No Dark Valley (10 page)

As she had expected, the trip to Georgia for her grandmother's funeral had indeed proved to be the breaking point for her. By the time they had arrived home that night, she had loathed the sound of Al's voice. She had avoided him now for two weeks, but when he had called and invited her over for tonight, she knew she shouldn't put it off any longer.

She was only mildly concerned about
how
she would tell him. She was familiar enough with the process by now to know that you didn't have to plan out every detail. The words always came somehow, sometimes more easily and gently than other times, but once a relationship had progressed to this fork in the road, she usually had very little concern for sparing the man's feelings. She wanted only one thing: out. And by now she was good at making it very clear and doing so quickly.

But first dinner had to be gotten out of the way. Besides fancying himself a proficient jazz saxophonist, Al also claimed to be a gourmet cook, and occasionally on weekends he liked to “do dinner,” as he called it. “Come over tonight,” he'd say to Celia on the phone, “and I'll do dinner.” He never wanted her help, though in Celia's opinion the final results almost always showed that he could have used it. She had to give him credit for trying, though, and sometimes he actually pulled off a good meal.

Tonight the main dish was something he called Steak Charlotta, a recipe he'd seen in
Chef's Pride
. Evidently he had tried to get by with a cheaper cut of meat, however, hoping to disguise it by slow cooking it to the point of fork tenderness. He had run short of time, though, and he had called Celia at five to tell her to come at seven instead of six, and then when she did arrive, he delayed the dinner further by serving an appetizer he had obviously thrown together in haste. He was a little out of sorts, Celia could tell, though he tried to cover it up with a loud cheerful stream of random chatter.

It was almost eight o'clock when they finally sat down to the table, having finished the Pickle Fan appetizer, which was a mixture of cream cheese and horseradish spread over pieces of melba toast and garnished with a sweet gherkin cut lengthwise and fanned across the top. Celia had nibbled around the edges of one while Al had devoured four of them in four bites, a single swift bite per Pickle Fan. Celia had finally managed to wrap the remains of hers in her paper napkin and deposit it in the trash while Al went into the kitchen to check on the main course.

They were just sitting down to eat their Steak Charlotta, along with Corn Sesame Stir-Fry and Almond Supreme Green Bean Casserole, when the doorbell rang. “That reminds me, I forgot the rolls in the oven,” he said, not even glancing at the door. The doorbell rang again, twice. He brought back the rolls—nice ones but clearly store-bought. He wasn't much for baking his own bread, though he had tried it upon occasion with less than satisfactory results.

From where she was sitting, Celia couldn't see who was at the door, though she knew whoever it was could no doubt see the lights on inside, could maybe even step to the side a little and see the two of them through the window, sitting at the table at one end of Al's living room. It was dark outside by now, but the porch light, which had been turned on when she arrived, was still on, which was probably the reason the person out there continued to ring the doorbell, taking the light as an invitation.

Al was taking great pains with his roll, using about three times more butter than he really needed. The doorbell rang again, and a voice called out, “Anybody home in there?” The screen door opened, and they heard several loud knocks on the door, followed by two more rings of the doorbell. Al calmly set down his knife, broke off half of his roll, and began to eat it.

“Yoo-hoo!” the voice said. It was a deep phlegmy voice but clearly a woman's. The doorbell rang again.

“Whoever it is, I don't think she's going away,” Celia said.

He shrugged and picked up his fork. “I don't care if she stands out there all night. I don't answer the phone or the doorbell during meals.” He took an enormous bite of green beans.

She already knew this, of course. Al allowed nothing to interfere with his eating. She had been sitting right here at this same table only a month ago when an ambulance had pulled into the driveway next door, siren wailing and lights flashing. They had been eating BLTs and cream of broccoli soup that Al had made, but he hadn't budged from his chair.

