‘And you’re a good one for a writer.’
This time the grin on my face felt more natural and stayed on longer. We passed the marker reading TR-90, and as we did, the sun burned through the haze and flooded the day with light. It seemed like an omen of better times ahead, until I looked into the west. There, black in the bright, I could see the thunderheads building up over the White Mountains.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
For men, I think, love is a thing formed of equal parts lust and astonishment. The astonishment part women understand. The lust part they only think they understand. Very few — perhaps one in twenty — have any concept of what it really is or how deep it runs. That’s probably just as well for their sleep and peace of mind. And I’m not talking about the lust of satyrs and rapists and molesters; I’m talking about the lust of shoe-clerks and high-school principals.
Not to mention writers and lawyers.
We turned into Mattie’s dooryard at ten to eleven, and as I parked my Chevy beside her rusted-out Jeep, the trailer door opened and Mat-tie came out on the top step. I sucked in my breath, and beside me I could hear John sucking in his.
She was very likely the most beautiful young woman I have ever seen in my life as she stood there in her rose-colored shorts and matching middy top. The shorts were not short enough to be cheap (my mother’s word) but plenty short enough to be provocative. Her top tied in floppy string bows across the shoulders and showed just enough tan to dream on. Her hair hung to her shoulders.
She was smiling and waving. I thought, She’s made it — take her into the country-club dining room now, dressed just as she is, and she shuts everyone else down.
‘Oh Lordy,’ John said. There was a kind of dismayed longing in his voice. ‘All that and a bag of chips.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Put your eyes back in your head, big boy.’
He made cupping motions with his hands as if doing just that.
George, meanwhile, had pulled his Altima in next to us.
‘Come on,’ I said, opening my door. ‘Time to party.’
‘I can’t touch her, Mike,’ John said. ‘I’ll melt.’
‘Come on, you goof.’
Mattie came down the steps and past the pot with the tomato plant in it. Ki was behind her, dressed in an outfit similar to her mother’s, only in a shade of dark green. She had the shys again, I saw; she kept one steadying hand on Mattie’s leg and one thumb in her mouth.
‘The guys are here! The guys are here!’ Mattie cried, laughing, and threw herself into my arms.
She hugged me tight and kissed the corner of my mouth. I hugged her back and kissed her cheek.
Then she moved on to John, read his shirt, patted her hands together in applause, and then hugged him. He hugged back pretty well for a guy who was afraid he might melt, I thought, picking her up off her feet and swinging her around in a circle while she hung onto his neck and laughed.
‘Rich lady, rich lady, rich lady!’ John chanted, then set her down on the cork soles of her white shoes.
‘Free lady, free lady, free lady!’ she chanted back. ‘The hell with rich!’ Before he could reply, she kissed him firmly on the mouth. His arms rose to slip around her, but she stepped back before they could catch hold. She turned to Rommie and George, who were standing side-by-side and looking like fellows who might want to explain all about the Mormon Church.
I took a step forward, meaning to do the introductions, but John was taking care of that, and one of his arms managed to accomplish its mission after all — it circled her waist as he led her forward toward the men.
Meanwhile a little hand slipped into mine. I looked down and saw Ki looking up at me. Her face was grave and pale and every bit as beautiful as her mother’s. Her blonde hair, freshly washed and shining, was held back with a velvet scrunchy.
‘Guess the fridgeafator people don’t like me now,’ she said. The laughter and insouciance were gone, at least for the moment. She looked on the verge of tears. ‘My letters all went bye-bye.’
I picked her up and set her in the crook of my arm as I had on the day I’d met her walking down the middle of Route 68 in her bathing suit. I kissed her forehead and then the tip of her nose. Her skin was perfect silk. ‘I know they did,’ I said. ‘I’ll buy you some more.’
‘Promise?’ Doubtful dark blue eyes fixed on mine.
‘Promise. And I’ll teach you special words like “zygote” and “bibulous”. I know lots of special words.’
‘How many?’
‘A hundred and eighty.’
Thunder rumbled in the west. It didn’t seem louder, but it was more focused, somehow. Ki’s eyes went in that direction, then came back to mine. ‘I’m scared, Mike.’
‘Scared? Of what?’
‘Ofi don’t know. The lady in Mattie’s dress. The men we saw.’ Then she looked over my shoulder. ‘Here comes Mommy.’ I have heard actresses deliver the line Not in front of the children in that exact same tone of voice. Kyra wiggled in the circle of my arms. ‘Land me.’
I landed her. Mattie, John, Rommie, and George came over to join us. Ki ran to Mattie, who picked her up and then eyed us like a general surveying her troops.
‘Got the beer?’ she asked me.
‘Yessum. A case of Bud and a dozen mixed sodas, as well. Plus lemonade.’
‘Great. Mr. Kennedy — ‘
‘George, ma’am.’
‘George, then. And if you call me ma’am again, I’ll punch you in the nose. I’m Mattie. Would you drive down to the Lakeview General’ -she pointed to the store on Route 68, about half a mile from us — ‘and get some ice?’
‘You bet.’
‘Mr. Bissonette — ‘
‘Rommie.’
‘There’s a little garden at the north end of the trailer, Rommie. Can you find a couple of good-looking lettuces?’
‘I think I can handle that.’
‘John, let’s get the meat into the fridge. As for you, Michael . . . ‘ She pointed to the barbecue.
‘The briquets are the self-lighting kind — just drop a match and stand back. Do your duty.’
‘Aye, good lady,’ I said, and dropped to my knees in front of her. That finally got a giggle out of Ki.
Laughing, Mattie took my hand and pulled me back onto my feet. ‘Come on, Sir Galahad,’ she said. ‘It’s going to rain. I want to be safe inside and too stuffed to jump when it does.’
In the city, parties begin with greetings at the door, gathered-in coats, and those peculiar little air-kisses (when, exactly, did that social oddity begin?). In the country, they begin with chores. You fetch, you carry, you hunt for stuff like barbecue tongs and oven mitts. The hostess drafts a couple of men to move the picnic table, then decides it was actually better where it was and asks them to put it back. And at some point you discover that you’re having fun.
I piled briquets until they looked approximately like the pyramid on the bag, then touched a match to them. They blazed up satisfyingly and I stood back, wiping my forearm across my forehead. Cool and clear might be coming, but it surely wasn’t in hailing distance yet. The sun had burned through and the day had gone from dull to dazzling, yet in the west black-satin thunderheads continued to stack up. It was as if night had burst a blood-vessel in the sky over there.
‘Mike?’
I looked around at Kyra. ‘What, honey?’
‘Will you take care of me?’
‘Yes,’ I said with no hesitation at all.
For a moment something about my response — perhaps only the quickness of it — seemed to trouble her. Then she smiled. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Look, here comes the ice-man!’
George was back from the store. He parked and got out. I walked over with Kyra, she holding my hand and swinging it possessively back and forth. Rommie came with us, juggling three heads of lettuce — I didn’t think he was much of a threat to the guy who had fascinated Ki on the common Saturday night.
George opened the Altima’s back door and brought out two bags of ice. ‘The store was closed,’ he said. ‘Sign said WILL RE-OPEN AT 5 P.M. That seemed a little too long to wait, so I took the ice and put the money through the mail-slot.’
They’d closed for Royce Merrill’s funeral, of course. Had given up almost a full day’s custom at the height of the tourist season to see the old fellow into the ground. It was sort of touching. I thought it was also sort of creepy.