“Harold,” Olla said. She gave Harold some more sweet potatoes from her plate. “He’s real smart. Sharp as a tack. Always knows what you’re saying to him. Don’t you, Harold? You wait until you get your own baby, Fran. You’ll see.”
Fran just looked at her. I heard the front door open and then close.
“He’s smart, all right,” Bud said as he came back into the kitchen. “He takes after Olla’s dad. Now there was one smart old boy for you.”
I LOOKED around behind Bud and could see that peacock hanging back in the living room, turning its head this way and that, like you’d turn a hand mirror. It shook itself, and the sound was like a deck of cards being shuffled in the other room.
It moved forward a step. Then another step.
“Can I hold the baby?” Fran said. She said it like it would be a favor if Olla would let her.
Olla handed the baby across the table to her.
Fran tried to get the baby settled in her lap. But the baby began to squirm and make its noises.
“Harold,” Fran said.
Olla watched Fran with the baby. She said, “When Harold’s grandpa was sixteen years old, he set out to read the encyclopedia from A to Z. He did it, too. He finished when he was twenty. Just before he met my mama.”
“Where’s he now?” I asked. “What’s he do?” I wanted to know what had become of a man who’d set himself a goal like that.
“He’s dead,” Olla said. She was watching Fran, who by now had the baby down on its back and across her knees. Fran chucked the baby under one of its chins. She started to talk baby talk to it.
“He worked in the woods,” Bud said. “Loggers dropped a tree on him.”
“Mama got some insurance money,” Olla said. “But she spent that. Bud sends her something every month.”
“Not much,” Bud said. “Don’t have much ourselves. But she’s Olla’s mother.”
By this time, the peacock had gathered its courage and was beginning to move slowly, with little swaying and jerking motions, into the kitchen. Its head was erect but at an angle, its red eyes fixed on us. Its crest, a little sprig of feathers, stood a few inches over its head. Plumes rose from its tail. The bird stopped a few feet away from the table and looked us over.
“They don’t call them birds of paradise for nothing,” Bud said.
Fran didn’t look up. She was giving all her attention to the baby. She’d begun to patty-cake with it, which pleased the baby somewhat. I mean, at least the thing had stopped fussing. She brought it up to her neck and whispered something into its ear.
“Now,” she said, “don’t tell anyone what I said.”
The baby stared at her with its pop eyes. Then it reached and got itself a baby handful of Fran’s blond hair. The peacock stepped closer to the table. None of us said anything. We just sat still. Baby Harold saw the bird. It let go of Fran’s hair and stood up on her lap. It pointed its fat fingers at the bird. It jumped up and down and made noises.
The peacock walked quickly around the table and went for the baby. It ran its long neck across the baby’s legs. It pushed its beak in under the baby’s pajama top and shook its stiff head back and forth. The baby laughed and kicked its feet. Scooting onto its back, the baby worked its way over Fran’s knees and down onto the floor. The peacock kept pushing against the baby, as if it was a game they were playing. Fran held the baby against her legs while the baby strained forward.
“I just don’t believe this,” she said.
“That peacock is crazy, that’s what,” Bud said. “Damn bird doesn’t know it’s a bird, that’s its major trouble.”
Olla grinned and showed her teeth again. She looked over at Bud. Bud pushed his chair away from the table and nodded.
It was an ugly baby. But, for all I know, I guess it didn’t matter that much to Bud and Olla. Or if it did, maybe they simply thought, So okay if it’s ugly. It’s our baby. And this is just a stage. Pretty soon there’ll be another stage. There is this stage and then there is the next stage. Things will be okay in the long run, once all the stages have been gone through. They might have thought something like that.
Bud picked up the baby and swung him over his head until Harold shrieked. The peacock ruffled its feathers and watched.
Fran shook her head again. She smoothed out her dress where the baby had been. Olla picked up her fork and was working at some lima beans on her plate.
Bud shifted the baby onto his hip and said, “There’s pie and coffee yet.”
That evening at Bud and Olla’s was special. I knew it was special. That evening I felt good about almost everything in my life. I couldn’t wait to be alone with Fran to talk to her about what I was feeling. I made a wish that evening. Sitting there at the table, I closed my eyes for a minute and thought hard. What I wished for was that I’d never forget or otherwise let go of that evening. That’s one wish of mine that came true. And it was bad luck for me that it did. But, of course, I couldn’t know that then.
