by Michal Paper
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by Michal Paper |
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IN MY HUMBLE OPINION ROkie White FEATURED COLUMNIST R Ray Collins FICTION |
Clayton Moseley believed himself to be a simple, moral man
who through shrewdness and good luck had accumulated a comfortable
fortune and married a woman for whom he’d sustained an insatiable
desire for thirty-five years. No one who knew him suspected his
wealth, but his devotion to Nina was obvious even after the accident
in which she shattered her hip. Every day for the past three
months he made the four-hour round trip into Denver to visit
her, first in the hospital and then in the rehabilitation center.
This day he made no extra stops and it was earlier than usual
when he returned home. The blistering summer sun was still high
in the sky, baking the high Colorado plains to dust. It was the
sort of day, had he been in a better humor, he would’ve
declared fit only for tumbleweed, sidewinders and snake-oil salesman---the
last category the one in which he facetiously placed himself.
He was in actuality a traveling salesman, a peddler of necessities
and luxuries to the remote farms and ranches of northern Colorado
and southern Wyoming and very good at his chosen profession.
Clayton was convinced his success came primarily from the
things he wasn’t, neither tall nor muscular, excessively
handsome or swaggeringly macho. His smile was practiced into
a non-threatening, contagious grin. When he spoke his voice was
deep, polite, softly slurred with a fading Tennessee accent.
If a woman answered his knock, he doffed the light tan fedora
that distinguished him from the cowboys with their wide-brimmed
Stetsons; if a man answered, he left it on, the front brim turned
down like a detective in an old black and white movie. The white van he drove was his store. In the back, shelves
bolted to the walls overflowed with small appliances, curtains,
bedspreads, jewelry and catalogs. He carried as much merchandise
as possible. The customer, he’d learned, was more likely
to buy what she could hold in her hands than what she could order
from a book. Over the years he’d cultivated a receptive clientele
eager for his goods and desirous of his company. He met few men
and even fewer women he didn’t like. He wouldn’t have
changed jobs for money or prestige but it was all coming to an
end---not because of the Home Shopping Network or the burgeoning
mail-order catalog trade but because of Nina. The visit with Nina that morning had disheartened him. It
left him feeling things were slipping out of his hands, that
his grip on the world was loosening. His morose mood wasn’t
improved by the sight of the rust-pocked, blue pickup occupying
his usual parking place in the alley behind his house. He’d
forgotten it was Joceline’s day to clean. A prickle of irritation
at her presumption made him turn the wheel too sharply and squeal
the brakes when he parked the van. He stepped onto the gravel
of the alley and slammed his door. "Something wrong, Mr. Moseley?" Joceline stood on
the back porch holding the screen door open. For a moment he felt things reversed as if this were Joceline’s
house and he were the intruder, standing in the backyard, waiting
for an invitation to enter. He shook his head slightly then reached
for the brim of his hat. With a tug he pulled it lower on his
forehead and walked toward the back door. Only two women answered his ad for a cleaning woman. The first
was Mildred Twedt, a heavy-set older woman with ankles thick
as fence posts. He knew her from town, but only by sight. He
started by asking her a few questions then leaned back in his
chair to smoke a cigarette and listen while she talked without
prompting. All the while she spoke she waved her hand in front
of her face to dispel the smoke. When she coughed, Clayton stood
and politely offered his hand to help her out of the chair. He expected the second interviewee to be similar in appearance
and attitude which was why he was so rude to the attractive woman
dressed in jeans and a T-shirt carrying an enormous handbag who
merely said, "Joceline Hager," when he opened the front
door. "We’re not buying any," he said and shut the
door in her face. He lit a cigarette and was walking back to his chair when
the second knock came. The vertical line between his deep-set,
blue eyes deepened. Persistence was usually a trait he admired
but it could be annoying. He opened the door and glared at the
woman who continued to stand on his front stoop. "I’m here about the job?" The lyrical cadence of her voice registered before her actual
words did. He continued to stare. She wasn’t as young as
he first thought. The fan of wrinkles at the corners of her pecan-brown
eyes was etched permanently into tanned skin. Her sun-bleached
hair was parted in the middle and hung in long braids on either
side of her narrow face. From her left earlobe a feather dangled
beneath a second gold stud earring. A thin, silvery scar that
started at the corner of her mouth and faded near the center
of her cheek caught the harsh afternoon light making her quizzical
expression look fixed, slightly calculating and hard. When she
tilted her head sideways it disappeared. "The job in the paper? I was supposed to come today,
right?" She shifted the strap of her shoulder bag and his eyes were
drawn to the gentle sway of her breasts. The clench in his gut
surprised him. After Mrs. Twedt such a reaction was only natural
he decided quickly and allowed himself to be amused by his libido.
