What Strange Creatures (3 page)

When he met Kim a few months ago, he stopped coming around so much. I was happy for him. And I didn’t need so much company after all. I had a dissertation to worry about, and my time was running out.

W
e all went to Wiley’s together in Jeff’s black Buick—one of the few reliable things in his life. Supposedly the car was some kind of collector’s model, and he took better care of it than he did of himself.

While Jeff drove, Kim brushed her hair and asked me about Whitlock’s Candles.

“I
love
their candles,” she told me. “Especially the ones that smell like laundry and air and stuff.”

“The Fresh line?” We didn’t have a scent that smelled like
air
per se. “Like Late-Summer Rain and Morning Linen?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“I named Late-Summer Rain.”

I didn’t say anything about Morning Linen. I’d argued that linen doesn’t always smell good in the morning but had lost to the fragrance team, who’d been proud of the name.

“
Really?
Oh my God, that’s cool. What a great job.”

I couldn’t tell if Kim’s admiration was real. She didn’t stop brushing her hair as she spoke. It was a rich brown-black, with scarlet highlights that were surely artificial. They suited her well, though, and matched her lipstick color. The light freckles dusted across her cheekbones gave her an impish quality that men surely found irresistible. One thing I liked about her was that her makeup wasn’t always perfect. Each time I saw her—and I’d seen her only a handful of times, admittedly—something always seemed hastily applied. There would be a blip in her lipstick or maybe a patch of foundation below the ear not fully blended in. Today one eye’s mascara was thicker than the other. Kind of a
Clockwork Orange
effect.

“How’d you get such an awesome job?” Kim asked.

“I don’t know if it’s awesome. But yeah, I’m lucky to have it. My friend Tish . . . her dad owns the company. He started it when we were kids. Richard Whitlock.”

“Oh. Really? I thought Whitlock’s Candles had been around, like, a hundred years or something.”

“They want you to think that. It’s all in the marketing. ‘Whitlock’s’ sounds so Colonial, doesn’t it? But Richard started the company in the eighties. It had about a hundred stores by the late nineties. Didn’t you know Richard is Jeff’s landlord, too?”

“You didn’t tell me that, babe.” Kim shoved her hairbrush into her purse.

“Whitlock’s got a lot of real-estate investments around town.”

I saw Jeff frown in the rearview mirror. He was watching me swallow a gag at the “babe.”

“Theresa’s being modest,” Jeff said. “She always mentions that she knew Mr. Whitlock growing up. But he wouldn’t ever have hired her if she weren’t a really good writer.”

I rolled my eyes. “I used to help Tish with her homework. She couldn’t diagram sentences, and neither could he. In his eyes it made me some kind of a genius.”

“Old impressions die hard, I guess.” Kim glanced out the window. “You didn’t know it then, but it got you a job. That works.”

“Yes,” I said, trying to follow her gaze. We were stopped at a light. She was looking upward, at the top of a telephone pole or the clear sky behind it. “It does work. That’s true.”

Kim turned back to me. “What does that mean, by the way? Diagram a sentence?”

Jeff wouldn’t let me answer. “It’s something from the deep past,” he said, “that you don’t really need to know about. Like bloodletting. Like a card catalog.”

“Somewhere in between those two,” I said. “Right.”

“You guys are cute,” said Kim, and then she looked out the window again. She said it like she felt sorry for us.

We hung out at the bar while we waited for our table. Just as Kim and I were settling onto our barstools, Jeff spotted someone he knew and floated off with his oatmeal stout.

“Do you know Nathan?” asked Kim, indicating the dark-haired bartender working in front of the elegantly backlit wall of fancy booze bottles. “Have I ever mentioned him to you before?”

“No,” I said.

“I think you’d like him.”

I gazed at the Asian-character tattoo on the back of Nathan’s neck. “Really? What makes you say that?”

“Well, it’s not any one thing. But I think you’d like his attitude. He’s laid back. And he’s, like, sort of a radical.”

As Nathan turned to give someone a beer, I noticed his sharp profile. He had a nice strong nose, which I liked. I didn’t care much for the five-o’clock shadow. It was well manicured—a deliberate shadow, to be sure. But facial hair generally makes me nervous.

“And he loves animals, like you,” Kim said, leaving the “radical” part unexplained.

“Oh, really?”

