The Annunciation, page 14
Then the three of them trouped out of the cafe, squeezed into Amanda’s MG with the top down and the guitar case standing on end and drove on up the mountain.
I’m sixteen years old if I’m a day, Amanda thought. I’m crazy as a loon.
This redheaded lady is fixing to take me home and fuck my eyeballs out, Will was thinking. Well, what the hell. I haven’t got anything else to do till Monday.
I’ll fill the kiln tomorrow, Katie was thinking. Who knows, maybe I won’t have to hear any more lectures about solitude for a while.
When they got to the house Amanda settled her guests on the balcony with a bottle of wine. Then she went into the kitchen and made a plate of small brown rolls filled with ham and lettuce and sliced olives. She brought it out on the balcony and put it down between Will and Katie. The sun was beginning to set, filling the clouds with purple and orange and wild magentas.
“I’ve got to find a yoga teacher,” Amanda said, stretching her legs out, propping them on the railing so Will could see how nice they were. “The only thing I miss about New Orleans is my yoga teacher. I was learning so many wonderful things from her.”
“Like what?” Katie asked, playing along.
“Like how to do a headstand. Can you believe that? Well, anyway, I adore it here, Will. Fayetteville, Arkansas is my Paris and my Rome.”
“I’ve lived here all my life,” he said. “I wouldn’t know how to love anyplace else.”
“Amanda thinks Fayetteville is an artists’ colony,” Katie put in. “Because of the way the women dress.”
“Well, I do love the way they dress. They dress like they don’t give a damn who’s looking at them. Like they aren’t for sale. It’s one of the first things I noticed when I first started coming here.”
“How do women dress in old New Or-leans?” Will asked.
“The black women are the best. I used to go down to Canal Street just to watch them on their lunch hours. They’re very tall and wear the most extraordinary colors.”
“That’s where you’re from? You’re from New Orleans?”
“Oh, no,” Amanda said. “I’m from the delta, from the smallest county in the state of Mississippi.”
“My mother was from Mississippi,” he said. “From a place called Rosedale. I always wanted to go down there and see where she came from.”
Amanda didn’t know what to say to that. She was afraid he was going to offer to introduce her to his mother. “Well, I’ll take you with me sometime when I go,” she said. “Don’t get me talking about the delta or you’ll be sorry. It makes me homesick to think about it. This time of day in the spring, when the fields have just been turned, you wouldn’t believe how it smells, you wouldn’t believe how it shimmers in the sun after a rain.” Her face had grown serious as she spoke of it, soft and sensuous, and Will began to desire her.
She got up and filled the wineglasses.
“None for me,” Katie said. “I’ve done enough damage to my gorgeous body for one day. I’m going home.”
“Don’t go,” Amanda said.
“Don’t leave,” Will added. But neither of them wanted her to stay and all three of them knew it.
“Is she still living with Clinton Dottley?” Will asked when Katie left. “He was my favorite coach. He was my idol.”
“She’s living with him. Right out in the open. Right here in Fayetteville.”
“Do you live with anyone?”
“No.”
“Do you get lonely?” He was waiting for her answer as if he had every right in the world to question her.
“I’ll tell you something,” she said. “But don’t tell anyone. It would ruin my reputation. Lately I do get lonely. This time of day, when the sun is leaving the earth, I get lonely. And I wonder what I’m doing here, so far away from everything I used to love.”
“Katie said you came up here to work with Marshall Jordan.”
“I think I really came to see the stars. I lived in New Orleans for such a long time, Will. You can’t see the stars there. There’s always a cloud cover over the city. Because it’s on the coast, you know.”
“I’ve been lonely all my life.” He poured the rest of the wine into his glass and held it out in front of him like an offering. “I wouldn’t know how to stop being lonely.”
In the light Amanda could see him better. He was a beautiful young man with hazel eyes and ears that stuck out through his unkempt hair. But the thing she was falling in love with was his mouth, which was wide and full and seemed right on the verge of laughter. He lowered the hazel eyes to a pile of rocks sitting in a blue pottery dish beside the railing.
“What are those rocks for? It looks like you’re building a pyramid.”
“Well, you probably won’t believe this. But I’m using those rocks to prove a theory. Don’t get me started on my theories. I get very wordy about theories. Anyway, what I do with them is throw them at the knot holes on that tree.”
“What’s the theory?” he said. He picked one up and threw it right into the center of the hardest target.
“Oh, God. Hand-eye coordination. I’m a sucker for hand-eye coordination. I think it’s a metaphor for the whole psyche.”
“What’s the theory?” he said.
“My theory.” She picked up a rock, took careful aim, and threw it a few inches away from the target. “Oh, good, that proves it. My theory is that however close I can come to that target is a barometer of what sort of mood I’m in.”
Will picked up a handful of the rocks and threw them, one at a time straight into the target. He threw the last one far out and over beyond the tree, then turned and smiled at her.
“I live right down there,” he said, pointing to the south. “I can almost see my street from here.”
“Where?” Amanda said, as though that were the most extraordinary coincidence in the world.
“Right down there on the edge of Tin Cup. That’s where I was this morning.”