With a smile and a sweep of his arm he invited her inside. "I’ll do windows, laundry, ironing, whatever---you
name it." She remained in her chair, looking up at him with
an unwavering gaze. "It’s a lot of money. . ." "But if you pay me cash you don’t have to report
it – no Social Security or taxes or stuff like that. It’ll
be cheaper." "I don’t know." He looked toward the door. "Look, I need this job. My husband…he had this accident
five years ago. He’s paralyzed. Can’t get a job and
we got two kids. I clean houses real good and I’ll work
hard, twice the work of anyone else." There was desperation
in her soft voice, in the way she sat hunched in the chair, her
knuckles white from gripping the purse in her lap. And she was true to her word – she did work hard. Clayton
tried his best to ignore her, pretending she was an extension
of the vacuum cleaner or an animated dust cloth. When that failed
– when he began to imagine a sexual energy flowing around
her eroding his desire for Nina -- he left the house while she
cleaned. She was too much of a distraction. He shrugged in dismissal, annoyed with himself for his churlish
reaction but thinking if she hadn’t been here, hadn’t
parked in his spot and stood at the back door when he walked
in, he might have imagined Nina waited for him in another room.
Dishes cluttered the sink but otherwise the small blue and
yellow kitchen was spotless. The windows sparkled behind starched
lace curtains, countertops and appliances gleamed, the crisp
scent of pine cleaner lingered in the air. Through the kitchen
door he could see the parallel lines left in the white carpet
by the vacuum cleaner. Her thoroughness, her control over his
house irritated him. I should’ve hired old lady Twedt, he
thought and tossed his hat on the kitchen table. She picked it
up and brushed off a thin film of dust. "You got a cig? I’m all out. Thought I’d finish
up before I went and bought a pack." She smiled and leaned across the table to pluck a pack of
Marlboro Lights out of his shirt pocket. As she leaned toward
him her T-shirt gapped slightly and he realized her smile was
another thing that irritated him. So many things lately irritated
him. "So how was Mrs. Moseley? Better?" She dug a lighter
out of the pocket of her jeans and sat across from him. "No, worse actually. The doctor wants to release her
to a nursing home Friday." "Have you told her yet?" Joceline exhaled smoke in his direction when she spoke, her
brow wrinkled with obvious empathy. He caught a faint whiff of
her breath, peppermint mixed with tobacco, before she waved a
hand briskly in front of her face moving the smoke in another
direction. Clayton brushed a hand in front of his face too, but
it was the image of Nina as he first saw her he tried to dispel. Clayton began to watch her, slightly annoyed with himself
for being attracted to her because she wasn’t pretty or
even sexy, at least not in the conventional mode of the day.
Dust-colored brown hair, cut short and frothed into unruly curls,
framed an unremarkable face. She had high, aristocratic cheekbones
but a small, receding chin. A noticeably crooked nose detracted
attention from her mouth which was a perfect, Cupid’s bow.
Her eyes gleamed dark as black velvet, partially obscured by
cat’s-eye glasses. All her pieces went together in an interesting
way and if she was short of pretty, she was a long way from ugly.
