Love Always

28

LUCY was in Hildon’s car, parked at a scenic overlook. A baby was sweeping the grass with a broom — a child about three years old, whose hands choked up on the handle as if he held a baseball bat. He tapped the broom against the ground, looked straight forward, then decided to sweep instead of bunt. All the while, the child was singing a song. The mother and father and an obese cocker spaniel were sitting on a tablecloth spread out near a willow tree.

Les Whitehall’s visit had made it possible for Lucy and Nicole to have the talk both had been avoiding. Maybe, Lucy thought, it was because Nicole had seen her vulnerability that she was willing to talk about her own. She wanted to star on Passionate Intensity. She would stay with Piggy Proctor and his wife, but she wanted Lucy to fly to L.A. and visit whenever she could. When the filming was over, Nicole would come back to Vermont.

So Les’s visit had been for the best, but of course he couldn’t have known that, and it wasn’t why he had come. He had come assuming that Lucy knew that Hildon was resigning as editor of Country Daze. The day of Les’s visit, Hildon had been in New York talking to an agent about a book he might write. The agent was also Les Whitehall’s agent. Les had found out about Hildon’s plans by coincidence — and, actually, Lucy had too. Les had come to ask her if she would put in a good word for him with Matt Smith, the publisher, and if she would also ask Hildon not to let his bad feelings for him get in the way of his possibly getting the job.

“When did you intend to tell me?” Lucy said to Hildon.

Hildon had driven to her house, after getting her message, and had found Lucy going up the walk with a bag of groceries. She was resolute: whatever happened, she was going to proceed. None of them was going to hurt her so much that she stopped in her tracks. As though to strengthen her resolve, she had gone out and bought food. Now, the bag was wedged between them, unpacked. She had gotten into Hildon’s car still carrying the bag. That was like Hildon: to do things in his own way, in his own time, and then to expect that she’d stop the clock when he felt like talking. Lucy doubted whether he even felt like talking — whether he wasn’t discussing this purely because she had forced him to.

“I thought you’d make fun of me,” Hildon said. “You’re always talking about how the whole world wants to write. Look at what a fraud Les Whitehall was. I didn’t want you to think of me as another Les Whitehall.”

“You’re changing the subject,” Lucy said.

“I wasn’t going to quit unless my agent thought the proposal would work,” he said. “It all happened in a hurry. How could I know that my agent was also Les Whitehall’s agent, and that she was going to run off at the mouth?”

“That isn’t what I asked,” Lucy said.

Hildon was holding the wheel at the bottom, tightly, as if he were driving fast. Lucy had thrown her door open to let what breeze there was circulate through the car. His door was shut, as if they were in motion.

Lucy had had so many bad times in cars. Her father had played games with her — turned off the headlights, said “Whoa!” as though a simple horse had galloped out of control, and accelerated through seconds of danger before he pulled the headlight switch back on. He had also teased her when she was a child by driving and closing the eye closest to her, squinting at the road through the other, saying, “Daddy’s gone blind! Daddy’s blind! Is the light ahead green or red?” She would describe everything nervously and thoroughly, begging him all the while to open his eyes, afraid to pull his arm or jump in her seat because it might cause him to veer off the road. It was not until years later, when she was telling the story to a school friend in front of him, that he closed his eye closest to where she and her friend sat and then turned his head, revealing the open eye that had been watching the road all along.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” he said. “It wasn’t a sure thing, and you were going through so much in California. I wasn’t going to pack a suitcase and leave town before sunrise, you know.”

“I don’t know what I know,” Lucy said.

“Well,” Hildon said. “I wasn’t.”

The child was sweeping its father’s back. The mother was rubbing the dog’s stomach. From where Lucy sat, she couldn’t see the trickle of muddy river below. The farmhouse with the blue roof she had always loved was visible on the hillside, and people hardly larger than dots were moving around it — people and cows — more of those mysterious people who thought something and felt some way Lucy couldn’t fathom. People who lived in a house in the valley.

“I would have told you from the first if it had seemed real to me,” Hildon said.

