Don guessed that originally the back stairs had been there, narrower than the wide front staircase, and when the bathrooms were put in that staircase was taken out and the plumbing was run up through the space where it had been. Modern people needed toilets and showers a lot more than they needed a stairway for the kids to get down to the kitchen without being seen by guests in the front room. So the back stairs wouldn’t be restored.
This shower still had a curtain hanging in it, spotted with ancient mildew but not disgusting. And the tub was pretty clean, not even as dusty as he would have expected. No sign of leaks in the tub; he’d be able to use it as soon as the water was hooked up and he replaced the rusted shower-head.
“This where you’re going to put the Jacuzzi?” asked Cindy.
“No, I’m going to keep it simple up here. I’m making the back of the south apartment into the master suite and the fancy stuff goes there.”
He didn’t even have to squat down to look at the toilet. A big crack in the bowl and serious waterstains around the base of it were all the information he needed.
“Toilet doesn’t look good?” she said.
“It ain’t a toilet anymore,” said Don.
“What is it?”
“Sculpture.”
She laughed. “I can see it on a pedestal downtown in the Arts Center.”
He liked her laugh. He wanted to listen to it again. He wanted to see if that moment would come again, when he’d actually want to be close to a woman, when the memory of his wife would disappear and he could see Cindy Claybourne as herself. “Listen,” he said, “you want to meet sometime, not in a bathroom?”
“I don’t know, I was just thinking that you bring a special je ne sais quoi to the discussion of plumbing fixtures.”
“OK, how about dinner in a place with really nice sinks?”
“The bathrooms at Southern Lights really have character,” said Cindy.
Don had taken his wife there the first time they went out to eat after the baby was born. He didn’t think he could go there without picturing that baby seat on the floor beside their table, the little face in repose, breathing softly as she slept. He quickly ran down the list of restaurants that he had gone to with clients but not with his family.
“Cafe Pasta,” Don said. “Art Deco.”
“I’ll go there, but only if you promise to share the sausage appetizer with me so both of us have garlic breath.”
Again she stood in front of him, looking up at him, smiling, and this time he seized the moment, reached up and touched her cheek, bent down and kissed her lightly, so lightly it was almost not a kiss, more of a caress of her lips with his. And then again, just a little more lingering, lips still dry. And a third time, his hand now around her waist, her mouth pressing upward into his, warm and moist. They parted and looked at each other, not smiling now. “I was just thinking that there’s more than one way for us both to have the same breath,” said Don.
“Who’s bending who, that’s what I’d like to know,” said Cindy.
“Bet you say that to all your clients.”
“After we close tomorrow, you’re not a client,” she said. “In fact you never were—you were a customer.”
“So what will I be when we go to Cafe Pasta?”
“A gentleman friend,” she said.
He liked the sound of it.
“When?” she asked.
“I’m not the one with an appointment book,” said Don.
“Tomorrow night?” she asked.
“Shower won’t be running by then.”
“Come over and use mine,” she said.
That startled him. It sounded like a come-on, and not for anything he thought of as romance. “No,” he said, perhaps too sharply. “Thanks, but let’s just make it Friday, OK?”
“If it’s Friday we’ll have to make a reservation.”
“You’re the one with a phone.”
“Glad to do it,” she said. She led the way out into the upstairs hall, and as she preceded him down the stairs, she said, “By the way, my offer to let you use my shower—that’s all it was. I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Good thing,” he said, “cause I’m not that kind of guy.”
“I know,” she said. As if she liked that about him. Maybe she wasn’t looking for the alpha baboon after all.
At the front door she stopped and held up a hand. “Don’t walk me to my car,” she said. “I’d just want you to kiss me again and we wouldn’t want to give the neighbors anything to talk about.”
“Fine,” he said. “See you in the morning.”
“Come by my office and we can drive to the closing together. The lawyer’s on Greene Street downtown and it’s hard enough to find one parking place, let alone two.”
“Eight forty-five,” said Don.
“Nice doing business with you,” she said with a grin. Then she bounded down the stairs and walked across the lawn. He stood in the open doorway and watched her all the way to the car, watched as she got in, started it up, and drove away. And then just stood there a while longer in the open door.
6
Lemonade
Without a building permit or title to the house, Don had about reached the limit of work he could do. Yet he wasn’t interested in sitting around the house the rest of the evening, and he had no place he wanted to go. He had long since learned that movies and books were either stupid or not. If they were stupid, it made him impatient and angry to spend time with them. If they were not, then they had the power to unlock emotions that he had no desire to face again. Work was the solution, and so work is what he did.
If he couldn’t do anything with the house, there was always the yard. This being North Carolina, anything that you mowed became a lawn, so under the deep scraggly weeds on the property there was a lawn just waiting to be uncovered. It took all his extension cords to get his Weed Eater out to the front of the property, and there was no way he’d get it all the way to the back, but anything he did would be an improvement. Maybe he should have bought a gasoline-powered machine, but he didn’t like carrying flammable liquids around with him.