In her pure white choir robe she looked untouchable and untouched.
While the pastor denounced sin from the pulpit, Clayton daydreamed
about a closer walk with a particular choir member. After church
he wrangled an introduction from his fan-toting neighbor and
invited Nina to dinner. She accepted. "I haven’t ever done this before," she said
when he appeared at her door that evening with a bouquet of wildflowers.
She wasn’t wearing her glasses and she puckered her lips
slightly and squinted when she looked at him. "What? Gone to dinner with a gentleman?" "No." She laughed, sounding both embarrassed and
indignant. "I meant to say I’ve never accepted an invitation
from a strange man before." "I assure you ma’am, I’m not a strange man."
"I’ll be the judge of that." "A trial without a jury?" "Should we invite twelve more people to go with us?"
Her smile teased but her tone was serious. Clayton was young and had never met a woman he considered
his match; he envisioned himself invincible of heart, body and
mind. Nina bemused him. She was a novelty, he thought, and he
would grow tired of her. But he didn’t. Their romance fed the tittle-tattle of small town gossips. She was older than Clayton and had been half-heartedly wooed and deserted by several suitors. There were those who said Clayton was a ne’er-do-well drifter with an eye on her steady income. She taught Spanish and history at the local high school. To maintain appearances for the sake of her job she never let him into her apartment for more than a few minutes but that didn’t stop the playful wrestling matches in his car which he always let her win. They were, he told her as they struggled and panted and pitted their wills against each other, two halves of a greater whole, much more together then apart. Amazing even himself, he knew he believed it. To maintain his sanity he felt compelled to marry her. Their marriage shaped itself around his job. He left every
Monday and returned every Friday, a constant flow through their
lives of partings and reunions. If it left them strangers it
also kept them hungry for each other. Clayton liked being on the road. He wouldn’t give it
up. On the road everything was in his control, especially his
customers. He played to their vanities, ferreted out their desires,
made them feel important for a few minutes, desirable and worthy
of better than they possessed. He was brother, father, Romeo,
friend---whatever was needed to make a sale. The power to manipulate,
to create desire where none existed before, was his addiction.
The highway too was addictive. Empty ribbons of blacktop that
wound through irrigated croplands and scrubby pasture land. He
kept a sleeping bag in the van and stopped for the night in whatever
lonely place looked inviting. On the banks of a shady creek,
under the shelter of a rocky cliff, anyplace off the road became
his open-air bedroom. Before sleep he sipped the expensive bourbon
Nina forbid him to bring into the house and puffed on fat cigars
exhaling smoky thunderclouds. Come morning he could hack, spit
and scratch without reproach. With the water he kept in a five-gallon
gasoline can, he brushed his teeth, shaved and managed a quick
wash before driving into the morning. If he planned it right he could arrive in time for breakfast
leftovers with some lonely housewife willing to put on another
pot of coffee for a little conversation. Usually that was all
his hostesses offered but not always. He enjoyed the little games. Particularly satisfying to Clayton
were the decent, guileless women so starved for a tender touch
that they were like putty in his hands. Women who leaned toward
him when they talked, who hung on his every word and seriously
considered his wares, unwillingly to make a decision for they
knew as soon as they bought something he would be gone. He would
proffer a toaster or a necklace to examine and when they handed
it back he would gently grasp their hand. It was erotic yet innocent
to hold their trembling hands, to casually massage their palms
with his thumb, to brush the inside of their wrists with his
fingertips while they talked, pretending the contact wasn’t
happening. Their expressions reminded him of captured birds.
