Paul Kavanagh - Not Comin' Home to You

“And she’s the only one who appreciates his true virtues.”

“Old Jessie, she’s a real appreciator. But everybody else, well, old Tom’s the sort that borrows your lawnmower and brings it back rusted.”

“If he brings it back at all.”

“Oh, no question, you have to ask him and ask him, and then he brings it back, like he’s doing you the most almighty favor, and sure it’s rusted and the blades is nicked from gravel and like as not the belt’s broken. That’s Tom for you every time. Why you laughing?”

“You’re funny.”

“You think I’m funny, just have a look at Aunt Alice. Here she is admiring a bed of roses. Now Aunt Alice is just the sweetest little old lady you’d care to meet. I suppose you can see that.”

“Well, she certainly looks the part.”

“She surely does, and on top of it Aunt Alice isn’t all there. You know, she has like a faraway look in her eyes, and when you get in a conversation with her, which you don’t do when you got any choice in the matter, she sort of focuses a few feet in back of your head, and if you put a question to her you’ll get an answer, but it might not be what you had in mind. Like you’ll say something to the effect of asking her what time it is, and she’ll say as to how it’s sure to be a cold winter because the birds are heading south earlier than usual.”

“Did Aunt Alice ever get married?”

“There was a fellow who always wanted to marry her, but there was this rumor that he had nigger blood in him, so she would never go through with it. Now the rest of the family thinks Aunt Alice is still a virgin.”

“But she isn’t?”

“Hell, no. That fellow who wanted to marry her, he comes to see her every September when the moon is full. She sneaks him up to her room and they do what they do.”

“Does she ever get pregnant?”

“Every damn time. But as plump as she is it doesn’t show too much, and each spring she hatches another little bastard and keeps him hidden away in her closet until he’s a year old. Then she wrings his little neck and digs a hole in the garden and plants a rosebush over him. That’s why she manages to raise these prize-winning roses.”

“Why does she keep doing that?”

“Well, she’s not what you’d call all there, Aunt Alice. She’s not a hundred percent all present and accounted for. And the thing is, see, she loves babies, but she just can’t abide children.”

“Maybe one of these days she’ll get one she likes enough to keep.”

“You’d think so, but the fact is that Aunt Alice was one hundred and fourteen years old last August, and she doesn’t have too many childbearing years ahead of her.”

“Then instead of saying she can’t abide children, you’ll be able to say she can’t bear them.”

“Oh, girl. Now I’m going to be a true gentleman and make pretend I never heard you say that.”

In the kitchen, with him sitting in one chair with his feet on another and drinking a cup of coffee while she folds the clean clothes and packs them into their bags. In the front room on the sofa, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder, just sitting with no need to say a word. Up in the bedroom, in the soft cocoon of a bed, touching and tickling and kissing, playing like kittens.

“Jimmie John? I wish today could go on forever. I wish we could stay here for the rest of our lives.”

“Me too.”

“You know, I was never alive before.”

“You were pretty lively couple of minutes ago.”

“I was never a person. You made a person out of me.”

“You were more person than you ever knew.”

“I just love being with you.” And turning to him, staring hard to hold tears back: “I don’t care, I don’t care what happens, no matter what happens. I’ll always be glad I walked out of that movie and you were there. Always. Even if—”

“Easy now.”

“Even if they catch up with us—”

“They won’t.”

“But even if they do.”

“They won’t.”

Late in the afternoon she asked him if he wanted to hear a newscast.

“Not here,” he said. “Not in this house. You know what I’m getting at?”

“Yes.”

“I want everything to be right in this house. Time enough when we leave. Oh, I could tell you right now what they’re gonna say. Back on the road, though, I’ll keep that radio on, listen to it, hear the same damn thing over and over again. But not here.”

“I know.”

A couple of times, sitting silently at his side, she played with a pretty little daydream. The Chitterton family — they had learned the name from a drawer full of bills in the sideboard in the dining room — would never return to the farm. In the first version of the reverie she had them annihilated in an auto accident, but she subsequently revised this, eliminating the tragic element and having Mr. Chitterton find a uranium mine or take a fantastic job offer or inherit a fortune and take his family on a world cruise.

Whatever the circumstances, the Chittertons would never return, and she and Jimmie John would be able to stay there for the rest of their lives.

The police would never think to look for them there. The neighbors would keep their distance like good gentle countryfolk, simply assuming that she and Jimmie John had bought the place from the Chittertons.

Every morning and every night she would go out to milk the cow, and in the mornings she would accompany him to gather the fresh-laid eggs. They would stuff themselves on huge country breakfasts and spend long afternoons walking in the fields and picking fruit from their own trees. In a few years there would be a boy of their own riding that tricycle she had seen. They would live out their lives surrounded by their children and their animals and the sky and the trees and the flowers, until she was as old and dotty as Aunt Alice in the family photo album, and when they died years and years from now they would be buried on their own land, under their own piece of sky.

An hour after sunset he touched her arm and she knew. She looked at him and he nodded.

“Can I take a look around before we go?”

“I got to get the car anyway.”

She walked through the rooms of the old house. She would never forget these rooms; if she lived a hundred years she would be able to sketch them from memory. Everything they had touched had been returned to its proper place, every dish and spoon washed and dried and put back where it came from. In fact they were leaving the house better than they had found it, for she had spent a good hour going from room to room with a dustcloth. Mrs. Chitterton was an immaculate housekeeper and shouldn’t have to return to dust-filled tabletops.

She waited for him in the front hall. He walked past her into the kitchen and she followed him. He said, “For the food we used and all,” and put some money on the table.

“Should we leave a note?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Otherwise they won’t know where the money came from, and they might be confused.” She got a pencil and a small scrap of paper from beside the telephone and printed: “This is for the food we ate and to show we appreciate your hospitality.”

She tapped the point of the pencil against a front tooth and looked up at him. “Should I sign it?”

“No sense putting our names or nothing.”

She printed: YOUR SECRET FRIENDS.

They weren’t on the road ten minutes before a newscast came on. Jimmie John seemed to take it all in stride, but it scared her, hearing it all like that. They knew his name now from fingerprints left behind at her parents’ house. They had found the man under the station wagon. They knew about the Coronet they were driving now.

“Took this car for nothing,” he said philosophically. “If I’d of known, but at the time I didn’t figure on stopping so soon. Time to trade it in.”