The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [36]
“I’d love to have it.”
“It’s yours.”
He handed it to her. She moved to take it, then withdrew. “You didn’t sign it,” she said.
“I’ll sign it on the back. I don’t like signatures on the front. They distract.”
He signed the back of the blank canvas. She thanked him again and went home with the blood singing in her veins. She did not look at his signature until she was inside her house with the door closed. “Clement McIntyre,” she said aloud. “Mrs. Clement McIntyre. Olive Drew McIntyre. Olive McIntyre.” She liked the sound of it, and in less than two weeks it was her name.
He was an alcoholic painter who had drifted into town just two days before she met him. He arrived in a Model-A Ford with the back full of canvases. In two days he had shown his work to every gallery in town and had found no one willing to display him. His paintings and his car and the clothes on his back were all he owned in the world. All he wanted to do on earth was to drink and to paint, and he was better at the former than the latter. No one in New Hope could figure out how on earth he persuaded Olive Drew to marry him.
He didn’t. It was she who persuaded him, and it took her the better part of a week. At first he couldn’t believe she was serious. Then he decided she was crazy. He told her if all she wanted was a husband she could do better than him. She said if all she wanted was a husband then she had picked a funny time to decide it, because she had already turned down half the town.
“I didn’t want them and I don’t want the other half. I want you.”
“Then you’ve got to be crazy.”
“If I’m too crazy to live with you can always get back in the car and leave. I wouldn’t let the bloodhounds after you.”
“How could I marry a woman I never slept with?”
“Now you’re talking,” she said. “The bedroom’s upstairs. You want to take a fresh drink with you?”
“I want to take the whole bottle.”
In bed they were perfect together. He was utterly astonished, and candid enough to say so. She was not surprised at all, because it had gone exactly as she had expected, exactly as she had known it would be from their first exchange of words on the Towpath.
She said, “Well?”
“Well, you’ve got to be crazy to want to marry me, but I’d have to be crazier to turn you down. As far as that goes I might have to marry you. Meaning I didn’t use anything. I was going to pull out but I got carried away.”
“Thank God for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t have children. I had an operation a couple of years ago and they had to take out some spare parts. Everything’s in working order but I can’t ever get pregnant. You ought to know that ahead of time. I never cared to have children myself, but it means a lot to some people.”
“All it means to me is never again being embarrassed in a drugstore. It’s your own business but when you say an operation—”
“If I meant an abortion I would have said so.”
“You do tend to cut to the heart of the matter. You know, downstairs I was half convinced you were a virgin, and in bed I got the complete reverse of that impression.”
“In other words, how close to a virgin am I? There were five men. Nobody ever made love to me more than once.”
“An hour from now,” he said, “you won’t be able to make that statement.”
They were married by a justice of the peace in Doylestown on a rainy Thursday afternoon in October. For twenty-five years there had never been a day when she was not conscious of her love for him. He was never an unpleasant drunk, never had blackouts, never became sloppy or hostile. Nor was he ever wholly sober.
He warned her before the wedding that he might not remain faithful to her. “Just don’t bring anything home with you,” she said.
“You wouldn’t get upset?”
“Five years ago the tools in this town passed a law that no dog could run free within town limits. The day the law became official I took two good beagles and gave them to a farmer the other side of Lahaska. I never want anything with a leash on it.”
“I’ve got to marry you because God knows I’ll never find anyone else like you.”
“Of course