Part 5 (1/2)
”I did,” says Hattie.
For she did love Joe, brusque as he could be-her fellow teacher, who taught World History and ran the bike club at school. Once, when a student was attacked by a pit bull, he jumped right off his bike onto the dog's back-that being the kind of thing he did, he said. What he lived for, even. Those moments, he used to say, when you know what you're made of. She did not believe she would ever know what she was made of. Sometimes, though, she did think she knew something, anyway, by the way she reached for him in her sleep-knows something, still. For even now she reaches, even now she dreams that she can feel him breathing-that they are breathing in synch, waking in synch, as they used to. One of the more nonsensical shocks of his death being that he ceased to have a rhythm, or a sense of hers. Of course, even autonomic responses require brain function. A working medulla oblongata; efferent nerves. She knew that. Still, theirs had been so unwilled, she had not quite registered, somehow, that they depended on life.
”Kids?” asks Candy.
”One,” says Hattie. ”His name is Josh.”
”Grandchildren?”
”Not yet.” Hattie picks the peas out of her Tuna Wiggle; she's partial to peas. The front door opens and sticks again; the new cook slams his pots on the stove as if he's used to a lower range and just can't get used to this one.
”So Carter disappeared?” Ginny's lips match her nails, match her s.h.i.+rt, but she has bags under her eyes, and her artichoke hair has a helmety look.
”I took too long looking for my wet suit.”
”Don't you think he'll be back?” asks Greta.
”You don't know Carter.”
”Here today, gone tomorrow.” Beth removes her toothpick from her mouth, that she might jab at the air with it. ”I know the type.”
”He does dispense with a lot.”
”And you hadn't seen him for how many years?” asks Candy.
”Oh, I don't know, maybe twenty-five? Thirty?” Hattie contemplates her thick plate. ”Or no-I went to his father's burial ten years ago, but didn't talk to him. Does that count?”
She keeps forgetting about having gone to the burial, somehow-the interment of Dr. Hatch's ashes, really-though it was right here in Riverlake. And how surprised and pleased the Hatches were to see her-how could she forget that? Floored, they kept saying, a word they hadn't used to use much, but seemed to have taken up the way they'd once taken her up. They were floored-all of them. Floored.
Did she live with his family?
”When I first came to the States, yes.”
And that was-?
”Oh, I don't know-some fifty years ago. I was kind of a permanent exchange student. Their live-in Chinese tutor and basket case.” Hattie starts in on her noodles, which are, in truth, a bit gooey. ”They were friends of some relatives on my mother's side. I don't think they realized they were going to end up stuck with me. But they took it in stride-put me up, made sure I got to college. And of course, they're a lot of how I ended up here in Riverlake-that summer house they had.”
The Adirondack lodge-people nod. The one that was falling down and couldn't be saved. The one the Hatches couldn't bear to replace.
”Which I remembered when I was looking for somewhere I could live on my pension,” she goes on. Something she doesn't have to explain; for who doesn't live with her means firmly in mind, after all?
”Were they Christian?” Ginny, perking up, asks as if the question just occurred to her, or as if it weren't hers, exactly-just something that popped into her head.
Greta, though, sets her spoon right down. Good Episcopalian that she is, gay bishops are fine with her but fundamentalists are something else. ”What does that have to do with anything?” she demands.
Politely enough, really. Still, Candy, their evangelical, stiffens. Never mind that she disagrees with Ginny more often than she agrees; her mouth and chin st.i.tch up.
”They were agnostic,” says Hattie-precipitating vague, scattered nods.
”Did you say twenty-five years?” asks Beth. ”Or twenty?”
”It may be more like thirty-five, now that I'm thinking about it,” Hattie says. ”Except for the burial.”
”Isn't that something.” Ginny straightens her cutlery.
They watch their favorite waitress put a knee on the lunch counter to redo the specials board. Flora is young and slight-a rock climber, dressed all in blue today, as her other job is in day care; probably she's off to be a whale in the afternoon, or the sky.
”Though it does sometimes happen, doesn't it?” says Beth. ”That people reconnect with their sweethearts from high school or whatever? Years and years later. I read that in a magazine someplace.”
”Did they say how often the guy needs taking care of?” asks Greta.
And people do laugh at that-no kidding.
”The healthy ones go for youth,” Greta goes on. ”Someone to-”
”Stoke the old poker,” says Beth.
More laughs.
(Men, men, men, Lee used to say. Always guarding their turgidity.) ”What I want to know is why some of us can't be happy and single?” says Candy. People look at her in surprise. ”I mean, if that is the Lord's plan? Why can't we just accept it?”
”Or how about if it's our own plan?” says Greta, warmly. ”Might not some of us remain happily single even if it's our own plan?”
Scattered nods to that.
”Anyway, Hattie's not reconnecting. She married another man.” Grace's wild gray hair is even wilder since she got a job in a greenhouse; the humidity brings up the frizz. ”And didn't he marry someone else, too?”
Hattie nods. ”Her name was Meredith.” Dear Meredith.
”Kids?” asks Greta, helpfully.
”Two.”
More pot banging.
”One of each?” asks Candy.
One of the meaner tricks of time being the turning of the sweet into the inane, Lee used to say. Anyway, Carter's two girls seem the proof some need that whatever Carter and Hattie were, it wasn't serious. The logic of this is not clear to Hattie, any more than why she would want to know where he is living and what he is doing.
But, well, the helpful will help.
”The Turners' cottage,” puts in Candy. ”You know how Dina hurt her knee? Right after they winterized? Well, they're renting it to him for the year. I guess he's writing a book.”
”Thinks all day, writes things down, looks miserable,” confirms Beth.
”Knows it wastes trees, but can't help himself,” says Greta.
Hattie smiles. ”I hope he at least recycles?”
Greta ought to smile back. Instead, she runs her braid through her hand as though reviewing a length of memory. ”I'm trying to think,” she begins.