A Beauty Page 8

  “We’ll have to get you a new bag,” he said, pleased with himself.

  “Yes, I have hardly room for the things I brought,” she said.

  He put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze.

  “I’ve never seen a river like this. So wide,” she said. They leaned into the railing, watching the water make deep patterns out of itself while they chugged over it on the big ropes.

  “I told you, stick with me, kid,” he said. Their bodies gently lifted and fell, side by side, and he imagined her saying, “I might. If you’re good, I might stick with you.” And then he would say, “You’re a flirt, you know that?” And she would say, “Sure I am. What girl isn’t? On a beautiful morning with her sweetheart beside her.” It was a beautiful morning. He’d never seen a sky so blue, clouds so white, the sun so strong.

  They moved out towards the middle of the river. The barge tilted and he looked to her, worried she might lose her balance. But she hadn’t seemed to notice the shift. Or she’d simply accommodated to it. She was staring into the distance, pensive, as if she were all alone. Well, he consoled himself, at least she didn’t always have to share her thoughts. And he forgave her for the times she did. It was kind of cute, anyway, how earnest she could get. And hadn’t he read her right from the start? She’d proved to have exactly what he’d divined: a great desire to be desirable, that he’d hardly had to encourage. Why, just this morning, look how sweet she’d been.

  Elena saw him grinning. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “Vaut am I thinking about?”

  She stood up straighter. She looked past him out over the choppy wake to the shore they’d left behind as if she could still see the two men who had stood there, getting smaller.

  “Hey, don’t get all huffy,” he said. “Your accent’s cute.”

  “I don’t have an accent,” she said carefully.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It duss sseem tat you do haff a liddle accent. Hey, I told you, it’s cute. I’m kidding you. I’m exaggerating.” The boat lurched and his feet skidded. He had to grab hold of the rail. She was already holding onto it, and only swayed, staring at him. “I’m kidding. Anyway, I like it,” he said. “I like the way you say, ‘I vonder.’ Hah! You’re always vondering.” He laughed and reached out and stroked her arm. “I was thinking about the Trianon. You’re going to love it.” This was the ballroom he’d told her about, where the orchestras were hot. Bands from all over North America came there. She hadn’t heard nothin’ yet. And dance – she’d never danced till she’d danced to one of them; real swing was what they played.

  She didn’t say anything more and she had no expression at all on her face, but he knew she was thinking and was not pleased. He turned away and watched the water. God, it looked deep. It must be deeper here. The further down you looked, the blacker it got. You couldn’t see anywhere near the bottom, and both shores were far away now. He could have driven north, they’d told him that in Charlesville; somewhere north there was a bridge across the river. It wasn’t that much out of the way. He didn’t know why he’d opted for the ferry. You shouldn’t put yourself into situations where you could end up feeling helpless. It was the same with women; you shouldn’t do or say anything that would give them a leg up; they’d start to remind you of your mother.

  He stood back from the railing, restless, but there was nowhere to go. The grinding of the ferry straining on its course was getting on his nerves. The noise hemmed him in. And Elena was looking at him as if she’d stepped inside him and was inspecting the inside of his skull. He knew a whole lot more about the world than she did, but that didn’t seem to count for much, not when she searched inside him with those eyes.

  It was just the ferry making him uneasy, that’s all it was, the noise and the motion of the water heaving under him. He’d be glad when they reached the shore and he could get into his car again and drive off onto solid ground. But he wished he hadn’t told her anything about himself. He wished he’d never mentioned his father. But at the same time he wanted desperately to ask her to marry him.

  He seemed more himself when they got back on the road. Mostly they drove in silence, with Bill explicating once in a while the ways of the city they would reach before nightfall and peripherally discussing himself and his ideas, and with Elena saying little, or, as she now supposed, liddle.

