mouth. The more she disapproved of something the thinner her lips got. The sight of my face had always puckered her up tight enough to stamp license plates, and today was no exception. She never said a word and never took her eyes off my face as the crew got dressed and lurched their way around toward the front of the house.
I took her inside and invited her to sit on the sofa, asked if I could get her anything, but she just glared me off, so I left her standing in the middle of my front parlor looking out through the open door while I stuffed the crew into a cab and sent them on their way, fifty bucks apiece burning a hole in their pockets, an extra twenty to the cabbie for putting up with the singing.
A light rain had begun to fall, darkening the pavement, hissing softly onto the magnolia leaves as I stood in the driveway and watched the cab roll out through the gate. I didn’t want to go back inside the house. Didn’t want to hear whatever it was that Iris had come thirty miles to tell me. Avoidance was a specialty of mine. You name it, I could pretend it didn’t exist. I liked to tell myself it was better than taking Prozac.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not claiming eternal sunshine or anything like that. I’m only human. Like most folks my age, I’ve got a long list of regrets. Things I wish had turned out differently. Things I’d like do-overs on. That’s the way life is, trial and error.
If there was any aspect of my past that haunted me on a daily basis, however, it was Rebecca Duval, Iris’s daughter. In a couple of weeks it would be three years since we’d parted ways, and I still wasn’t “over it.” Truth be told, I didn’t wantto be “over it.” The sense of longing I felt whenever I thought of her connected us in a way I didn’t understand but wasn’t prepared to abandon. Pain was something and something was better than nothing.
In a perfect world, I could have blamed her for walking out on me. Called her a faithless ho and drunk myself to sleep at night. But what can I say? She wanted somebody with the same hopes and dreams as her own, not some overgrown kid who played at being a private cop and whose only real ambition was to live to be forty-five. Who could blame her? I could miss her, but I couldn’t blame her.
We started back in the fifth grade. For reasons I’ll never understand the powers-that-be were determined we learn to dance. The well-rounded young person or some such tripe. So Thursdays after lunch, they’d bus Seattle Preppies like me over to Holy Names Academy to trip the light fandango with the Catholic girls. Talk about awkward. The airborne hormones were thicker than string cheese. Exhibiting great social sensitivity and
savoir faire
, they matched us up according to height. As Rebecca and I were both a head and a half taller than anyone else in the room, we were a natural fit. She found my clumsy attempts at dancing hilarious, and there was absolutely nothing about her that didn’t amuse or excite me, so we just kept dancing, year after year, until she walked off the floor and took the music with her.
I took a shallow breath and started for my front door. Iris hadn’t moved. She stood on the carpet, rigid as a fencepost, her mouth thin enough to pass for a scar.
I took my time. Moving slowly, thoroughly wiping my feet before closing the door. I swallowed a sigh, turned, and ambled her way.
She just couldn’t resist. “Nice crowd there,” she commented.
I’d long ago decided that life was too short to trade oneliners with Iris. We’d already said what we had to say to one another, on several occasions at great length and at top volume. No point in going over that same old pile of beans again. A tedious moment passed. The silence was deafening.
I finally broke the spell. “What can I do for you, Iris?”
Funny I should ask.
“I haven’t heard from Rebecca in over a week,” she said.
My body began to vibrate. Felt like I’d dropped a quarter into one of
I took her inside and invited her to sit on the sofa, asked if I could get her anything, but she just glared me off, so I left her standing in the middle of my front parlor looking out through the open door while I stuffed the crew into a cab and sent them on their way, fifty bucks apiece burning a hole in their pockets, an extra twenty to the cabbie for putting up with the singing.
A light rain had begun to fall, darkening the pavement, hissing softly onto the magnolia leaves as I stood in the driveway and watched the cab roll out through the gate. I didn’t want to go back inside the house. Didn’t want to hear whatever it was that Iris had come thirty miles to tell me. Avoidance was a specialty of mine. You name it, I could pretend it didn’t exist. I liked to tell myself it was better than taking Prozac.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not claiming eternal sunshine or anything like that. I’m only human. Like most folks my age, I’ve got a long list of regrets. Things I wish had turned out differently. Things I’d like do-overs on. That’s the way life is, trial and error.
If there was any aspect of my past that haunted me on a daily basis, however, it was Rebecca Duval, Iris’s daughter. In a couple of weeks it would be three years since we’d parted ways, and I still wasn’t “over it.” Truth be told, I didn’t wantto be “over it.” The sense of longing I felt whenever I thought of her connected us in a way I didn’t understand but wasn’t prepared to abandon. Pain was something and something was better than nothing.
In a perfect world, I could have blamed her for walking out on me. Called her a faithless ho and drunk myself to sleep at night. But what can I say? She wanted somebody with the same hopes and dreams as her own, not some overgrown kid who played at being a private cop and whose only real ambition was to live to be forty-five. Who could blame her? I could miss her, but I couldn’t blame her.
We started back in the fifth grade. For reasons I’ll never understand the powers-that-be were determined we learn to dance. The well-rounded young person or some such tripe. So Thursdays after lunch, they’d bus Seattle Preppies like me over to Holy Names Academy to trip the light fandango with the Catholic girls. Talk about awkward. The airborne hormones were thicker than string cheese. Exhibiting great social sensitivity and
savoir faire
, they matched us up according to height. As Rebecca and I were both a head and a half taller than anyone else in the room, we were a natural fit. She found my clumsy attempts at dancing hilarious, and there was absolutely nothing about her that didn’t amuse or excite me, so we just kept dancing, year after year, until she walked off the floor and took the music with her.
I took a shallow breath and started for my front door. Iris hadn’t moved. She stood on the carpet, rigid as a fencepost, her mouth thin enough to pass for a scar.
I took my time. Moving slowly, thoroughly wiping my feet before closing the door. I swallowed a sigh, turned, and ambled her way.
She just couldn’t resist. “Nice crowd there,” she commented.
I’d long ago decided that life was too short to trade oneliners with Iris. We’d already said what we had to say to one another, on several occasions at great length and at top volume. No point in going over that same old pile of beans again. A tedious moment passed. The silence was deafening.
I finally broke the spell. “What can I do for you, Iris?”
Funny I should ask.
“I haven’t heard from Rebecca in over a week,” she said.
My body began to vibrate. Felt like I’d dropped a quarter into one of
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