They wanted to pull away but the gentle warmth of his touch kept
them trapped. Often his touch made them more agreeable to his
suggestions and they bought things they didn’t need. Their
husbands must be cold bastards he thought. But these were only games. He still desired only Nina. Nina had been sitting in a wheelchair when he visited her
that morning. She smiled when he walked into the room with a
bouquet of daisies he’d bought in the gift shop. He bent
to kiss her lips. She wore dark red lipstick which made her look
even paler than usual. The past two months in the hospital added
years to her face. "How you feeling?" he asked. "Ready to come home. Do you miss me?" He wasn’t quick enough to hide the slight widening of
his eyes, the unintentional sharp intake of breath. She looked
away and frowned. "My hair looks awful doesn’t it? That nurse’s
aide did a lousy job with it. Hand me my brush." Clayton picked it up from the night table but instead of giving
it to her, he stepped behind her and began to brush her hair
slowly, letting his free hand follow each stroke. A tradition
started on their honeymoon, one hundred strokes before bed. It
was their time to talk before other things consumed them. Her
hair was longer now, it hadn’t been cut since she entered
the hospital. The curls were gone along with the Miss Clairol
chestnut color. The brush bristles left lines in her coarse,
gray hair as distinct as the rows in a plowed field. He cleared
his throat. "The doctor says you aren’t going to therapy." "Oh, Clayton, I tried, I really did but all those things
they make you do, they hurt, they hurt so bad I can barely stand
it. It can’t be good for you if it hurts so much. If they’d
just leave me alone I know it’d heal up fine." "I know honey, I know," he said as he continued
to stroke her hair, his voice low and placating, "but the
insurance company won’t pay if you don’t go to therapy.
Either you start cooperating or they’ll have to release
you." "Good. I hate it here. I want to go home. We could get
rid of that cleaning woman and hire a nurse until my hip heals
and I can get around." She plucked at the cotton blanket
that covered her legs. Her fingers were long and bony, her nails
painted to match her lipstick. The way she said it "…that cleaning woman"
as if she knew something or suspected something. Clayton rested
his hands on her shoulders to calm her. The doctor told him she
wasn’t going to get better. "I wish I’d had children for you, Clayton, we’d
have somebody to help us now and you wouldn’t be so all
alone." She grabbed his hand and pressed her soft, powdered
cheek into his palm. Clayton was the one who had wanted children, had once even
gotten down on his knees and begged her to have his baby. It
was the only thing he ever wanted that he couldn’t get by
himself. It was the one thing she refused to do. Eventually he
stopped asking. Clayton left his hand in hers, let her stroke his fingers.
She was full of confessions lately. He tried to be understanding
but her illness felt unaccountably like a betrayal and Clayton
began to remember all the women he refused for her. He wanted to believe it was Joceline who first slipped her
arms around his waist. It was the day he told her Nina wouldn’t
be coming home. He’d reserved a private room for her at
the local nursing home. It was within walking distance of the
house. He remembered Joceline murmuring something sympathetic in
response and then her hands firm and warm on his back, her body
pressed against his as she hugged him. It might have been innocent.
But when he bent his head toward her, her lips were under his,
her mouth slightly open, waiting, inviting. And then as suddenly
as she was in his arms she pushed away, her hands on his chest
whispering, "We can’t---we shouldn’t." She
started to cry. "Joceline, I didn’t mean. . ." His hands fluttered around her, afraid to touch her, distrustful of his own impulses, her responses. "It’ll never happen again, I swear. It’s just that it’s been . . . so long." He signed and turned away. He picked up her large purse from the kitchen counter and held the back door open for her. Her tears seemed convenient, manipulative, and he was irritated with himself for his weakness and for the fact that it was Joceline who pulled away first. After she left he still felt the imprint of her hands against his back, her warm, inviting mouth. The interlude left him with an unfamiliar fear and desire
whenever Joceline was around. He was wary of her and desirous.
He thought more than once of asking her to leave but the words
never made it out of his mouth. He surreptitiously watched her
now as she sat across the table from him, her elbows propped
on the table. "Look," he said and paused as he ran a hand through
his hair, "the place looks great. Why don’t you take
the rest of the day off?" He turned and walked toward his
bedroom without waiting for an answer. "Are you okay? I heard something as I was heading out."