“What are you thinking about, Jack?” Bud said to me.
“I’m just thinking,” I said. I grinned at him.
“A penny,” Olla said.
I just grinned some more and shook my head.
AFTER we got home from Bud and Olla’s that night, and we were under the covers, Fran said, “Honey, fill me up with your seed!” When she said that, I heard her all the way down to my toes, and I hollered and let go.
Later, after things had changed for us, and the kid had come along, all of that, Fran would look back on that evening at Bud’s place as the beginning of the change. But she’s wrong. The change came later—and when it came, it was like something that happened to other people, not something that could have happened to us.
“Goddamn those people and their ugly baby,” Fran will say, for no apparent reason, while we’re watching TV late at night. “And that smelly bird,” she’ll say. “Christ, who needs it!” Fran will say. She says this kind of stuff a lot, even though she hasn’t seen Bud and Olla since that one time.
Fran doesn’t work at the creamery anymore, and she cut her hair a long time ago. She’s gotten fat on me, too. We don’t talk about it. What’s to say?
I still see Bud at the plant. We work together and we open our lunch pails together. If I ask, he tells me about Olla and Harold. Joey’s out of the picture. He flew into his tree one night and that was it for him. He didn’t come down. Old age, maybe, Bud says. Then the owls took over. Bud shrugs. He eats his sandwich and says Harold’s going to be a linebacker someday. “You ought to see that kid,” Bud says. I nod. We’re still friends. That hasn’t changed any. But I’ve gotten careful with what I say to him. And I know he feels that and wishes it could be different. I wish it could be, too.
Once in a blue moon, he asks about my family. When he does, I tell him everybody’s fine. “Everybody’s fine,” I say. I close the lunch pail and take out my cigarettes. Bud nods and sips his coffee. The truth is, my kid has a conniving streak in him. But I don’t talk about it. Not even with his mother. Especially her. She and I talk less and less as it is. Mostly it’s just the TV. But I remember that night. I recall the way the peacock picked up its gray feet and inched around the table. And then my friend and his wife saying goodnight to us on the porch. Olla giving Fran some peacock feathers to take home. I remember all of us shaking hands, hugging each other, saying things. In the car, Fran sat close to me as we drove away. She kept her hand on my leg. We drove home like that from my friend’s house.
CHEF’S HOUSE
THAT summer Wes rented a furnished house north of Eureka from a recovered alcoholic named Chef. Then he called to ask me to forget what I had going and to move up there and live with him. He said he was on the wagon. I knew about that wagon. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He called again and said, Edna, you can see the ocean from the front window. You can smell salt in the air. I listened to him talk. He didn’t slur his words. I said, I’ll think about it. And I did. A week later he called again and said, Are you coming? I
said I was still thinking. He said, We’ll start over. I said, If I come up there, I want you to do something for me. Name it, Wes said. I said, I want you to try and be the Wes I used to know. The old Wes. The Wes I married. Wes began to cry, but I took it as a sign of his good intentions. So I said, All right, I’ll come up.
Wes had quit his girlfriend, or she’d quit him—I didn’t know, didn’t care. When I made up my mind to go with Wes, I had to say goodbye to my friend. My friend said, You’re making a mistake. He said, Don’t do this to me. What about us? he said. I said, I have to do it for Wes’s sake. He’s trying to stay sober. You remember what that’s like. I remember, my friend said, but I don’t want you to go. I said, I’ll go for the summer. Then I’ll see. I’ll come back, I said. He said, What about me? What about my sake? Don’t come back, he said.
WE drank coffee, pop, and all kinds of fruit juice that summer. The whole summer, that’s what we had to drink. I found myself wishing the summer wouldn’t end. I knew better, but after a month of being with Wes in Chef’s house, I put my wedding ring back on. I hadn’t worn the ring in two years. Not since the night Wes was drunk and threw his ring into a peach orchard.
