A few weeks before the Fourth of July, I was curled up on my couch, enjoying the soft light of the patio through my sliding doors, ready to go to bed. Shaken by the buzz of the doorbell, I was pulled from my reverie by a woman’s voice.
“I’m Bud’s wife. I need to talk.”
“What the hell?” I mumbled.
Bud had told me his wife was coming back to decide what was hers and what was his. He didn’t say anything about her wanting to talk to me.
I pulled in my breath, blew it out. Might as well get this over with. I slowly opened the door.
“Come in,” I said. “Would you like to sit down?”
She chose a chair close to the door. Words rushed out. “Bud left your letters on the seat of his Porsche. I see he’s been fucking you.”
I stopped breathing. The constant shuffle of letters between Bud and me brought joy. How could she read them? How could he leave them for her to find? I snapped back to the present. She’s just found out about us.
“I thought you’d moved away, the two of you were getting a divorce.”
“Oh,” she said, quiet for a moment. “We never made a decision about that.” Her voice revved up. “The son of a bitch has sent almost no money since I left. We’re having a hard time making it.” She stopped again, then added, “He says his book royalties have dried up.”
I blurted, “Ask him to show you his royalty payments.” Bud had shared that he was hiding royalty income from her. I didn’t think a lot about it at the time. Suddenly, I was furious. He wasn’t supporting his kids.
I shut down my feelings, stood up, and walked toward the door. She followed, all blown out, quiet, subdued. As she walked out into the night, I wondered what she looked like. I hadn’t turned on the light, seen her face.
I picked up a pillow and screamed into the soft square shape, then collapsed on the couch and sobbed. Familiar grief from my recent divorce flooded through me.
Over the past year, Bud and I had casually met a few times when he attended events and dropped off books to sell at the antique car museum where I was the director.
We connected when mutual friends invited us to a party. I handed Bud a beer. My eyes took in the thick brown hair that needed a cut, his ready smile, and blue eyes that seemed to reach into his soul. I didn’t take my eyes off him the rest of the night. We sat in a corner talking, got the short version of our lives out of the way.
Bud was a literature professor at Michigan State University and a car nut. His wife had taken a teaching job and a lover when she and their two kids moved to Seattle. He puttered aimlessly before deciding to get on with his life. He would fix up the house like his wife had wanted, build the hot rod he had been putting together in his head for the past thirty years.
I had suspended my education so my husband could get a Ph.D. A philosophy professor at the same university, he had receded into alcoholism while I earned bachelor and master’s degrees. Recently divorced. Our daughter had taken a job as a designer in New York City.
Bud and I moved on to favorite authors, local hiking trails, and other safe subjects. Neither of us spoke of the loneliness that hovered over us like mist on a rainy afternoon.
Our first week we went to a spectacular play at the new Wharton Center for Performing Arts, hiked through deep snow at Rose Lake, had dinner with a couple Bud knew. The evening turned out warm, friendly.
Afterwords, we stood by the edge of the curb, chilled by the wintry air, unable to say good night. “We need to find a warmer place to continue talking,” I said. “Why don’t you follow me back to my apartment?”
“Love to,” Bud said. A big smile spread across his face. “I thought you were never going to ask.”
Bud probably thought we were going to jump into bed. After years of silence, I wanted, needed to talk. We finally quit speaking when Bud walked out into the snowy daybreak.
When I woke in the afternoon, a letter from Bud was tucked into my mailbox. Torn pieces of brown gummed paper covered the print on the used envelope.
3/2/83
Dear Kate:
I know a guy in California named Strother MacMinn.
He lives in the house in which he was raised--a bungalow on
a palm-lined street in Pasadena.
He drives a 1950 Jaguar X-120 roadster, and teaches at the
Los Angeles Design Center (& writes for Motor Trend, Road & Track, etc).
Strother MacMinn. Pasadena. Bungalow. Jag X-120 roadster
LA Design Center. Don't the parts seem to add up nicely?
I mean, I'd expect a guy w/ a name like that to live in
Pasadena and drive a Jag roadster, etc. etc.
You have that same integrated sense. Your name, first and
last, fits (much better than Miller!) what you are. I like
your clothes, whether high bucks combat fatigues or the
russet skirt and vest with embroidery (?). The scarab pin
from SF. Royal purple. Fur-lined white coat. The man's hat
with snap-brim turned down. Your apartment. Framed posters/
pictures/ photos/pages. Your elegant (& untouchable!) brass bed.
Your hair--feather cut? Long lower lip. Soft voice. Softly
assertive. The rounded cheekbones--I think of a line from
a poem by John Logan:“Susannah"--''the high formal bones of
your face.'' You sit with your legs tucked under in a
variety of ways. You eat an artichoke and arrange
the leaves into a nice pattern. Everything seems to fit—
except for the damn Toyota--buy a Jag 120 roadster!
Across the lower part of the typed page, Bud scrawled in red ink God, I am happy!
Bud’s letter captured my heart. I loved his densely stacked words. His effulgent happiness—emphasized in red ink—seeped into my brokenness.
