Twenty-Four

She turned in whenever she saw his truck. He’d plant himself in her path and she couldn’t pass him up. She’d perch on the stool beside him, and sometimes before they had one drink, they’d leave—he was more careful now about being seen with her in town. Once she came into Bob’s Bar and he was talking to a man his own age, a trim tanned man in a blue sport shirt. The place was almost empty. She took her seat and waited while they continued their conversation. Quinn ignored her. She nursed a beer. His voice buzzed, but she couldn’t quite hear what he and the blue sport shirt were talking about: who was building what in town, maybe. Who got county contracts. The man ordered another beer for himself and one for Quinn. Cress got up to leave then, and Quinn’s hand shot out, touched her leg under the rim of the bar, and pushed her back into her seat.

*   *   *

In the Sawyer bakery on a crowded morning, the air hazed with coffee steam and vaporized grease from the doughnut fryer, he sat with Caleb and two other men at a coil table, while she and Donna occupied the next one. Neither brother looked at her. Leaving, he passed within inches without glancing down.

“You might have at least raised an eyebrow,” she said later.

“Half of Sawyer was in there watching,” he said. “To see what I’d do.”

“Even so, you could’ve been polite and not acted like I didn’t exist.”

“When you’re seeing a married man, you should expect that sort of thing.”

He didn’t mean it the way it sounded. In fact, she understood: they had to be discreet; he had to keep up appearances so that this time Sylvia would think he was making a real effort to make their marriage work.

*   *   *

They drove slowly, pressed together, on the purgatorial grid of roads and orange groves. They sat in their familiar completeness and comfort in those small bars in far-flung places where a lurid canned sadness leaked from the jukeboxes and old men drank diligently till dinnertime, then came back to drink some more till bedtime.

Quinn phoned and she met him down by the lake and drove with him to Bakersfield, where he looked at a job in a treeless new housing development. She read a novel in the car while he talked to the foreman. Afterward, they bought a bottle and rented a motel room. “Now, this really feels like adultery,” she said.

Quinn winced, as she knew he would. “It’s not like that,” he said.

“It’s exactly like that,” she said.

“More like, I met the person I’m closest to twenty years after I handed my life over to someone else. When I’m not my own to give away.”

“Oh, sure you are.” She had less patience now for his formulations. “People get divorced every day.”

“People you know,” he said.

The next time, he went to bid finish work for an office complex in Visalia.

The hours together invigorated her. She learned to make use of this invigoration. She drove to L.A. for research. She sewed curtains, she read novels from the Sparkville public library, she wandered in the foothills, her morning walks lasting two or three hours. As the days passed, the effect of their last meeting wore off; she saddened and slowed; pain and the internal chatter built back up, quivering dark edges reappeared around objects, the telephone poles bled back into view. She spent afternoons in the barn again, in the cool trough, with a candle and wine, lying under the polka-dot comforter, counting backward, waking up to a leaping candle and radiant darkness.

*   *   *

He took a job in Redondo Beach and during the workweek stayed with his cousins there. Cress drove down to spend Wednesday nights with him at a motel. They ate at seafood restaurants, took walks on the sand. He’d told his cousins he had a weekly poker game in Glendale and drank too much beer to drive home. When she was leaving in the morning, he said, “Poker again next week?”

Three more times in the next three weeks, they met in Redondo, and then the job was finished.

*   *   *

Cress’s body startled before she saw why: Sylvia Morrow was standing at the fish counter in Younts. She looked smaller than Cress remembered: a slight, petite woman in navy pants and a navy tunic—her work uniform. Her hair was dark and thick, a heavy pelt. Cress swiveled her own cart around and fled the width of the store, to the produce section, where she stood by the watermelons, four field boxes pushed together. Cress slapped a melon, the hollow smack satisfying, like the correct answer to a question. She wasn’t afraid of a fight; Sylvia was too reserved and timid for any loud accusations, name-calling, nail-clawing. But why not spare them both the pain and embarrassment of a meeting? Cress shoved melons aside to thump the ones below. She’d thump until she calmed down and was sure Sylvia was out of the store.

A cart rolled up beside her. “Hello, Cress,” Sylvia said.

The aisle was wide enough that their shopping carts fit side by side. Sylvia’s hair was weirdly massive and curled, the crimped mane of a country-and-western singer or a cocktail waitress with aspirations.