  She drifted into thinking about learning, about the many things she’d like to learn, subjects that school hadn’t touched upon, such as learning itself. It would be interesting to study how the human brain worked, how people figured things out and made decisions, why they thought the way they did, also what it was that made some things funny and others not very amusing at all. On the ferry, the shifting, shiftless sensation, that uncontrolled swaying, had got right into her blood. Standing at the railing, her dream had come back to her. Her father calling her. Calling her name, over and over. Insistent. Some disaster was heading her way. Maybe the ferry was going to sink, she thought. And what if it did? She looked across the boat and imagined a couple standing at the opposite railing, a sophisticated man and a woman in white gloves. The white gloves especially drew her attention. They were short, came only to the woman’s wrists, and on the inside of each wrist, they had a row of three tiny buttons like seed pearls. But then Bill had distracted her, with that grin all over his face, and she’d made the mistake of asking him what he was thinking. She wondered if the unsettling feeling of the river under their feet was what had sent him into such a bad mood, or if it was only that she hadn’t appreciated him mocking her.

  All the time she was musing on these things, Bill was talking. “I like to take things as they come,” she heard him say, and she thought: Especially when they come so easy. Well, what did it matter? She leaned back in her seat and let the hot wind handle her. She closed her eyes so that in her mind’s eye she could see the buttons on those gloves. Something refined about them spelled assurance, a certain carefree ease, a way of being that needed money behind it, and made her think of her father’s worthless land and the empty buildings, the way she’d last seen them flashing past in the wide circle lit by Bill’s headlights.

  Bill was talking about the city and she had an image in her mind of the road ending suddenly in tall buildings and traffic. “I would like some gloves,” she said.

  “Sure you would.” He laughed excitedly. “Sure you would,” he said again.

  Stick with me, kid. “Thank you, Bill,” she said.

  “Come here,” he said. “Come on over here.” He held out his arm and she moved in closer. He draped his arm around her and absent-mindedly fondled her loose right breast inside the soft cotton of her dress. She’d heard boys say anything more than a handful is a waste, but she was pleased she had a good handful. He’d said she had nice little bullet nipples. She started to sink into the seat and he pinched the nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and she moaned. Actually, it was more of a whimper – her breasts were swollen and sore.

  “Oh, girl,” he said in a sort of deep growl.

  At first he thought she was crying. Her chest heaved and she pulled out from under his arm and turned her head away. Her shoulders shook. She was still turned away from him but there was no doubt, now – she was laughing. She was laughing so hard she was choking.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  She shook her head, her hand clutched to her mouth. He’d like to know what was so goddamn funny – just when he was thinking how sweet she was, leaning against him, just when he was imagining one of these days she was going to turn to him and tell him she loved him – but then they hit a patch of washboard and he had to focus his attention on the road and use both hands on the wheel. They’d hardly seen another vehicle for miles, and now came up fast on a plume of dust. It was a farm truck, braking ahead of them, the driver signalling with a crooked blue-shirted arm out his window, taking his time turning onto a side road. Bill had to slow right down. Elena was still
laughing and still looking away from him, watching the truck as it headed towards a little town down the narrow dirt road.

  Then she said, “Stop,” just as he was accelerating. It sounded so urgent, he hit the brakes hard, and they fishtailed in the loose gravel. The car jerked and stalled, stranding them sideways across the highway. They’d stirred up so much dust they couldn’t see a thing until it started settling, sifting down on the roadster to coat its long hood and fenders. “Gilroy,” the sign right in front of them said, when the dust cleared. From the highway, it looked a lot like every other town they’d passed. No sign of life except for a young girl, about eleven or twelve, out walking along the railway tracks, a kid on her own, dragging her feet.

  “Elena?” He reached for her as she opened her door. His hand grazed her hair, but she was already hopping down from the running board, she was walking into the battered weeds at the verge of the road. For a few seconds she stood there, plucking at the thin material of her dress that clung damply to her thighs, and then she took off. She took off down the highway, towards the intersection they’d just passed. She was walking away. For a few seconds, he just stared at her. He couldn’t believe his eyes. She was walking away, just walking away, like a person in a dream that you had no voice to call to, walking off down the road into the hazy white sky. And it was so white, that sky, it was like it wasn’t real, so he thought: This isn’t really happening. He wiped his arm across his eyes and she was still walking away. He lunged across the passenger seat and smacked her door shut, half-thinking the sound would bring her to her senses, although his hand moved naturally afterwards to the key at the ignition. He’d get the hell out of there, that’s what he’d do, he thought, with his hand at the ignition. But he turned around in his seat to watch her.

