Part 1 (2/2)

When they reach the front door, Gerald stops and says, ”I hope you don't mind vegetarian.”

”Not at all,” Bliss says. ”It'll do me good to be so wholesome.”

Gerald bites his lip, and she sees that this time she has offended him. ”Seed to table,” he says. ”I know you think it's dumb or pretentious or something, but it's really important to me. It makes me feel like I'm in control of my life. Or at least part of it.”

He turns to open the door. To stop him she says, ”I don't think it's dumb at all,” and she's surprised to find that this is true. It's the way she sometimes feels about the bookstore: she and her partner order books and the books arrive and they put them on the shelves and people buy them. ”It's like the bookstore,” she says.

”I'm not sure I get the connection,” Gerald says. ”But thanks. It matters to me that you don't condemn my life.”

The directness of this unsettles her; it has always unsettled her that he can say something so revealing, so personal, and not have the saying of it undo him. It's the kind of confession that would choke her up. He stares at her for a moment, but the only reply she can think of is ”Don't you ever miss eating meat?”

He laughs. ”Not much. And when I do I get in the truck and drive over to Santa Rosa to a place that makes a great meatball sub.” He grins and opens the door, motioning her to go in ahead of him. Once they're inside, he heads for the kitchen, but she stops to take off the muddy boots. It's silly, really, but as she peels the socks down over her feet she's filled with the strangest feeling of satisfaction: Marisa may not like it-she may not even know it-but when he wants to he still eats meat.

There's a delicious, spicy smell coming from the kitchen as Bliss heads down the hall. When she gets there, though, she stops in the doorway; Gerald and Marisa are standing at the sink, talking in low tones. Marisa has pulled her hair into some kind of bun, and Gerald is running his finger up and down her neck.

”Hi,” Bliss says.

They pull apart and turn to face her. ”Hi,” says Marisa.

”Hungry?” Gerald asks. ”I'm starved.”

Marisa pats his shoulder. ”Lucky you,” she says. ”Dinner's almost ready.” She smiles at Bliss.

”Almost?” he says in mock outrage.

She laughs. ”It will be as soon as you get the salad out.”

Bliss stands in a corner and watches as they move around the kitchen, taking things from the refrigerator and stovetop and oven and putting them on the table. They don't look at each other or touch, but they're connected somehow-it's as if they were performing some kind of dance they'd been rehearsing for months.

They all sit, and Marisa serves their plates with rice and some kind of vegetable mixture-ratatouille, Bliss decides. They talk for a while about the things Gerald showed her-the chickens, the last of the tomatoes, the woodshop-and then Gerald asks about the bookstore. Bliss tells a story about a guy, Walter, whom she hired a few weeks ago to be a cas.h.i.+er. He seemed perfect-he lived around the corner, said he could work extra hours whenever she wanted, even volunteered to open the store for her one morning when she had to go to the dentist. Then one night she was on her way home from having dinner with a friend and decided to stop at the store for a book. When she got there she found Walter and three of his friends sitting on the floor eating take-out pizza, pa.s.sing around a fifth of vodka, and paging through bookstore books with their greasy fingers. ”The thing that really got me,” Bliss says, ”is that when I told them to get out, they just walked off and left the pizza lying in the middle of the floor.”

”That is terrible,” Marisa says. Her forearms are resting on the edge of the table and she has tightened her hands into fists. When Bliss looks at her face, she thinks she sees tears in her eyes. ”People like that have no consideration.”

This seems self-evident to Bliss-obviously Walter is a jerk; that's the point.

But Marisa goes on. ”He'll probably never learn, either. You know? He'll probably go through life trespa.s.sing on people's decency, never doing a single thing for anybody. Someday he'll marry some poor woman and ruin her life. G.o.d, that kind of thing makes me sick!”

