Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [33]
“I know what you mean,” says Tom, nodding with enthusiasm.
On the way home Louise is in tears. Tom, perplexed, tries to console her, telling her that her pictures are as good as any of the old man’s watermelons.
“Don’t worry about him,” he says, holding her hand. “It won’t matter that you lost your job. I thought I’d go see about getting a small-business loan to get started again. We’ll get straightened out somehow.”
Louise, crying, cannot reply. She doesn’t feel like arguing.
“I didn’t even know you could draw,” Tom says.
“I’m not going to paint any more watermelons,” she says.
“You won’t have to.”
Louise blows her nose and dries her eyes. Tom’s knuckles are tapping a tune against the steering wheel and he seems to be driving automatically. His mind could be somewhere else, like someone in an out-of-body experience. But Louise is the one who has been off on a crazy adventure. She knows now that she painted the watermelons out of spite, as if to prove to Tom that she could do something as wild as what he was doing. She lost her head during the past weekend when she was alone, feeling the glow of independence. Gazing at the white highway line, she tries to imagine the next steps: eating supper with Tom, going to bed together, returning to old routines. Something about the conflicting impulses of men and women has gotten twisted around, she feels. She had preached the idea of staying home, but it occurs to her now that perhaps the meaning of home grows out of the fear of open spaces. In some people that fear is so intense that it is a disease, Louise has read.
—
At the house, Louise reaches the door first, and she turns to see Tom coming up the walk. His face is in shadow against the afternoon sun. His features aren’t painted in; she wouldn’t recognize him. Beyond him is a vacant lot—a field of weeds and low bushes shaped like cupcakes. Now, for the first time, Louise sees the subtle colors—amber, yellow, and deep shades of purple—leaping out of that landscape. The empty field is broad and hazy and dancing with light, but it fades away for a moment when Tom reaches the doorway and his face thrusts out from the shadow. He looks scared. But then he grins slowly. The coastline of Italy wobbles a little, retreats.
OLD THINGS
Cleo Watkins makes invisible, overlapping rings on the table with her cup as she talks.
“The kids just got off to school and I’m still in one piece,” she says. “Last night we was up till all hours watching that special and my eyes is pasted together this morning. After the weekend we’ve been through, now everybody’s going off and I’ll be so lonesome all day!”
Cleo puts her elbow on the kitchen table and switches the receiver to the other ear. Her friend Rita Jean Wiggins says she had trouble getting her car started yesterday in time for church; it flooded and she had to let it sit for a while. Rita Jean is worried sick about her cat Dexter and is going to take him to the vet again. As Cleo listens, she notices that Tom Brokaw is introducing a guest who is going to talk about men as single parents. Cleo doesn’t know whether to listen to Tom or Rita Jean. For a minute she loses the train of Rita Jean’s story.
“Just a minute, I better turn this television down.” Cleo crosses the kitchen and lowers the volume. “This house is such a mess,” says Cleo, sitting down again. “And you don’t know how embarrassing it all is—Linda’s car here all the time, the kids going in and out. She’s making an old woman out of me.”
“Did she bring much from home?” Rita Jean asks.
“Mostly things the kids needed, and a lot of her clothes,” Cleo says, watching the faces move on the television screen. “I told her wasn’t no use carrying all that over here, they’d be going back before long, but she wouldn’t listen. You can’t walk here.”
Rita Jean’s voice is sympathetic. “I’m sure she’ll get straightened out with Bob in no time.”
“I don’t know. Looks like she’s moved in. She went to trade day out here at the stockyard, and she come