  She got to the intersection and made the turn and went on down the narrower dirt road. Either side of her the fields of wheat were almost motionless. The truck that had slowed them down had pulled into town; the girl she’d seen out walking by herself had disappeared over a little rise past the grain elevators, and nothing was moving in the whole landscape except for grasshoppers. They arced over the road, sometimes as many as twenty or thirty in her path at once. Their whirring fluttered the air, filled it with a sound that was so like being stroked by them, she shuddered, but she walked through them with her head up, pretending they couldn’t hit her with their brittle, horrid bodies, leaving her spotted with their tobacco-coloured stain.

  She wasn’t laughing anymore; her second thoughts were anything but funny. It was hot, godawful hot, and what in the world was she doing? She’d left her bag behind and that ache inside her pelvis was getting critical. And she didn’t have a cent in the world. She’d need money soon; without her rag pads she’d have to buy napkins and a belt. She didn’t look back, but she started walking slower. She tried to think Bill might turn the car around and follow her. He hadn’t started the engine yet; maybe he was considering it. Maybe he’d come after her.

  He was still watching her. He’d made fun of her dress, the brown colour, its modesty, but she didn’t have a thing on under that dress and he knew it. Just watching her, thinking about her melting out there in the heat, he was growing hard. She liked that power she had over him, and he liked that about her. She had her faults. She laughed at the wrong times. It was disconcerting. One minute she was asking him for gloves and the next she was walking away. But he’d wait for her, if she stopped and turned back. He’d wait for her.

  He did sit there for a bit longer, but she went on as if her feet were taking her mindlessly down the road, further and further down the road into the white sky. He half-noticed, then, that the whiteness was increasing, that it was actually billowing, like a cloud or like fog rolling in, as it might have, rolling towards her like this in some other place. But he wasn’t interested in the sky or any other natural phenomena; he was only interested in her and in what she was doing, leaving him. He couldn’t figure it out; she was walking slower than she had before, but there was only one direction she was going, and that was the one in front of her face. Tears prickled his eyes.

  When he was a little guy, his mother would sometimes say to him, “You’re happy now.” He would look up from whatever he was doing and try to catch the expression on her face. It was always just fading. He never knew exactly what she meant. He assumed his happiness was a source of satisfaction to her, but a hint of musing in her voice caught him up each time and made him remember the other times she’d said it. He thought of them now, not the individual times, but the glint of them, stretched like beads through his childhood. He remembered Elena’s pale face gleaming from the Lincoln that first night, in Addison, while they waited for the hotel owner to open the door. That was happiness, that girl in his car. He felt as if someone had snatched his life away. He started the Lincoln, shaking his head to clear his vision. He looked back a last time. She wasn’t walking fast, couldn’t, he realized, in the pumps he’d bought her, of soft light brown leather with a strap near the ankle, shoes that fit her like a glove. She was ruining those shoes by walking on gravel. That was one thing she hadn’t considered. He didn’t notice she’d forgotten her bag, or he would have heaved it out into the ditch.

  She heard him gun the motor and take off, and turned to watch him go. The empty feeling, which he’d dispelled during their few days together, came back, familiar and almost comforting. Soon she couldn’t see the car anymore, only the trail of dust it left behind, and when the dust from his leaving had died down, she was surprised to see that the sky above the highway continued hazy. A whole minute after he’d gone, she was still standing there staring at the spot where the roadster had stopped. Surely, the air held way more dust than one vehicle could have raised. It was unnaturally white dust, too, hovering like a low-hanging cloud over the road and the fields. Then she saw that the cloud hung all around her, and was all lit up, as if each particle was glowing from within. And when she turned to continue what she’d started, she saw that the little hamlet down the road, sitting pillowed in silvery grasses, knee-high foxtails and things like that, shimmered in it like a mirage.