Bliss is embarra.s.sed. She looks away from Marisa's red face at Gerald; he's got such a worried look on his face that she wishes she could reach across the table and touch his arm. He looks the way he used to at the dinner table at home, toward the end, when her father was always angry at her mother. Is it not true, her father would say to her mother, that you told me you were going to finish that typing by dinner? Gerald, her father would say, what do you suppose could have happened? Do you suppose it just slipped your mother's mind that she had twenty pages to type for me today? Or do you suppose she was too G.o.d-d.a.m.ned busy talking to her friends at the grocery store to think of anything else? Well? Well, Gerald? Well?

Gerald looks up at Bliss, and she can see that his mind is whirling. She smiles at him-she will say the first thing that she can think of. But he beats her to it. ”What kind of pizza was it?” he asks.

Then he gets up and goes around behind Marisa's chair and leans down low, and when his arms reach around her, tears begin to stream from her eyes. Bliss looks down at her plate and pokes at the remains of her dinner with her fork. If this doesn't stop soon, she'll have to leave the room. When he looks up again, Gerald is staring at her, his face hard and challenging.

Finally Marisa reaches for her napkin and dabs at her face. She looks up at Bliss and says, ”Sorry.”

Bliss smiles and shrugs.

Gerald gives Marisa's shoulder a final pat and straightens up. Then Marisa pushes her chair back and stands, too. ”Well,” she says, as if nothing had happened, ”are we done? I'll get going on the dishes. Why don't you two make a fire in the other room?” She carries a few things to the sink and begins to run the water. She turns back to Bliss. ”I'm sorry we don't have any dessert,” she says.

”We've got fruit,” says Gerald. ”Want a plum?”

”I'm fine,” says Bliss. ”It was delicious.” She takes her plate to the sink and sets it down. This is not the right moment for the cookies.

THE LIVING ROOM is spa.r.s.ely furnished-just two armchairs and several large pillows on the floor.

”Sit,” Gerald says, coming up behind her. He pats one of the chairs.

”Don't you guys want the chairs?” Bliss says. ”I'll sit on one of those.”

”Nonsense,” he says.

So she sits in one of the chairs and watches him build the fire. Marisa's scene has disturbed her-does she do this kind of thing a lot?-but curious as Bliss is, she hopes Gerald won't bring it up. She doesn't really want to talk about it.

”That was a good dinner,” she says.

”Thanks,” he says, without turning around. He lights a match and touches the flame to some newspaper, then sits looking into the fireplace. Finally he turns to face her. ”Listen,” he says, ”let's just drop what happened in the kitchen, OK?”

”Of course,” Bliss says. ”I wasn't going to-”

”She's just a little on edge is all,” Gerald says. ”Having a visitor.”

Bliss blushes. It wasn't her idea to come up here.

”I don't mean it like that,” Gerald says. ”She just wants you to like her.”

He doesn't seem to expect a response; he turns back to the fireplace and pokes at the logs with a piece of kindling. She should say, ”Oh, I do like her,” but it would sound so forced; her mother used to sit on the edge of her bed at night and say, ”I love you, baby,” and then, after the slightest pause, ”Do you love me?”

”That should catch,” Gerald says, standing up. He claps his hands together to get rid of the wood dust, then sits in the other chair. ”We were thrilled when it started getting cooler again. There's a guy up the road who lets me chop firewood for free.”

”Just like that?”

”Well, I give him a hand when he needs it. I helped him build a new kitchen.”

”How'd you learn how to do all this stuff, anyway?”

”I must have a natural apt.i.tude,” Gerald says. They both laugh; he was the kind of child who, in art cla.s.s, used his Popsicle sticks for abstract sculpture when everyone else was making a birdhouse.

”No, really,” Bliss says.

”I wanted to,” Gerald says. ”That's really all it takes.”

Marisa comes in from the kitchen carrying a tray. ”I made some tea,” she says. She offers the tray to Bliss, and Bliss thanks her and takes a mug. It smells strange, and she decides that it's some kind of herbal tea, made from their herbs. She would give anything for a cup of coffee right now.

Gerald takes a mug, and Marisa sets the tray on the floor at Gerald's feet. She pulls a pillow over and sits on it, leaning against his legs. No one says anything.

<script>