Originally published in The Madison Review, our last #summershortreads is “Driftwood” by Mary Vensel White:

 

He appeared against the backdrop of the shadowy Tehachapi Mountains, a blurred form amongst the Joshua trees and tumbleweed in the foreground. From this great distance, the peaks were gray and hazy, saturated with blue from the cloudless sky, quite indistinct in comparison to the expanse of desert that stretched to meet them. A study in browns, her desert, from the abundant brush in varying shades of dryness to the sand underneath; this singular color scheme cloaked the entire valley in which Jackie had lived for fifty-two years.

She strained her eyes, leaning forward at the kitchen window, and watched as the man—she was sure it was a man—ambled along, hunched forward, stopping now and then. Her abdomen pressed against the sink, and she was careful to avoid the tender section. It was a shallow soreness; she’d lived through worse pains.

The man had stopped to crouch down, and she stood on her tiptoes, straining to see him. Her eyes followed the line of the old service road to where a white pick-up was parked a way down. Back when they’d had animals—horses, chickens, dogs—Ken would bring supplies down that narrow passage, but he hadn’t used it for years. Occasionally, local kids parked back there to drink or be alone. Once, Jackie watched a group of four boys explore the small, dilapidated barn which, by some miracle of nature, was still standing. More of a shed really, it leaned dangerously to the west. Many times over the years, she’d asked Ken to tear it down or have someone do it, but he didn’t worry over it, he said.

Ken worked an occasional Saturday and on this one, he’d been gone since early morning. Like her, he’d had the same job since they met almost twenty years ago. When he was younger, he helped maintain and deliver rental equipment to homes and job sites, anything from generators to concrete mixers to large-scale landscaping and construction tools. On his time off, he built things and worked outside at his house, this house, which was now Jackie’s, too. He’d injured his shoulder falling from a horse, and she’d been his physical therapist. She remembered the first time he took off his shirt, her hands on his muscular shoulder, rotating it gently while he tried not to wince. The electricity, the heat. These days, he worked inside, taking orders and keeping inventory.

Outside, the man moved closer to his truck and without thinking, Jackie fairly leapt toward the door and was half-way down the steps before she realized she’d forgotten her flip flops. Back outside, she squinted in the afternoon sun. She made her way across their land, a mess of weeds and debris where there used to be a modest lawn, a swing set, perennials in wooden holders next to a coiled hose. It had to be ninety-five degrees already. Sweat was forming under her breasts, and she wondered about the large bandage across her ribcage; she’d have to change it later. She shielded her eyes from the sun and kept going.

The man was opening a tarp stretched over some type of frame so that it looked like a tent covering the bed of the truck. His arms disappeared under the white fabric, then his head. Soon, he popped back up.

She passed the clearing where they’d buried four Labradors. The last, her favorite, a black beauty called Serena whose devotion to Jackie had made Ken jealous. His dog had been Zeus, his first child, really, before he met Jackie. None of the other dogs had ever warmed to him as much.

The man was tying the tarp back down, and Jackie was close enough now to see the bulk of him, broad shoulders and thick forearms. “Hello!” she called, but he didn’t seem to have heard her. Dirt was caked around her toes, and flurries of dust had risen in her wake. She looked down, noticing now thick thighs in tight Capri pants, the stain of strawberry jam at the hem of her blouse. She reached up to smooth her hair. Her dad had never made a big deal about clothing, what to wear or whether it was clean or not. She’d learned from other girls and their mothers about things like appearance, neatness, and fashion. Even so, she often reverted to her childhood nonchalance.

The man noticed her now and stood rooted at the spot. Details emerged as Jackie drew nearer: his tight, white tee shirt, worn jeans with a full knee missing, some type of bandanna keeping the dark blonde hair out of his eyes.

“Hello,” she said again when she stood at the edge of the old path.

“Afternoon,” he said.

Her eyes went immediately to his right arm, which was covered in tattoos. A sleeve, they called it. She had learned this only recently.

He stepped forward, squinting. “Am I trespassing?”

“What? Oh, no,” she said. “Well, yes.” She smiled.

