Freedom [89]
Having made this decision, Patty sat up and was surprised to see that the trees and the deck were soaked. The rain was so fine that she hadn’t heard it on the roof, so gentle that it hadn’t trickled in the gutters. She put on Richard’s faded red T-shirt and asked if she could keep it.
“Why do you want my shirt?”
“It smells like you.”
“That’s not considered a plus in most quarters.”
“I just want one thing that’s yours.”
“All right. Let’s hope it turns out to be the only thing.”
“I’m forty-two,” she said. “It would cost me twenty thousand dollars to get pregnant. Not to burst your bubble or anything.”
“I’m very proud of my zero batting average. Try not to wreck it, OK?”
“And what about me?” she said. “Should I be worried that I’ve brought some disease into the house?”
“I’ve had all my shots, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m usually paranoically careful.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
And so on. It was all very chummy and chatty, and in the lightness of the moment she told him that he had no excuse now not to sing her a song, before he left. He unpacked his banjo and plucked away while she made sandwiches and wrapped them in foil.
“Maybe you should spend the night and get an early start in the morning,” she called to him.
He smiled as if refusing to dignify this with an answer.
“Seriously,” she said. “It’s raining, it’s going to get dark.”
“No chance,” he said. “Sorry. You will never be trusted again. It’s something you’re just going to have to live with.”
“Ha-ha-ha,” she said. “Why aren’t you singing? I want to hear your voice.”
To be nice to her, he sang “Shady Grove.” He had become, over the years, in defiance of initial expectations, a skilled and fairly nuanced vocalist, and he was so big-chested that he could really blow your house down.
“OK, I’m seeing your point,” she said when he finished. “This isn’t making things any easier for me.”
Once you get musicians going, though, they hate to stop. Richard tuned his guitar and sang three country songs that Walnut Surprise later recorded for Nameless Lake. Some of the lyrics were barely more than nonsense syllables, to be discarded and replaced with vastly better ones, but Patty was still so affected and excited by his singing, in a country mode she recognized and loved, that she began to shout in the middle of the third song, “STOP! OK! ENOUGH! STOP! ENOUGH! OK!” But he wouldn’t stop, and his absorption in his music made her feel so lonely and abandoned that she began to cry raggedly and finally to become so hysterical that he had no choice but to stop singing—though he was still unmistakably pissed off by the interruption!—and try, unsuccessfully, to calm her.
“Here are your sandwiches,” she said, dumping them into his arms, “and there’s the door. We said you were leaving, and so you’re leaving. OK? Now! I mean it! Now. I’m sorry I asked you to sing, MY FAULT AGAIN, but let’s try to learn from our mistakes, OK?”
He took a deep breath and drew himself up as if to deliver some pronouncement, but his shoulders slumped and he let the big statement escape from his lungs unspoken.
“You’re right,” he said, irritably. “I don’t need this.”
“We made a good decision, don’t you think?”
“Probably we did, yeah.”
“So go.”
And he went.
And she became a better reader. At first in desperate escapism, later in search of help. By the time Walter returned from Saskatchewan, she’d dispatched the remainder of War and Peace in three marathon reading days. Natasha had promised herself to Andrei but was then corrupted by the wicked Anatole, and Andrei went off in despair to get himself mortally wounded in battle, surviving only long enough to be nursed by Natasha and forgive her, whereupon excellent old Pierre, who had done some growing