall's center skylights, throwing brilliant bands of colors across the floor. A toddler at a bench across from where Perry sat pointed gleefully from prism to prism and struggled to get down from his mother's lap. She finally gave up and snapped a stretchy cord around his wrist, then set him down on the floor. He waddled to the nearest spectrum and tried to pick it up, clawing at the floor with his tiny fingers, then looking back at his mother peevishly. Abandoning that one, he crawled to another one and again scratched at the floor, a look of bafflement crossing his face as the colors tinted the back of his small hand.

Several people had stopped to watch, and when the toddler finally screamed in fury and lay down, thrashing his chubby legs, everyone chuckled and one woman said indulgently, “Isn't that precious?” The mother came quickly, with reddened face, and scooped up her little boy, who swatted her with one flailing arm and then grabbed a fistful of her hair. The laughter died as she bore him off. Perry hadn't laughed. He knew too well how she must feel. He finished his sandwich then headed toward the card store at the opposite end of the mall.

The clothes were already gift wrapped, but now he picked up a long tube of brown mailing paper, then looked around for an appropriate card. He was surprised at the variety of occasions represented. He passed by the Halloween and Thanksgiving cards, the anniversary and wedding cards, and then turned to the next aisle. These were all humorous, with pictures on the front of gorillas wearing clothes in domestic settings or questions like “Know what you get when you cross a penguin with a birthday candle?” One had the picture of a voluptuous blond hitchhiker in short shorts, one high-heeled shoe perched on top of a small suitcase. The message said, “How about a little birthday pickup?”

He walked past baby cards, then another section labeled “Unique Remembrances” with cards for “A Fine Young Man's Baptism” and “Now That You're Retired” and “Congratulations on the Promotion!” He even saw one that said “Let's Forget Our Quarrel.” He stopped briefly and wondered what Dinah would say if he sent a card like that to her. It would probably throw her off balance. Was he trying to be funny, she would wonder, or was he spitefully trivializing what they had been through? Or was he still so addlebrained that he thought a trite apology would erase it all?

When he finally found the serious birthday cards, he realized he'd have to make it one of the friendly, impersonal kind since “Ex-wife” wasn't one of the categories included. At last he settled on one that said “A Special Birthday Wish.” On his way to the cash register, he passed a display of clothbound books filled with blank pages. On an impulse he picked up one and added it to his purchases.

Outside the card shop, Perry dug into his pocket and pulled out the list he had made before leaving home. There were still six errands left on it—unimportant things, all of them, but not totally unnecessary. At least he hadn't come to that yet—filling up his time with “piddling” as Dinah called it. One of her friends named Shelley had been married to a man who was the worst piddler of all. Paul spent Saturdays doing things like polishing the underside of his car hood and going to estate auctions, though he never bought anything. Dinah—and Shelley, too, apparently—had nothing but contempt for Paul. He and Shelley had divorced several years ago.

Perry looked at his watch. This was working out well. The worst part of the day would be used up before he finished. There wasn't a World Series game on television tonight, but one of the channels carried Perry Mason reruns. Those weren't bad. He had always liked watching another man named Perry handle so competently the challenges of his job. He stuffed the list back into his pocket and headed for the mall exit. He couldn't help thinking of Beth. She would be so proud of him if she knew he had made a list of errands and was proceeding through them one at a time, even marking them off as he went. Lists were one of her passions, right up there with filing her receipts in alphabetical order.

It was after seven-thirty when he finally arrived home. Willard's car was parked in Jewel's driveway, and her front door was open. He saw Joe Leonard look out, then disappear from sight. As Perry started up the steps to his sister's house, Jewel opened her kitchen door and called to him.

“Perry, we're fixing to start a game of Monopoly and wondered if you'd like to join us. It's Willard's birthday, and we're going to have some cake and ice cream later.” Joe Leonard was standing behind her, listening for Perry's answer, and it struck Perry again that the boy was getting taller.

Perry Mason or Monopoly—he couldn't remember the last time he had had a choice of what to do on Friday night. It didn't take him long to decide. Those movie reruns were on every month or so. “Sure, I'll play,” he told Jewel. “Just let me set these things inside.” Chinese checkers, dominoes, Monopoly—what will it be next, he wondered, Old Maid?

He set his packages on the kitchen table next to the two bags of groceries he hadn't bothered putting away yesterday. At the top of one of the bags sat a two-pound can of special-blend coffee. He took it out now, carefully removed the large gold bow the gift-wrap girl had taped to Dinah's present, and stuck it on top of the coffee can. He found the card that said “A Special Birthday Wish” and signed his name, then wrote “To Willard” on the front of the envelope. There—never let it be said that Perry Warren came to a party empty-handed. He'd have to get another card for Dinah—or maybe he wouldn't even bother with a card. This one really hadn't seemed suitable anyway. And the bow would have had to come off, too, before wrapping the gift to mail.

When he looked in at Jewel's open kitchen door a few minutes later, no one was there. He saw the Monopoly game board spread out on the dinette table, the chocolate layer cake on the counter beside the stove, and a two-liter bottle of 7-Up beside it. One cupboard door was standing open, and several glasses sat upside down in the dish drainer. The dish towel was slung carelessly across the countertop. Where was everybody? Perry wondered. There was no sound whatsoever from inside the house. He paused a minute before pressing the buzzer. It's not
that
, he told himself, remembering Harvey Gill's recent Sunday school lesson on what the church people called “The Rapture.” Eldeen had once described what she thought it would be like after this momentous event. “And just think of all the things left at loose ends! The airplanes without pilots and the patients on operating tables without a doctor and the mamas in rocking chairs all of a sudden without their little babies—and everybody wondering and wondering what's happened. And then somebody saying, ‘Oh, now, could it be that thing all them Christians kept talking about? Maybe it really was true after all! Maybe they've all been
raptured!
'”

Standing here outside the empty kitchen, Perry suddenly thought of all the vacancies in Derby's everyday activities if these people really did disappear into the heavens someday. Annoyed at himself, he pushed the button forcefully and heard the buzzer inside. There was no response. No one came hurrying to the door to welcome him. He knocked loudly, then opened the screen door a crack and called, “Anybody home?” Still nothing. He felt a chill down his back. They had been here less than fifteen minutes ago. Where were they now? Hormel wasn't even sitting at his normal post beside the gate.

All at once he heard a startled cry—low and raspy. “Well, I
never
!” It was coming from the backyard. Perry hurried down the steps and unlatched the gate. Hormel came racing toward him, barking furiously, then stopped and wagged his tail. Then Perry saw them, and a wave of relief washed over him. All four of them were huddled together behind the house, and Eldeen was sitting in a lawn chair peering through something mounted on a tripod. In a flash it came to Perry what it must be. Jewel had talked recently about Willard's interest in buying a telescope. He must have gone ahead and done it.

Willard was the first to notice him. “Hey, Perry, come on over here and take a look through this thing,” he said.