Brad Watson - The Heaven of Mercury

— It’s from Ann Christensen, who runs the Tallahassee store, she said. -Go on.

Finus hesitated. -Was she there, at the funeral, then?

— She had the decency to hang back, but she was there.

Page two became personal again. It was a love letter, finally. She missed him. She hated not seeing him more than once a week, twice at best, but often only once or twice a month. She cherished their time on the Mississippi coast. She ached for him whenever they would part, after those times. She didn’t even want to love someone as much as she loved him.

Do you think , she wrote finally, that Birdie would be all right if you did in fact leave? I want so much for us to be together, but I don’t want you to be miserable because of it. I don’t want us ruined by your guilt and fear and worry over her. Sometimes I get so jealous that you feel so protective of her, so fearful of her dependence on you. Wouldn’t she be all right, in that house, with Creasie there to help her out, and all her biddy friends? I feel terrible urging you to keep thinking about this, I don’t like to think of myself as a home-wrecker. But your children are grown and gone. They and your grandchildren could come to see us down here. We could run the businesses from here. Or hell, sell the Mercury store, let’s open another one in Mobile or Jacksonville. I’m sorry. I can’t help wishing for what I think is right, in spite of the fact that you are married. It’s me you love, we both know that. We should be together. I try not to think about it like this. I can’t help it. I love you. — Ann

Birdie was looking out the window at the day, a blustery wind blowing in a front, clouds sailing above the bare oak limbs in the front yard, bright blue between them. It had enlivened Finus, coming out. Now he felt they were in a muffled cocoon, buffeted by the wind and isolated from all that had made him feel good in it, before.

— Do you think he was going to leave you? he said. - Did you?

She shrugged, after thinking for a moment.

— I always said he’d never leave me for anyone he just slept with, she said, pulling at a loose thread on her skirt.

— But this wasn’t just that, Finus said.

She shook her head.

— I knew that, anyway.

They were quiet a while.

— It had to be Merry sent me that letter, Birdie said. -Stole it from Earl’s office and mailed it to me just for meanness. Meanness to him or to me, I don’t know. Both, I guess. I think he knew I had it, what had happened. He was nervous and irritable about it. But he wouldn’t ask.

— You didn’t say anything to him.

She shook her head.

— I didn’t want to make a fuss about it. She looked up. -Well what difference would it have made, anyway, Finus?

— Maybe make him face up to what he was doing—

— And maybe decide to leave me. I didn’t ever think he would, he knew I couldn’t get by on my own. I’ve never worked, just been a housewife and a mother. Never went past the eighth grade. What would I do for a living?

Finus said nothing.

— I’m going to ask Edsel and his family to move in with me out here, I think, she said. -Just to have somebody around, and my grandchildren. They don’t have a house yet, and this one’s so big. Maybe they’d be happy here for a while.

— That sounds like a good idea.

He could still see her, a young girl naked in the woods, turning like a wheel in the light slanting through riverside trees. Looked at her feet now in the new slight slippers from Earl’s store and remembered her short plump girl’s feet flung up and over, how they made a ka-thump sound upon landing on the ground, the little muff of hair diaphanous in light from the leafy boughs behind her. He flushed with physical pleasure and a lamentable sense of loss. He wanted to go over, kiss her on the cheek. Felt as if he could not keep himself from doing it, in any case. But then he heard a whistling sound from the kettle, and Creasie pushed through the swinging door from the dining room to the kitchen. In a minute she came into the room carrying teacups steaming on little fragile saucers, no tray, just one saucer tilted in each hand, Lipton labeled tea strings hanging over the cup rims, a look on her face as if she were in some distant thought, had arrived in the room almost by luck, the kerchief on her head a comical nod to some old type though she was still a young woman, this belied too by the lump of dip pooching out her lower lip.

— Thank you, Creasie, Birdie said, her voice a little wavery.

— Yes’m, Creasie said, and ambled out of the room on, Finus just then noticed, a pair of pink-bottom, slightly squashed-down splayed bare brown feet.

IT WAS ON one afternoon while they were fishing for bream on a bed stinking of roe that he felt silently overwhelmed with a sense of urgency, that whether or not he understood what he’d felt for this woman now and at various times in the past he had to make a move, had to leap into something in order to understand the very element in which he existed, to understand his own mind.

He looked at her. Just a little plump with her fifty-four years, hair still dark brown and long, in a braid this day, a few gray strands, a little fleshier in the cheeks, but still pretty. The same impertinent mouth, the gapped teeth. Easy laugh. She saw him looking.

— What? she said.

— Do you know, Birdie, he said, I’ve seen you naked.

— What?

— A long time ago, the day you fell into the river during the picnic at the Methodist retreat. I was in the bushes when you and Avis came down the path to change you.

She colored. -Well what am I supposed to say to that?

— I don’t know. Something happened to me that day, watching you. Avis saw me in there.

— Well what were you doing there? Just spying?

— Yes, but not on purpose. I’d gotten sick, went away from the camp, and y’all just happened along.

— You should have said something before I took my clothes off.

— I didn’t have time. I didn’t know what y’all were up to. Well I couldn’t , I had my own pants around my ankles. But what I wanted to say, you put a spell on me that day. It’s like it’s never worn off, all these years.

Just saying those words released something in him, a prickling, blood pressure up, compromised vision.

— What kind of spell?

— That’s what I’d like to know. I was stricken. Smitten, maybe, but stronger than that. I wanted you, somehow. I was so mad you decided to marry Earl.

She laughed, half dismissal and half embarrassment. She lifted her line from the water, examined the worm on the hook, and lowered it in again.

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a while.

— I don’t have to remind you that you’re still a married man. I probably shouldn’t even be out here fishing with you, come to think of it. Sometimes I forget you and Avis are still married.

Finus snorted. -Wish I could. No, sometimes I do . But only for a moment or two at a time.

— Listen, Finus. Oh, I don’t even like to throw my mind back so far. But you were right way back when you said I wasn’t ready to get married, too young. And so much of my life went into it. I just want to be alone, live with Edsel and his family awhile, as long as they want to stay with me at the house. I’m just tired, I feel worn out. Like I’ve had the life drained out of me. I know I’m not real old but I feel old. You’re a good man. You had a bad marriage, I know. I did too in some ways, but it was good in others. If you want to try to convince Avis to give you a divorce, well go ahead, I think it’s best anyway. But I don’t want to run right into something else again. I’ve lived a whole life already, seems like. I may have more in me but not right now. Maybe not ever. I just want to rest. All this mess has just exhausted me.