The second week, we met for a hurried lunch at a funky little diner. Like a magician, Bud pulled from his pocket a tiny vase stuffed with flowers, a couple of small model cars, and a miniature book of poetry. He lined them up along the edge of my plastic tray.
“Bud, you are nuts,” I said, looking self-consciously around to see who was watching. No one. I loosened up, giggled, and enjoyed the fuss.
The next day, I opened another letter from Bud.
Dear Kate,
I linger over the memory of our various brief meetings,
and how things came together so nicely, how the feeling
I had (have) for you developed, became intense.
We did so much in a week, and I want our relationship to
continue in that same exciting way.
I have this thing about the time-space continuum, as per
the Alexandria Quartet--we’re thrown together in this place,
the gods shake us up and roll us like dice, and people are paired
in an almost random manner. In the semi-long lives we’ve led
we’ve met lots of people, so it’s not so odd we should meet,
and, yet it is odd that we should meet and develop a ( brief)
relationship and that I, at least, and perhaps you too,
should feel so intensely about another. It has been many
years since I’ve felt about a person the way I feel about you.
I love you.
Bud was signed in large blue letters.
In a way, everything had come together nicely, seemed to fit.
Bud phoned to ask me to come to dinner. I nearly died laughing when he called out the directions. “Go to the Chief Okemos sign. Turn left at the garbage can on the corner and drive down a dirt road until you get to the house.” Ever after, I smiled as I turned left at the garbage can, something that happened a lot after that first day.
The road ended in a circle in front of the house, a decaying, flat-roofed anachronism plunked down in the middle of Michigan. Ruts carved up the road and forced me to drive slowly no matter how much I anticipated seeing Bud. When it rained, the ruts filled with pools of water that splashed the sides of my car. I enjoyed the drive, anyhow.
By late spring, the leaves on the trees had transformed the road into a shaded tunnel, lined with waist-high grass. Bud didn’t believe in mowing. He said that when his kids were little, he rented a mower to cut paths for them to run through. I would have liked to do that, too.
Warm weather also brought random bursts of color from unkempt lilacs, magnolias, tulips, daffodils, and violets. I wandered through the yard filling my arms with sweet-smelling flowers until they could hold no more.
Every time I pulled up to Bud’s place, I wondered if I was at a used car lot or junkyard. His favorite, a red 1937 Ford coupe with a cracked windshield, stood next to his wife’s malfunctioning Mercedes. Bud’s faded blue Porsche was usually tucked into a spot between the front door and the garage which hid a partially built hot rod and a Model A.
The backyard was filled with rusty car parts and pieces of lumber that formed irregular shapes wherever you looked. The clutter was intriguing. I found the whole place fascinating.
Bud loved to cook for me in the peculiarly shaped kitchen that angled off from the living room. I would sit on one of the rickety chairs, my feet pulled up on the seat, taking in rows of spices and cookbooks. Bud never used either. He relied on garlic, onions, and olive oil.
When I offered to help, he said, “I love to watch you watching me cook. I’m having so much fun.” I didn’t resist. I found Bud’s eagerness to cook and share food refreshing.
During the years I was married, I had prepared many meals. Toward the end of our relationship, the TV had usurped my husband’s presence at the dinner table. When he came home, he would settle in front of the TV, read the newspaper, watch the news, and drink beer until bedtime.
A dry sink with an etched glass front was edged into a corner of Bud’s kitchen. Stacks of papers and a typewriter covered the round oak table that filled the center of the room. Bud hurried about chopping and stirring. He might halt to show me a paper from one of his students or read something from a publisher. Sometimes letters from his wife rested on top of the piles. I hated to see them because I felt her eyes staring at me. Bud said I could read them. I never did.
By the time the food was ready, Bud had pushed an opening into the midst of the clutter and set two places with an odd assortment of dishes and silverware. With one last flourish, he would rummage up candles, adding coziness to the kitchen.
Bud sensed I was nervous about sex and proceeded slowly. When he slipped his hand into the back of my jeans and caressed my bare skin, I shivered, didn’t pull away. He moved his hands toward my breasts. “Not yet,” I said.
“OK. I can wait. You’re worth waiting for.”
We eventually got to the bedroom. Bud let me know how much he appreciated sex. I appreciated his sweetness, gentle touch, and warm body. I was still locked in the past, unable to dissolve into a passionate relationship.
Bud’s bed looked like it belonged to a teenage kid. Large undulating curves cut into the honey colored wood of the rope bed which was heaped with an afghan, comforter, and every blanket he owned. A blow-up photograph of Bud’s face perched on the dresser at the foot of the bed. Cobwebs floated from the ceiling. A cheap pair of curtains with large flowers hung across the windows that faced into the woods at the edge of the backyard.
I always pulled the curtains back when I was there. I loved to see the morning sunlight and the soft glow of light in the evening. When I asked Bud if I could open the curtains, he said, “Of course. I see how happy it makes you. That makes me happy, too.” I soaked up the simplicity of his words, felt cared for.
