Joy Williams - Taking Care

“I can’t remember that,” Jill said.

“It’s a small world,” Patsy said, pouring herself more champagne. She sighed. “Scooter’s getting along now.”

Charlotte and Jill were sitting on either side of Patsy at the kitchen table, making lists of the names they wanted to call their children. Charlotte had Victoria, Grover and Christopher; Jill had Beatrice, Travis and Cone.

“Cone?” Patsy asked. “How can you name a child Cone?”

Constance looked at the ornately lettered names. The future yawned ahead, filled with individuals, each expecting to be found.

“Do you swim?” Constance asked Patsy.

“I do,” Patsy said solemnly. “I just gave the girls a few pointers about panic in the water.”

“Would you like to go swimming?” Constance asked.

“It’s almost five,” Patsy said. “Steven will be coming down any moment.”

“‘Cone’ is both a nice shape and a nice name,” Jill said.

“Would you like to go swimming?” Constance asked the girls.

“No thanks,” they said.

Ben came in the kitchen door, chewing gum. Since his heart attack, he had given up smoking and chewed a great deal of gum. He was tanned and smiling, but he moved a little oddly, as though he were carrying something awkward. Constance got a little rush every time she saw Ben.

“Would you like to go swimming with me?” Constance asked.

“Sure,” Ben said.

They drove out to the beach and went swimming. On the bluff above the beach was the white silo of a loran station which sent out signals that enabled navigators to determine their position by time displacement. Constance and Ben swam without touching or talking. Then they went home.

Teddy came the next weekend. Patsy’s champagne bottle held a browning mum. Teddy was secretive and feminine. She brought two guests of her own, Fred and Miriam. They all lived on a farm in South Woodstock, Vermont, not far from the huge quartz testicle stones there. “There are megalithic erections all over our farm,” Teddy told Constance.

A terrible thing had happened to Fred — his wife had just died. A mole on her waist had turned blue and in six weeks she was dead.

Fred told Constance, “The last words she said to me were, ‘Life goes on long enough. Not too long, but long enough.’” Fred’s eyes would glass up but he did not cry. He had brought a tape of Blind Willie Johnson singing “Dark Was the Night,” which he frequently played.

On Saturday they had a large lunch of several dozen ears of fresh corn and a gallon of white wine. Miriam said to Constance, “It wasn’t Rose that died, it was Lu-Ellen. Doesn’t Fred just wish it was Rose! Lu-Ellen was just a girl in the office he was crazy for.”

Miriam whispered this so Fred would not hear. She had corn kernels in her teeth, but apart from that she was the very picture of an exasperated woman. Was she in love with Fred? Constance wondered. Or Steven? Actually, it was Edward she spoke to constantly on the phone. Miriam would say things to Teddy like, “Edward said he got in touch with Jimmy and everything’s all right now.”

After lunch, there was a long moment of silence while they all listened to the sound of Steven’s typewriter. Steven did not eat lunch; he was bringing together the cosmic and the personal, the poetic and the expository. During working hours, he was fueled by grapefruit juice only.

Teddy had brought four quarts of Vermont raspberries to Constance and Ben. The berries had been bruised a little during their passage across the Sound. She had brought Steven a leather-bound book with thick creamy blank pages upon which to record his thoughts.

“Nothing gets past Steven, not a single thing,” Teddy said.

“I’ve never known a cooler intelligence,” Miriam said.

“You know,” Fred said, “Vermont really has somewhat of a problem. A lot of things that people think are ancient writings on stones are actually just marks left by plows, or the roots of trees. Some of these marks get translated anyway, even though they’re not genuine.”

Teddy lowered her eyes and giggled.

Later, Teddy and Miriam and Fred took Charlotte and Jill to the cliff which was considered the highest point on the island, and they all jumped off. This was one of the girls’ favorite amusements. They loved jumping off the cliff and springing in long leaps down the rosy sand to the beach below, but they hated the climb back up.

The next day it rained. In the afternoon, the girls went with the houseguests to a movie, and Constance went up to their room. The rain had blown in the open window and an acrostic puzzle was sopping on the sill. Constance shut the window and mopped up. She sat on one of the beds and thought of two pet rabbits Charlotte and Jill had had the summer they were eight. Ben would throw his voice into the rabbits and have them speak of the verities in a pompous and irascible tone. Constance had always thought it hilarious. Then the rabbits had died, and the children hadn’t wanted another pair. Constance stared out the window. The rain pounded the dark street silver. There was no one out there.

That night, the house was quiet. Constance lay behind Ben on their bed and nuzzled his hair. “Talk to me,” Constance said.

“William Gass said that lovers are alike as light bulbs,” Ben said.

“That’s just alliteration,” Constance said. “Talk to me some more.” But Ben didn’t say much more.

Mercedes arrived. She had fine features and large, grey eyes, but she looked anxious, and her hair was always damp “from visions and insomnia” she told Constance. She entertained Charlotte and Jill by telling them the entire plot line from General Hospital She read the palms of their grubby hands.

“Constitutionally, I am more or less doomed to suffer,” Mercedes said, pointing to deep lines running down from the ball of her own thumb. But she assured the girls that they would be happy, that they would each have three husbands and be happy with them all. The girls made another list. Jill had William, Daniel and Jean-Paul. Charlotte had Eric, Franklin and Duke.

Constance regarded the lists. She did not want to think of her little girls as wives in love.

“Do you think Mercedes is beautiful?” Constance asked Ben.

“I don’t understand what she’s talking about,” Ben said.

“You don’t have to understand what she’s talking about to think she’s beautiful,” Constance said.

“I don’t think she’s beautiful,” Ben said.

“She told me that Steven said that the meanings of her words were not philogistic, but telepathic and cumulative.”

“Let’s go downtown and get some gum,” Ben said.

The two of them walked down to Main Street. Hundreds of people thronged the small town. “Jerry!” a woman screamed from the doorway of a shop. “I need money!” There was slanted parking on the one-way street, the spaces filled with cars that were either extremely rusted or highly waxed and occupied by young men and women playing loud radios.

“What a lot of people,” Constance said.

“There’s a sphere of radio transmissions about thirty light-years thick expanding outward at the speed of light, informing every star it touches that the world is full of people,” Ben said.

Constance stared at him. “I’ll be glad when the summer’s over,” she said.

“I can’t remember very many Augusts,” Ben said. “I’m really going to remember my Augusts from now on.”

Constance started to cry.

“I can’t talk to you,” Ben said. They were walking back home. A group of girls wearing monogrammed knapsacks pedaled past on bicycles.

“That’s not talking,” Constance said. “That’s shorthand, just a miserable shorthand.”

In the kitchen, Mercedes was making the girls popcorn as she waited for Steven. She chattered away. The girls gazed at her raptly. Mercedes said, “I love talking to strangers. As you grow older, you’ll find that you enjoy talking to strangers far more than to your friends.”