Wes had a little money, so I didn’t have to work. And it turned out Chef was letting us have the house for almost nothing. We didn’t have a telephone. We paid the gas and light and shopped for specials at the Safeway. One Sunday afternoon Wes went out to get a sprinkler and came back with something for me. He came back with a nice bunch of daisies and a straw hat. Tuesday evenings we’d go to a movie. Other nights Wes would go to what he called his Don’t Drink meetings. Chef would pick him up in his car at the door and drive him home again afterward. Some days Wes and I would go fishing for trout in one of the freshwater lagoons nearby. We’d fish off the bank and take all day to catch a few little ones. They’ll do fine, I’d say, and that night I’d fry them for supper. Sometimes I’d take off my hat and fall asleep on a blanket next to my fishing pole. The last thing I’d remember would be clouds passing overhead toward the central valley. At night, Wes would take me in his arms and ask me if I was still his girl.
Our kids kept their distance. Cheryl lived with some people on a farm in Oregon. She looked after a herd of goats and sold the milk. She kept bees and put up jars of honey. She had her own life, and I didn’t blame her. She didn’t care one way or the other about what her dad and I did so long as we didn’t get her into it. Bobby was in Washington working in the hay. After the haying season, he planned to work in the apples. He had a girl and was saving his money. I wrote letters and signed them, “Love always.”
ONE afternoon Wes was in the yard pulling weeds when Chef drove up in front of the house. I was working at the sink. I looked and saw Chef’s big car pull in. I could see his car, the access road and the freeway, and, behind the freeway, the dunes and the ocean. Clouds hung over the water. Chef got out of his car and hitched his pants. I knew there was something. Wes stopped what he was doing and stood up. He was wearing his gloves and a canvas hat. He took off the hat and wiped his face with the back of his hand. Chef walked over and put his arm around Wes’s shoulders. Wes took off one of his gloves. I went to the door. I heard Chef say to Wes God knows he was sorry but he was going to have to ask us to leave at the end of the month. Wes pulled off his other glove. Why’s that, Chef? Chef said his daughter, Linda, the woman Wes used to call Fat Linda from the time of his drinking days, needed a place to live and this place was it. Chef told Wes that Linda’s husband had taken his fishing boat out a few weeks back and nobody had heard from him since. She’s my own blood, Chef said to Wes. She’s lost her husband. She’s lost her baby’s father. I can help. I’m glad I’m in a position to help, Chef said. I’m sorry, Wes, but you’ll have to look for another house. Then Chef hugged Wes again, hitched his pants, and got in his big car and drove away.
Wes came inside the house. He dropped his hat and gloves on the carpet and sat down in the big chair. Chef’s chair, it occurred to me. Chef’s carpet, even. Wes looked pale. I poured two cups of coffee and gave one to him.
It’s all right, I said. Wes, don’t worry about it, I said. I sat down on Chef’s sofa with my coffee.
Fat Linda’s going to live here now instead of us, Wes said. He held his cup, but he didn’t drink from it.
Wes, don’t get stirred up, I said.
Her man will turn up in Ketchikan, Wes said. Fat Linda’s husband has simply pulled out on them. And who could blame him? Wes said. Wes said if it came to that, he’d go down with his ship, too, rather than live the rest of his days with Fat Linda and her kid. Then Wes put his cup down next to his gloves. This has been a happy house up to now, he said.
We’ll get another house, I said.
Not like this one, Wes said. It wouldn’t be the same, anyway. This house has been a good house for us. This house has good memories to it. Now Fat Linda and her kid will be in here, Wes said. He picked up his cup and tasted from it.
It’s Chef’s house, I said. He has to do what he has to do.
I know that, Wes said. But I don’t have to like it.
Wes had this look about him. I knew that look. He kept touching his lips with his tongue. He kept thumbing his shirt under his waistband. He got up from the chair and went to the window. He stood looking out at the ocean and at the clouds, which were building up. He patted his chin with his fingers like he was thinking about something. And he was thinking.
Go easy, Wes, I said.
She wants me to go easy, Wes said. He kept standing there.
But in a minute he came over and sat next to me on the sofa. He crossed one leg over the other and began fooling with the buttons on his shirt. I took his hand. I started to talk. I talked about the summer. But I caught myself talking like it was something that had happened in the past. Maybe years back. At any rate, like something that was over. Then I started talking about the kids. Wes said he wished he could do it over again and do it right this time.
They love you, I said.
No, they don’t, he said.
I said, Someday, they’ll understand things.
Maybe, Wes said. But it won’t matter then.
You don’t know, I said.
I know a few things, Wes said, and looked at me. I know I’m glad you came up here. I won’t forget you did it, Wes said.
I’m glad, too, I said. I’m glad you found this house, I said.
