W innifred awakened with a violent headache shortly past noon. The gift opening, she thought. I can't face it. She curled into a tight ball and shut her eyes again, reliving yesterday, feeling guilty for betraying Paul.
She called him five minutes later and came as close to begging as she ever had with him, but he said Sandy and Mick were actually her friends, and he'd prefer to stay home and finish the work he'd begun the day before. Then he added, "But have a good time, darling."
She considered calling Ann Schaeffer and offering her apologies, then going out for a long hard run to work off her frustration but felt it her duty as maid of honor to attend the gathering. She wore faded string-bean blue jeans and a white cotton-knit "Wallace Beery" shirt, the most unglamorous getup she could produce from her closet. She washed the hair spray from her hair and fluffed it with a blow dryer but left it free and uncurled, totally unspecial. She disdained all makeup except a pale application of lip gloss, chiefly because her lips were chapped from Joseph's rough chin, and the lanolin relieved them.
She was fifteen minutes late and expected to confront Joseph as she jogged down the steps to the Schaeffers' lower-level family room. But to her relief he wasn't there. Twenty or more people had arrived, and all the chairs were filled, so she took a seat on the floor near Sandy's feet. Sandy and Mick were just about to begin opening gifts, and Winnie was given the job of recording them in the wedding book.
She had written the eighth name and listed the gift when she looked up to find Joseph had just come in. Her heart went into overdrive, and her mouth watered. He was dressed much as he'd been the night of the rehearsal, in faded Levi's, the same new tennis shoes and same ivory jacket. His thumbs were hooked in his back pockets as he stood for a minute, saying hello, smiling at the group in general as his eyes passed from one person to another. When they came to her, they scarcely paused, and he gave a silent nod, then picked his way through the limited walking space and sat on the floor at the opposite end of the room from Winnie.
He followed her orders of the night before-to the max. He never again looked at her or spoke to her but visited most of the time with a pretty young woman named Connie, near whose chair he sat. There were times when Winnie thought she felt his eyes on her, especially when her attention was given to the book on her lap. But the two times she glanced his way, he was talking and laughing with Connie, who seemed more taken with him as the afternoon progressed.
The two of them walked out of the house together, and Winnifred followed, wondering at the deep sense of abandonment she felt while studying Joseph's back as he walked in front of her beside another woman. He laughed and Winnie's heart lurched. She felt empty and cast aside, wondering what the woman said that had amused him.
The two of them stood on the street beside a strange vehicle, and when Joseph's hand rested on the handle of the door, he looked over the woman's shoulder and saw Winnie, heading for her own car.
"Winn!" he called.
She came up short. Her heart lifted with hope. She hadn't time to ask herself for what.
"I found something of yours in the Haynes. Just a minute." He opened the door to the strange vehicle, and his head disappeared. When he turned, he held one of her pink high heels in his hand, its tiny pearl button winking a reminder in the waning Sunday afternoon. He lifted the shoe above his head and wagged it, walking toward her. They met in the center of the street; Connie remained where he'd left her, waiting.
Up close he looked and smelled wonderful. But he only handed her the shoe and said, "One's not much good, is it?"
"Thank you."
His back was already turning as he said, "It's okay," and waved with a negligent lifting of his knuckles.
He returned to Connie, and that's where he was when Winnie drove away. When she got home, she changed into her running clothes and ran until her body felt tortured.
Her life returned to normal in the weeks after the wedding. At least, as normal as life can be when you're less than three months away from your own wedding. She kept a list of things that needed checking, ordering or making, and crossed them off one by one: the florist, the organist, the singer, the garter, the pillow for the ring bearer.
She saw Paul several nights a week, usually at his place, and found it necessary to visit her mother once or twice a week concerning various details. At times Joseph Duggan entered her mind in a most distracting way. Then she'd put on her sweats and try to run him out of her system.
But it never seemed to work.