When Celia had gone to the door and thrown it open, he hadn't even looked up from his bowl. She had gone outside to see the next-door neighbor borne out the front door on a stretcher and had learned from his wife that he had fallen off a ladder trying to hang a mirror above the fireplace. By the time Celia had returned to the table, Al had already refilled his soup bowl. Between bites he had nodded toward the house next door and said slurpily, “So what's going on?”

Finally the doorbell quit ringing, and they heard the slow heavy sound of someone retreating down the front steps. Celia couldn't help wondering who it was. Probably somebody selling something for a booster club or soliciting donations for cancer research. She picked up her knife to cut a piece of her meat. She had to work at it, and as she did, Al glanced at her and sighed. He was not at all happy about the Steak Charlotta. He started cutting his own meat with exaggerated sawing motions, his lips pressed together tightly.

“How about steak knives?” Celia suggested. “After all, it
is
steak.”

“The recipe said it would fall apart,” he said testily. “I hate a recipe that raises your hopes like that.”

“It would probably be fine if you could cook it another couple of hours.”

“But we're eating
now
,” Al said. “I want it ready
right now
, not in another couple of hours. I followed every step of the stupid recipe.” It struck Celia with great force that marrying a man like Al would come down to conversations like this one. Their lives would revolve around meals; their moods would be determined by them. She looked at Al and suddenly thought of Mr. Ed, the horse on television reruns, content in his warm stable with plenty of oats and hay. She watched Al stab a bite of his steak and put it into his mouth almost angrily. She had never before noticed the rather horsey way he chewed his food, working his jaws sideways and showing a little too much gum, and without meaning to she laughed right out loud.

Al kept chewing, of course, but frowned at her. “What's so funny?”

“Oh, nothing really. I just remembered this joke I heard.”

“Oh yeah?” He took a bite of his corn, followed by another one of green beans, then glared distrustfully at Celia. “What joke?”

“This horse goes into a bar and sits down,” Celia said. “The bartender comes over and says, ‘Hey, why the long face?'” She paused, then laughed again and shrugged. “Oh well, it seemed funny at the time.”

Al grunted and continued to chew. A buzzer went off in the kitchen. “That's the dessert,” he said. He took the rest of his roll with him and left the table again.

From the small dining area where she sat, Celia turned her eyes to Al's living room, took in the bachelor look of it all—the stacks of magazines and books by the lumpy recliner, the remote control resting on its padded arm, the blue-and-brown plaid sofa, the pale sheers drooping at the large front window, a cheap metal floor lamp with a crooked shade, the bare walls. She shuddered to think of the redecorating a woman would have to do here. Or the decorating—you could hardly call it redecorating when it looked like this.

Of course, in Al's defense, he hadn't lived here very long. He had bought the house and moved in only two months ago, after he had decided to keep his job at the bank and stay in the area awhile. Remembering the apartment he had moved from, however, Celia was fairly sure his house was going to look exactly this same way years from now. Al's domestic interests stopped at cooking.

For a moment she tried to imagine what it would be like to move in here as Mrs. Al Halston, and the thought was so horrible that she actually stuck out her tongue and made a face. She wished more than anything they were done with the meal so she could make her speech to Al, dump his stuff out of her trunk, and get home to her own apartment, full of good furniture and art.

Al came out of the kitchen whistling, which Celia translated as a sign that the dessert had turned out well.

“Save some room for Berry Berry Buckle,” he said, seating himself again and taking up his fork. And though she hadn't asked, he began explaining the dessert to her. “It's kind of a cross between a cobbler and a cake,” he said, “and you use three kinds of berries—raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. I found the recipe in this old book that . . .”

As he talked on, it occurred to Celia that this had become something of a pattern, these pre-breakup dinners. She wondered how many she had sat through by now, picking at her food until enough time had passed and she could spring the news. It always seemed to work out that way, not that she planned it or anything, not as if she thought,
Well, I'll get one more good meal out of him and then split
.

