Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

Moira adjusted her glasses, shuffled papers. ‘Okay, time for th’ language test we’ve been talkin’ about-let’s hear everything you’ve learned so far.’

‘Um,’ said Lisa. ‘La dolce vita!’

‘Ferragamo, Armani, por favore!’ said Tammy. ‘What else could we possibly need?’

‘We’ve hardly had time to learn a whole other language,’ said Debbie. ‘I only have one word.’

‘Go for it,’ said Moira, who was making the rules.

‘Magnifico?’ said Debbie.

‘Say that anywhere, it will get you points.’

‘I hope we’re not going to conjugate any verbs this evenin’,’ said Lisa.

‘On th’ plane tomorrow. Now-for a night out in Positano, this is all you need, th’ whole nine yards; I made a copy for everybody: Ciao. Falanghina. Risotto. Tiramisu. Espresso. Il conto. Ciao.’

‘Two ciaos?’

‘One for hello, one for sayonara,’ said Moira. ‘As for our night out in Naples, we’ll be addin’ this to our vocabulary: Vada via che sa di aglio.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Buzz off, garlic breath.’

‘Idn’t she terrific?’ asked Debbie.

‘Bilingual,’ said Cynthia.

‘Y’all goin’ to meet here next year?’ asked Lisa.

‘We don’t know yet,’ said Cynthia. ‘Are you?’

‘Maybe. We really like it over here, th’ lake fishin’ an’ all.’

‘I really like workin’ with ghillies,’ said Debbie.

Hoots, cackles, the usual.

He raised his glass. ‘Happy fishing in Italy!’ This launched a din that made his ears ring.

‘You are quaint,’ said his wife, patting his hand.

‘Tim and Cynthia’-Tammy lifted her glass; bracelets jangling. ‘Safe travel, strong ankles, and may th’ dollar clobber th’ euro, pronto!’

‘Salute! ’

‘Amen,’ he said.

Liam came to the table. ‘A phone call from your son. Take it in the kitchen, we’ll hold th’ noise down at th’ sink.’

He passed through the swinging door in a blur and picked up the phone.

‘Hey, buddy?’

‘Hey, Dad.’

Something was wrong, he could hear it. His heart seized.

‘I messed up.’

‘Talk to me,’ he said.

‘She hit me. That’s it, I’m done. It’s over.’

‘Why did she hit you?’

‘I told her she was ice sculpture. She’s cold, Dad, frozen like Mitford Creek two winters ago. You could skate on her ice.’

The up email, the down phone call. Roller coaster.

He eased himself into the corner behind the desk, turning his back to Maureen and Bella at the sink, Liam at the stovetop. ‘She hit you because hitting was what she learned all the years she was being hit.’

‘It’s time she got over those years.’

‘Why are you done? Why did you end it?’

‘What else could I do?’

‘You could talk.’

‘No way.’

‘Do you love her?’

A long silence. Then, ‘I wish I didn’t.’

Before Dooley was ten years old, his mother had given away four of her five children; his father, a violent drunk and erstwhile highway laborer, vanished along the severe slab he’d helped pour. Cleaving asunder was hard for anybody, especially for kids who had felt the cleaver again and again; he could sense Dooley’s anguish clear across the Pond.

‘Where did she hit you?’

‘Slammed me in th’ gut.’

‘It wasn’t the first time.’

Soon after the two met, Dooley had hidden Lace’s hat-a despoiled affair which she wore with ominous pride. She’d let him have a big one in the solar plexus.

‘Ice,’ he said, ‘is what you turn into when you’re trying to protect yourself. Ice is what keeps you from feeling anything.’ Dooley Barlowe had shown up on the rectory doorstep a decade ago, his anger frozen in a glacier of his own. It was melting, drop by everlasting drop, but only in the temperate climate of love and with a staggering amount of patience. ‘Are you with me, buddy?’

‘I guess. Not really. Gotta go.’

‘Wait. Give me a minute.’

Silence. A minute begrudged.

‘Can you forgive her?’

‘Why invest more energy in somebody who thinks slammin’ you in th’ gut solves everything? She brought me to my knees, Dad.’ There was the boil-there was the sticking point.

‘Hitting you wasn’t a good thing, I admit. But if you think about it…’

‘I don’t want to think about it. Gotta go.’

The transatlantic cable hummed; he set the receiver on its charger.

He was a wreck.

‘You’re a wreck,’ she said. She was waiting for him at the garden door; he went to her and they stepped outside and sat on the bench.

‘Dooley and Lace,’ she said, knowing. ‘At it again.’

He shrugged, shook his head. ’Til the cows come home, I suppose.’ This was more than a lovers’ quarrel, it was something deeply poisonous that both Lace and Dooley carried like a virus. He’d seen Lace the first time several years ago; she was stealing Sadie Baxter’s ferns-digging them with a mattock, shoving them into a sack to sell to a mountain nursery. Watching her eyes beneath the brim of her ruined hat, he asked her to replant everything she had dug, but she had stood him down. I’ll knock you in th’ head, she said, if you lay hands on my sack-I don’t care if you are a preacher.

She grabbed her goods and ran then, the hat flying off her head. He’d taken it home and when she came looking for it at the rectory, Dooley hid it, taunting her. That was the first punch. She had come again after that, beaten brutally by her father. It had taken hours for Cynthia to dress the bleeding lacerations riven upon old wounds.

‘All that pain for all those years,’ Cynthia said.

‘They can’t trust each other.’

‘Time can be healing. Will you buy that?’

‘Not at the moment,’ he said. He told her about the ice sculpture.

Why did he care so much about Dooley and Lace as a couple? In recent weeks, he’d finally swallowed the lie that two damaged lives couldn’t possibly be fashioned into a whole. Faithless as a heathen, he’d given up hope.

‘They have the same enemy,’ he said. ‘Fear.’

‘But they have the same God-love. They’ll manage. We were a couple of ice sculptures ourselves.’

‘Remember your cold feet a couple days before the wedding?’ he asked.

‘Remember your cold feet for a whole two years?’

‘You win,’ he said. He realized that he wanted again to hope.

In the library, Liam prodded a burst of flame from the turves, then stood away from them by the photo gallery. At the lake, Liam had asked him to speak his piece and he’d done that as simply as he knew how. Liam had listened, saying little-from there, the results were beyond anything priest or friend might do. They’d walked back to the lodge together, sober, not talking. ‘Partridge,’ said Liam at a sound in the hedge.

The club was busy ordering espressos, no decaf-‘Gambling again!’ said Tammy. Anna removed her apron and found a seat with the club; after serving coffee, Seamus chose the remaining wing chair; Maureen entered, peered around, and sat by Anna. Bella slipped into the room, a shadow gliding past the bookshelves to a chair at the open window.

Cynthia looked stricken.

‘What?’

‘I think William and I are the evening’s entertainment. ’

He pondered the expectant faces, the hush over the room. Definitely.

‘I thought everyone would go about their usual after-dinner business while William and I worked by the fire.’

‘You’ll be fine.’

She gave him a look, mildly ticked at this remark. ‘Easy for you to say.’

He had to laugh. ‘I worked for forty years with people watching.’

William entered with the aid of a silver-handled cane, wearing a starched shirt, pressed trousers, a jacket, a vest, a blue necktie.