Swept Away

Months ago such a compliment would have pleased her, but now she shrugged it off. “That’s behind me, Enid.” She told her friend about her mother but nothing more.

“Seen Mr. Henderson since you’ve been back?”

Had she ever! “I knew you’d ask that. Anything new with him?” She hoped Enid wouldn’t catch her evasion. “Who’s he after now?”

Enid’s dreamy-eyed expression brought a sheen of perspiration to Veronica’s forearms. Was what she felt for Schyler merely the usual reaction of the average woman? His regular due?

“Girl, I wish he was after me,” she heard Enid say.

She didn’t want to watch Enid drool over Schyler Henderson. She sipped the last of her coffee, gave Enid and Wilma the tiny porcelain Swiss yodelers she’d bought for them in Interlaken and bade her friend goodbye.

“Let me know where you’ll be, honey,” Enid said.

Veronica wrote her name, address and phone number on a piece of paper. “In case it’s been erased from your computer, here it is, but be careful who gets hold of it.” She started off, turned back and hugged her friend. “See you.”

Enid ducked her head, but Veronica had seen her tears. “Don’t worry about me, Enid. I’ll be all right. But there’s so much I haven’t done, seen and felt, things that I’ve dreamed of since childhood. Now may be my only chance to live fully. To the hilt. And I’m not letting it slip by. I’ll stay in touch.”

Enid nodded and walked away.

Veronica stopped in Kmart, bought a jumbo-size umbrella with a long handle and headed for the train to Owings Mills. When she reached the train station, she crossed Reisterstown Road and turned the corner.

“Ronnie! Ronnie! I knowed you’d come back. I just knowed it. I missed you a whole lot, Ronnie. People don’t talk to me when they past here. I ’preciate every single penny people gives me. Lord knows I do. But you don’t throw money at me like you was ’fraid to touch me, Ronnie. You comes to me and hands it to me and talks with me. While you was gone, weeks went by and nobody said a word to me lessen I went to buy something. And then they didn’t say nothin’ if they could help it.”

The woman’s anguish drifted through her like a throbbing ache, for she had never before heard Jenny complain or even show dissatisfaction with her predicament. Yet, she couldn’t get Jenny to motivate herself enough to receive real assistance.

“You don’t belong out here,” she told her. “I told you I’d help you get a place if you’ll only fill out that form I gave you.”

“I’m gon’ do that, Ronnie. Honest. I just dreads them slammin’ them doors in my face.”

Veronica stepped closer and patted Jenny’s shoulder. “If you’ll trust me, that won’t happen. Here’s something for you.” She handed her the umbrella. “This will keep you dry, and it’s good for shade, too.”

Jenny’s wide grin lit up her face. She grabbed the umbrella and ran her fingers up and down it, feeling it, caressing it. “So pretty, Ronnie. And it’s new. Brand-new. Well, can you beat that? I don’t know when I last had anything that hadn’t been throwed away. Real new. Well, I declare.”

Such a small thing, that umbrella. Jenny’s pleasure in it humbled her. She folded some bills and handed them to the woman.

“Oh, no, Ronnie. You keep that.” She patted her coat pocket, still secured with the two safety pins. “I still got some of what you gave me before you left. I’ll let you know when I run out. You know I thank you, don’t you, Ronnie?”

Veronica nodded. “See you next time, and you fill out that form.”

“I hope you ain’t out here in the middle of the day ’cause you sick or somethin’.”

Veronica couldn’t help smiling with pleasure at Jenny’s concern for her. “Nothing like that. I’m on leave.” She looked at her watch. “I have to get my train. Bye now.”

“Bye and thanks. I’m gonna fill out the paper. You hear?”

Veronica walked into the town house that she’d worked so hard to get and in which she’d always taken such pride. Sunlight streamed through the living room’s large bay window, its brilliance giving the room an added cheerfulness and an elegance that complimented her achievements and her personality. For a minute she let herself glory in it, but a few seconds later the picture of Jenny on the corner with her shopping cart of junk and her joyous acceptance of the one new thing she’d had in years undercut her pride in her home and her possessions.

Discomfited, she wandered through the house, flicked on the television to a Senate debate, sucked her teeth in disgust at the hypocritical posturing and shut if off. She turned on the radio, and a Mozart concerto flowed around her. Her favorite, but not on that morning. Schyler. Schyler. If only she didn’t care. She walked into the kitchen and looked out of the window and at a blue jay flitting from limb to limb on her prized cherry tree. She couldn’t help remembering the soul-searing trek over the meadow in the Swiss Alps.