The bed was a wonder-filled spot for drinking wine and listening to the radio. We especially liked Prairie Home Companion on Saturday nights. Whole weekends slipped by, talking, tangled together in that bed.
Bud painted the walls in the nearby bathroom a bright clean purple. He probably did it for me. That’s my favorite color. He could have done it to head off negative reactions to his neglected house. He didn’t do anything to the cruddy fixtures, the cracked linoleum floor, or the toilet that sprayed water if you leaned ever so slightly to the right—a mystery I found both joltingly funny and annoying.
Bud preferred the bathroom at the end of the hall, his favorite room. “Come look at my new shower curtain. Just found it at Meijer Thrifty Acres for $2.98.” His delight prodded me to ignore the rusty shower stall hidden by the clear blue sheet of plastic.
I found the worn red plaid couch in the living room ugly. I was impressed with the rest of the sturdy pine furniture, charged with character that took over the rest of the space. “My wife discovered and refinished each piece,” Bud said. “That’s a Morris chair, you know.” I didn’t know and admired the boxy tilt-back chair all the more.
I fell in love with the fieldstone fireplace and slate hearth. Bud got a kick out of me lugging heavy logs through the side door and building rip-roaring fires.
“Hey, you don’t need to do that. Let me.”
“Yes, I do. Bringing in wood is fun,” I said. “I love the fires, the hours we spend in front of the fireplace.” We’d lie on a blanket, sip wine and talked while the flames made gigantic flickering shadows on the ceiling. Sometimes we listened to classical music on the radio.
“Why didn’t I ever think to do this?” Bud asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We both fell into a vacuum of loneliness. I’m glad we’ve found some joy.”
“Me, too. After my wife left, I was in limbo, just trying to get through those months. I needed desperately to meet someone like you.”
“I like the idea of being together, making each other happy,” I said, nestling deeper into Bud’s embrace. I was at peace.
The memory of words Bud had written about time pushed into my consciousness.
Back back in time which circles, spirals inward like a
conch shell of memory, an echo chamber, two threads that unfold
in parallel but separate lines until, far in the future, they
converge, meet. How odd!
“I’m thinking about how you described our meeting as two lines coming together. The idea has seeped into my brain, sings of the mystery of why two people meet,” I said.
“Yes, two lines that have come together,” Bud said. Will we ever know why?”
“Do we really know anything?” I responded. “Nevertheless, if someone said we shouldn’t be together, I would swear on a stack of bibles they were wrong.”
“Me, too. I know we’re supposed to be together. I’m glad we are.”
The next day, we took a walk through the pines in back of Bud’s house. When we circled back to the shed, Bud surprised me by saying, “I want you to live with me.”
“I enjoy our time together, but I can’t live here with the unresolved presence of your wife lingering about.” In my heart I knew Bud was never going to fix up the place, I could never live there.
Bud was stunned, didn’t speak. He finally said, “I’m not going to give up. I’ll keep asking.”
“What I’d like right now is to see the shed. Can we?” Bud had described his hidey-hole many times, though never offered to take me inside. Now seemed the perfect time.
Bud welcomed the shift. He grinned, pulled a handful of keys from his pocket, and opened the padlock. Boxes of books, magazines, and envelopes stuffed with research notes suffocated the room. Scattered about were writing awards, trophies, report cards, and photos of his wife and children.
A collection of miniature cars rested on top of a bookcase. “The kids broke most of them when they were little. I like to remember that time,” he said, melancholy creeping into his voice. “When warm weather comes, I move my typewriter out here and live for the summer.”
Bud and I had planned to go to the Fourth of July celebration. His wife’s return obliterated that possibility. I went alone and cried through the band concert and the fireworks.
I didn’t hear anything from Bud the rest of the summer. I hated being alone, feeling lost, unsure how to crawl out of this hole a second time.
I ran into Bud on the street in the fall. “I’ve been following you for the last few blocks, afraid to speak to you.” he said. He hurried his words. “After my wife went back to Seattle, I sent you some letters, called. You don’t answer. I want to talk to you. I’m so sorry my wife barged into your apartment. I miss you. I love you. I want to be with you.”
“You betrayed me,” I said in a flat voice. “Left my letters for your wife to find.”
Bud’s face paled. He pressed on, unable to hold back. “My wife hung around for a few months, told me what an asshole I was, before taking most of the furniture to the West Coast. I’m thinking of going there for Christmas.”
He stopped, then picked up his words again. “Why don’t you come out to the house and see how it looks without furniture?”
“I’m not going to let you betray me again.”
I circled around him and started down the block, then turned back, hurled words at him. “Besides . . . I’m not interested in an empty house.”
Fay L. Loomis leads a quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York. Member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and the Rat's Ass Review Workshop, her poetry and prose appear most recently in Spillwords, Pleiades: Literature in Context, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Rats Ass Review, The Passionfruit Review, Vita & the Woolf, October Hill Magazine, Loch Raven Review, The Milk House and Sunlit Wildness, a micro-chap, published by Origami Poems Project. Fay’s poems are included in five anthologies.
Comments