“Rye Granger,” he said, extending his hand. “Rye, like the whiskey.”

Jackie thought she had never heard a better name. She’d known a Butch Granger in school. Baseball player, also tall and blonde. Last she heard, Butch went off to someplace in the Midwest for college, to play third base. He was one of those popular, talented kids who seemed to have everything going for him, no limits to what he might do. They hadn’t been friends. In all these years, she’d never thought about him, not once. She shook Rye’s hand, which was large and warm and slightly sandy. Across the heated air, his scent reached her nostrils: salt, black licorice, leather.

“Sorry,” he said. Reaching back, he pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.

“No,” she said. “It’s fine.” She wiped her hand on her pants.

“I didn’t catch your name,” he said.

“Jackie,” she said, leaving off her last name. He isn’t much older than Stu, she rebuked herself. Stu, your son.

Rye looked towards the mountains, then back at her. His eyes flickered to her chest, but she was used to that. A friend’s mother had taken her to buy her first bra when she was ten, after discussing the situation with her dad in hushed tones. Jackie had lived with her large breasts for so long, she couldn’t even muster much resentment anymore.

Rye shoved two fingers into the front pocket of his jeans. “Is that your house?” he asked, lifting his head towards it.

“Yes,” she said, without thinking.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Why?”

He extended his forefinger and beckoned her and again, without thinking, she went toward him. He watched her close the distance, his eyes searching hers, until she had to look away. Amidst the images crowded onto his arm, she noticed a bearded figure with long hair, in some sort of draped outfit, glaring into the distance.

“Let me show you something,” he said. Reaching into the open driver’s window, his tee shirt rode up to expose a couple of inches of lower back. When he stood back up, he was holding a folded sheet of paper, which he opened and spread onto the hood of the truck.

It was a map, its ink faded and hard to make out.

“Did you know there used to be a natural creek here?” he asked.

She bent over the drawing to look where he was pointing. The map was old; she couldn’t make sense of it.

“Around 1750, this area had a major drought, and much of the natural water dried up.” He straightened, blocking the sun from her face. “If you know how to look, you can see the curve in the land, the impression where the water used to flow.” He gazed across the desert, but all Jackie saw was the same dirt, the same brush and weeds. She couldn’t imagine this land ever having had a water source, but she didn’t want to offend him.

“I’m an artist,” he told her. “I make different kinds of art, from all sorts of things, but what really turns me on is finding something with some history, a past.”

Jackie turned and leaned her backside against the truck; the metal burned through her capris, but she stayed. “What are you looking for out here?”

He grinned. “Anything left high and dry by that creek. Animal shells, bones, driftwood. I guess you could say I’m also an archaeologist, by way of art.”

Jackie looked at her watch. She visited her dad every day, without fail, at two o’clock. It was a quick drive from work during her lunch hour, and she went on the weekends, too. He was in a rehab place in Lancaster, bed-bound for the past two months, getting weaker by the day. After his stroke, Jackie watched him change from a strapping, outdoorsy man to an immobile shadow of himself. Often, she went to his house and wandered through the rooms. Many times, she made plans to start cleaning it out, but she left each time, overwhelmed. They hadn’t yet cleaned out most of her mother’s things, and she’d been gone for four years already. Her brothers were no help, living as they did out-of-state and being as they had always been, incompetent and selfish. You’re being unkind, she told herself.

“Who is that person on your arm?” she asked Rye.

He looked down and turned his forearm slightly. “Zeus,” he said. “God of sky and thunder.”

Somehow, she had known he’d say that. “We had a dog named Zeus,” she said. She looked again at her watch: one thirty-five. “He’s buried back here.”

“I’m sorry,” Rye said, putting his hand on her shoulder, where it caught fire.

Jackie had met her first husband, Stu’s father, in high school. They’d dated throughout their junior and senior years—prom, back-seat sessions, the whole deal—and they’d gotten married two years after that. Jackie finished her physical therapy program while Stu Sr. worked as a security guard. They bought a little ranch-style home on the east side of town and made payments on a brand new, blue hatchback. And when they were ready to start a family, they painted the smallest bedroom and bought a crib and changing table. Ten months later, Stu was born and two years after that, Stu’s father was killed on his way home from work by a drunk driver.