Schyler. Schyler. She didn’t want to go to the singing group that she loved; didn’t feel like knitting the mittens and caps that she always created as Christmas gifts for homeless children; and she couldn’t work up an interest in the state’s foster care system. She wanted what she couldn’t have. She wanted that wild, hot, unearthly feeling she’d gotten when he had her in his arms. If only she could feel his hands, his lips, his body…Oh Lord, what was wrong with her!

Without thinking, she did as she’d always done when she stood at a precipice and needed balance. She called her stepfather.

His voice blessed her with the solace that he’d always represented in her life. “I was hoping you’d call, Veronica. I don’t like not knowing where you are.”

“I’m home.”

“Good. I know you’re upset about your mama being gone and all that, but she’s better off now, and we have to be glad for that.”

“I’m handling it, Papa. What about you?”

“I’m doing fine. When are you going back to work? When I called Enid, she said you had three months’ leave to use up. That doesn’t make sense. You can lose a lot in three months, including your job.”

She didn’t want to distress him. He’d think she didn’t appreciate her blessing. And besides, she wanted him to know she’d always be there to help him if he needed it. “I haven’t had a vacation in years, Papa, and that trip to Europe just whetted my appetite.”

He knew her so well that he probably suspected she wasn’t telling all, but she knew he wouldn’t pressure her to share a problem before she was ready. He had so many ways of communicating his love for her, and it came to her now in his softened voice and gentle concern.

“Well, get some rest, and you be careful roaming around all by yourself. Come see me when you can. I’ll be praying for you.”

She pushed back the threatening tears, though there was no sorrow in them. Just an overwhelming love. “Thanks, Papa. You know I will.”

She waited for him to say goodbye, but he hadn’t finished. “If you’re running from something, girl, you might as well stand still and face it, cause it’ll catch you anyway. I can testify to that. And if you’re trying to find something, look inside yourself first. It’s there, baby. You just need the courage to take it.”

How had he read her so accurately? “I know, Papa. I know. Here’s my cell phone number in case you lost it. You can reach me wherever I am in the country. Love you, Papa.”

“You’re my heart, Veronica. Always have been. Always will be.”

Nothing had changed, but she felt a lot better. She phoned Hertz for a rental car, got out some maps and sat down to figure out where next to satisfy her wanderlust. The following morning she packed a few essentials along with her Buddy Guy, George Strait and Leontyne Price cassettes, her knitting bag, six cans of ginger ale and a supply of Butterfingers. She laughed at her taste in music. Blues, country and opera, not to mention the jazz and chamber music and other classical morsels that she wasn’t taking along. She went back into the house and got a couple of Billie Holiday cassettes, in case she stayed away more than a few days and began to miss them. She looked at the beloved house that she once hated to leave for any reason, shook her head at the changes in her, got in the Mercury Cougar and headed for the Adirondack Mountains.

Dusk had begun to settle over the tiny hamlet of Indian Lake when she turned into Geandreau’s Cabins, a group of furnished, red clapboard cabins on Highway 28 facing Adirondack Lake. The brochure promised scenic beauty and only nature for company, if one wanted that. Here and there, houses predating the Revolutionary War proudly displayed their plaques of authenticity and stood arrogantly, as it were, among the youthful and less imposing school, church, tiny post office, hardware store and Giant supermarket. What did the villages do for entertainment or for intellectual stimulation? An eerie quiet. Solitude.

She quickly learned that if she wanted that, she’d have to insist on it. At supper in the nearby café, a stranger joined her as soon she sat down.

“You’re not from ’round here,” the old man said. “Staying long?”

She remembered that she was in a small town, tried not to show impatience and made herself smile. “A few days.”

“Ain’t much to do here ’cept swim and go canoeing. Fish don’t never bite no more; weeds suck up the oxygen in the lake.”

Not according to her knowledge of chemistry; like all other lakes, that one was nothing more than a combination of oxygen and hydrogen. She let the old man have his wisdom. “That so?”

“Sure thing,” he said. “If yer husband wants to go fishing, I can take him down to the Indian Lake in the morning. They bites down there. No charge. Just friendly. I likes the company.”

She supposed if she lived in a tiny place like Indian Lake, she’d be expected to have a husband. “I’m not married.”

He peered at her as if to make sure his eyes hadn’t fooled him. “Where you from?”

She told him, and watched him shake his head, seemingly in dismay. “No wonder. Them city fellows don’t know a woman when they sees one. You better get started. Raising young’ uns ain’t easy when you get older. Takes more energy than you got. Get yerself a good man ’fore you too old to find one.” He looked closely at her. “You got one, ain’t you?”