“Rya?”
She looked at him.
“Do you like Jenny?”
She grinned. “Oh, very much.”
For seven years, since Mark was two and Rya four, the Annendales had been taking their summer vacation in the mountains above Black River. Paul wanted to communicate to his children his own love of wild places and wild things. During these four- and six-week vacations, he educated them in the ways of nature so that they might know the satisfaction of being in harmony with it. This was a joyous education, and they looked forward to each outing.
The year that Annie died, he almost canceled the trip. At first it had seemed to him that going without her would only make their loss more evident. Rya had convinced him otherwise. “It’s like Mommy is still in this house,” Rya had said. “When I go from one room to another, I expect to find her there, all pale and drawn like she was near the end. If we go camping up beyond Black River, I guess maybe I’ll expect to see her in the woods too, but at least I won’t expect to see her pale and drawn. When we went to Black River, she was so pretty and healthy. And she was always so happy when we were out in the forest.” Because of Rya, they took their vacation as usual that year, and it proved to be the best thing they could have done.
The first year that he and Annie took the children to Black River, they bought their dry goods and supplies at Edison’s General Store. Mark and Rya had fallen in love with Sam Edison the day they met him. Annie and Paul came under his spell nearly as quickly. By the end of their four-week vacation, they had come down from the mountain twice to have dinner at Edison’s, and when they left for home they had promised to keep in touch with an occasional letter. The following year, Sam told them that they were not to go up into the mountains to set up camp after the long tiring drive from Boston. Instead, he insisted they spend the night at his place and get a fresh start in the morning. That first-night stop-over had become their yearly routine. By now Sam was like a grandfather to Rya and Mark. For the past two years, Paul had brought the children north to spend Christmas week at Edison’s.
Paul had met Jenny Edison just last year. Of course, Sam had mentioned his daughter many times. She had gone to Columbia and majored in music. In her senior year she married a musician and moved to California where he was playing in a band. But after more than seven years, the marriage had turned sour, and she had come home to get her wits about her and to decide what she wanted to do next. As proud a father as he had been, Sam had never shown pictures of her. That was not his style. On his first day in Black River last year, walking into Edison’s where she was waiting on children at the candy counter — and catching sight of her — Paul had for a moment been unable to get his breath.
It happened that quickly between them. Not love at first sight. Something more fundamental than love. Something more basic that had to come first, before love could develop. Instinctively, intuitively, even though he had been certain there could be no one after Annie, he had known that she was right for him. Jenny felt the attraction too, powerfully, immediately — but almost unwillingly.
If he had told all of this to Rya, she would have said, “So why aren’t you married?” If life were only that simple…
After dinner, while Sam and the children washed the dishes, Paul and Jenny retired to the den. They propped their feet up on an antique woodcarver’s bench, and he put his arm around her shoulder. Their conversation had been free and easy at the table, but now it was stilted. She was hard and angular under his arm, tense. Twice, he leaned over and kissed her gently on the corner of the mouth, but she remained stiff and cool. He decided that she was inhibited by the possibility that Rya or Mark or her father might walk into the room at any moment, and he suggested they take a drive.
“I don’t know…”
He stood up. “Come on. Some fresh night air will be good for you.”
Outside, the night was chilly. As they got in the car, she said, “We almost need the heater.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Just snuggle up and share body heat.” He grinned at her. “Where to?”
“I know a quiet little bar in Bexford.”
“I thought we were staying out of public places?”
“They don’t have the flu in Bexford,” she said.
“They don’t? It’s only thirty miles down the road.”
She shrugged. “That’s just one of the curiosities of this plague. ”
He put the car in gear and drove out into the street. “So be it. A quiet little bar in Bexford.”
She found an all-night Canadian radio station playing American swing music from the 1940s. “No more talk for a while,” she said. She sat close to him with her head against his shoulder.
The drive from Black River to Bexford was a pleasant one. The narrow black-top road rose and fell and twisted gracefully through the lightless, leafy countryside. For miles at a time, trees arched across the roadway, forming a tunnel of cool night air. After a while, in spite of the Benny Goodman music, Paul felt that they were the only two people in the world — and that was a surprisingly agreeable thought.
She was even lovelier than the mountain night, and as mysterious in her silence as some of the deep, unsettled northern hollows through which they passed. For such a slender woman, she had great presence. She took up very little space on the seat, and yet she seemed to dominate the car and overwhelm him. Her eyes, so large and dark, were closed, yet he felt as if she were watching him. Her face — too beautiful to appear in Vogue: she would have made the other models in the magazine look like horses — was in repose. Her full lips were slightly parted as she sang softly with the music; and this bit of animation, this parting of the lips had more sensual impact than a heavy-eyed, full-faced leer from Elizabeth Taylor. As she leaned against him, her dark hair fanned across his shoulder, and her scent — clean and soapy — rose to him.
In Bexford, he parked across the street from the tavern. She switched off the radio and kissed him once, quickly, as a sister might. “You’re a nice man.”
“What did I do?”
“I didn’t want to talk, and you didn’t make me.”
“It wasn’t any hardship,” he said. “You and me… we communicate with silence as well as with words. Hadn’t you noticed?”
She smiled. “I’ve noticed.”
“But maybe you don’t put enough value on that. Not as much as you should.”
“I put a great deal of value on it,” she said.
“Jenny, what we have is—”
She put one hand on his lips. “I didn’t mean for the conversation to take such a serious turn,” she said.
“But I think we should talk seriously. We’re long overdue for that.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about us, not seriously. And because you’re such a nice man, you’re going to do what I want. ” She kissed him again, opened her door, and got out of the car.
The tavern was a warm, cozy place. There was a rustic bar along the left-hand wall, about fifteen tables in the center of the room, and a row of maroon leatherette booths along the right wall. The shelves behind the bar were lit with soft blue bulbs. Each of the tables in the center of the room held a tall candle in a red glass lantern, and an imitation stained-glass Tiffany lamp hung over each of the booths. The jukebox was playing a soulful country ballad by Charlie Rich. The bartender, a heavyset man with a walrus mustache, joked continuously with the customers. Without trying for it, without being aware of it, he sounded like W. C. Fields. There were four men at the bar, half a dozen couples at the tables, and other couples in the booths. The last booth was open, and they took it.
When they had ordered and received their drinks from a perky red-headed waitress — Scotch for him and a dry vodka martini for her — Paul said, “Why don’t you come up and spend a few days with us at camp? We have an extra sleeping bag.”