The one place he didn't manage to intrude was at the hospital. She loved her job and the people she worked with, and the patients, each of whom she considered a separate challenge.
The Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department of North Memorial Medical Center consisted of four systems: physical therapy; occupational therapy; cardiac rehab; and sports medicine, a relatively new and specialized facet of P.T. that was located in a separate building from the other three systems. But it was with those three housed within the main body of the hospital building that Winnifred worked.
She spent her days gaining the confidence of the patients to whom she was assigned, encouraging them with the often repeated phrase "You can" and making certain they never failed in the problem she assigned them for the day, be it raising a leg one inch higher than the previous day or touching an ear to a shoulder. It was one of the things she loved about being a physical therapist, the constant challenge of gauging each person's abilities and limits, and making certain she never expected more progress than their impaired bodies were ready for.
She worked with both inpatients and outpatients, seeing them once or twice a day until they were either released or had recuperated as much use of the affected body part as possible. Because she came to know each of them personally-their temperaments, personal histories, goals and fears-there was always a grave danger of becoming emotionally involved with them herself. Sympathy was fine and necessary, but when it grew too empathetic, it clouded judgment and affected a therapist's own emotions. Thus, they were taught from the start to beware of sympathetic involvement.
It was a gorgeous day in late April when Winnie was assigned a new patient. She met Meredith Emery shortly before noon, and from the first glance at the burn-scarred ten-year-old, something within Winn's heart trembled.
The child had been standing next to her father when the first match failed as he attempted to light a backyard barbecue. When he went inside for extra matches, he forgot to turn the gas jet down. The resultant explosion burned both of them badly, but the child suffered worse, simply because she was shorter, and the flame caught her at chest and neck level, scarring her face, too.
It was the frightened, lashless, eyebrowless eyes that caught at Winnifred's heartstrings from the very first moment she looked into them. The child's eyes must have been stunning before the accident-enormous, deep brown with large pupils and such wide-open lids. A poppet's eyes.
An orderly rolled Meredith Emery down to P.T. on a gurney, which was topped by a "rack" of canvas stretched onto an aluminum frame, much like an Indian litter. Winnifred met her at the door to the tank room and told the orderly she'd take over from there.
The child had been lightly sedated, but not enough so she wasn't capable of fear at yet another strange face, another strange stainless-steel facility, another new process for her small ravaged body.
"Hello, Meredith, my name is Winnifred. I'm going to be seeing you twice every day for as long as you're here, and together we're going to work on your arms and legs and toes and fingers and everything until you can move just like you did before and be able to run and play and go back to school. How does that sound?"
The wide doubtful eyes only stared.
"Meredith…" Winnie mused. "That's a rather big name for a girl…" Winnifred checked her chart questioningly. "Ten? Are you ten?" She cocked her head closer to the level of the child's.
Meredith answered with an almost imperceptible nod.
"What do your friends call you?"
"Merry." The mouth was misshapen and drawn, and when it formed the words was transformed into a grotesque parody of a child's lips. Steeling herself, Winnifred ignored the pity that gripped her. "May I call you Merry? My name is kind of like yours, too-a little on the fancy side, kind of puts people off sometimes. So I'd like it if you'd call me… Winn." Where had it come from, this form of her name only Joseph Duggan used? She had never before encouraged people to call her by it, but now it soothed her as she looked down upon the unfortunate child.
Winn explained that because Merry's burns had been treated with sulfa and lanolin aeams, they must be washed off to prevent infection, then she verbally attempted to prepare Merry for the sight that often terrified younger patients: the Hubbard tank. It was a stainless-steel monstrosity, shaped rather like a nine-foot-long four-leaf clover and equipped with a whirlpool. She explained that Merry could lie just as she was, and she and the orderly would attach four hooks to the corners of the rack, then lift her into the pool, rack and all, as if she were cargo being loaded aboard a ship.
But when the hooks were attached, and the motor began hoisting the child, she screamed and reached pathetically for Winn's hand.
