Consequences

For a moment he seemed taken aback, almost panicky, as if he’d suddenly realized he was having a casual conversation with two women outside the safe confines of the school.

Lucia took pity on him and gestured toward the manila folder in his hand. “What have you got there, Will?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s…” He waved the folder nervously. “I just brought this over for you to look at. It’s a proposal for that new social studies curriculum we were talking about last week.”

“Thank you,” she said, a little puzzled, watching as he opened the gate awkwardly and came into the garden to hand her the folder. “I’ll have a look at it right away and let you know what I think.”

“Oh, there’s no rush.” He stood in front of the bench like a long-legged stork in his rumpled khakis and knitted vest. “We won’t be starting that unit until the next semester, anyhow.”

Then why did you come all the way over here to bring it to me tonight? Lucia wanted to ask.

But there was something strange in the air, an odd tension in the way he stood at the edge of the garden while June kept chopping at her weeds.

Finally Willard turned and made his way back toward the gate, casting a brief wistful glance at the garden and the silent woman among her pumpkin vines. He turned back to Lucia.

“Well,” he said, “I guess I should be pushing off now.”

She ached for him in his nervousness, and glanced around to see if June might be disposed to offer this unexpected guest a glass of iced tea or some of the blueberry tarts she’d made that afternoon.

Lucia could hardly invite him up to her own apartment, not the way this community watched and gossiped. If she did, it would be all over town by morning that Ms. Osborne was entertaining a male colleague in the privacy of her rooms.

Even the students would know, and be whispering about it…

But June was still wielding the hoe, her face impassive as she worked.

“Good evening, Will,” the landlady said with odd formality. “Don’t forget to stop by and pick up that pumpkin, will you?”

“I won’t forget, June.” He paused with his knobby hand on the latch.

By now Lucia was deeply intrigued, looking from June to Willard.

“Well, good night,” he said at last, his Adam’s apple jerking nervously. “I’ll see you at school, Lucia. Good night, June.”

Lucia murmured another farewell but June said nothing, just turned away deliberately and began to work along the fence line, her shoulders rigid.

Willard Kilmer trudged off, his thin back swallowed up in the hedges down the lane.

When he was out of sight, June rested her hoe against the fence, plodded through the garden and sprawled on the bench next to Lucia. She sighed wearily and rubbed one of her shoulders.

Lucia stole a cautious glance at her landlady, whose composure seemed badly unsettled for some reason.

“June,” she ventured at last. “Is something the matter?”

“That man just gets under my skin,” June said. “He makes me so mad I could scream.”

“Willard?” Astonished, Lucia thought about her mild-mannered colleague. “That’s not the effect he normally has on people. Most of the time,” she added, “it’s hard to even remember he’s in the room.”

“He can sing like an angel,” June said, surprising her again. “Did you know that? Will’s a true baritone, and he has perfect pitch.”

“No kidding. How did you happen to learn that?”

“He sings in the choir with me, down at the Baptist church.”

Though Lucia never attended church, she knew that June Pollock had a fine alto voice. But in the seven years of Lucia’s relationship with Willard Kilmer, this was the first she’d heard of his musical talents.

“And he has one of the best arrowhead collections in the whole state,” June went on, stretching her legs and letting her blond head rest against the back of the bench. There were some silver strands among the rich gold, and her face looked tired and strained.

“An arrowhead collection?” Lucia asked blankly.

“He goes out most weekends to hunt for arrowheads in plowed fields and washed-out creek beds. Whatever Will finds he catalogs and mounts, enters the information on a big computer file. Colleges and museums even contact him sometimes to borrow parts of his collection.”

“Imagine the man never talking about that at school,” Lucia marveled, then looked at her companion, still puzzled by June’s reaction. “But why does he make you so angry?”

“Because he’s wasting his life.” June frowned at the rustling branches above her, where a nighthawk fluttered and woke to set out on its evening hunt for insects.

“Willard is wasting his life?”

“He lives with that awful mother of his, and she’s got him wrapped around her little finger. She’ll never let loose of him. Willard Kilmer doesn’t have the courage of a mouse or he’d tell her where to get off, the nasty old dragon.”

“But how can you…” Lucia paused, genuinely shocked by this harshness. “Faye Kilmer’s an invalid, June. She can hardly get out of her chair to walk across the room. Everybody knows that.”

“Invalid!” June snorted, her face hardening. “Liar is more like it.”

“I can’t believe you’d say that. Willard brought her to the staff Christmas party last year, and she was so sweet to everybody. I thought Faye Kilmer was a lovely woman.”

“Oh, sure, everybody thinks Faye’s such a lovely woman.” June got to her feet and began to chop aimlessly among the vines again. “She’s so little and dainty, with her big eyes and lace dresses and that I’m-so-delicate-I-might-break act of hers. But the woman’s made of iron, let me tell you.”

“She spends a lot of her time in the hospital, you know,” Lucia said gently, watching June’s tense broad shoulders.

“Sure she does,” June said. “Whenever it looks as if Will might be getting a life and planning to move out on her, Faye has some kind of attack. And then she’s just way too helpless to look after herself, so he creeps right back into line.”

“You think Faye Kilmer is using her medical condition as some kind of emotional blackmail over Willard?”

“I think she’s a truly selfish woman. It’s my opinion,” June said, “that Faye will never let go of him as long as she lives. And,” she added darkly, “mark my words, Faye’s likely to outlive all of us. Those kind always do, you know.”

“Have you ever told Willard what you think about any of this?”

June turned to look at her directly, and Lucia was stunned by the depths of pain and sadness in those level blue eyes.

“It’s hardly the kind of thing I could say to Will. Never in all this world. But dammit, Lucia, sometimes I wish I could.”

“You care a lot about him,” Lucia said gently. “Don’t you, June?”

A bit of color filled June’s tanned cheeks. She waved her hand in an abrupt, dismissive gesture, then let her shoulders drop, leaning on the hoe.

“Well, I guess maybe I do,” she said. “He’s such a nice man, you know. There’s times,” she added shyly, “when I hear him sing and it purely gives me goose bumps all over.”

She turned away, clearly embarrassed by this revelation, and knelt to tug at a weed near one of the biggest pumpkins.