Mahlon arrives with tackle and a lunch box. His boots and jeans are muddy. I think he has come from an unsuccessful fishing expedition at a nearby pond.
“Hi, Mahlon,” I say displaying a broad smile to emphasize the fact that I am desperate to be friends with him. “They didn’t bite today, did they?”
He merely looks at me with his smile. I can detect contempt in it. Somehow one is able to read different moods in the unchanging smile when one gets to know the man enough. He pretends that I don’t exist and walks into the house.
“I told you he hates you,” says Ruth gleefully. “He thinks you taking Orpah away from him.”
“You think so too, don’t you? You just said I am stealing your children away.”
“I think so too. But I’m a Christian woman; I don’t hate nobody.”
“I don’t understand this, Ruth. You always complained that Orpah did not get out enough…that she was not independent enough…that she sat in her room all day long playing the sitar and drawing pictures.”
She takes out bits of red slate from one of the pockets of her sweats and chews furiously. In no time her teeth are red like blood.
“She ain’t independent when she’s with you,” she says.
“You want her to be with Nathan?”
“’Cause he’s gonna make her a good husband.”
“And he won’t take her away?”
“Damn right he won’t. Orpah’s ours. No one must take her away.”
In August the different shades of green that dominate the Kilvert summer now sport patches of yellow. The leaves become smaller; you can see further into the woods. And Orpah and Mahlon don’t talk anymore. Although Ruth thinks it is my fault, I learn from Orpah after pleading with her to tell me what the problem is that I have nothing to do with it.
Mahlon discovered her deception about ghost orchids. He learned that she was creating them from found objects and sticking them on the sycamores for him to discover. And he was presenting them to her as gifts from the memories. They ended up in her collages. I don’t know what devil got into Orpah to confess that she was the creator of the ghost orchids in the first place. She expected Mahlon to take the whole thing as the big joke it was meant to be and was astonished when he exploded and accused her of betrayal. Not only had she betrayed him she had also pissed on the sanctity of the memories. He added that she would never have betrayed him if it were not for my evil presence in their lives.
I must admit that I am a bit skeptical about Mahlon’s anger here. How could a man who knows so much about trees not have known in the first place that ghost orchids don’t grow around these parts and the ones he discovered were artificial? Was he play-acting or did his memories close his eyes and his mind to the fact?
But his anger has lasted for a few days. At first Orpah did not take it seriously and thought that her father would come around and they would have their midnight memories again. On the third day she began to worry. She missed Mahlon. She missed the memories. She begged for his forgiveness but he ignored her. He goes about his life without even looking at her when they chance upon each other in the house.
I know how it is when Mahlon decides you don’t exist.
Orpah spends even more time in my RV than ever before. But she never brings the sitar with her even when I beg her to. I am just wondering what that sitar would do to my body if she played it in my RV. Would it have the same effect that it had on me when the sound leaked from her room or would it just be beautiful music as it was at the bluegrass festival in Huntington, West Virginia? It did not have any adverse physical effect on me that night. I guess I have no way of knowing as long as she won’t play it here.
But what has happened over the days, even without the aid of the sitar, is that we have eased each other into intimacy. The first night she spent at the RV was difficult. She was all bravado, claiming great experience, and I was a whimpering fool. But soon she became the whimpering one. I have a tongue that knows its way around the strategic parts of bodies, thanks to Noria’s lessons. And her memory did intrude just at that time. Noria. She won’t rest until she is mourned.
It was different with Noria. She had been experienced by many men before me and that made her even more desirable. Orpah, on the other hand, was not only an emotional virgin. She was a virgin virgin. And this discovery did not make our first real night together particularly memorable.
I remember Obed telling me once: “Orpah, she never messed with nobody. Whenever some teenager had gotten knocked up my mama fear it was gonna happen to Orpah. She took her to the doc for a diaphragm. To Orpah that was an insult ’cause she didn’t plan to be doing nothing with boys.”
Tonight is the fourth night and our bodies are beginning to find each other. Me and Orpah are screaming like there is no tomorrow.
Whenever Obed honors us with a visit he has that idiotic facial expression of a lovestruck man. He thanks me all the time because he credits me for the mediation that brought him together with Beth Eddy. He thinks I am a great seer who has changed his path in life. I tell him that he should thank the ghost of Nicodemus instead.
I don’t know how many times I have suggested to him to invite Beth Eddy for dinner at his home so that she may meet his parents. He always says it is a good idea, but for later. Things are a bit awkward at the moment. He does not want Ruth to embarrass him in front of the love of his life. All in good time he will gather enough courage to introduce the lady to Ruth and Mahlon. And of course to Orpah.
The foolish expression is even more pronounced today when he finds me sewing at the Center. I tease him that he is a real lover man now; tender, unguarded and vulnerable. He doesn’t get my meaning; or pretends not to. Instead he laughs at the “ugly” quilt I am stitching together. I am trying to translate three of Orpah’s designs into a single quilt. The ghost trees are made with materials from old burlap sacks. I am attaching on the quilt strings and all sorts of found objects such as baby sneakers, an old plastic wallet and some glistening trinkets from the junk on the porch with the donated clothes.
Irene smiles and nods in agreement. She too despises string art quilts, as she calls them. But of course she is not as rabid as Ruth in opposing them. She does not mind if I create them at the Center using her machine, although she thinks it is a pity that I am spending so much valuable time doing this sort of hideous work when I have not yet mastered the traditional quilt.
“Oh, yeah,” she says to Obed, “anything goes with them string art quilts.”
Obed says he wants to discuss some private matter with me, so I pack my stuff and store it away in a chest. We go out. He says he heard from Ruth that she has given me permission to locate his grandmother’s grave. I didn’t know she had given me her blessing because the day I was there we didn’t come to any conclusion.
“Why you wanna do that, man? Why you guys don’t wanna let sleeping dogs sleep?” he asks.
“Your grandmother is not a dog, Obed. She died a lonely death at a mental home. She was never mourned. Your folks want to build an engraved tombstone or maybe have a plaque. I want to mourn your grandmother. I believe that will restore her dignity.”
We are slowly walking toward my RV. I can see Nathan’s Chevy Blazer parked at Ruth’s.
“You came with Nathan?” I ask Obed.
“Yep. He bring me from Athens.”
Obed says although he thinks the whole idea is stupid he can tell me exactly how to find his grandmother’s grave.
“If you knew all along why didn’t you find it?” I ask.