“And now you’re here.”
“Now I’m here.” The sun was almost gone now. A wind came up, making them shiver.
“Let’s go inside,” Amanda said.
Will sat down on her piano bench still holding his guitar. He was wishing he had bathed. Aside from that he didn’t care what happened. This crazy woman from a world of tennis clubs and ski resorts and yoga schools was a lot of excitement for a Sunday afternoon in Fayetteville. It never occurred to him that he might fall in love. He had never even read a book about a man loving someone old enough to be his mother.
“Do you play this piano?” he said.
“I’m learning. Maybe I should have started with a guitar.”
“Come sit by me. I’ll show you some chords.”
She put down the glass she was holding and sat beside him. He reached his arm around her and held down the chords while she touched the strings.
“This is an old trick guitar players use to put their arms around women they fall in love with,” he said. “Has anyone ever done this to you before?”
“I’ve never known a musician before,” she said. “I always end up with lawyers.”
“How does it feel, knowing a musician?”
“It feels very nice so far,” she said. Then Will put the guitar away and took her into his arms with the gentle manners he had learned from his mother and Amanda gave up thinking and allowed herself this strange excitement as if she had every right in the world to tenderness and to joy.
“We might as well go on and do this,” she said finally. “Since it looks like we are definitely going to do it.”
“Do we have to hurry?”
“We don’t have to hurry. On the other hand we don’t have time to do anything as foolish as get to know each other.”
In the night Amanda started menstruating for the first time since she’d taken out the IUD. Now she stood on the bathroom floor staring down at the towel in her hands. She stared down at the white towel with its red stains mixed with semen.
Oh, God, she thought. I’m still alive. I’m not old yet. She took a deep breath, feeling her rib cage rise up out of her waist, looking up at the ceiling as if to thank someone, anyone, God or Jesus or the Gautama Buddha or Albert Einstein or her grandmother’s weird tough little genes.
“Sometimes that happens,” Dr. Kincaid told her later. “Sooner or later the estrogen level rises and one of the leftover eggs drops. It isn’t unnatural. Especially with an early menopause.”
But Amanda wasn’t in a mood to believe in estrogen levels. It’s because he touched me, she told herself. He touched the part of me that wants to live.
When she woke again in the morning, Amanda was sleeping in the beautiful hazel-eyed young man’s arms. His body was strong and still beside her, his skin was warm against her skin. The curves and volumes of his body fit against her own as if they were made of the same material. Wordlessly and perfectly they made love again.
“It seems so easy,” she said.
“It’s you,” he said.
“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s you.”
“It’s us,” he said and Amanda smiled to herself. She would never in a million years have said such a romantic thing. But Will was a small-town boy who listened to songs on the radio. He wasn’t afraid to say anything.
“Oh, God,” Amanda said, rolling over on her stomach, pulling the pillows over her head. “I feel like that poor woman in The Last Picture Show. Maybe I better get up and start redecorating the bedroom.”
“Which one?” he asked. “Cloris Leachman or Ellen Burstyn?”
“Ellen Burstyn,” she said. “Ellen Burstyn’s looks and Cloris Leachman’s role.”
“Where are you going to be when I get out of school this afternoon?” he said.
“Right here painting this room baby blue,” she said. “Going crazy waiting for you to call me.”
As soon as he left for school she called Katie. “Look what you’ve done to me,” she said. “I’m in love with him. I swear I am. Katie, I am not teasing you.”
“Oh, God,” Katie said.
“Tell me about him. Tell me who he is.”
“You already know more than I know,” Katie said. “He’s a good musician. I know that. And he’s a local boy. Oh, I’ll tell you something else. Clinton used to coach him. I told Clinton last night I’d just left you on a balcony with Will Lyons and he said that’s one of the few men in this town he’d trust you with.”
“Listen, Katie,” Amanda said. “Would you believe this? Would you believe I didn’t even know that I was lonely.”
On Monday night he had dinner with her and spent the night. On Tuesday night he had dinner with her and spent the night. On Wednesday he had dinner with her and spent the night.
“Why do you always cry when I make love to you?” he said, smoothing her hair with his fingers. The moonlight was pouring through the window, covering the bed with silver.
“Because it makes me remember death,” she said. “Because when you love someone you can’t bear to think of ever leaving them.”
“Don’t talk like that,” he said. “I hate to think about things like that.”
“That’s why loving someone younger than you are is so sad and dramatic and poignant, if there still is such a word.” She was trying to keep it light but she was warming to her subject. “Because you know from the start it’s a limited engagement. We can’t fool ourselves about how long this will last.”
“Don’t talk about it,” he said. “It makes me sad.”
“You started it. You asked me why it made me cry. Because I’ve already made up my mind what it’s going to be. I’m going to love you as hard as I can for as long as I can and then I’ll give you to someone your own age and you can have babies and lead a normal life.”
“I don’t need a normal life,” he said. “A normal life would bore me to death.”
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll love you until I’m fifty years old. How about that? When I’m fifty years old I’ll give you up and go back to work.”
“If I kiss you will you stop talking?” he said.
