Brad Watson - Miss Jane

“I’m sorry.”

“I said have you not heard anything about me, and since you are sensitive to people making assumptions about you, surely you won’t mind the direct question.”

“I’ll answer you, if you’ll let me do it over dinner at Schoenhof’s.”

“Are you sure you’re not a lawyer instead of a banker?” Jane said. But then, for some reason she did not entirely explore in the moment — as close as she would come to a whim — she didn’t exactly decline, said she would try to make it but that she had to be home by seven and had a busy afternoon scheduled already. “I hope you won’t be offended if I’m not able to come,” she said.

“I do hope you can, though. I’ll hope to see you there,” he said, with a big smile. He shook her hand, touched the brim of his hat, and strode off the one block to his bank with a good bounce in his stride.

Well , she thought, he’s an optimistic fellow, if nothing else .

She felt like she’d just participated in something like an emotional boxing match, and it felt good, like good exertion. But it had also made her anxious. She was glad of her earlier fasting that day, more than ever.

She occupied herself that afternoon at the new Carnegie library, browsing books and magazines. At around four-thirty she looked up, went outside, and was surprised to realize that the anxiety she’d felt earlier had disappeared. She felt an odd calm in her blood. She felt hungry now and a bit faint, but not dangerously so. She walked slowly back into the center of town. Thinking, if in a cloudy way. She went down to Front Street and into the pharmacy on the corner across and one block down from Schoenhof’s. Where she could see out the window from the magazine rack and have little risk of being seen back. In a while, she saw him walk up and stand near the restaurant’s door, looking up and down the street. Hands in the pockets of his nice suit. He didn’t pull out a cigarette to smoke. Didn’t seem like a man of vices, anyway.

She mulled the question, Just what would come of this? Surely it could be simple friendship. That was possible between a man and a woman, wasn’t it? Yet he had said he was “all man,” and just what did that imply? Well, she knew perfectly well what it implied. Especially given the way he had shadowed her, the way he introduced himself to her, the way he had been so politely insistent upon this “date.” And, possibly, he was a man with something to prove.

So, what would he tell her he had heard about her? He wasn’t a native, with lots of friends. What did anyone outside her family and Dr. Thompson (and Emmalene and Hattie’s family, she supposed) really know about her? Her guess was they had some general idea, something in the general vicinity of her condition, her history.

She let her eyes linger on Gordon Ray, standing there waiting on her, now checking his watch. It wasn’t yet five-thirty but it was close. He pushed his hands back into his pockets, rocked a bit on his heels. He looked pleased, possibly a little nervous. She felt sorry for him, just then. But she also allowed herself to be pleased that a man would want to ask her to dinner, knowing or having heard God knows what about her. And then she left from the same door she’d come in through, around the corner and out of sight of Schoenhof’s and Mr. Gordon Ray, and took the long way around to where she’d parked the little yellow Ford, got in it, and drove up the hill and out of town. Feeling light, in a way, as if she’d escaped a difficult situation. And as far as she knew, she probably had.

She supposed she would have to refrain from taking lunch in town for a while, in order to avoid running into Gordon Ray. She would rather seem to be mysterious than cruel. She felt sorry for him, but of course she was not exactly sentimental about loneliness.

SHE STOPPED AT Dr. Thompson’s house on the way home and told him about her encounter. He grew serious, leaning forward and listening as if she were giving a lecture on something. When she finished he sat back, his expression relaxing, as if he were thinking on it.

“I know who that young man is,” he said. “I believe he’s not from around here, originally. I believe he moved here from Tennessee.”

“That’s what he said.”

“You know people in Mississippi and Alabama can be a little snooty toward people from Tennessee.”

“How come is that?”

“I don’t know for sure. But my guess would be they think it’s not quite Deep South, not quite Appalachian, kind of a state without a clear pedigree.”

“What about Louisiana?”

“France, lower part. Northeast part pretty much east Texas.”

“Georgia.”

“Oh, kind of piedmont in the north, Florida cracker in the south. Middle part’s Southern, I guess.”

“Well, what about Florida, then?”

“Florida? Florida is nothing. Just what folks slipped and slid down into the swamps, couldn’t hold on up here.”

She laughed. They’d made a game.

“People sure can get picky about all kinds of silly things,” she said.

“You got that right. I expect it would have been all right to go to dinner with that boy. Then again, you’re probably right, he’s probably been a little lonely and probably would have pressed you to get serious. Probably sooner than one would like, given he must be closer to forty than not. Wants to start a family.”

“That’s what I figured.”

He said, “You know, the Greeks believed that physical love was the lowest form of love. That true love was akin to divine love. Or something like that. That pure love between two people existed on a higher plane.”

“What did they mean by that?”

He looked into his glass, shook the ice, and shrugged.

“Well, they were pantheistic, of course. I guess they meant that the highest form of love somehow transcended physical love. Was more powerful. I guess I mean to say that, if you get down to it, you have loved. You’ve had love. And as I understand it, or it seems to me, anyway, that once you have something like that, you have it forever. So it doesn’t matter that you were not allowed to stay with or even marry that Key boy. In fact what you had with him, and still do in your memory, in your mind, is something greater than many people have in the end, when they find themselves trapped in the business of love and marriage. Do you understand?”

“I’m sure I will,” she said. “Someday.”

“What will you do with the rest of your life, Janie? When you’re truly alone.”

“I have been studying that.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’ve been studying it all my life.”

They were quiet then, looking frankly at one another without discomfort. Interrupted by the call of one of his peacocks over near the edge of the woods.

By this time, as he’d predicted, the doctor had far more peacocks than he could count. The yard was populated with cocks and hens as if it were some kind of strolling park in a big fancy city like New York or Paris, France, birds the leisure class of a Sunday afternoon. No doubt the doctor’s reputation as an eccentric had been greatly enhanced by their presence.

“How come the foxes and coyotes don’t get them?” she said.

“ ’Cause they can fly, I guess. Run pretty well, too. Listen, now, are you hungry?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. Thinking about eating at Schoenhof’s gave me an appetite.”

She stayed for supper.

After eating, between late afternoon and evening, they sat in the back yard while he had another glass of bourbon. She agreed to join him if he made it mostly water and ice.

“Don’t tell Hattie I’ve allowed you to corrupt me,” she said.

“Aw,” he said. “I know she takes a nip from my supply now and then. At least she doesn’t try to hide it by watering it back up to where it was in the bottle.”