"Nooo! Nooo!"
"Stop!" Winn ordered immediately. The fissure in her heart widened, and she took the small hand, ordering the hoist to be lowered again. The thin hand clung. The lashless eyes cried. And Winn wanted to drop to her knees and cry herself. She soothed the child as best she could, rechecked her chart and made a quick decision.
"Have you been able to sit up yet, Merry?"
"They wouldn't let me."
"Just a minute… I have another idea that you'll like better, but I'll be right back." Several minutes later, after receiving an okay from the child's doctor, Winn took Merry instead into a much smaller, less intimidating tub in which the child could sit instead of lie. Merry was strapped into the swivel chair of a device called a Century lift, and upon it was raised over the edge of the stainless-steel tub, then down inside.
When the ninety-eight-degree water touched her skin, the tiny body, which had had its chemistry so drastically upset, began to shudder violently. Merry howled and broke into tears, and begged to be taken from the tank, but it was necessary to keep her immersed and agitated by the water for a full five minutes.
They were five of the longest of Winnifred Gardner's life.
When they were up, the child was swathed in dry blankets and laid once more upon her rack and gurney to be returned to her room. But as she left, her eyes clung to Winn's, still filled with tears that made Winn wish to bend low and run a soothing hand over the little girl's hair. Only Merry had no hair. It, too, had been burned in the explosion.
When the gurney rolled away, Winn stood in the silent hall, watching the door through which it had disappeared. She sighed deeply, covered her cheeks with both hands and dug her fingertips into her eyes-they were filled with tears. This is what they warned us about. I mustn't get emotionally involved. I mustn't. But how was it possible not to feel anger and pity for a child such as Meredith Emery? Ten years old and already facing a trial more painful and defeating than many must face in a full lifetime.
At that moment Mrs. Christianson, the coordinator of P.T., stepped out of her office and paused beside the doorway.
"Winnifred?"
Winn turned around, her face burdened with pain.
"It's the child, isn't it?"
Winn roughly sieved her fingers through her hair. "Yes, it's the child. I'm not sure I can take this one, Sylvia."
"Of course you can. We all can when we have to. But sometimes it helps to discuss the case. We could go to lunch together."
"I think I'll pass today, if it's all right with you. I need something more than food right now."
Winn spent the next hour in the deserted rehab room, riding the stationary bike until her calves burned, then strapping weights onto her ankles and doing extended leg raises until her stomach and neck screamed for her to stop. Next she strapped the weights to her wrists and held them extended straight out from her sides until her facial muscles quivered and her pectoralis major felt ready to snap!
"What are you doing, Gardner?"
Winn dropped her arms and sank to her knees on the floor, panting, too breathless to answer.
Mrs. Christianson entered the gymnasiumlike room and stopped beside the hunkered figure. "No matter how hard you push yourself, you can't make up for it, you know that" came her sympathetic yet firm admonishment. Winn shook her head, still breathless. Her hair flew and stuck to her sweating forehead and cheeks, and she gripped her knees, trying to make sense out of such useless waste as that suffered by Meredith Emery. "The best I can do is offer to put someone else on the case if it gets to you. Will you let me know if it does?"
Winn nodded blindly. But the image of Merry's slim seeking hand lifting to her in entreaty filled the bleak depths of Winn's mind. She'd stick it out. That was the best thing she could do for the little girl.
That afternoon when Merry came back to P.T., Winn began a program of exercises whereby motion would be maintained-a flexion of the chin, rolling of the head, lifting of the arms-to prevent the child's skin from contracting and losing elasticity. She tried her hardest to instill confidence and optimism in Merry, but for the first time in her own career that sense of optimism was lacking in herself. The ten-year-old burn victim faced not only the enormous task of recovering motor movements and learning to live with a great deal of ongoing pain but would need to accept the horrendous fact that her appearance was defaced, then begin working upon the even more difficult assignment of attempting to regain a positive "body image."