  GILROY

  I was the one she saw. I was that girl walking along the railway tracks, looking lonely. I didn’t see her arrive because I had my back to Gilroy. It was such bad luck. I was facing away from the intersection where Bill Longmore stopped his car and Elena Huhtala got out and left him. I was trudging along between the rails, inhaling the hot black creosote smell of the ties. I loved that smell. Just thinking about it can make me feel like a kid again, with summer all around me. That day I was mooching along, wishing I could live in someone else’s house – wasting my time on wishing, when I might have been looking and seeing, when I might have been experiencing what I could only, from evidence painstakingly gathered later, imagine. And I have often imagined it since; it was of such importance to me, the moment of her arrival in Gilroy, that liquid droplet in that pearly day, the car door opening, her wavy, honey-coloured hair, one bare, tanned leg then another as she placed her feet on the running board and looked up to find a pale sun in the sky, the size of a coin tossed high. Her brown dress clinging to her thighs as she stepped down to the gravel and the spurge at the side of the road.

  As for my wishing, and the house I wanted to live in, that house existed. It had pictures on the walls and shelves full of books and other attributes I hadn’t yet seen or guessed at. It was a small bungalow at the edge of town, where I thought I could have a room to myself, a cool, quiet room where I could be alone. I had chosen the house, but I hadn’t been invited in.

  Probably I was conscious of looking lonely, out there alone on the bare prairie, moseying along on a hot day when anyone with brains bigger than a grasshopper’s would have found some shade; probably I was hoping to make the impression of loneliness if anyone went by and noticed me.

  I’m sure it was the very moment Elena Huhtala stepped down from the car that I looked up in the opposite direction, and got stopped. I had to stop be
cause way down at the end of the tracks, where they met at the horizon, a big whiteness was headed my way, a big, luminous, opaque whiteness. It looked almost as if an old-time steam engine was barrelling towards me, but whatever it was, it was bigger than a head of steam. It took up most of the horizon. For a few absurd seconds I thought snow was coming, but it was August, and so hot my clothes were drooping; it couldn’t be snow. I didn’t see how it could be dust either, on a day when, unusually, there was almost no wind. And it was much too white to be any dust I’d ever seen; it was the opposite of the dark billows we’d got used to in recent years that were our topsoil blowing away.

  I thought I should run back to town and warn people. But warn them of what? I looked up into the sky, where the sun pulsed crazily, as if it wanted to break through, and couldn’t, and I realized the white cloud was no longer in front of me; it had already enveloped me. The air all around me glittered with suspended phosphorescent dust.

  It was a trek from the highway into Gilroy and the sun was getting stronger every minute. A pink strip appeared where Elena’s wavy hair parted and along her pretty nose. The deodorant she wore went slick under her arms. Small rivers trickled down her ribs under her thin dress. And her poor young feet! Rubbed raw, especially at the heels where grit from the road met the moist skin.

  The town was smaller than it looked from the highway. It was nothing more than a hamlet, just one row of false-fronted boxes along a wide main street and a few scattered, unpainted houses. The whole of Gilroy boasted four trees and none of them had grown yet much higher than Elena Huhtala’s head. She could hear her own footsteps like whispers over the gravel, the kind of whispers gossips use. The place looked deserted. Almost everyone had gone inside to escape the afternoon heat as best they could. Then she saw that there were a couple of witnesses to her arrival. Two men stood in the open door of the garage opposite the general store – the only store in town – and smoked lip-wet roll-your-owns. They stood up a little straighter when Elena Huhtala appeared on the road that ran slantwise from the highway to meet up with Main Street. Men often stood up straighter when they saw her; it was simultaneously a sign of respect and disrespect, and it meant she had to walk without limping while avoiding looking their way. She stepped up to the wooden sidewalk in front of the store and stopped to take a breath. She put her hands up and shook out her hair. She wiped her face with her fingertips. The best she could hope for was to smudge the sweat, the powder, and the dust together. Ignoring the men, she peered down at herself, checking that the buttons on the front of her dress were done up, and snuck a look at the wet patches under her arms. She sat down on the bench in front of the store and brushed at her shoes.