“It’s strange, “she said. “I was thinking about that dog right after I saw you, and here you are with that tattoo.” She thought, also, about the way she’d spent the morning, the pulsing ache under her shirt.

Rye lifted his hand from her shoulder and slowly folded up the map. The motions made his chest contract under the tee shirt. “Do you know what I was thinking about, before I saw you?” he asked.

She shook her head, although he wasn’t watching her.

“I had a girlfriend once,” he said, “a blonde like you. She was a girl of many talents. And when I saw you storming your way across that yard—”

“I wasn’t storming.”

“A sunbeam,” he said, looking at her. “Yellow hair blazing.”

Jackie had never had trouble getting attention from boys or men. But after Stu’s father died, she’d forgotten that side of herself for a good, long while. Stu became her priority, working and caring for him her only purpose. Meeting Ken had caught her completely by surprise. She realized that a great, hungry part of her had been hiding all along. She looked at Rye—the bulk of him, the burn on the back of his neck. “Do you believe in signs?” she asked him.

He came to her then, straddled her legs with his own and grabbed her elbows with his large, rough hands. His face was close enough that she could see the pores on either side of his nose. His teeth were unbearably straight and white. “Jackie,” he said. “I believe, without a doubt, in signs of all kinds.” Just as suddenly, he gently released her and turned away. He threw the map into the truck.

Stunned, loose, tingling, Jackie leaned against the truck. She cleared her throat. “Would you like to come to the house for a sandwich? It’s better if you move your truck and park in front.”

Rye motioned with his head towards the passenger seat. “Hop in,” he said. His maddening blue eyes glowed like neon. “I also strongly believe in sandwiches, all kinds of sandwiches.”

***

Jackie picked up the sculpture of the bird once more. Smooth and cool to the touch, it had been carved from discovered wood and attached to a mahogany stand. What she found most interesting about the sculpture, about all four of the objects Rye had brought in from his truck, was that they weren’t actual, realistic representations. The bird was obviously a bird, but because it suggested a bird. There were two narrow spans of wood that rose from the main, central portion, and these seemed like wings. There was the conical tip that suggested a beak, the rounded bottom, the grooves like feathers throughout the grain.

“Can you tell what it’s going to be before you start?” she asked.

Rye swallowed the last bit of his sandwich and nodded.

She had heated up roast pork from last night’s dinner, raked it into strips and added barbecue sauce. She offered him a beer and when he accepted, she opened one for herself, thinking as she always did about the medication and how she was supposed to avoid alcohol. But she didn’t take the pills often, and she was a moderate drinker. In fact, she’d been thinking about getting rid of the medicine all together. She wasn’t feeling anxious anymore, at least she wasn’t today.

They sat across from each other at the kitchen island. Ken had let her redecorate as a gift for their tenth anniversary, and Jackie had chosen black leather stools to match the granite slab with its depths of gray, black and silver. Lately, the kitchen had started to seem outdated. “Do you want another beer?” she asked, although Rye’s was still a third full.

“I’d better not,” he said. “I’ve got some driving left to do.”

She set the wooden bird on the counter. “I never asked where you live.”

He leaned back. “I’m between living arrangements at the moment. Not homeless but home free.”

“Where do you sleep?”

“I’ve got a twin mattress in the back of the truck. Friends, who let me crash occasionally.”

She watched, waiting for him to say more.

In a long swig, he finished the beer. His eyes had a pleasing softness now, as he looked at her. Over the course of their lunch, she’d gotten used to his gaze. It had been a while, she supposed, since someone had looked at her so intently, had listened so closely. Of course, people listened. She went to work and spoke to patients and coworkers; she came home and talked about Ken’s day with him. But this man seemed interested in her at a level that probed something deep within her, like a tongue looking for a lost tooth.