At the end of the session Winn felt drained and depressed. How could anyone expect a ten-year-old to do all that?
The day had been one of the first ever when Winn wished to have any other career than the one she had. When she returned home, she immediately called Paul. She needed him equally as bad as Meredith Emery needed a physical therapist-perhaps worse.
"Paul, could you possibly break free to go to a movie or something tonight?"
"Oh, darling, I wish I could, but I've brought Arv home from the office because he's considering going into contract work, and he wanted to try out Rita and see what he thinks of her."
Rita again! Was that all the man could think of? Anger and jealousy immediately surfaced, but Winn bit back the accusation and asked as calmly as she could, "Then could you make it an early evening with Arv and come over here afterward?"
"Is something wrong, Winnie?"
"Well… yes and no."
"What is it, darling?" To his credit he did sound terribly concerned.
"It's a patient at work."
There followed a long pause. "Oh." She heard his hesitation and understood. He never knew what to say to her when she spoke of the unfortunate, the accident victims, the aged, the diseased. These were repugnant to Paul in some odd indefinable way. They were not perfect, and he found it difficult to deal with imperfection of any kind. Paul Hildebrandt coped best when working within a tidy sphere. "Well, just a minute, I'll ask Arv." Again a silence passed, then his voice came again. "Listen, darling, I should be able to get over there in a couple of hours, okay?"
Disappointment welled. "Okay," she said dejectedly, "see you then."
"And Winnie?" He paused, then added, "I love you."
"I love you, too. See you as soon as you can make it."
During those two hours Winn felt trapped in her own house. She simply did not want to be alone right now. She considered going over to her mother's but discarded the idea. Somehow her mother always managed to ruffle instead of soothe. She called Sandy but could sense her friend's impatience to get back to whatever she'd been taken from. Winn suggested they meet one day soon for a game of racket ball, but Sandy offered only a vague, "Yeah, sure, maybe this weekend." At the sound of Sandy's distracted voice Winn wondered if perhaps Mick wasn't waiting in bed for his wife to finish her telephone conversation. At the thought she was chagrined, and felt awkward and excluded-from what, she did not know. Perhaps from the charmed circle of those who shared a part of each day with one special person of the opposite sex. If only Paul were here right now. What she needed most was to be held, petted and perhaps made love to… slowly, expertly.
Joseph Duggan's face appeared in her mind's eye, and it brought an inexplicable shaft of longing that momentarily overrode her lingering depression over Meredith Emery.
I wonder if he ever thinks of me. I wonder how he's getting along with his dim vague Perkins hostess. I wonder if, when she needs him, he answers her beck and call, maybe makes love to her slowly, expertly, then cradles her head against his chest and lets her talk it out while lying in his arms.
Winn put on her sweats and went for a run that nearly dropped her in her tracks, for she'd worked out so strenuously at noon and had been under so much stress all day she was virtually exhausted.
Paul never came. He called at nine-thirty and apologized, and said Arv had stayed later than expected and would Winnie like to talk about it now over the phone?
No, Winn definitely would not like to talk about it over the phone. And anyway, her run, her weariness and the five-hour lag time between the two phone calls had helped her overcome the pressing need she'd carried home from the hospital.
But it was back afresh the following day and each day that week as she worked with Merry during her two scheduled therapy sessions. The child was bright, and it was easy to tell she had been very happy before the accident. She spoke of things like ballet class, gymnastics and ten-speed bikes, all of which she'd have to forgo for a long time. One day she said, "Next summer we're going to go to Disneyland." But the following day when Winn checked the child's chart, she read that Merry had had a very bad night. At 2:00 A.M. her breathing had been interrupted, and oxygen had had to be brought in.
Standing with the clipboard braced against her stomach, Winn felt suddenly nauseous. She reread the charted information, and a premonition lifted the fine hairs along her back.
She's going to die.
