Let, your life had said, its only order.
And did you have a choice in this? You did- Sleeping and waking,
the horses around you, the mountains around you,
The buildings with their tall, hydraulic shafts.
Those of your own kind around you-
A few times, you stood on your head.
A few times, you chose not to be frightened.
A few times, you held another beyond any measure.
A few times, you found yourself held beyond any measure.
Mortal, your life will say,
As if tasting something delicious, as if in envy.
Your immortal life will say this, as it is leaving.
-JANE HIRSHFIELD
WHERE THE G.o.d OF LOVE HANGS OUT.
Farnham is a small town. It has a handful of buildings for the public good and two gas stations and several small businesses, which puzzle everyone (who buys the expensive Italian ceramics, the copper jewelry, the badly made wooden toys?). It has a pizza place and a coffee shop called The Cup.
Ray Watrous looked in The Cup"s big window as he walked past. He saw the woman he"d represented in a malpractice suit ten years ago because laminated veneers kept falling out of her mouth. He saw the girl who used to babysit for them when Neil and Jennifer were small, now a fat, homely young woman holding a fat, homely little kid on her lap. He saw his daughter-in-law, Macy, at a table by herself, her gold hair practically falling into her cup, tears running down her face. Ray turned around and went inside. He liked Macy. He was also curious and he was semiretired and he was in no hurry to go to Town Hall and argue with Farnham"s first selectman, a decent man suddenly inclined to get in bed with Stop & Shop and put a supermarket in the north end of town, where wild turkeys still gathered.
Ray liked having his son and Macy nearby. Sometimes Ray went down to New Haven for lunch and sometimes Neil drove up to Farnham, on his way to the county courthouse. They talked about sports, and local politics and the collapse of Western civilization. The week before, Neil mentioned that a girl he"d dated in high school was going to run for governor and Ray told Neil that Abe Callender, who shot out the windshield of his own car when he"d found his girlfriend and her girlfriend in it, a few years back, was now a state trooper in Farnham.
"Can I join you?" Ray said.
Macy twisted away from him, as if that would keep him from seeing her tears and then she twisted back and took her bag off the other chair.
"Of course," she said.
Randeane, the owner and only waitress of The Cup, brought Ray a black coffee and put down two ginger scones with a dollop of whipped honey on the side.
Ray said, "These scones have Dunkin" Donuts beat all to h.e.l.l."
Randeane thanked him. "Cream and sugar?"
Ray, who was normally a polite man, said, "The coffee could stand a little fixing up, I guess."
Randeane put her pencil in her pocket and said, "People love our coffee. It"s fair trade. Everyone loves our Viennese Roast and our French Roast and I believe people come here for our coffee."
Ray said, "I hate to disagree, but they come for the pastries or the atmosphere or because of you but they don"t come for the coffee."
"I beg your pardon," Randeane said.
Macy laughed and said, "Wow, Ray."
"I"m just saying, people don"t come for the coffee."
"I"ll make you a fresh cup."
Randeane brought him another coffee and Ray drank it. It wasn"t great. Macy ate a little bit of her scone and she sighed. Two high school girls sat down at the table next to them.
"I"m not r.e.t.a.r.ded," the skinny girl with pierced eyebrows said.
"I know. But, duh, you can"t go for a job interview looking like that." The other girl was chubby and cheerful and in a pink uniform.
"Fine," the skinny girl said. "Fix me."
Macy and Ray watched the two girls walk hand in hand into the ladies" room.
"Girls are good at friendship," Ray said.
Macy shrugged. "I guess. I was thinking about my mother when you came in and saw me crying," she said.
"My father was a no-good fall-down drunk," Ray offered. "My mother was as useless as a rubber crutch. But sometimes I miss her. That"s the way the dead are, I guess. They come back better than they were."
"We weren"t close," Macy said.
She"d been sitting in the kitchen just two days ago, thinking about gumbo and looking for file powder, when the phone rang. Her mother said h.e.l.lo, she was just pa.s.sing through and wanted to see Macy. She didn"t say hope to, or love to, she said, "I want to see you, kid. I"m in New Britain. There"s a place just off Route 9. It"s called the Crab Cake. Meet me there." Her mother wore skinny black jeans and a yellow blouse and high-heeled yellow boots. She had a scarf pulled over her black hair and she sat in a booth, smoking, and when Macy came in, her mother didn"t get up.