Joceline stood in the doorway and flipped on the light. "Ooh,
what a mess and I just cleaned." "It’s fine. I’m fine. Go home." He turned
away. "Don’t you want me to pick up?" "No." "I don’t have to be home right away." Clayton took a deep breath and turned to ask her to leave.
He stopped at the sight of her kneeling on the floor, almost
reverently touching the necklaces, earrings and brooches that
covered the worn carpet. All the time Nina had been in the hospital,
she’d never ask him to bring her any of it. "Mrs. Moseley’s got so many pretty things."
She picked up a triple-strand pearl choker. Clayton had spent money on Nina’s jewelry knowing if
the piece was gaudy enough, the diamonds or rubies or pearls
big enough, people would assume it was costume jewelry. Most
of his money was invested, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, assets
he could hide from the local banker and in turn the town. For
Nina he made an exception to his secretive ways but he doubted
even she knew which pieces were real and which were fakes. He
never told her. She never asked. The necklace Joceline held was
genuine with a clasp that sparkled with tiny diamond chips. "That one isn’t Nina’s," he said, classifying
the piece in his own mind as he would the inventory in his van.
"Would you like to try it on? Let’s see it. The clasp
is tricky." He took the necklace and draped it against Joceline’s
neck and pushed away the hair that hung loosely to her shoulders.
So close she smelled faintly, surprisingly of peaches. He braced
his legs to keep from leaning into her. "It looks good on you. Pearls need to be worn or they
lose their luster. They just sort of dry up." "Pearls? Real pearls?" She brushed the pearls with
her fingertips and stared in the mirror at the fortune encircling
her throat. "What’s a necklace like this worth?"
"A week ago I would have told you how much in dollars…but
today…maybe money isn’t what they’re worth,"
he said. He’d ordered it for a rancher who wanted a nice tenth
anniversary present for his wife. When Clayton held it out to
him and repeated the price the rancher backed away, his face
reddened and he started to stutter. Without a flicker of censure,
Clayton produced a similar necklace from his other pocket and
extolled the virtues of costume jewelry. He patted the man on the back and said, "The little lady
never needs to know whether it’s real or not does she? It’s
the thought that counts." Joceline looked into his eyes reflected in the mirror. She
smiled. The look on his face, he realized, was neither senile
nor harmless. I am a fool, he thought. He tried to think of Nina
but when he did he thought of an old woman in a wheelchair. A
woman who would never share this bedroom with him again. His
gaze stayed fixed on Joceline’s as he shrugged slightly
and forced his easy, practiced smile. She turned until they were face to face, their bodies a breath
apart. With her hands on his shoulders, she stretched up to kiss
him on the lips. Clayton didn’t move. When she pulled back
she didn’t step away. He looked into her eyes for long seconds,
searching for answers. Today there were no tears in her eyes.
There was a moment of hardness on her face as her scar caught
the overhead light. It caused him to step back suddenly, remembering.
Nina had never asked for a single piece of jewelry. Each piece
that now littered the floor was an expression of his love and
desire. He hadn’t needed to buy her love and affection.
They may have done some things wrong – both of them –
but their love was a constant. He smiled again but this time
it wasn’t forced or practiced. "No," he said, "money isn’t what it’s
worth. I plan to give it to Nina when I bring her home from the
hospital. A little homecoming present. Thanks for trying it on
for me. I know it’ll look beautiful on her. Let me get your
pay for the week." He saw Joceline struggling with the necklace
catch as he unlocked the top dresser drawer to get the money.
Her face was hard again, even without the light accentuating
her silvery scar. "And you won’t be needing to come
back. I’m going to hire a nurse to help with Nina." It is the thought that counts he was thinking as he heard Joceline’s truck pull out of the driveway. Any thought colored with love. |