That night when she called Paul, she didn't ask, she told him she was coming right over and needed to talk to him. But when she explained about Merry, he quietly encouraged her not to bring her troubles home from work. It's best if you leave the patients at the hospital, darling, he said. Yet when she walked into the house, she'd once again stolen him away from Rita. Winn closed her eyes and huddled against Paul's chest, cinching her arms around his back, wondering if he was moved at all by human plight. Or was he threatened by it? Was that why he could not let it infiltrate his very analytical mind? It could not be data processed. It could not be broken apart and analyzed on a green screen. Thus, perhaps it was beyond his concern.
He asked her if she'd stay that night, but she declined, dreaming up an excuse about it being somebody's birthday at work tomorrow and how she'd baked a cake that still needed frosting before she went to bed tonight.
Back at home she slumped onto the foot of her bed and fell back, supine, staring at the ceiling. She understood fully for the first time why every instructor she'd ever had in her college medicine courses had adamantly badgered their students about the pitfalls of becoming emotionally involved with their patients.
Not only will it be painful to you, should they die, but if they don't, you must make sure they never grow dependent upon you. The mark of a good therapist is knowing when to withdraw his or her support and make the patient stand alone.
Her head hurt. Her neck ached. She wished she were at work so she could stretch out on a table and have one of the other therapists give her a massage. She wished she had said yes to Paul's invitation to spend the night. But she'd felt oddly reluctant to sleep beside him after his failure to understand her need for a sympathetic ear and an understanding heart.
The name "Silicon Chip" came back to niggle.
Had Joseph Duggan been right? Was that all Paul Hildebrandt had for feelings-silicon chips?
She wondered, were she to call Joseph, and tell him she needed him, what would his response be? She somehow sensed he'd have the ready store of human compassion her fiance seemed to lack.
She rolled to her side and curled up in a ball, blanking out the inviting idea of turning to Jo-Jo Duggan.
The next day Merry's chart showed she'd had another difficult night, and during her hydrotherapy session she had another even worse attack. When the child was returned to her room, Winn sought out Dr. Eldrid Childs, Merry's attending physician. She found him on the fourth floor, making rounds.
"It's about Meredith Emery, doctor," she explained.
"You're her therapist, aren't you?" The intelligent eves met hers directly.
Winn nodded, then asked softly, "She's going to die, isn't she?"
He studied her silently, tapped the palm of one hand with the fingers of his other, then took her arm and walked her idly along the hall. "Yes, it looks that way. This morning it was more than a lung that failed. It was her kidneys." So often with explosion victims it was not the burns that got them but the resultant damage to vital organs that didn't always show up immediately.
Winn's eyes slid shut, and she struggled to keep from crying. Next summer we're going to Disneyland . She gulped at the lump in her throat, but it could not be swallowed away.
"You're involved in this one, huh?"
She nodded, keeping her eyes tightly closed. They were no longer walking.
"Sometimes we're wrong, Gardner. Sometimes they fool us."
She opened her eyes. He seemed to be swimming in a white lake of milk. "Yeah…" she grunted thickly. "Yeah, sure."
When her shift ended at 3:00 P.M., she faced her empty town house with the heaviest heart she'd ever borne. The child's eyes seemed to be staring at her from the bouquet of milkweed pods given her in a different time by another patient, but one who'd recovered.
She called Sandy 's house, knowing perfectly well her friend was still at work, but thinking just by chance, if she'd stayed home today, the two of them could have a game of racket ball.
God, she needed to pound something, beat something, lash out and get even!
The house haunted. Outside it was spring, the season of renewed life, with robins nesting, angleworms squiggling and ants building doughnuts of sand. May was here. Trees were bursting with bloom.
Winn needed to be out there where the air was ripe with the promise of summer. She got in the car and drove. Unconsciously. Not caring where she went or whether she held up impatient drivers behind her. She was in an insulated bubble where hurt was temporarily held in abeyance.
