Suncatchers (55 page)

“Oh, I love these. I've got me a pair!” she said gaily. A happy song was playing now, one that kept repeating the phrase “Hooray for the cowboys!”

“I bet you can't wait to see her face when she opens all these,” the woman continued, glancing up at Perry. But she fell silent, her fingers poised above the cash register. “What's the matter, honey?” she said. She reached over and tapped his hand. “You all right, darlin'?”

Perry forced a smile. “I'm fine,” he said a little too cheerfully.

The saleswoman looked quickly toward the back of the store, where the other customers had drifted, then turned back to Perry. “Are you on the outs with your wife, hon'?” she said, her dark eyes clouding sympathetically.

How do women always seem to sniff these things out? Perry wondered. He would never forget how Dinah had foretold the doomed marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Di less than two years after their royal wedding. “She doesn't look happy,” she had announced once, watching a brief news clip about the couple. Charles was holding his wife's elbow as they walked down a roped aisle among a throng of people. Dinah had pointed at the television screen. “See how he always looks away from her, over the tops of people's heads, like he's looking for someone else?” she had asked, and Perry had looked closer. All he saw, though, was the prince with a slightly worried expression, no doubt tired of all the public hoopla and ready to get away and play a little polo. “They won't last,” Dinah had said shortly, and although it had taken everyone else a lot longer to figure it out, she had been right, as usual.

“Is she mad at you about something?” the saleswoman repeated, touching Perry's hand again.

Perry shrugged. “Oh, a little I guess.” He cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. “But I'm working on it.” He realized right then that he had never admitted to himself just what he was doing. He really
was
working on it—it was no longer just a hazy hope, but he actually had intentions.

The little woman's face brightened. “Well, all this should sure help,” she said firmly, looking back to the cash register. “I could forgive lots and lots if my husband gave me presents like this!”

“That's what I'm hoping,” Perry said.

A song of lament about a cowboy who fell in love with a girl on the Red River Shore began playing. When the girl's father objected to the marriage, the cowboy took off in a pique but returned later, only to find that his sweetheart had despaired and drowned herself.

The cowboy shouldn't have been so quick to leave, Perry thought, and he looked down at the silver belt buckle the saleswoman was just ringing up. He closed his eyes briefly but could still see the image of the daring, spirited rider straining forward in the saddle.

35

Some Kind of Trouble

As Perry listened to the rapid clicks of the rotary phone, he tried to think of all the things that were going on at the same moment all over the world. He often did this when he felt uneasy about something. He had done it since he was a child, when he had accidentally hit upon its calming effect. Somewhere in a rice paddy in Burma, he told himself now, a farmer's brown feet were plodding through soaked fields. But was it the right time of day for that? he wondered. And what about the season? For a moment he couldn't even think. Everything he knew about geography was a muddle. He wondered what Queen Elizabeth was doing right now. What time would it be at Buckingham Palace when it was eleven o'clock at night in Derby, South Carolina? He used to know all that, but he couldn't remember the first thing right now.

Somewhere down in the South American jungle, he told himself, along the Amazon, monkeys were screeching, and hungry crocodiles were floating along the banks. Beggars were crying in the streets of India, and Eskimos were eating the meat of seals in the Arctic. People right now were mountain climbing in the Himalayas, and others were lost in the Sahara. Somewhere on the planet a volcanic eruption was brewing, a river overflowing, an earthquake rumbling. Lightning was striking trees, maybe people. Women were having babies; old men were dying.

As he dialed the final number and heard the first ring, Perry spoke these words aloud: “In the vast mural of humanity, what difference does my little brushstroke make?” If Dinah hung up on him, the Burmese rice farmer would go right on wading through his fields, Queen Elizabeth would keep on wearing her dowdy little hats at royal functions, and the Eskimos would finish their meal and lie down to sleep.