She started to calm down. She was being a little irrational. Of course he wouldn’t have just disappeared without saying anything. He had every right to quit as editor of Country Daze and do something — as he had said on the ride to the overlook—“serious.” It was just a big change, another unexpected adjustment.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“I’m going to Boston for a while,” he said.

She turned and looked at him, startled.

“Lucy,” he said. “I need a change. I’m sick of the work I’ve been doing. I’m under a lot of pressure from Maureen’s lawyers. I can’t take any more phone calls from Matt Smith.”

“What do you mean you’re going to Boston?” she said.

“For a while,” he said. He chewed his bottom lip. She was still looking at him. “I’m going to move there for a while,” he said. She still stared. “Get out of the house,” he said, lamely.

It was such an off-the-wall explanation that it made her laugh. “Hildon,” she said, “if you ever decide you want to explain all this to me, come over or give me a call. I’ve got to get back to Nicole.”

“Don’t be self-righteous,” he said softly, and bit his lip.

“Hildon,” she said, “I don’t understand anything you’re saying today, including that last remark. Would you mind driving me home? I have things to do.”

He stared straight ahead. The child and the dog walked through his line of vision. He looked at the sun, which had just come out strong, shining on the blue roof that Lucy loved. “I’ve never been closer to anyone than I am to you,” he said, “yet I’m able to just leave.”

“I seem to be quite an inspiration to people in that way,” Lucy said. “Think of me as Tintern Abbey.”

“Don’t turn it against yourself,” he said. “I hate it when you do that.”

“Take me home,” she said. “I’m really upset.”

“I know you are,” he said. He touched the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it on. “You’re going to get mad at me for saying it,” he said, “but shit kickers don’t go through stuff like this. They don’t introspect.”

“I didn’t realize we were being introspective. I’d say that what I am is baffled.”

“Cindi Coeur?” Hildon said.

“I’m not Cindi Coeur.”

“I know,” he said. “So it was such a peculiar thing for us both to arrive at. That everything was such a joke.”

“You don’t think that most of the time and neither do I. We never have.”

“Hey, Lucy!” a man hollered.

There was one other car at the overlook. Andrew Steinborn and Lillian were there, still trying to decide what to do about their marriage plans. She wanted time to think. He wanted them to get a blood test and get married immediately. So far, the only compromise that had been agreed upon was that however the afternoon turned out, they would go out that night to a fancy restaurant, for an expensive dinner with wine. Andrew Steinborn leaned out of his window, waving madly.

“Who’s that?” Hildon said. “It’s a man who’s writing a book, actually.” Andrew continued to wave, shouting something Lucy couldn’t hear.

“Shit,” she said. “Just a second.”

She opened the door and began to walk across the gravel. Cars passed on the highway. Hildon could tell, watching her walk, that she was depressed. There was no spring in her step, no toss of the long hair. He opened his own door to go with her. The grocery bag tipped over and several potatoes rolled across the seat. In a hurry to catch up, he threw two back in the bag and leaned in to straighten it, saw another potato on the pavement and picked it up and put it in the pocket of his denim jacket. When he caught up with Lucy, she had already greeted the people in the car.

“We’re getting married,” Andrew said. “Isn’t it the perfect day to decide that? We knew it before, actually, but sitting here, looking out …”

“We’re thinking about it,” the woman sitting next to Andrew said, leaning across his lap. Lucy smiled and nodded. She introduced Hildon.

“A fellow writer,” Andrew said. “I am very, very glad to meet you. Lillian and I were reading your wonderful magazine out on the lawn at the inn the other evening. A very good, very unique piece of work.”

“Thank you,” Hildon said.

“He just quit,” Lucy said.

“You’re leaving?” Andrew said.

“He’s moving to Boston,” Lucy said. “He wants to get out of the house.”

Lillian straightened up and sat waiting for the conversation to end. A big, shiny convertible careened around the half-circle, radio blaring James Taylor and Carly Simon singing “Mockingbird.” Hildon put his arm around Lucy’s shoulder instinctively as the car made the turn. Kids, out having a joy ride.

“Good luck with your wedding,” Hildon said.

“I’m going to need it if my fiancée keeps these cold feet,” Andrew said nervously.

“You’ll get a sign,” Hildon said. “I’m a great believer in mystical revelations.”