“How are you?” Sylvia said.

“Fine,” said Cress. “And you?”

Sylvia must have noticed Cress staring, because her hand rose to a clump of curls by her face. “I just got my hair done. I hate how she rats it up so poufy. I always get in the shower the second I get home to wash out all the spray.”

Stupefied, Cress nodded. Would they really stand here and talk hair like friends?

Sylvia put a hand on Cress’s cart and left it, fingers curling slightly around the chrome. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Cress. So I’m glad we ran into each other. I wanted to say…” Sylvia glanced quickly into Cress’s face, then down. “Well, I hope you’re not staying around up here because you think Quinn’s going to leave me and marry you. Because that’s not going to happen, Cress. It never was, and it never will.” In her girlish tones twanged a wire of certainty. “Quinn and I are going to grow old together. We always were, and nothing’s changed. If he got your hopes up for something else, he shouldn’t of, and I’m sorry for that. I really am.”

Cress kept her face still, even as her heart went wild. Sylvia’s self-possession was marvelous, but those clichés!

Up ahead of them, symmetrical stacks of waxy purple and green cabbages bulged with veins. The misters went on, spraying them, and in that hissing, Cress missed some of what Sylvia was saying next. She heard “… miscarriage last month, but the doctor says we can start trying again next week.”

So here was a real prisoners’ dilemma, Cress thought. Should I continue to nod and simper? Or should I now tell Sylvia about the day before yesterday at the Motor Inn? The bottle of bourbon? The hours in bed?

But Quinn would never forgive her if she narc’ed.

*   *   *

“I’m glad she talked to you,” said Dalia. “Maybe now you can be done.”

Cress hoped so too. She would like to be done. Done and gone. But when she saw Quinn’s truck at the Staghorn, she turned into the parking lot. His green eyes brightened at the sight of her; he was down at the end of the bar, where she’d met the yellow mother. His low voice sent a fast current through her system. He was hoping she’d come; he always felt better the moment he saw her warm, open face. Did she feel like a drive? A steak?

They drove and ate, and drowsy from meat and liquor, Cress, who had been trying to ascertain if Sylvia had reported their encounter, said, “Sylvia sees me around, on the road. Does she ever say anything? What does she think?”

“She thinks you have psychological problems.”

“Oh my. I suppose I do. What do you think?”

“I do wonder why you’re still here.”

She saw then that they’d found a way to unite against her. That they’d agreed on a narrative: Quinn had made a mistake, opened a real can of worms. And now he was pursued by the mentally unstable.

On a recent trip to Pasadena, Tillie and Cress had gone to see a movie where a spurned mistress—who’d spent only one night with a married man—stalks the man relentlessly, tries all sorts of shenanigans to get his attention, and eventually boils his family’s pet. Cress would never go a tenth that far, but her sympathies were definitely with the mistress, who was up against the blameless bland wife and family itself, that fortress of sanctified virtue. The pet boiler was truly deranged—but isn’t it often the fringe, unhinged person who acts out the anger of her cohort? The pet boiler, Cress felt, had struck a blow for their kind. The discarded. The unchosen.

She did have psychological problems, Cress would be the first to admit it: obsession, depression, loss of affect, anhedonia. And—not to be melodramatic here—she couldn’t quite locate herself anymore. She’d try to consult herself on matters large or small and she’d come up blank, except through the filter of him. She bought only the food that he might eat. When she shopped for clothes, she thought only in terms of his taste, or what she imagined his taste to be: lace at the neck, and tighter, tidier slacks. Upon entering any room full of men—a banquet, the magazine’s newsroom, a bar—not one pricked her interest, they could all have been chairs or lamps, since none of them was Quinn. Although Cress duly researched and wrote the assignments Silas gave her—she was too afraid of displeasing him and Tillie to fail—she had no real interest in the magazine work, the stories about art and commerce. The single story she did pitch—one about clearcutting in the Spearmint watershed and the war between local loggers and environmentalists—was dismissed on the spot. (“Write it for the Sierra Club newsletter,” Tillie said.) As for her dissertation—well, that was like a small handkerchief tied to a tree so far away Cress glimpsed its listless flutter intermittently, seasonally.

A dissertation on art in the marketplace would do nothing to draw him nearer.

