3
THERE WAS THE sound of thunder somewhere far off, like a door closing on the season, and in the direction of the distant ocean the sky was the color of wet slate. The wind gusted now, carrying on it the first deep notes of the bells from the tower at St. Anthony’s on Chapman Avenue a block away, and for a moment Walt thought that the sound of the bells was a remnant of the thunder, echoing through remote canyons in the clouds.
Raindrops pattered down onto the concrete walk, and he ducked into the garden shed that stood beneath the canopy of an enormous avocado tree in the back corner of the yard. There was something lonesome in the rain this winter afternoon, in the smell of wet leaves and the low sound of thunder that mingled with the weather-muffled ringing of the bells.
They rang every afternoon during the month of December—something that Walt, happily, had never really gotten used to even though he and Ivy had lived in the neighborhood for upwards of twelve years. Hearing them was always a pleasant surprise, like coming around a corner and suddenly seeing a cherry tree or a hawthorne in blossom.
Abruptly he remembered that Ivy’s aunt and uncle were due shortly—maybe even later this afternoon—and thinking about it took some of the magic out of the afternoon. They were on the last leg of their trip from the east. For a couple of weeks they’d been driving out from Michigan in a motor home, fully self-contained—toilet, refrigerator, awning, the whole works. They’d bought it last year with dividends from Uncle Henry’s stocks and bonds. The idea was to spend the winter in California—specifically in Walt and Ivy’s driveway, which, Walt had to admit, was better than them staying on the foldout couch in the den like last year.
“It’s an Executive,” Uncle Henry had said to him over the phone, leaning heavily on the second syllable, and it had taken Walt most of the rest of the conversation to figure out what he meant, that it was the brand name of the motor home. He had tried to imagine the kind of vehicle it was, what it must look like, given its name—a desk in the back, maybe, with a Rolodex on it, and a swivel chair and file cabinet—an outfit suitable for a man of business. Last night Aunt Jinx had called from Kingman, from a pay phone in the parking lot of the Alpha Beta Market where they were spending the night.
Happily alone, at least for the moment, Walt looked out through the dripping branches of the avocado tree and knew that right now there was no place in the world he’d rather be. Even the threat of pending houseguests was somehow diminished by the misty weather. Solitude—that was the good thing about working out of the house, especially on a day like this with the rain coming down and with Christmas on the horizon. Ivy was earning pretty good money, thank God, and her income allowed Walt to run his catalogue sales business out of the garage. Once the business was really up and running, the money would roll in, and Ivy could flat-out quit if she wanted to. The Christmas season was already boosting sales, and he was counting on his most recent catalogue to turn things around for him.
“You hope,” he said out loud. Money—the subject had gotten increasingly unbearable to him. The truth was that he was past forty and still didn’t have a real job. He worked like a pig, but somehow that didn’t equate to bringing home the bacon. Ivy never complained, of course. She wasn’t the complaining type. But a man had his pride.
Anyway, he wasn’t in much of a position to complain about Jinx and Henry, no matter how long they intended to stay. He looked at his watch. It was just past noon.
He noticed now that there were a couple of dark red tomatoes on last summer’s vines along the fence. The vines were still green, but it was a gray-green, not the emerald green of high summer, and of course there were no blooms left at all. The two tomatoes were probably fossilized by now. The basil in the adjacent herb garden had gone to seed, and the three basil plants had maybe six leaves between them, but the rosemary and sage would last out the winter no matter how lousy the weather got. And during the cool fall months the lemon tree at the opposite end of the garden had set on so many lemons that now the wet boughs were bent nearly to the ground beneath their weight. Avocadoes, lemons, lawns greening up in the rain—that was winter in southern California; no wonder Henry and Jinx got the hell out of Michigan every year and drove west. They must miss the hell out of California since they’d moved away.
Right then a spider, some kind of daddy longlegs, crawled out of the hole in the bottom of an overturned flowerpot on a shelf and stood there looking around, as if it had slept late and the thunder had awakened it. The pot had a sort of door in the front, a ragged arch where a piece had broken off. It occurred to Walt that the spider worked out of its house, too, and he wondered suddenly what kind of furnishings it had inside—a hammock, a pantry, shelves of books. If Walt had kids he’d be tempted to load the flowerpot up with doll furniture and tiny books and then pretend to find it like that, forever changing his children’s notions about bugs.
Thinking about children, he wondered uneasily if Ivy would bring up that subject again tonight. She’d been on a kick lately about starting a family. Usually the subject came up around bedtime. He’d managed so far to fend her off with logic, just like he had in the past. But that couldn’t go on forever. Ivy had a deep suspicion of logic. She said it was a leaky boat. Last night she had told him that there was nothing logical anyway about starting a family, and so trying to apply logic to it was illogical.
Even now the argument looked irrefutable to him, and he had the vague notion that he’d been defeated. Well, he was safe for the moment anyway, there among the sacks of planting mix and tools and clay pots, watching the heavy branches of the avocado tree shift in the wind, and listening to the swish of its big green leaves and the sound of the rain pelting down. A haze of mist rose from the shingles of the garage, and he could hear the drops pounding on the tin roof of one of the storage sheds, nearly drowning out the sound of the church bells. The bellringer was a hell of a dedicated man, out in weather like this in an open tower, yanking on soggy ropes whether anyone could hear the bells or not: art for art’s sake, or more likely for the glory of God, like the old Renaissance painters.
Walt listened closely. It took him a moment to recognize the melody. It was “In the Bleak Midwinter,” one of his favorites, and it really needed a big church choir to do it justice. He recalled the words to his favorite stanza, and was just on the verge of singing along when the bells broke into a clamor that sounded like a train wreck, the discordant echoes finally clanging away into silence.