“Hello.” It was Dinah who answered, as Perry had expected. Troy would be in bed by now. She didn't sound sleepy or irritable, but her voice was flat as if she were preparing to listen to a telemarketing spiel.

“Dinah. It's Perry.” He had tried to plan out his tone of voice and his opening words to provide the conversation with momentum, but again it all left him in an instant. He needed to learn to write it out on a note pad and have it sitting beside the telephone.

“This is Saturday night, not Sunday,” Dinah said.

“Right,” said Perry.

“Is something wrong?” Dinah asked.

“Well, in a sense, yes—but, strictly speaking, the way you mean, no.”

“Then why . . . are you calling?”

Quickly Perry tried to think of an adjective to describe her tone. Hopeful? No, that was too strong. Open? Friendly? Not exactly. Interested? Maybe, but not in an eager sense. Curious? Oh, surely there was a better word than that, one with more of a hint of optimism. But that was it, he knew it. If he were transcribing their conversation onto paper and adding adverbs to the dialogue tags, he would write, “‘Then why . . . are you calling?' she asked curiously.”

“Because I wanted to . . . talk to you,” he said. The adverb for that one would have to be “stupidly,” he thought. Why else did you call someone?

“Talk?
You
want to talk?” Incredulously, with a brittle edge of sarcasm, Perry thought. “Okay, let's talk,” she said. Would that one be “archly”? Or maybe “wryly”?

“What are you doing?” he asked. Then without even meaning to, he said aloud, “He asked nosily.”

She sighed. “I'm addressing eleven Christmas cards. That's the least number I could get by with this year.”

“Read me one,” he said.

“What—a card?”

“Yes, what does it say? Read me one.”

“Okay. ‘Remembering you warmly during this very merry season.' That's it. There's a picture of a house on the front with a wreath on the door and a snowman in the yard and a Christmas tree in the front window, and all that.”

“How are you signing them?”

“What?”

“How are you signing the cards inside?”

“Well, how do you think? With a pen.”

“She said wittily,” he replied, then immediately hoped she wouldn't take offense.

“Well, what do you mean, how am I signing them? You mean exactly what am I
writing
?”

“Yes.”

“I'm writing, ‘Sincerely, Dinah and Troy,' unless it's to somebody like Aunt Kay or Lindy. Then I write, ‘
Love
, Dinah and Troy.' I mean, what else
would
I be writing?”

“You're late, aren't you?” Perry asked.

“What?”

“Don't you usually send Christmas cards the first week of December? It's the eighteenth.”

“Yeah, well, I'm running behind this year. It's been . . . real busy.”

“How's Troy?”

“He's okay. He's out of school now till the third of January.”

“I bet he likes that.” Perry was aware that this wasn't going anywhere. What was wrong? From somewhere inside him came a swift, grave command:
Quit asking her questions and start talking
.

“The church here is having a Christmas program tomorrow morning,” he said, and without waiting for a reply rushed on. “I'm singing in the choir for it. My book is coming pretty well. I'm on the last chapter and hope to have it finished, revisions and all, by the end of January. Cal says it looks good so far. And speaking of Cal, he called last week with some pretty surprising news. I sent him a story and poem back in July, and he laughed. Well, no, not at first he didn't. They were . . . well, different from my usual stuff, and he thought I was getting sidetracked and all, and he didn't really even
like
them, I don't think. But I told him to try to sell them, and I guess he did finally, and he called to tell me
Atlantic
had bought them both.
Atlantic
, of all places—not some hokey little magazine like he had expected. He said he decided when he pulled them back out and reread them to start at the top and work his way down. So he sent them to this friend of his at
Atlantic
, Bill somebody, and then forgot about them until the friend called him one day and said they wanted them, both of them. And, let's see, what else? Oh, Beth called and said she's going to Canada for Christmas. Saskatchewan. She's met somebody there in Washington who's from someplace called Moose Jaw, and she and two other people are going to spend a week up there in a cabin with this woman's family. Can you believe it? Four mathematicians in a cabin in Saskatchewan—and one of them my sister Beth? That's pretty amazing. And next week . . .”