She understood that he was no longer listing in her direction. He had found a way back into his old life. His grief, the sadness and fury that sent him to her, had subsided, leaving her stranded here in the middle of a pasture. She should get out. It was time. Past time. And she wanted out, she really did. At least part of her did. More and more, it seemed, she was in a civil war with herself, the side that had dug in versus the side that wanted out. The dug-in side was like a steel I-beam sunk deep in unconscious muck. The wanting-out side was like that sheep of his uncle’s, tangled deep in the brambles, bleating weakly for someone, anyone, to come and yank her free.

*   *   *

A motel in Reseda had thin, slippery sheets and hourly rates.

“Don Dare’s in law school,” she told him.

“Caleb and Candy moved to South Carolina again; she wouldn’t let Caleb take jobs away from home, and he couldn’t find enough local work to keep them going.”

Two months later, she saw his truck at the Staghorn.

“Did you hear? Brian and Franny have twins! A boy and a girl!”

“Annette’s transferring to Cal for her junior year,” he said.

“You remember my friend Tillie? She had a little girl and is now a features editor at City and State.”

Another time, they started at the Staghorn and ended up at the Dairyman’s Inn out on the highway.

“Do you think we’ll ever be together more than this?” she said.

“We shouldn’t even be together like this,” he said.

On a warm May day, they drove once more through the cloying perfume of the blossoming orange groves. “If you and Sylvia had stayed split up from the start and we’d married a year later, we’d be nearing our second anniversary.”

“We’d be divorced,” he said flatly.

“What makes you say that?”

“We’re too different,” he said. “We couldn’t of pulled it off.”

But she would have adjusted, for better or worse, and made him a home, with log walls, plank floors, fine china, and a snarling bearskin—the one that still occupied the Saab’s entire trunk. A moldering smell sometimes wafted into the car.

“One day you are going to know how terrible I’ve been, and you are going to get really angry,” he said.

She patted his thigh. “I look forward to that day.”

*   *   *

Two more months passed and she didn’t see his truck parked anywhere. The next time she climbed into the cab beside him, she wept silently for two hours as he drove across the valley floor, past orange and lemon and olive groves; then farther west into sorghum, apricots, alfalfa. The tears plopped on her lap until her jeans were sodden.

He was working on a library down on Mulholland Drive for a television actor, he said. She should come down.

They rented a room at the Starlight Inn in Encino, four times in six weeks. The renewed frequency, their high humor, dinners at Jinky’s, seemed a resurgence. Loving and close, they sat on the same side of booths. There was always news. Donna had finally won her paternity suit and had also become impregnated by and engaged to the Sparkville deputy marshal. Don Dare and Elise had two boys already—and Don was almost through law school on a two-year fast track. Tillie had moved over to the Los Angeles Times, where she was now second in command at the Sunday magazine.

Cress could never remember which time was the last time, because neither knew it would be the last. She saw him when the Mulholland job was almost done, and then he must have been done, because she passed him in his truck midweek on Noah Mountain Road. He waved.

His truck was never parked at the bars, at least not when she drove by. She saw him infrequently on the road (he always waved). More often, she passed Sylvia (no wave). So they were still around. Seeing either one set off her heart and made her hands shake.

She was spending more time down south, a week or two every month. She had a desk in the City and State offices now, and a title: contributing editor. Tillie and Edgar had bought a large house by the Arroyo in Pasadena, and she had her own room—and bath!—on the second floor there.

Her father retired; her parents sold both Meadows cabins in the upward-trending housing market. Cress thought, for a split second, she might want the A-frame; then she remembered the Garshes. Her parents wanted to travel now, and her father, working with a Realtor, invested in second mortgages.

Her sister, Sharon, was coming to town as a visiting lecturer at her alma mater, the USC School of Music.

Cress quit working at Beech Creek, although Dalia called her in for the large banquets, and Cress was happy to help.

Donna, with a swift backward glance in the Sawyer bakery, spoke softly over the top of two-year-old Ava’s blond curls. “I still don’t understand why Sylvia took him back. I mean, a one- or two-night stand is one thing; even a two- or three-month affair might be forgiven, but three-plus years, with all that lying? That amounts to a whole secret life!”

But Cress understood why Sylvia took him back. Given half a chance, she would, too.

*   *   *

She would always wish that some small scrap of self had reared up and saved her. But that is not what happened.