She remembered the last guy, Ward, who used to work at the Derby
Daily News
before he moved over to Greenville to work for a bigger paper. She had first met him when she had gone to the Derby newspaper office to talk to the editor about a freelance article she had agreed to do. Ward had introduced himself as the new sports writer, although she discovered later that most of his work in the office consisted of other things besides covering sports. He took care of the billings, for one, and did obituaries for another, also worked with ads and even cleaned the bathroom in back. Sports writing was his first love, though, and his speech was peppered with sports analogies. In fact, this was the thing about Ward that, like Al's obsession with food, Celia had grown to detest.

If he was late because he got tied up with a project at work, for example, Ward couldn't give the real reason. Instead, he'd have to say something like “Wow, it took forever to chip my way out of that bunker” or “Sorry, the game went into overtime.” If he was optimistic about something, he might say, “Hey, first and goal, on the two” or “Green flag and no pit stops.” A tense situation might elicit “Whoa, sudden death shootout.” When Celia had canceled a date one time, he had said, “No problem, we'll just roll out the tarp and take a rain delay.”

Their last night together had been at a small restaurant trying hard to be trendy in downtown Greenville, a place called Ziggy's that used to be a shoe repair shop. When she had told him afterward that she didn't want to see him anymore, he had said, “Ejecting me from the game, huh? Sending me to the old locker room?” She had felt an immense wash of relief at that moment, knowing she wouldn't have to put up with him anymore. She had taken a deep breath, looked at him without flinching, and said, “Yes, you've struck out, double faulted, air balled, gotten sacked, and whatever else you want to call it.”

Usually she would lose all interest in the man long before the final dinner, but at last she would be seized with the knowledge that she couldn't stand him another day, and she would accept an invitation to go out, knowing it would be the last time. Something always seemed to rip apart and come crashing down at some point in a relationship, like a tree struck by lightning in a sudden storm.

Before Ward there had been what she called her “C Sickness,” a string of guys whose names had started with
C
. Chris, Clint, Casey, and Colin. All but one had been short relationships, but she had actually begun to think that Casey might be a marriage prospect until she went swimming with him one day. It was sometimes the silliest, smallest things that could trigger the end of a relationship. As she sat beside Casey on the edge of the pool that day, she noticed how white and nearly hairless his thighs were and how fat they looked pressed against the concrete. She had broken up with him a week later after a meal at a steakhouse over in Spartanburg.

Before the “C Sickness” period there was an older guy named Roy she had liked a lot. She had met him at a party, and they had spent three hours by themselves on a balcony talking about books, art, and theater. By the end of the evening she had imagined herself in love, her heart nearly bursting with the sudden influx, but then right before she left the party, she had learned that Roy's last name was Kluck, and her heart had suddenly sprung a leak and emptied itself.

The trouble with most men, she had decided long ago, was that they were too crass, too driven, too loud, and too full of themselves. They tried too hard to impress her, to make her smile, to prove themselves funny and smart and ambitious. She hated the quick, assessing way they looked at women walking by, top to bottom and back up again.

And they always, always imagined themselves to be great irresistible Casanovas, acting as if they had taken an advanced course in romancing a woman—no, more like they had written the book for the course. Sometimes she would feel like laughing right out loud, and sometimes she actually did, which they always misinterpreted as evidence that she was overcome with delight. The truth was, though she had met a few men she knew she could put up with, she had never met one she knew she couldn't do without. She was pretty much convinced by now that such a man didn't exist.

She had counted up to only the last seven or eight men by the time her dish of Berry Berry Buckle was set before her. One thing Celia liked about eating with Al was that she didn't have to search for things to talk about because he gave his full attention to his food, either eating it or delivering a monologue about it. This particular meal seemed to be going on forever, though, and Celia was starting to get restless.

The dessert was okay, though nothing to rave about—not as good as a regular cobbler made with only one kind of berry, in Celia's opinion, except that it was still warm. It did have that going for it. Al had added a scoop of vanilla ice cream to the top, and it was melting fast.