She left Brooklyn Park behind and headed into the farm country north of the suburb, where farmers were planting their vast potato fields, and children were riding their bicycles in the driveways in the balmy late afternoon. She turned west off Douglas Drive and headed toward the old-fashioned water tower that lifted into the skyline ahead. Several minutes later she entered the quaint town of Osseo -population 2,906-by one of its lesser-used streets. Winn let her nose lead her, up one avenue and down another, searching for some sign she'd recognize, though she didn't know where it was or even if the business had a sign.
She found it on Second Avenue, two blocks off the main street of town, beside a gravel alley with grass beginning to sprout up its middle. It was a square brick building with old-fashioned double wood doors beside a windowless service door, and the sign said Duggan's Body Shop.
She stepped inside and found herself in a reception area of sorts, if it could be elevated to such a title. There was a desk made of oak, far older than his Haynes, and a nondescript pair of wooden chairs, a file cabinet, telephone and refrigerator, also very ancient, with rounded instead of squared corners. On the far side of the room an open doorway led to the shop beyond, and from it came the screel of an electric sander upon metal and the sound of someone whistling along as a country station played a Waylon Jennings song.
She stepped to the open doorway. The body shop had a cavernous ceiling, grease-stained concrete floors and a single line of windows up eight feet off the floor, plus another matching row at eye level across the dated double doors.
A man was leaning over at the waist, running the sander along the flank of an orangy-colored fender on a navy blue car. Two others were bending over another hoodless car, peering at its engine. Above them dangled a set of enormous chains with hooks at the ends, attached to the arm of a monstrosity that looked as if it might drop on their heads at any moment. The man on the left lifted his head, spied Winn and came over immediately, wiping his hands on a stained blue rag.
"Hi." His smile was Joseph's, but his eyes weren't nearly as pretty. "What can I do for you?" The rear end of the man she thought was Joseph was still protruding from the dismantled car.
"Is Joseph here?"
"Sure." He turned and bellowed over his shoulder. "Hey, Jo-Jo, somebody to see ya."
But Waylon was singing louder than Joseph's brother, and the sander was still whining. Brother Duggan crossed toward the bending figure in the washed-out blue jeans and called again, "Hey, Jo-Jo, there's a lady here to see you."
Joseph straightened halfway and looked over his shoulder. Winn's heart seemed to swell and thud while an awful constriction squeezed her chest. He straightened the remainder of the way very, very slowly, reaching blindly for a shop rag without taking his eyes from her. As he crossed the greasy floor, his smile grew broader with each step. Three feet before her, he stopped, wiping his hands. "Well, hello."
She had forgotten the magnetism of his incredible smile. "Hello, Joseph." Her heart was hammering so wildly it was difficult to speak in her customary tone of voice.
"What brings you to the thriving metropolis of Osseo?"
"Am I interrupting something important?"
"No. We're just jerking an engine. One's just like all the rest. It can wait." He shrugged and tossed the shop rag aside. He was dressed in filthy blue jeans and a soiled blue chambray shirt, a pair of boots that might have been those she'd seen in his living room. His hands were black and the nails lined with grease. He looked every bit as inviting as he had in his tux and ruffles.
"I probably should have called first, but I didn't really plan to stop here. I was just out driving and…" She grew terribly self-conscious and gestured vaguely with one hand.
He glanced toward the windows in the double doors. "You got car troubles or something?"
"No. I just wanted to talk to you. I thought maybe you could play a game of racket ball… or go out for a cup of coffee or… or something," she finished lamely.
He reached for her elbow, glanced at his dirty hand and thought better of it. With a jerk of his head he ordered her to follow. "Hey, John, tell Tommy to turn that sander off. There's somebody I want you to meet."
When she hesitated, Joseph turned, held out a hand as if to take her elbow, but didn't. His brothers came forward, and she saw again the sharp resemblance to Joseph in Tommy's smile. It was there in John's, too, that same contagiousness. "This is the lady I told you about, the one I walked down the aisle with, Winn Gardner." Jo-Jo smiled at her while going on, "And these are my kid brothers, Tommy and John."