August 18, 1985

Dear Cress,

Greetings from USC! I am here in my new office, a long, skinny room with a view of an ivy-covered brick wall. I spent the morning at the Natural History Museum where I attached myself to a back room tour and saw many interesting things in glass jars: 2-foot-long centipedes, Siamese-twin pig fetuses, etc.). I am finally getting over my jet lag! Still, it is weird to be back in smog-socked ole So Cal.

I promise to visit as soon as I’m settled. I’ve already made great strides—I found a therapist and a good OA meeting that’s not too full of anorexic actresses. AND I found a place to live, which is the main reason why I’m writing.

I told Mom and Dad that I’d consider staying permanently in the area if they’d give me the down payment for a house. They said … NO! (Big surprise!!!) (Dad did offer me a mortgage at 12%, which I can get from any bank. It’s the 10% down I need help with.) All of which is to say, yesterday I signed a year lease on a funky little hillside house in Echo Park—on a clear day you can see the Hollywood sign and the ocean. The house has three bedrooms and two baths, a big deck, pretty yards, front and back, etc., but the rent is a little steep for one person (or I’m a little too cheap to pay it all). I’ll have to get a roommate, and it occurred to me that maybe YOU would be that roommate. DON’T Just Say No! (I’m writing rather than calling so you’ll have the leisure to overcome any knee-jerk resistance and think it over.) I figure we can get along, since I’ll hardly ever be home and it’s only for a year (the end is already in sight!), after which you can get another roommate or go back to the mountains, or pay the whole nut yourself, or burn the place down. I’ll give you a great deal on your share of rent (to make up for past transgressions—I owe you!!! I also promise not to proselytize too much or be too much the big sister!).

I won’t advertise for a roommate until you get back to me—but try to let me know in a week. We can move in on the first—I’m paid up here at the oatmeal-gray Oakwood till then.

Think about it. Then … Just Say YES!!!!

Love,

Sharon

Her father rented a U-Haul to move her. She was grateful for his offer to help—her mother was behind it, she was certain—but once he arrived, she regretted taking him up on it. Having her father, of all people, escort her south felt far too much like being led away in defeat, as if she was retreating to the bosom of her own family, the last place she wanted to be.

He hitched the Saab to a tow bar. “No sense wasting gas,” he said. “Though the added drag will definitely use more gas than the truck alone, especially on inclines. But your load is light.”

He insisted on stopping in Sparkville for coffee; she steered him to the Koffee Kup on the mad chance she might see Quinn one last time. If he was there, she thought, even if he was sitting with other men, or with Sylvia, she would go right up to him. She would tell him she was leaving, and she would watch the truth of it take hold in his pale green eyes.

Quinn was not at the Koffee Kup. She sipped ice water while Sam Hartley drank three cups of coffee. “Yes, please! Top her off! We have a long drive ahead of us! Whoa there! That’s plenty, thanks! Got to save room for a little arf-’n’-arf!”

His term for half-and-half.

South of town, her father pulled off the road to buy honeydew melons at a rickety farmstand and again, near Bakersfield, he stopped for a crate of tomatoes. Cress waited in the hot cab while Sam engaged the vendor and other customers in a conversation about canning methods. This was beginning to seem like one of her dreams, when she was trying to get somewhere and one obstacle after another arose. Didn’t he see that she was crawling out of her skin?

“That guy was selling figs for four dollars a basket.” Her father climbed back in the truck. “Eight, ten figs in each. My tree has a thousand figs on it easily. A hundred baskets, let’s say, leaving plenty for the birds. That’s what? Four hundred dollars? And I’ve been giving them away!”

Behind them, the Sierras sank into the valley mist, the highway thrummed under the truck’s tires. The U-Haul locked in at fifty-five miles an hour, and cars passed them incessantly.

She would be a glint of light, a shred of old cloth, a mote by the time they got to Los Angeles, and here her father was signaling again, prompted by a another farmstand at the foot of the next off-ramp. “Can we sit this one out, Dad?” Cress said. “And keep driving? I’m so anxious about this move. You’re sweet to help me, and I appreciate it so much. But can we just get there?”

“Hunh,” he said, braking as he veered onto the ramp. “Moving’s never bothered me one way or the other, though it always put your mother in a tizzy. I’ll be quick. I just want a sack of sweet onions. They’re picked every morning, dirt still on ’em. Only two-fifty for twenty-five pounds.”