“I hate my lips,” she said. “They aren’t big enough. I have skinny English lips. I want lips like yours. I want thick rich lips to kiss you with.”
“Hush,” he said. “I’ll make them grow.”
On Thursday he broke the spell. He came walking into the kitchen where Amanda was cooking Creole sauce in a copper skillet. She had just added green peppers to the tomatoes and was watching the good-smelling steam rising in the cool air of the small kitchen. A bowl of biscuit dough was sitting in a sunny window. Amanda was thinking that it was the nicest day she had ever known. All the pieces have fallen into place, she was thinking. My most secret desire, my most secret desire is about to come true.
“I have to go home for a few days and think this over,” he said. “I have to get some studying done. I can’t keep this up.”
Amanda turned the fire off under the skillet and looked away. All the armor fell into place and clamped shut. She put on her city voice.
“Of course,” she said. “Whatever you want to do. I’ll see you Sunday then. Or Sunday night.”
“I’ll call you,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”
“Great,” she said. “That’s wonderful. I was going to be out of town for a few days anyway. I need to go to Eureka Springs to see an old friend from New Orleans. I’ve been meaning to go ever since I moved up here. It’s this old friend of mine, this great guy I love like my own brother.”
“I just need to be alone for a few days,” he said.
“Of course,” she said. “That’s wonderful. That’s great. I’ll call you when I come back then. Or you call me.”
When he left Amanda threw the Creole sauce and the biscuit dough into the sink and wandered downstairs to the room that was her office and stood looking at the piles of papers on her desk. She hadn’t been in the room since Sunday. What am I doing? she thought. What in the name of God have I been up to?
She picked up the page she’d been working on Sunday morning, a fragment she was making a trot from.
Where are the hands that brought me
water from every stream
Where are the psalms and bells
The well at the root of the tree
How long until even thirst
will seem a stranger
She played with the verbs for a while, then dropped the paper back down on the desk. He might never come back, she thought. I might never see him again.
She sat down in the middle of the workroom floor and pulled her legs into a yoga posture and closed her eyes. After a while she was deep into a long stretch and she could see Garth Hotchkiss’s sweet face smiling at her over the cash register at the Tulane Book Store, telling her about his plans to move to the Ozarks. I really will go see Garth, she thought. I really will go see him. She got up off the floor, found his phone number in Eureka Springs, and called and told him she was coming. She stuffed some warm clothes into a bag, locked the house, jumped in the car, and started driving as fast as she could go down the mountain.
I’m going to Garth, she told herself. Garth will save me with Zen. Surely Garth will save me.
12
Garth Hotchkiss was an old college friend. One spring they had owned a houseboat together on the Tennessee River where they held “literary afternoons,” chugging up and down the river with a borrowed ten-horsepower motor, drinking sherry and discussing Albert Schweitzer. Garth had later gone to India as a Peace Corps worker, then knocked around New Orleans running a bookstore while he saved up money to make a dream come true.
Every time Amanda ran into him in New Orleans he talked to her about a dream he had to buy the old school-house in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and turn it into a Tai Chi academy.
The only thing wrong with his dream was that it wasn’t making any money. He had taken to running the early morning paper route in Eureka to pay the light bill. He had just come in from delivering his papers when Amanda called.
When they finished talking he put the phone neatly back on its pedestal, shook his head from side to side several times, sat down on the floor and began massaging the neck of the German shepherd he had rescued from a commune at Loyola and brought to Arkansas to enjoy nature. The only thing wrong with that was that the dog didn’t like to go outside.
“Krishna, Krishna,” he said to the dog. “Amanda McCamey’s in the Ozarks. What a world we have lived to see. What a long way we have all come from our beginnings.” A bell was tinkling in a tree outside the window. It was a tiny brass bell on a string Garth had found one day outside the Five Happiness Restaurant on Carrolton Avenue in New Orleans. He kept it around to remind him of why he was in the Ozarks. Sometimes it reminded him of the dirty crowded streets of the city. Other times it reminded him of all the good restaurants he had left behind.
Garth moved his hands across the dog’s body. Garth was very interested in the fields of energy that surround living bodies. He waved his hands around over Krishna’s back for a few minutes, then stretched them out to the pile of bills lying on the table.
“Open Sesame,” he said out loud. “Make bad bills shrink up like hearts of stingy people.” He moved his hands closer to the stack, trying to lift the top one from the pile without touching it. He tried for a few minutes, then put his hands back on his coffee cup. He was very relieved that the envelope had stayed in its place.
Amanda came driving down off the mountain onto Mission Road and followed it until it turned onto Highway 45 leading into the hill country to the north. The hills were steeper here, the farms more desolate, the farmhouses farther and farther back from the road.
“Those tapes are playing in my head,” she sang as she drove, “all those silly goddamn love songs. Shopgirl sorrows, jukebox tears, low-rent rendezvous. Where or when, September songs, the clothes you’re wearing are the clothes he wore, the smile you are smiling he was smiling then, but I can’t remember where or when. Oh, to love again and again and again…It’s always the same thing. Always the same goddamn silly thing.