"Don"t you look fat and happy," her mother said.
Macy sat down.
"Surprised?"
"I"m surprised," Macy said. It had been her plan that no one in her real life, meaning Neil and Neil"s family, would ever meet her mother.
"I bet. Well, I thought it was time you and your old mother had a chat."
It didn"t take very long. Macy called her mother "Betty," which was her given name, and Betty called Macy "Joanie," which was hers. Macy"s mother accused Macy of running away and Macy said that if she hadn"t run away she"d be a f.u.c.ked-up c.o.ke addict like her mother or worse. Betty said she had done her best and Macy stood up at that point. She said, Don"t tell me that. Macy"s mother said that they should let bygones be bygones, that she"d dumped Brad"s mean, sorry a.s.s anyway, years ago, and see how Joanie had turned out fine. She said she was on her way to Miami and if Joanie could spare her some traveling money, she"d get right into her car. Macy had four hundred dollars she"d put aside from housekeeping money and three hundred she"d gotten as a bonus from her company, another hundred she got for a winter coat she"d returned, and twenty bucks that she"d found in Neil"s pants when she took them to the laundry. She"d put it all in an envelope before she got in her car to drive to the Crab Cake and she handed the envelope to her mother, who counted it.
"That"s all I have," Macy said. "We"re not millionaires."
Her mother was cheerful, the way she always was when things were not as good as she hoped, but not as bad as they could be.
"You weren"t hard to find," her mother said.
"I wasn"t hiding," Macy said, and her mother smiled and put out her cigarette.
"Well, good. Then you won"t mind if I come around again, when I"m pa.s.sing through."
"You come to my house and I"ll shoot you myself. I"ll say you snuck in and I shot you in self-defense, thinking you were a burglar. And I will cry my heart out to have killed my own poor, crazy mother, who should have been locked up in the first place."
Macy"s mother stood up.
"Aren"t you a kidder. It"s okay, you lie dormy, and so will I. Good luck," her mother said, and Macy watched her drive off in a dusty blue station wagon.
A handsome black woman walked past The Cup"s big front window.
"Looks like Nellie," Ray said.
"Nellie of the coconut cake," Macy said.
Ray shook his head. "My wife can be a b.i.t.c.h."
Macy said, "I can"t argue with you."
Macy and Neil had met at his parents" house. It felt like a houseful of people to Macy, who had lived with one person or none, most of her life. Neil"s sister, Jennifer, had brought Macy home with her after they ran into each other their senior year, at the Philadelphia Flower Show. (Just come home with me for the weekend, Jennifer had said. My parents will love you.) Neil was older than Jennifer and Macy by a couple of years and finishing law school; their cousin Howard, who lived in the maid"s room because he couldn"t face the real world after his time in Afghanistan, was making drinks for everyone.
Jennifer said, "This is Macy. You"ll love her."
Neil squeezed Macy"s hand and looked her right in the eye and she could feel herself blushing. Eleanor Watrous served chicken frica.s.see with dumplings and glazed carrots and a separate plate of bitter green salad with a disk of goat cheese in the middle. For dessert, Jennifer carried in a gigantic and snowy and objectively beautiful coconut cake.
Macy said, "My goodness, that"s gorgeous."
Mrs. Watrous waved her hand toward the kitchen and said that Nellie was gifted. (That"s the housekeeper, Neil said quietly. She cooks when my mother wants to impress people.) "I"ll have Nellie wrap some up for you," Mrs. Watrous said, so that everyone could just picture Macy in her windowless room, sitting on her twin bed, unwrapping the slice of cake for a snack or for breakfast. Macy let her napkin slide to the floor so she could get a grip on herself. Neil"s hand came crab-walking across the rug, toward Macy"s napkin. He stroked her ankle and then he picked up the napkin and put it in her lap.
After coffee, Mr. Watrous had said, Let"s adjourn and Neil and Cousin Howard followed him into the study. The door to the study was not closed, and Macy sat in the chair nearest the door.
"Cute girl, Jennifer"s little friend," Neil"s father said.
"She"s hot," Cousin Howard said, and then he picked up a magazine and started fanning himself.
"Christ, Howard," Mr. Watrous said. "How"s law school, Neil?"
"Okay," Neil said.