She extended her hand, realized too late it was the wrong thing to do, but kept it where it was while Tommy glanced at it, said, "Hi, Winn" and finally with a crooked smile grasped hers in his greasy hold before John did likewise.
"Hey, Jo-Jo, she's all right," Tommy approved.
"Damn right she's all right. But wipe the leer off your face, brother. She's spoken for, as I also told you." Without pause he informed them, "I'm gonna knock off for the day, but you two get that cherry picker on this engine and get 'er hoisted up, then check to find out if those kingpins and bushing are in. If they've got 'em, leave a note on the kitchen table so I can pick 'em up in the morning. I might be late." Then he turned to Winn and said, "Let's go."
It had taken him less than three minutes to give the remainder of the day to her.
Outside he said, "Well, this is a surprise."
"For me, too."
"You and old Hildegard have a fight or something?"
"No, not a fight." She glanced at him askance. "But something."
He glanced at her car, parked at the curb. "I walk to work, since it's only a few blocks. Do you mind driving so we can stop by the house and I can wash up and get my sweats and racket?"
"Get in."
He craned around to check his backside, then grinned at her across the hood of the car. "My front side usually gets dirtier than my back, so I shouldn't get your car seat dirty."
They had just climbed in and slammed their doors when a rotund man came walking down the sidewalk, raised a hand and called, "Hey, Joey!"
Joseph turned, then smiled and hooked an armpit over the window ledge. "Hiya, pa, what's up?"
From her side of the car Winn saw the man bend down, then in the window appeared a smiling face beneath a cap advertising "John Deere." Into Joseph's lap he tossed a knotted plastic bag.
"Your mother says the rhubarb is ripe and sent me over to bring you some. And who's this pretty little thing?" His face was merry as he smiled at Winn, and she understood from whom Joseph inherited his charm.
Joseph awarded her a proud smile, informing his father, "This is Winn Gardner, the lady I met at Mick's wedding. Remember I told you about her?"
"Oh, she's the one!" Mr. Duggan doffed his cap. "Well, nice to meet you, Winn. I'm Joey's dad." He thrust his hand across the front seat and shook hers.
"Nice to meet you, too, Mr. Duggan."
"You takin' off for the day?" he asked Joseph.
"Yeah, but the boys are inside."
"Guess I'll go in and say hello and tell 'em ma sent the rhubarb."
When he was gone, Winn's eyes dropped to the bag of pink and green fruit, then lifted to Joseph's face. He smiled and hefted the bag. "Ma thinks we don't eat right since we moved out, and she keeps sending over our favorites."
"They live close to you?"
"Yeah, right here in town. Pa works at the hardware store, ma raises gardens and thinks she's still got to baby her boys." But he chuckled good-naturedly and for a moment Winn envied him his very ordinary, but obviously caring family. There were more questions she wanted to ask about them, but while she drove, Jo-Jo changed the subject. She felt his eyes on her as he commented, "I never thought I'd see you again. At least, not one on one."
"I've had one of those days we'd all like to forget, and I needed something to take my mind off it. I tried calling Sandy, but she's still at work, and Paul was too, and my mother." She clutched the steering wheel and refrained from turning to look at him. "I'm probably out of line, turning to you, but I was just driving and there was Osseo in front of me, and I thought of you and wanted… to… well…" Words finally failed and, anyway, explanations seemed suddenly phony.
"I'm glad," he said quietly, and pointed to a white house with red shingles and trim. "That's it." She'd never seen it in daylight before. It was quaint and farmlike, and very much a grandma's house.
Inside, it was just as she remembered, except the kitchen stove had been cursorily cleaned, and the Dutch oven was nowhere in sight. The ivy hung in the west window above the kitchen sink, and the little red plastic clock read three-fifty-five. There was a bag of Taystee bread on the kitchen counter and a duster of green grapes in the middle of the porcelain-topped table, not even in a bowl, just lying there with half their stems denuded.