The afternoon had turned hot, and he was soaked with sweat by the time he finished with the front and side yards and as much of the back yard as he could reach. He was also covered with flecks of weeds, most of which he was probably a little bit allergic to, so he itched as well. What a great job to do when you’ve got no shower, he thought. As he coiled up the cords and put everything away inside the house, he tried to decide whether he should go get a shower and then put on some of his dirty clothes, or go do a laundry while he was still so filthy that touching clean clothes would only get them dirty again. It was getting on toward dusk when he locked the front door and headed for the truck.
“Hey! Hardworkin’ man!”
It was the old white woman from next door. She was standing behind their picket fence, holding a plate with a checkered cloth over it.
“Look at this!” she said.
Dutifully he went over to the fence and waited for her to pull away the cloth with a theatrical gesture. It was a loaf of hot fresh bread, and even though he was more thirsty than hungry, and too hot to wish for anything but cold food, there was no resisting the yeasty smell of the stuff.
“I don’t know why that smells so good to me,” he said. “My mother never baked bread.”
“Jesus had to tell us not to live by bread alone because if we had our druthers we’d try,” she said. “We also got stew, which I know is too hot to sound good to you right now, but you need something to stick to your ribs. And we got lemonade.”
“I’m in no shape to be decent company, ma’am,” said Don. “There’s no water working in the house yet and I’m filthy as a fieldhand.”
“I’ve sat at table with fieldhands before,” she said, “and there’s nothin’ to be ashamed of in it. Now don’t give me no argument. I seen you lock that door, so you can’t pretend you ain’t done working for the day.”
“I just couldn’t put you out.” He almost told her that he had to get some laundry done, but stopped himself in time—the mood she was in, she’d snatch the laundry right out of his hands and insist on washing it herself.
She raised a quizzical eyebrow. “If I ever seen a hungry man it’s now, so what are you afraid of, that we’ll talk you to death? Maybe we will, but we won’t make you talk, so you can just shovel in the food and pour lemonade down your throat and pay us no heed, we’re used to that since we hardly listen to each other anymore.”
Don laughed in spite of his effort to keep a courteously sober face.
“There,” she said. “Besides which, if you got no water in that house then you sure as hell need to pee.”
That was the clincher and she knew it. She turned her back on him and was halfway to the house before he’d straddled his way over the fence. “Beg pardon, ma’am,” he called out to her, “but I’ll go around the back way so I don’t track this mess through your front rooms.”
She called over her shoulder. “I’ll have the back door open before you get there, unless you run.”
He didn’t run and she was as good as her word. If the bread had smelled good, the smell in the kitchen should probably have been a controlled substance. The black woman—Miss Judy?—was sweating over the stove, but she smiled at him as he came in though she didn’t have a free hand even to wave.
“I hate to put you to so much work,” he said.
“We were going to eat no matter what,” she said. “And we were going to have to cook it ourselves, too, so you didn’t cause us to do a thing we weren’t planning to do anyway. Now go wash those arms up to the elbows, boy, and maybe wash your face while you’re at it.”
Once he saw the dainty guest towels, he had no choice but to scrub his face and neck and hands and arms for fear that if he didn’t wash well enough, he’d mar the perfect cleanliness of the towels. And while he was at it, he took them up on the offer of a toilet. He had a copious bladder but its capacity wasn’t infinite, and he was glad when he was done because he could stop thinking about how his first kiss since his wife left him was in a bathroom during an inspection tour of the plumbing fixtures. This bathroom might have been romantic; the other one should have been condemned. But the ways of love are hard and strange . . . he had read that somewhere, in one of those books he ended up wishing he hadn’t read.
When he got out the kitchen was empty of people and the pots and pans were empty of food. He had brushed himself off on the porch, but he was still embarrassed about coming in to the dining room, what with the carpets and the plush upholstery.
“Don’t be shy,” said the white woman, who was pouring lemonade from a sweating silver pitcher into three tall glasses.
“You’re going to have flecks of grass and weeds wherever I sit.”
“Then it’s a good thing we know how to clean house, isn’t it,” said Miss Judy. She had just set down the tureen of stew and was folding up the dishtowels she had held it with as she carried it in. “Let me see your hands.”
He walked in and dutifully showed them, palms and backs. He half-expected her to demand to see his neck and behind his ears, but instead she picked up a huge serrated knife and told him to slice the bread. “It’s fresh so slice it thick.”
Don was good with tools and he got the knack of working with hot bread on the first try. A smooth back and forth, but only light downward pressure so you didn’t mash the soft part of the bread. Before he had a chance to ask where to stack the slices, Miss Judy had one of the bread plates right to hand and he flipped the slice deftly onto it. A moment later three thick pats of butter were melting into the bread, and the same happened with the next two slices.
Only when they all sat down did Don get a chance to glance around the room. The china was elegant and fussy, and so were the knickknacks and doilies on every surface in the room, but the overall color scheme and style of furniture were not exactly grandmotherly. It was so plush in red velvet and mahogany that it looked for all the world like a bordello. Naturally, he kept this observation to himself. Maybe this was the only decorating style that could be agreed on by a white woman whose accent made her from Appalachia and a black woman who had the eastern flatlands in her speech.
“It occurs to me,” said the white woman, “that you never mentioned your name.”
