The Age of Grief - Jane Smiley [12]
“Okay,” Lily said, “who’s the dumb cowboy?”
“His name is Hobbs Nolan. She met him at a crosscountry ski clinic last year. But he’s not really outdoorsy or athletic; he just wears these pointy-toed cowboy boots and flannel cowboy shirts. Out there guys like him are a dime a dozen …”
“You know him?”
“I’ve seen him. He knows people we know. They think he’s a real jerk.”
“You blame him for all of this, then?”
Kevin glanced at her and said, “No.” After a moment he exclaimed “Oh, God!” again, and dropped his head on his arms. His hair grazed the butter dish, and Lily was suddenly repelled by these confidences. She turned and looked out the window, but Nancy was nowhere in sight. The freshness of the morning was gone, and the early blue sky had whitened. She looked at her watch. It was about ten thirty. Any other morning she would already be sitting down to her work with an apple and a cup of tea, or she would be strolling into town with her list of errands. She glanced toward the bedroom. The blanket was half off the bed and a corner of the contour sheet had popped off the mattress. Nancy’s and Kevin’s clothes were piled on the floor. They had left other items in the living room or the kitchen: Nancy’s brush, a scarf, Kevin’s running shoes and socks, two or three pieces of paper from Nancy’s purse, the map on which they had traced their route. But hadn’t she expected and desired such intimacy? He sat up. She smiled and said, “You know, you’re the first people to spend the night here in ages. I’d forgotten—”
“I don’t think you should worry about that. Like Nancy said, we all go through dry spells. Look at me, my—”
“Oh, that! I wasn’t referring to that.”
“My whole life was a dry spell before Nancy came along.”
Lily sat back and looked at Kevin. He was sighing. “Hey,” she said, “you’re going to have a lot better luck if you lighten up a little.”
“I know that, but I can’t.” He sounded petulant.
Lily said, “Well—”
“Well, now I’d better go running before it gets too hot.” Kevin reached for his shoes and socks. But Nancy walked in and he sat up without putting them on. Nancy displayed her packages. “There was a great sale on halter tops, and look at this darling T-shirt!” She pulled out an example of the T-shirt Lily had seen on everyone all summer. It said “If you live a good life, go to church, and say your prayers, when you die you will go to OHIO.” Lily smiled. Nancy tossed the T-shirt over to Kevin, saying, “Extra extra large. I’m sure it will fit.”
He held it up and looked at it and then said, glumly, “Thanks.”
“Are you going for your run now?”
“Yeah.”
But he didn’t make a move. Everyone sat very still for a long time, maybe five minutes, and then Lily began clearing plates off the table and Nancy began to take down her hair. Kevin seemed to root himself in the chair. His face was impassive. Nancy glared at him, but finally sighed and said, “I got a long letter from Betty Stern not so long ago. She stopped working on her Chinese dissertation and went to business school last year.”
“I heard that Harry got a job, but that it was in Newfoundland or someplace like that,” Lily said.
“Who’d you hear that from?” Refusing even to look in Kevin’s direction, Nancy combed her hair.
“Remember Meredith Lawlor? Did you know she was here? She’s teaching in the pharmacy school here in Columbus. She raises all these poisonous tropical plants in a big greenhouse she and her husband built out in the country.”
“Who’s her husband?”
“She met him in graduate school, I think. He’s from Arizona.”
“I’d like to raise plants for a living. I don’t know necessarily about poisonous ones.” Nancy glanced at Kevin. Lily noticed that she had simply dropped her packages by her chair, that tissue paper and sales slips and the halter tops themselves were in danger of being stepped on. In college they had teased Nancy relentlessly about her disorderly ways, but Lily hadn’t found them especially annoying then. Kevin said, “Why