“What do you mean?” Andrew said.

“A signal. A bolt of lightning will flash. Something will tell you.”

“Oh,” Andrew said. He looked uncomfortable. Hildon leaned forward. “Stay posted,” he said to Lillian. He raised a hand to say goodbye. Lucy smiled. As they turned away, Lucy could see Andrew stiffening. Hildon took his hand out of his pocket and dropped the car keys. As he bent to pick them up, he took out the potato and jammed it into Andrew’s tail pipe.

“What in the name of God are you doing?” Lucy whispered.

“Come on,” he said, his hand on her back, steering her toward his car. “There’s going to be a major explosion when that guy drives off.”

In the car, with Lucy laughing into her hands, he said, as he turned on his own ignition, “You don’t know that trick? You a goddamn stupid girl or something?”

As they pulled out, she looked happier. It had passed — for the moment, the tension between them eased up. He hadn’t had to bog down in all the details he didn’t have the desire, or the heart, to go into today.

For the next minute, as the clouds rolled in front of the sun, she was still smiling: Hildon could sniff a jackass a mile away. She liked his nerve. She liked his sense of humor. She depended on him for that — if nothing more tangible; she could not imagine what her life would be like if he went to Boston, and because she knew he knew this, she didn’t think he would really do it. He meant to, though. What he had not had to come right out and say to her was that he was a coward — that it was not only in being a prankster that he was still a schoolboy.

He dropped her off, and she went in carrying the groceries. The Mylar balloons had begun to deflate; if she looked quickly, the tree now looked like a Claes Oldenburg soft sculpture. Nicole, whom she said she had to get back to, was nowhere in sight. She was always gone — jogging into town when she didn’t have Lucy drop her off after they did errands. It worried Lucy that she was overly concerned with physical fitness. She thought that Nicole was grieving; she had no way of imagining what way Nicole had found to deal with her mother’s death. Lucy began to unpack the grocery bag, on the verge of tears: things to be wrapped, washed, put away — it was so ordinary, life’s continuation, so banal it was painful. She heard Nicole suddenly. She had not gone off after all; she was upstairs, bathing.

A few minutes after she heard the water begin to drain, Lucy walked upstairs. Nicole was in her robe — Piggy’s robe, embroidered PP, that she had always coveted and that he had given her in L.A. She was sitting in front of the desk that she had fashioned into a dressing table, a three-paneled glass mirror hung above it, with photographs of herself scotch-taped to the border. It was much like the desk that had metamorphosed into an all-purpose treasure trove for Jane, years ago, when she lived in the tiny apartment in New York City.

“Hi,” Nicole said, as Lucy walked into the room. The robe was huge; she looked anorectic inside it, a little child lost in a satin tent.

“Let me do that,” Lucy said, taking the brush from Nicole and beginning to slowly brush her hair, from the very front to the very back, sensing where the hairline began instead of looking in the mirror to see, gently pulling the brush, over and over.

“Thanks,” Nicole said, relaxing in spite of herself. She was remembering the day St. Francis ran away, the day of Les’s visit, when Lucy told her that things were complicated. She wanted to sit and have Lucy brush her hair, but she was late already. Harry Woods had the afternoon off, and if she didn’t get to his apartment in time, he would go off with one of his friends instead of waiting around to go to bed with her. If she didn’t blow it — if she let Lucy feel helpful, and if she herself enjoyed the hair-brushing — it would all work out. She was glad that she had better survival skills than her mother. That she understood how to be patient. Her mouth turned up in a smile, as if the slight tug of the brush through her hair moved her mouth as well as her neck, which was now tipped back, hair spilling over the back of the chair.

Lucy had brushed Jane’s hair — brushed it so often that their mother complained that it made it oily and that then Jane had to wash it too often. In truth, Lucy loved to brush more than Jane liked the feel of it. She had always hoped to hypnotize Jane, mesmerize her. She remembered how frustrating it was when Jane abruptly struggled to sit up and get on with other things. “Sit still,” she could remember saying, half pleading with her sister. “Let me brush your hair. Stay still.” Whispering urgently, “Stay still, Jane. Just stay still.”