Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [58]
“I don’t know. I still don’t want to go to Louisville, though.”
“I don’t want you to go. I wish you would just stay here and we would be together.”
“I wish it could be that way,” I say, trembling slightly. “I wish that was right.”
We round a curve. The night is black. The yellow line in the road is faded. In the other lane I suddenly see a rabbit move. It is hopping in place, the way runners will run in place. Its forelegs are frantically working, but its rear end has been smashed and it cannot get out of the road.
By the time we reach home I have become hysterical. Larry has his arms around me, trying to soothe me, but I cannot speak intelligibly and I push him away. In my mind, the rabbit is a tape loop that crowds out everything else.
Inside the house, the phone rings and Larry answers. I can tell from his expression that it is Stephen calling. It was crazy to let Larry answer the phone. I was not thinking. I will have to swear on a stack of cats that nothing is going on. When Larry hands me the phone I am incoherent. Stephen is saying something nonchalant, with a sly question in his voice. Sitting on the floor, I’m rubbing my feet vigorously. “Listen,” I say in a tone of great urgency. “I’m coming to Louisville—to see that house. There’s this guy here who’ll give me a ride in his truck—”
Stephen is annoyed with me. He seems not to have heard what I said, for he is launching into a speech about my anxiety.
“Those attachments to a place are so provincial,” he says.
“People live all their lives in one place,” I argue frantically. “What’s wrong with that?”
“You’ve got to be flexible,” he says breezily. “That kind of romantic emotion is just like flag-waving. It leads to nationalism, fascism—you name it; the very worst kinds of instincts. Listen, Mary, you’ve got to be more open to the way things are.”
Stephen is processing words. He makes me think of liquidity, investment postures. I see him floppy as a Raggedy Andy, loose as a goose. I see what I am shredding in my hand as I listen. It is Monopoly money.
After I hang up, I rush outside. Larry is discreetly staying behind. Standing in the porch light, I listen to katydids announce the harvest. It is the kind of night, mellow and languid, when you can hear corn growing. I see a cat’s flaming eyes coming up the lane to the house. One eye is green and one is red, like a traffic light. It is Brenda, my odd-eyed cat. Her blue eye shines red and her yellow eye shines green. In a moment I realize that I am waiting for the light to change.
THE RETREAT
Georgeann has put off packing for the annual church retreat. “There’s plenty of time,” she tells Shelby when he bugs her about it. “I can’t do things that far ahead.”
“Don’t you want to go?” he asks her one evening. “You used to love to go.”
“I wish they’d do something different just once. Something besides pray and yak at each other.” Georgeann is basting facings on a child’s choir robe, and she looks at him testily as she bites off a thread.
Shelby says, “You’ve been looking peaked lately. I believe you’ve got low blood.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“I think you better get a checkup before we go. Call Dr. Armstrong in the morning.”
When Georgeann married Shelby Pickett, her mother warned her about the disadvantages of marrying a preacher. Reformed juvenile delinquents are always the worst kind of preachers, her mother said—just like former drug addicts in their zealousness. Shelby was never that bad, though. In high school, when Georgeann first knew him, he was on probation for stealing four cases of Sun-Drop Cola and a ham from Kroger’s. There was something charismatic about him even then, although he frightened her at first with his gloomy countenance—a sort of James Dean brooding—and his tendency to contradict whatever the teachers said. But she admired the way he argued so smoothly and professionally in debate class. He always had a smart answer that left his opponent speechless. He was the type of person who could get away with anything. Georgeann thought he