“
Perry
, please.” Dinah was pleading.

When he stopped, Perry found himself panting—only slightly, but nevertheless panting. “What?” he asked. “Please what?”

“Why are you doing all this?”

“All what?”

“Calling me like this and going on and on. You've never done anything like this before.”

Perry couldn't think of an answer. Why
was
he doing this? He knew, of course, what his ultimate goal was, but he certainly couldn't state it bluntly to Dinah, not now. What
could
he say to explain his phone call? If he said the wrong thing, he knew well the contempt she was capable of expressing. He suddenly knew what Esther must have felt when she entered the court of King Ahasuerus. Her heart must have stood still as she awaited her fate. Would she find favor in his sight, or would he dismiss her with a curt directive?

At last Perry answered—slowly yet conclusively, as if he were just now gathering his thoughts and wanted to make no mistakes.

“I've changed, Dinah. I . . . guess I'm going on and on because I'm nervous. I just want you to know . . . well, I've changed.”

“How?” It wasn't challenging or bitter, just—again—curious.

“Well, in a lot of ways, I think, but it's hard to explain them all. I've done a lot of thinking, and . . .” He trailed off again.

“And what?”

“Well . . . men are . . . I mean, I never . . . well, if I could just . . . I think I could . . .” He broke off with a self-deprecating laugh. Dinah would have every right at this point, he thought, to fling back a caustic retort, something like “My, how aptly put” or “Oh, thank you, now I understand perfectly.”

But she didn't say anything, and Perry finally took a deep breath and started in again, trying a lighter tone. “I told you I'm singing in the church choir now. Actually, I started back in June. That's one change. Did you ever know me to do anything like that before? And I've been trying out my hand in the kitchen more. At first it was nothing but spaghetti sauce from a jar or macaroni and cheese in a box, but I've been branching out lately. Jewel showed me how she makes biscuits—baking soda biscuits—and I've made muffins, too. Last week I even tried lasagna one night, and it turned out pretty good. And I've learned to play tennis a little, and I've gone fishing four or five times. And I've read through the whole Bible and figured out a washing machine problem and . . . well, I've been thinking a lot lately, and . . .”

“Sounds like you're having yourself a real good time down there,” Dinah said. It wasn't angry, really, but guarded—maybe even a little hurt. Perry realized how he must have come across. How would he feel if she proudly rattled off a list of new things she had learned to do over the past months during their separation? Again he had stumbled off down the wrong path. Could he grope his way back and try again?

“A good time?” he asked wonderingly. “Oh, Dinah, is that what you think I've been doing—having a good time? Look, I came down here pretty much out of necessity. Partly to write the book, of course, but also because I was . . . we were . . . well, I needed a place to live. It's not exactly like I've been living it up at some resort.” He knew that if he had said it defensively, it could have sounded angry. It could very well have ended the conversation. But he had spoken calmly, kindly. Even as the words slipped from his mouth, he marveled that he was actually talking this way, that he was reasoning out the situation, seeking to fit the pieces together, not only to view their lives from Dinah's angle—as he had so seldom before attempted to do—but also, for her benefit, to try to put into words his own perspective.

There was a long pause, during which he heard Dinah sniff. His first response, when he realized she was crying, was to stiffen. He hadn't expected this, and he certainly didn't
want
it. His mind was suddenly flooded again with memories of all the times he had simply vanished from Dinah's presence at the first hint of tears. Enter tears, exit Perry. The easy way out. He could do that now. He could so easily take the receiver from his ear and gently, selfishly set it down on top of the two black, springy buttons on the cradle of the telephone. The line would be broken. He began making up words to the tune playing through his mind: “Rock-a-bye, Dinah, over the phone. When the tears start, then Perry will go. When the sobs break, then Perry won't hear, and Dinah can cry—a buzz in her ear.”