She took a breath and turned back to him. “What are you reading?”
He held it up. “Dad read it to me once when I was sick. It took me forever to find it.” It was held together by a rubber band. The red-eyed horse rearing, the man in the duster, the coiled snake, the beautiful woman wrapped in turquoise ruffles. He closed the book and set it aside.
“Are you even leaving your room? Are you sick?”
“I’m fine.”
“How was class today?”
He shrugged.
“Gordon.” His eyes were glassy, and his teeth looked large — or like there were more of them than she’d remembered. Out in the hall a door opened, and the sound of music on a stereo swelled and faded as the same door slammed shut. “There’s a city out there. Restaurants. Museums. A great big library. Two of them. Trees. Beautiful houses. Good people. Books to read. Good teachers. Kind people. Have you seen any of this? No. You don’t want to see any of it.”
“I guess you’ve got some of that right.”
“You’re not going to class,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“I looked for you today.”
“Why?”
“Because, stupid.”
Outside in the hallway, the door opened again and the music flared to life.
“Gordon. Listen. It’s ‘Red River Valley.’ What are the chances? Someone else is a throwback, too.” She suddenly felt bright, felt the broad sun of home across her face and shoulders and she reached for his hand. “Come on, it’s a sign. Let’s dance.”
“I don’t want to dance.”
“Come on, it’s a sign!”
“Stop.”
“Dance with me.”
He pulled his hand away. “Leigh,” he said sharply. “Please.”
She sat and they were still, not talking, for a full minute.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not being the best kind of man right now.” He set his hands flat on his knees. “I’m not the best man right now.”
“You don’t have to say it twice.”
“Please be patient.”
“You already said.”
He shook his head. “You go off so quickly,” he said softly. He looked up at her. “You went off so quickly.”
She blushed and turned away. A moment later she put her hand on the side of his face, and brought her lips to his.
He pulled his face away.
Leigh crossed her arms and leaned back. “Something’s wrong with you.”
“Is it.”
“I think you need help.”
He said nothing.
“Like a counselor.”
Nothing.
“I mean, for one, your parents.” She waited.
He nodded once.
“And losing the shop. Moving away from home.”
“I’m not losing the shop.”
“OK.”
“And I’ll go back.”
“Gordon.”
They both pictured Lions then. The pigweed, foxtail, purslane, and countless unstoppable weeds in a spiny brown hide stretching from their front doors to the ditch on the side of the dusty road. All the stock barns collapsed in the weeds, rusted coils of pasture fences unspooled across the dirt. Jefferson Street, empty. Jorgensen’s place, empty — the two-story white house that had always been lit up.
“Then won’t you talk to someone?”
“You mean a psychologist.”
“It comes with the tuition.”
She watched him. He must have been imagining what he’d say to such a person. That he’d discovered or been given a new job in life, one he neither wanted nor didn’t want, but which he was compelled to perform.
“And if you don’t do it,” this doctor would ask, “what happens?”
“I was born to do it.”
“And you recently lost your father?”
“Yes, sir.”
The doctor would nod at that. Jot something down. Interesting, he might think.
To ignore this task his father gave him on his deathbed, Gordon would explain to the counselor, would be to live a lie. To do it, however, would be to turn his back on everyone and everything he once thought was his life.
“A very pleasant life,” Gordon would explain. “That was supposed to include Leigh. And clean and simple rooms in a clean and simple house in a clean and simple town.”
“That doesn’t sound so indulgent.”
“I didn’t say I’d be turning my back on indulgence. I’d be turning my back on a certain kind of life. A very good kind of life.”
“Does she know about this — job — of yours?”
“She knew my father.”
“But you haven’t spoken of it?”
“Not explicitly.”
“Why not?”
“She might think I was crazy.”
“She thought your father was?”
“A lot of people did.”
“Do you think,” the doctor would ask slowly, “that I think you’re crazy?”
“Yes.”
“Does thinking so change your feelings about this — task, as you call it?”
“No.”
Then Gordon would describe the hut where the wounded man lived, the alternative to the pleasant, airy, sunny home he might have shared with Leigh.
“It’s a way to feel close to your father?”
“I guess.”
And this doctor would nod, and refer to his notes, and respond in kind with a prescription.
In Gordon’s dorm room, Leigh sat forward in the extra chair and closed her eyes, then suddenly stood up. Somewhere in the distance the sound of a crackling motorcycle rose in the late summer sky.
“Stay here with me,” he said.
“I need some air.”
“I know we’ve been having a hard time,” he said. “Leigh, look at me.”
“You won’t tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s all falling apart,” he said.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
He shook his head. “What do you want me to say?”
“I mean what is this?” She gestured at his chair, the afghan. The room he’d created.
“I thought we could get a fresh start again out here,” he said.
She looked around his room in disbelief. “You did?”
“I’m talking about you and me. I thought it could be like it was at home again. That we could start over from how it was, before.”
“No, Gordon. That would be like starting over from a negative number. Do you understand? I don’t want things to be like they were at home.”
“You don’t.”
“For God’s sakes no. Why did I come here?” She flung her hand at the shade he’d pulled down over one window and knocked it sideways. As it swung slowly still, it dawned on her. “You only came to try to lure me back.”
He shook his head. “No, Leigh.”
“That’s exactly what this is. You were never going to stay.”
“Listen.”
“You were going to lure me back.” She said it this time quietly, as if to herself.
Gordon fixed his eyes on the line where the wall met the carpet.
“I am not going back in any way, shape, or form.”
“I just need a little time there. Six months. A year.”
“I don’t want to be there and I don’t want things to be like they were there and I don’t want to be any place like it. Not for a day and definitely not for a year.”
“OK, Leigh.”
“I’m not going to be like your mother.”
“OK.”
“Good.” Her breath was shallow and her heart raced high in her chest. “I’m going now.”
“OK.”
She went from his dorm into town to meet her roommate and a few other new friends at a café where you could sometimes convince them to sell you a glass of beer. There was a quartet of young men from the college playing from the Great American Songbook, and she and her friends took up the ragged love seat and armchairs in a circle around a gas fireplace. The evening was just cool enough for it. Someone, somehow, procured a bottle of wine, and they filled their empty coffee cups and chatted and listened to the music. But even in his absence Gordon managed to ruin the night. When the wine was gone and the young men were packing up their instruments, she crossed campus. It was well after midnight, and quiet, just the sound now and then of a lone car on the main strip and the sprinklers ticking over the blue lawns and early autumn flowers. She followed the sidewalk toward Gordon’s dorm.