The Me You See (13 page)

She laughed along with me, then after the giggles had
subsided, she said, “Anna Marie, you’re the only one who will tell it to me
straight.”

“What do you mean?”

“You tell me what you know. You don’t lie. You don’t hide,”
she said. “You don’t act.”

I thought for a minute and said, “Come close. I’m going to
tell you the two absolute sure things I’ve learned from life.”

“Okay, I’m ready.” She leaned in to glean from me the
wisdom I’d gathered in my eighty-three years on earth.

“Number one,” I said, “you will never ever use Algebra in
real life. Ever. And number two? There is no way for you to stop your dishrags
from getting stinky. Just throw the damn things away and buy new ones.”

Stefia opened up into a laugh that I didn’t think could
come out of that petite body of hers. She laughed so hard that she went silent
and her body bounced up and down as she held her stomach and said, “Stop, oh my
god, stop!” Her laughing got me laughing and I had to take off my glasses and I
could hardly breathe. I thought I was going to have to call for oxygen.

After we’d recovered, Stefia poured another cup of coffee
for the both of us.

“You must have one hell of a thermos there,” I said.

“It’s biggish.”

“It keeps the coffee hot!” I said. “Maybe the home should
invest in those.”

A silence settled in while we sipped at our coffee. And it
wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, because pauses in conversation with Stefia never
felt uncomfortable and the conversation never felt forced. But after some time
had passed I spoke up.

“I have another story to tell you,” I said.

“Okay.”

So I began.

“Once upon a time there was a lady. She lived on a gravel
road out in the middle of farm country. She was married and had a few kids. She
had a country neighbor friend named Julie.”

“Country neighbor?” Stefia interrupted.

“That means you’re neighbors, but the houses out in the
country aren’t as close together as in the city. So someone can be your country
neighbor and live a mile away.”

“Oh,” Stefia nodded. “Okay.”

“So,” I continued, “this lady had a country neighbor friend
named Julie. Her kids and Julie’s kids grew up together, hung out together,
played and fought together. You know, like good friends do.”

Stefia relaxed into her chair and sipped on her coffee
listening to the tale as I wove it.

“Anyhow,” I said. “So even though Julie’s family and this
lady’s family were always together, there was something that just didn’t seem
right about how Julie’s husband acted towards this lady. He seemed really stand
offish. Really…stuck up. Really…I don’t know, distant. Unreachable.”

“What was the husband’s name?”

“Which husband?” I asked.

“Julie's husband,” Stefia clarified.

“Oh. His name was Grant.”

“Okay,” Stefia said. “Hey, Anna Marie?”

“Yeah?”

“You can just use your real name instead of ‘the lady’. It
makes it easier to follow.”

I smiled.

“Can’t get nothing past you, can I?”

“I didn’t think you were actually trying to.”

“I wasn’t.” I winked and took a sip of coffee. “Anyhow, so
every time I’d be at Julie’s farm visiting with the kids, Grant always had
something to do. If I walked in, he walked out. If he was in the middle of
something and I showed up, he disappeared. Drove me absolutely insane.”

“I don’t blame you,” Stefia said.

“So one day after church, we were having a meal at Julie’s
farm. Dinner was ready so she sends the kids out to tell Grant it's time to
eat. Well, the kids get sidetracked with something like kids always do. Julie’s
hands were full putting the last touches on a pumpkin pie so she asked me to go
out to the machine shed and deliver the message to Grant myself.”

I remembered that day like it was only an hour ago. I wandered
out to the shed and found him tinkering with the tractor. I stood in the
doorway, still in my flowery Sunday dress. He held up his hand to shield his
eyes from the sun coming in the doorway so he could see who was watching him. When
he realized it was me, he went right back to working on that tractor.

“Julie sent me to tell you dinner is ready,” I said.

“Why didn’t she send the kids?” No emotion. No
hi, how
are you
. Nothing.

“She did. They got sidetracked.”

He didn’t say anything. Just messed with that tractor like
I wasn’t even there. And that's what he always did. Pretended I wasn't there.
So I got mad. I snapped.

“What is your problem?” I snapped from where I stood in the
doorway.

He glanced up at me but made no effort to stop what he was
doing.

“Excuse me?”

“You have a problem with me?”

“What do you mean?”

He was trying to spin a wrench on a bolt and not having any
luck. He kept forcing it, twisting and turning and gritting his teeth and I
started to wonder if the discomfort on his face had nothing to do with the bolt
that wouldn’t come off.

“Every time I come here, you walk away. Every time I enter
the room, you leave. What on god’s green earth did I do to make you not like
me?” I yelled. “What the hell do you have against me?”

He gave one final jerk on the wrench. It flung the wrong
way off the tractor, and he busted his knuckles against the stuck bolt. He
sucked in his breath, shook out his hand, and then cradled it close to his
body. Looking right at me over the top of the tractor with gritted teeth and
fixed eyes, he finally entered into real conversation, carrying an intensity
I’ll never forget.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he asked.

“Get what?”

“I can’t be around you.”

“Says who?”

He shook his head.

“I refuse to be around you.”

“Why, Grant? Why do you hate me so much?”

“You don’t get it!” he hissed. “I don’t hate you!”

“Then what’s the problem? Why can’t you be in the same room
with me?”

“I just can’t.”

“That’s not a reason,” I said. “Tell me why!”

“Because, Anna Marie!” he screamed. “Because! Okay?”