“I think the introductions have been lacking all around,” said Miss Judy. “I’m Miz Judea Crawley.”
Ah. So “Miss Judy” was definitely a name for only her housemate to use. She’d be either Miz Crawley or Miz Judea to him. He took a guess, deciding on the more affectionate title. “I’m honored, Miz Judea. I’m Don Lark.”
“And this is Miz Evelyn Tyler,” said Miz Judea.
No correction, so his use of her first name had been acceptable. He smiled at the white woman and said, “Honored to meet you, Miz Evelyn.”
“Don Lark,” said Miz Evelyn. “What a lovely name. Like the first birdsong of morning. Dawn. Lark.”
She said the words as if they were music. Don found it disconcerting. What had been a source of schoolyard teasing now sounded charming. Maybe he had finally grown into his name.
“I got to say, you ladies take neighborliness farther than I ever saw before.”
“Then it’s a sad world,” said Miz Evelyn, “because we’ve hardly done a thing.”
“Folks can’t be too neighborly,” said Miz Judea.
That was a philosophy that Don knew wasn’t true, at least not for him. And while he knew it was ungrateful of him, for the sake of the next year’s work, he had to lay down some boundaries. “I got to tell you, ladies, I’m not a very neighborly kind of guy. I’m sort of . . . standoffish.”
They glanced at each other. “That’s all right,” said Miz Judea. “Standoffish is fine.”
Miz Evelyn chimed in cheerfully. “In fact, that’s sort of what we—”
“Hush, Miss Evvie,” said Miz Judea. “That’s for later.”
For the first time it occurred to Don that maybe there was more here than gregarious old ladies giving a lesson in kindness and manners to the whippersnapper working next door.
Miz Judea lifted the lid off the tureen and steam rose up into her face. She sat a little straighter, closed her eyes and breathed it in. “You smell that?” she asked.
Oh, yes, he smelled it.
“What does that smell like?” she demanded.
He didn’t even have to search for an answer. “Like I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“Don’t just smell it, Miss Judy. Serve it!”
Don would never have said anything, but he felt the same impatience. Even after a hard day’s work, food always seemed like just another duty, shoveling in something out of a grease-spotted paper sack. Today was a day of unexpected pleasures. And in this case, it wasn’t even a forgotten pleasure. Nobody in Don’s family was really much of a cook, and certainly nobody on his wife’s side. That wasn’t just sour grapes after she left him, either. She managed to simultaneously undercook and scorch Kraft macaroni and cheese, and once he opened up a lunch she packed for him and found potato-chip-and-mayonnaise sandwiches. He’d almost gagged. It made him appreciate his mother’s very, very plain cooking. His mother always acted as if Chef Boyardee spaghetti was maybe a little too spicy.
The stew heaped high on the ladle and Miz Judea served it without spilling a drop. She passed him his bowl. He waited as the other two bowls were served, while steam and the smell of pepper and beef and spices he’d never heard of rose around his face. Finally they each were served, and since nobody was taking a bite they must be waiting for him, as the guest, to begin. He picked up his spoon and dug in.
Miz Judea laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t forget to give thanks.”
He almost thanked them again, before he realized what they meant. It made him feel stupid, since he’d said grace every day as he was growing up, and he and his wife had seen to it that they raised their daughter with prayers at meals and every nig
ht before bed. But for the past couple of years, there’d been nobody to pray with and, more importantly, nobody he much wanted to pray to.
The ladies bowed their heads. “Dear Lord, for this food we give thanks,” said Miz Evelyn, “and for this strong young hardworking man who earns his bread by the sweat of his face. Bless him to be smart enough to get the hell out of that house before it eats him alive.”
Don wasn’t the only one startled. Miz Judea gave a little cry and apparently kicked Miz Evelyn under the table, since she gave an equally sincere cry in response. “Evvie!” said Miz Judea.
Miz Evelyn steadfastly kept her eyes closed and intoned with all deliberation, “A. Men.”
“Amen, you silly old tart,” said Miz Judea. “Say amen yourself, young man.”
Bewildered as he was, Don had nothing better to say. “Amen.”
“Now eat before she says something even stupider,” said Miz Judea.
Don was grateful to obey. The food was good, but there was an element of craziness about them both—no, call it simple strangeness—that disconcerted him, precisely because they didn’t seem crazy at all. They seemed like his kind of people, earthy yet elegant, gracious yet plain. He liked them. They were generous. They were funny. But when it came to the Bellamy house, they were, in fact, loons.
The conversation stayed on safe subjects through the rest of dinner—how the Bestway on Walker Street was the only survivor of an onslaught of supermarket takeovers that brought in the big boys and drove out the small ones; how outraged everyone was when they changed the names of a half-dozen of Greensboro’s historic old streets so that Market and Friendly would have the same names along their entire length; how ironic it was that now they couldn’t even remember what the old names had been . . . Hogarth? Hobart? Hubert? No, that was the vice-president back in 1952, wasn’t it? Or was he the one who got impeached? It was like being caught up in a history lesson in which the teacher had no notes. They remembered everything, had lived through everything, and yet they remained hopelessly vague about all the public events.