“And he’s into, like, spiritual stuff. I bet he’d really be interested in that nun lady you’re doing your thesis on.”

Marge was no nun, but I didn’t feel like getting into it with Kim. I didn’t want to sound like a know-it-all. I’d probably already come across braggy about the candles.

“Maybe I ought to try to fix you guys up.”

I sipped my wine and didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure if she was serious.

“I would’ve asked
him
to take Wayne this weekend. But he’s got this snake, and that makes me nervous.”

“Oh? A snake?”
Polite smile, Theresa. Remember that Jeff really digs her.

“Yeah. He’s got a really old greyhound, a couple of canaries, and a ball python. His dog is bigger, but I’d worry the snake would get out of his cage and think Wayne was food.”

“A python? Huh.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty cool. It’s all white and yellow, kind of pretty in a way. Jeff and I went over to his place a few weeks ago. He took it out of its cage and showed it to us. He really snuggles with that thing. Loves it as much as his other pets.”

I took a longer drink from my wineglass. I wondered how I could seem that eccentric to Kim—that a dude with a python felt like a good match. Maybe it was all the flannel I’d been wearing lately.

“You don’t need to fix us up, Kim.”

She frowned. “No?”

“Deadly reptiles. That’s a deal breaker for me.”

Kim let out a big, fake-sounding laugh. Then she said nothing—just sipped from her cocktail straw.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“I’m surprised to hear you say the term ‘deal breaker,’ I guess.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve got a couple, too. I understand.”

She put her hand on my arm. I think my face tightened slightly, because she pulled it away quickly.

“For example?” I said, trying to recover by expressing a bit of interest.

Kim pawed around in her plaid leather handbag for a moment and came up with a cell phone. “For example, being an asshole,” she said, tapping at the phone but trying to look casual about it.

These young folks irritate me, always looking at their phones. It annoys me in a fist-shaking, “get off my lawn” kind of way.

“Isn’t that a deal breaker for everyone?” I asked.

“Not in my experience.”

“And it’s not something you know going in,” I said. “Like someone owning a python, for example. The python’s there from the beginning, if you choose to deal with it. An asshole, if he has any intelligence at all, hides it at the start. Then slowly reveals himself. After you move in, say.”

Kim slid the phone onto her lap and covered it with her palm. I wondered if this was the new phone etiquette, like covering your mouth when you cough. “Some assholes. There are assholes of every kind out there, Theresa.”

I forced a smile. Funny how this young thing was trying to school me about assholes.

“But the kind you’re talking about . . . was that what Brendan was?”

I took a breath, surprised to hear my ex-husband’s name come out of this young thing’s mouth. She and Jeff had clearly discussed him, and Kim was trying for an intimacy I wasn’t interested in having with one of Jeff’s girlfriends. Not at this stage anyway. Women always seemed attracted to Jeff’s very gentle heart for a few short months—before they liked to break it. If Kim stuck with Jeff a couple of years, boosted his confidence, encouraged him to get a job worthy of his talents, made him healthy breakfasts, and fattened him up a bit, then maybe. But not until then. And I wasn’t interested in pretending in the meantime.

“No,” I said. “He wasn’t an asshole. It was a complicated situation.”

Kim’s gaze eased down to her Cosmopolitan glass for a moment. “Okay,” she said, then took a sip.

We both watched Nathan move behind the bar. He was handling a bottle of Grey Goose in a ridiculously sexy fashion, sliding his left hand up the length of it as he tipped it and poured with his right.

“You know what I like about your brother, Theresa?” Kim asked.

“No,” I said, then realized it sounded colder than I intended. “What?”

“I mean, aside from the fact that the first time we went out, he made a rose for me from the cocktail napkin.”

I smiled. Jeff’s full of million-dollar book ideas. Most recently he’d talked about a series of gluten-free mysteries. Before that was
How to Win Chicks with Origami.

“The thing is . . . he’s as good as he seems.”

“Good?” I said.

“As kind as he seems. No more, no less. I realized while you were talking about the type that slowly reveals himself. That’s not Jeff at all. He’s as good as he seems.” Kim hesitated and twiddled her cocktail straw. “Isn’t he?”

I couldn’t tell if she was trying to kiss up by talking up my brother—or really asking for my assurance that she was with a good guy. Naïve either way.

