Where You Once Belonged(41)

“Let’s go back, then. If that’s what you want.”

“Yes, I do.”

We walked a little farther.

“And this is what you want, isn’t it? You want to stay here and live with your father? And work at the library?”

“Yes. You wouldn’t like it. I know you wouldn’t, but I do. It suits me.”

“Well. I hope you’ll be happy.”

“Oh please. Don’t be that way.”

“I’m not. I do hope you’ll be happy. I mean that.”

“Because I tried,” she said. “I did try, don’t you think I did?”

“Yes. I think you did. I think we both did.”

“Thank you for saying so.” She touched my arm and then took her hand away.

“Yes. Well. I miss Toni. I can’t help but miss her.”

“I know,” Nora said. “I miss her too.”

Then we arrived at the apartment. We stood on the sidewalk in front of the iron fence.

“Do you want to come in?” she said.

“No. I don’t think so. You go ahead.”

“Thank you for dinner.”

“Good-bye,” I said.

She went on up the steps into the apartment. I stood for a moment longer watching as the lights were turned on inside. Then she pulled the curtains shut and I got into the car and drove home, out of Denver onto the High Plains toward Holt.

*

After that I was lonely for a while. I do not mean that I missed Nora herself very much, but it was the absence of there being anyone else at all in the house. I suppose after eighteen years, even if it is an unsuccessful marriage, you still miss the sound and presence of someone’s being there when you go home. I missed Toni horribly.

Finally I began to eat supper at one of the local restaurants to delay going home, and often I ate at the Holt Cafe. Jessie Burdette was still working there. She looked very attractive in her yellow blouse and dark slacks, with her brown hair pulled back away from her face in combs. She was thirty-one years old then. She was very competent as a waitress, and it was pleasant to see her and to talk to her briefly in the evenings.

So the fall passed in that way. I worked steadily at the newspaper office every day, editing and publishing the Holt Mercury, printing whatever was profitable and of interest locally without attempting to do anything that would take much effort, just the routine small-town-weekly-newspaper kind of thing. Then one evening at the Holt Cafe, after I had eaten supper, when Jessie brought the bill to the table I asked her if I could drive her home when she got off work. The evening had turned cool and I knew that she usually walked home.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I drove this time. I was late leaving the house so I decided to drive.”

“Oh. Well maybe another time.”

“Yes,” she said. “Why don’t you ask another time? But do you want anything else? Any dessert?”

“I guess not.”

She put the bill on the table and carried the dishes back to the kitchen. I finished my coffee. Well that was foolish, I thought. She doesn’t need you bothering her. I got up and walked over to the register to pay. Jessie was clearing another table. I waited for her, then she came back and rang up the bill and made change and I started to leave.

“But, Pat,” she said. “Wait. Would you like to come to the house? I could make some fresh coffee.”

“I would, if it’s all right.”

“I’ll be here another hour or so.”

“Okay.”

“Say about seven-thirty?”

“Okay.”

She laughed. “Sure that’s okay?”

I grinned back at her. “I’m real quick. I guess I’m out of practice.”

“I know you are,” she said.

I walked on outside. I thought of taking something to her, some cake or cookies to go with the coffee, but the bakery was closed and only the bars and liquor stores and the 7–11 were open now at this time in the evening. So I went back to the office and worked for an hour and then waited half an hour longer; then I locked up again and drove over to her apartment on Hawthorne Street.

TJ and Bobby were watching television in the front room when I walked up onto the front porch. I could see them through the window. I rang the doorbell and Jessie came to let me in. “This is Mr. Arbuckle,” she said. “He owns the newspaper.” Her sons looked at me. “Can’t you say hello?”

“Hello,” they said. Then they turned back to the television.

Jessie led me out to the kitchen. It was clean and bright, with space enough for a large table and four chairs. “Do you want to sit down?” she said. “I’ll get the coffee started.”

“You have a nice place here,” I said.

“It’s all right. Anyway, it’s not too expensive.”

I watched her making the coffee. She had changed clothes since coming home from the cafe; she was wearing a long-sleeved blue pullover now and faded Levi’s and her hair looked freshly combed. When the coffee began to perk she sat down across from me at the kitchen table.

I don’t know what we talked about that first evening—well yes, I do know. We talked about ourselves, about her childhood in Tulsa, her crippled mother and about her brothers and her father, and I told her a little of growing up in Holt. It was awkward at first. We drank several cups of coffee and at nine-thirty Jessie said, “Excuse me a minute,” and went into the front room. She told the boys they had to go to bed now. They turned the television off and came through the kitchen to enter the bathroom. I was still sitting at the table and as they passed through the room they looked suspiciously at me. When the bathroom door was shut I could hear them brushing their teeth and whispering to one another. Then they came out and stood beside the table while Jessie kissed them. “Go to bed now. And no funny stuff. Okay?”