Wes snorted. Then he laughed. We both laughed. That Chef, Wes said, and shook his head. He threw us a knuckle-ball, that son of a bitch. But I’m glad you wore your ring. I’m glad we had us this time together, Wes said.
Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn’t hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.
Wes fixed his eyes on me. He said, Then I suppose we’d have to be somebody else if that was the case. Somebody we’re not. I don’t have that kind of supposing left in me. We were born who we are. Don’t you see what I’m saying?
I said I hadn’t thrown away a good thing and come six hundred miles to hear him talk like this.
He said, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk like somebody I’m not. I’m not somebody else. If I was somebody else, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. If I was somebody else, I wouldn’t be me. But I’m who I am. Don’t you see?
Wes, it’s all right, I said. I brought his hand to my cheek. Then, I don’t know, I remembered how he was when he was nineteen, the way he looked running across this field to where his dad sat on a tractor, hand over his eyes, watching Wes run toward him. We’d just driven up from California. I got out with Cheryl and Bobby and said, There’s Grandpa. But they were just babies.
Wes sat next to me patting his chin, like he was trying to figure out the next thing. Wes’s dad was gone and our kids were grown up. I looked at Wes and then I looked around Chef’s living room at Chef’s things, and I thought, We have to do something now and
do it quick.
Hon, I said. Wes, listen to me.
What do you want? he said. But that’s all he said. He seemed to have made up his mind. But, having made up his mind, he was in no hurry. He leaned back on the sofa, folded his hands in his lap, and closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to.
I said his name to myself. It was an easy name to say, and I’d been used to saying it for a long time. Then I said it once more. This time I said it out loud. Wes, I said.
He opened his eyes. But he didn’t look at me. He just sat where he was and looked toward the window. Fat Linda, he said. But I knew it wasn’t her. She was nothing. Just a name. Wes got up and pulled the drapes and the ocean was gone just like that. I went in to start supper. We still had some fish in the icebox. There wasn’t much else. We’ll clean it up tonight, I thought, and that will be the end of it.
PRESERVATION
SANDY’S husband had been on the sofa ever since he’d been terminated three months ago. That day, three months ago, he’d come home looking pale and scared and with all of his work things in a box. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said to Sandy and put a heart-shaped box of candy and a bottle of Jim Beam on the kitchen table. He took off his cap and laid that on the table, too. “I got canned today. Hey, what do you think’s going to happen to us now?”
Sandy and her husband sat at the table and drank whiskey and ate the chocolates. They talked about what he might be able to do instead of putting roofs on new houses. But they couldn’t think of anything. “Something will turn up,” Sandy said. She wanted to be encouraging. But she was scared, too. Finally, he said he’d sleep on it. And he did. He made his bed on the sofa that night, and that’s where he’d slept every night since it had happened.
The day after his termination there were unemployment benefits to see about. He went downtown to the state office to fill out papers and look for another job. But there were no jobs in his line of work, or in any other line of work. His face began to sweat as he tried to describe to Sandy the milling crowd of men and women down there. That evening he got back on the sofa. He began spending all of his time there, as if, she thought, it was the thing he was supposed to do now that he no longer had any work. Once in a while he had to go talk to somebody about a job possibility, and every two weeks he had to go sign something to collect his unemployment compensation. But the rest of the time he stayed on the sofa. It’s like he lives there, Sandy thought. He lives in the living room. Now and then he looked through magazines she brought home from the grocery store; and every so often she came in to find him looking at this big book she’d got as a bonus for joining a book club—something called Mysteries of the Past. He held the book in front of him with both hands, his head inclined over the pages, as if he were being drawn in by what he was reading. But after a while she noticed that he didn’t seem to be making any progress in it; he still seemed to be at about the same place—somewhere around chapter two, she guessed. Sandy picked it up once and opened it to his place. There she read about a man who had been discovered after spending two thousand years in a peat bog in the Netherlands. A photograph appeared on one page. The man’s brow was furrowed, but there was a serene expression to his face. He wore a leather cap and lay on his side. The man’s hands and feet had shriveled, but otherwise he didn’t look so awful. She read in the book a little further, then put it back where she’d gotten it. Her husband kept it within easy reach on the coffee table that stood in front of the sofa. That goddamn sofa! As far as she was concerned, she didn’t even want to sit on it again. She couldn’t imagine them ever having lain down there in the past to make love.