The room was ugly. Homey. She loved it. From the red dotted Swiss curtains that had probably been hanging limply since years before his grandmother died, to the worn-off spots in the linoleum where she had undoubtedly stood while preparing hundreds of meals, Winn loved it all.
Jo-Jo uncapped a jar and took up a handful of something that looked like cold cream and began rubbing it into his hands. He turned on the kitchen faucet and scrubbed first his knuckles, then his nails with a small orange brush. She stood behind him, watching his blue shirt stretch tightly over his shoulders as he worked over the old-style double-width sink that had no divider, but a drain board off to one side.
He leaned down, opened a cabinet door and retrieved a square yellow plastic dishpan, then began filling it with water.
Glancing over his shoulder, he invited, "Listen, if you'd rather wait in the living room, make yourself at home. I'm gonna wash up here quick and get rid of most of the grease smell, anyway."
He turned to face the window while one-handedly unbuttoning the dirty blue shirt. He stripped it off and flung it across the cabinet top. Picking up a bar of soap, he bent forward and began scrubbing his face, neck, arms, armpits and stomach. He went at it as if in a great hurry and wasted no time being gentle with his own hide.
She stood in the archway leading to the living room, watching. When he leaned over the dishpan, the white elastic of his shorts peeped from beneath the waistband of his blue jeans. She caught a glimpse of hair under his arms and watched in fascination as the curls at the back of his neck grew wet and changed to a darker color. He turned on the water, cupped his hands and clapped them to his face about five times, snorting into the water to keep it from getting up his nostrils. It was like watching a dog charge out of a river and shake himself. Water flew everywhere, up onto the red curtains, across the faded gray linoleum lining the top of the cabinets and onto his dirty shirt there.
He straightened, groped beside his right hip for a towel that was strung through one of the drawer pulls and stood erect while beginning to dry his face.
When he turned, the towel was still covering his chin and jaws. He stopped dead, staring at her from above the towel. The pause was electric. Two droplets slid off his elbows, then he went on briskly toweling his arms and stomach. "Oh, I didn't know you were still standing there." His eyes followed his hands, and so did hers. She noted the thick brown hair that covered his chest, the hard tough muscles, upper arms that had hourglass dips halfway to the elbow. "I said you could go wait in the living room. I got a new print of a 1920 Essex, but I ran out of room to hang it on the wall. It's leaning beside the davenport. Tell me what you think."
What she thought was that any woman who'd prefer looking at a 1920 Essex to Jo-Jo Duggan washing up would be an utter fool! The scent of Ivory soap was everywhere in the kitchen, and that other curiously lye-like aroma she'd detected about him the first night-she took it to be the solvent with which he washed his mechanic's hands.
It suddenly struck her that she'd run to Jo-Jo Duggan for more than one reason. He had been on her mind ever since she'd met him, and to deny it would be worse folly than marrying a man to whom she was not well suited.
She was studying the Essex when he clattered up the wooden steps that led off the end of the room just beside the kitchen archway. As he took the stairs two at a time, he called back, "Where'd you have in mind to play racket ball?"
"Either my club or yours," she called back, casting her eyes about his living room, noting a tablet with some numbers scrawled on it, two old limp sofa pillows, two empty cans of Schlitz beer, a discarded white T-shirt-bits and pieces of Jo-Jo Duggan's life, the life of a simple workingman.
"Then let's go out to Daytona. I feel in the mood for the ride."
He clattered back down the steps and appeared in the doorway with a navy blue duffel, his racket slipped into a sleeve upon its side. He wore a red jogging suit with a white stripe down each leg and each sleeve, white socks, and had his Adidas in his hand.
Her heart went off like a rocket.
"Let's go." He dazzled her with that high-voltage smile. "I'm all yours."
She had the crazy exhilarating feeling that he was. Or that he could be whenever she said the word.