“No. I want to know. I want to…”

 “I’m married,” he said.

“What does that have to do with anything? You have to walk
out of a room I’m in because you’re married? Grant…I’m married, too! What does
that…”

 “Christ, Anna Marie. Your pretty head can’t be that
thick,” 

“I’m not thick, Grant. “ I said. “I just want you to come
out and explain yourself. I want you to say it!”

He closed his eyes and balled up his fists. He shook his
head, and then he kicked a tool clear across the floor of the machine shed.

“God damn it, Anna Marie! I can’t be around you because I’m
afraid of what will happen if I am!”

The words exploded with such a force that I knew closing
his mouth around them wouldn't have stopped them from coming out.

“Grant?”

“Damn it,” he said, his eyes fixed on me. “Just go.”

I stared at him, consumed for what seemed to be an
eternity. And then another one. And it wasn’t until I heard the kids in the
yard barreling towards the machine shed that our eyes broke their hold. It was
then I remembered his knuckles, dripping spots of blood on the tractor.

“Do you want me to…” I started, motioning towards his hand,
but he shook his head and grabbed a rag to wrap it up in.

“Just go,” he said.

“But…”

“I meant what I said. I need you to leave.”

“Grant?”

“Please. Just go.”

So I did. I walked out of the machine shed and back to the
house, each step away from him feeling like a knife through my heel.

“Did he ever come in for dinner?” Stefia asked, breaking
into my thoughts and momentarily forcing me back to present day. She was
leaning forward in her chair, elbows on her knees, waiting for the next juicy
tidbit.

“No, he didn’t come in for dinner,” I said. “I didn’t see
him the rest of the day.”

“Wow,” said Stefia. She sat back in her chair, chewing on
her thoughts, replaying the story in her head. “So he was ignoring you because
he liked you?”

“I don’t think like was quite the right word,” I said.

And in trying to decipher what word would have best
explained the aggressive, all consuming, distraction that I was to Grant—or
that Grant became for me—I was tossed back into the story and continued
telling.

Thinking of Grant and the way he yelled at me to leave him
in the machine shed always gave me shivers. And I really did my best to stay
away from him. We had an unspoken agreement on boundaries, and an unspoken
agreement not to cross them. And it worked out pretty well.

But in July of 1965 there was a summer storm that whipped
up from nothing—black skies and torrential rain and wind like I’d never seen
before and haven’t ever since. I had run to town quick to get groceries,
leaving the kids with Helmer at home. This storm blew in from nowhere. I was
driving on the gravel right in front of Grant and Julie’s farm and the road
suddenly washed out. Grant saw the headlights of the car and came out to see
who was stuck halfway in the ditch and realized it was me. It was pitch black,
pouring down rain like something out of a movie and the wind was whipping tree
branches across the road and he yelled at me, “Just come inside!”

I knew there wasn’t anyone else home because Julie had
taken the kids to her mother’s house for the weekend. She’d told me that.

 I knew Grant was there alone.

I was sopping wet standing in the rain. He said something
that I didn’t hear and then lightning struck a tree right next to us and I
screamed.

“Anna Marie! Just come inside, for Christ’s sake!”

And I thought about what he’d said before about not being
alone with me and I thought about what I wanted and I prayed to every saint I
knew that the wind would not come up and blow me the wrong way.

It didn’t.

I looked at Stefia. She was holding her breath, waiting.
Waiting. Wanting to know the next piece. Wanting to know which way the wind
blew.

“James was born the following April,” I said. And I smiled.

Stefia exhaled.

“Did Helmer ever know?” she asked, chewing on the edge of
her thumbnail.

I shook my head.

“So he raised James as his own son?”

I nodded.

She flopped back in her chair.

“Oh my god, Anna Marie.”

“See, we all have secrets. All of us.”

“So,” she continued, “if your husband never knew…who did
you tell?”

I thought for a minute.

“As far as I know, Grant and I were the only people who
ever knew. And at first he didn’t even know. I think he just did the math and
figured it out. He never came right out and said it, but I knew from the look
in his eyes the first time he saw James. He knew.”

“And how did he take it?”

I looked at my empty coffee cup. I traced the edge of it
with my fingertip, thinking on that night during the storm when Grant had done
the same with his fingertip along my cheek and around my mouth and over the
point of my chin and down my neck…

“He was devastated. He was never the same after that. Never
the same after he saw James for the first time. I think it just…crushed him.”

“Wait a second. You’re telling me no one else knew about
this?” Stefia asked. “Why are you telling me about it?”

I kept tracing the coffee cup and thinking. And tracing.
And thinking.

“I guess I told you because in the grand scheme of things,
I don’t really know you.”

“I don’t get it,” she said. “That’s totally counterintuitive,
Anna Marie...”

“It’s not. I’ve only known you for eight weeks, so really
we’re not that close. You’re not close, so I can be honest,” I said. “Stefia,
the closer we get to people, the less we can share. Surely, you must know
that.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not true,” I said. “I told you we
all have secrets, Stefia. Every single one of us.”

I was still tracing the rim of the coffee mug.

Still tracing.

Still tracing.

**

The ninth week Stefia came to visit she walked in with her
thermos of coffee without saying a word. She poured two mugs, pushed one across
the table to me, and sat down in the chair opposite where I was. She took in a
deep breath. Then another.

Then she spoke.

 “My mother left home when I was thirteen. I hated that
day.”