“In my experience,” I answered.

W
hen Jeff called to tell me he was on his way with Wayne, I put Boober in my bedroom and let out the two outdoor cats. A few minutes later, I watched as Jeff let Wayne out of the backseat of his car. Wayne was velvety brown and even fatter than I expected, but there was an unexpected lightness to his movement as he pranced up the driveway. His tongue hung out casually to one side, and he glanced amiably at my brother a few times as they walked.

Jeff took a little detour into the side yard to pick up a golf ball and stuff it into his jacket pocket. He used to be more consistent about collecting the stray balls and taking them to the pro shop for some extra cash. Lately he’d been remiss. There weren’t too many piled up, though, since it was the end of the season.

“Hi, guys,” I said as they entered the kitchen. I stooped down. “Are you Wayne?”

The puggle looked at Jeff.

“He really liked the drive,” Jeff said. “He likes the car.”

Wayne tilted his head, listening to Jeff.

“Didn’t you?” Jeff deposited a brown bag on the kitchen counter. “Here’s his food. It’s a special formula for fatties. He’s got a thyroid problem.”

Wayne blinked, repositioned his paws, and cocked his head even farther to the side.

“I’ll be right back. I’ve got his little bed in the car, too.”

Wayne lowered his head to his paws and glanced from me to Jeff’s retreating figure and back to me again, his forehead wrinkling, his bitty black eyebrows worrying up and down.

While Jeff went back out to the car, I knelt next to Wayne and held my hand out so he could sniff it. Then I patted him on his soft head.

“You don’t seem like a Wayne,” I said.

Wayne made a deep groaning noise and lifted his head again.

“Or maybe you do,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be presumptuous. I don’t really know you yet.”

Jeff returned with a plaid, fleece-lined dog bed—a very expensive-looking item that made me feel like a second-rate pet owner.

“I’d stay to help him settle in,” Jeff said, “but Kim and I are both sort of in a rush.”

“Get out of here, then,” I said. “We’ll be fine.”

He did as instructed—even quicker than I expected. He was out of my driveway in about thirty seconds. Jeff rarely moves so fast, so I wondered what made my brother so eager to escape.

“Won’t we?” I said to Wayne.

Wayne lifted his head, sniffed the air, and resignedly closed his eyes.

I
t was a sultry night in June when Margery Kempe told her husband she’d rather watch his beheading than sleep with him anymore. She told him so in response to a hypothetical question he asked her while they walked home from a trip together. (If a man came with a sword and was going to lop off my head unless I made love to you like I used to, would you let him do it, or would you sleep with me?) When John Kempe heard his wife’s honest response, he declared: “
Ye arn no good wyfe.”

In my final year with Brendan, those words echoed in my head quite often. That was the point when I ceased to find that passage amusing. I’d returned to this conversation between Marge and John many times over the years, trying to decide what I thought of it.

And I was reading it yet again while I waited for Jeff or Kim to come pick up Wayne.

Despite John’s chagrin, it was on that very same trip that Marge finally convinced him to allow her to be celibate—after a few years of haggling. They sat under a cross and made a deal. She’d pay off some of his debts (she was from a wealthier family than he was) and agree to eat with him on Friday nights (which she’d recently stopped doing, as one of her many displays of faith), and he’d quit trying to get her into the sack. It was a pretty good deal for the times. That is, for a woman with fourteen children who was ready for some spiritual Me Time.

I looked at the clock. It was getting late, and still no word from Jeff.

My time with Wayne had gone more smoothly than I anticipated. I had Boober and Wayne take turns in the guest bedroom, making sure to give the sequestered dog plenty of attention.

I tried Jeff’s number. No answer. I didn’t know Kim’s.

It was awfully quiet in my bedroom, so I went to check on Wayne. When I opened the door, I found him wrestling something with his paws. Seeing me, he stopped and cocked his head.

“What’ve you got there, boy?” I said.

It was an old leather journal of mine, in which I’d never written a word—a gift from Brendan years ago. I wasn’t sure where Wayne could’ve found it.

The journal was made of a beautiful wine-colored leather. (“It’s cruelty-free leather,” Brendan had told me when I opened it. I still don’t know what that means.) It had a lovely oak tree carved into the front, and the description inside said it was a “Tree of Life.”