“I used to live here but mostly grew up in Arizona,” he said. “Little town called Roosevelt, near Scottsdale. But my grandmother lives here, always has. My uncle passed, and we had his funeral yesterday.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jackie said.

“Thanks.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “My uncle used to watch me sometimes when I was little. He was much younger than my mom—his sister—so he was sort of like an older brother to me. Played baseball with me, stuff like that. Then we moved away, and I saw him like most people do, family events, weddings and funerals.”

She thought again of Butch Granger but didn’t ask. “What are your plans?” she asked instead.

His forehead wrinkled. “Plans?”

“You know, for life. Where do you see yourself in ten years?” She shrugged. “Isn’t that something people ask?”

Slowly, his mouth spread into a grin. “I’m more of a day-to-day kind of person, always have been. Drives my mother crazy because she’s been worrying about me for thirty-eight long years. Her words.”

“Does she like your art?”

“She does, despite herself.”

Jackie picked up the horse sculpture, her favorite. She ran her hand over the gleaming haunches, circled one back leg with her thumb and forefinger. Her dad loved horses, an interest discovered later in life after she married Ken. He used to come over and help Ken out back. He used to be tall and solid as a tree. Jackie remembered looking out the same kitchen window, watching him lead Jackson, Stu’s favorite horse, around the path now overgrown with wild plants. Stu, sitting upright and listening carefully to his grandfather. Ken, somewhere in the distance, working, but keeping an eye on the proceedings. Stu was seven when they married, and he loved Ken like a father, which is what her husband had been. She couldn’t complain about that, not one bit.

“My son lives in Boise,” she said. “Idaho.” Her throat ached, thinking of it.

Rye’s eyes sparkled. “I know where Boise is, Jackie.” Slowly, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Jackie was a little sleepy from the beer. She shook her head, stood up. Had she taken the medicine that morning? “Your sculptures are wonderful,” she said. “I like them all, the bird, the—what is it, a seal?”

He nodded, watching her.

She stroked the back of the seal, which was a complete, undivided piece of wood, scrubbed clean as glass. “My mother died when I was five,” Jackie said. “I never knew her, not really. Your uncle, he was good to you?”

“Yes.”

“That’s nice.” She thought of her dad, lying underneath the beige blanket the nurses always pulled up under his chin, even when it was too warm. She thought of her brothers and the tents they made from old sheets and blankets, flashlight beams bouncing underneath, but they always kept her out. She liked watching them anyway, liked when they were laughing instead of fighting, liked listening to their bragging. She’d been surrounded by boys and men her entire life, she realized.

“Jackie.”

She felt warmth on the back of her neck and knew that Rye was behind her, had stood and walked around the island and now waited for her to notice, to turn. She inhaled, her chest straining painfully. Her throat was burning. Her hair had once been vibrant copper, deep and shiny as a new penny. Now it was lighter and flecked with gray, which she had covered up every six weeks to the tune of ninety dollars. At night, she soaked her feet and used a heating pad on her lower back while she watched television with Ken. Her son had moved eight hundred miles away, and her dad was vanishing before her eyes. That goddamn drunk driver. Loss after loss after loss. Most nights, Ken started snoring in his recliner before whatever they were watching was over. He’d stopped working outside, had stopped doing anything besides going to work and coming home. The animals, all gone, her brothers, lost long before they moved away. Twice recently, patients had asked to see another therapist; she’d been called in to discuss her “current situation.” She hadn’t even told Ken—when could she? Between his naps and the times he simply stared past her at the dinner table? The house needed work but neither of them seemed to care. She had moments of confusion, of fear. She’d seen a doctor, the one who gave her the prescription that was supposed to be a short-term fix; Jackie had been refilling it for the better part of a year. Her dad’s stubborn, beating heart and slack jaw. The house. Her aching back. The warm fur of the dogs, the click of their nails. How she missed the dogs! Her husband didn’t desire her anymore or at least, he never made any efforts. There had been no announcement, no problem or event. Slowly, they’d just stopped. Everything had stopped, was in a perpetual state of slowly stopping.

Jackie picked up the sculptures, holding all four against her chest, where they poked her here and there. The last one, a squirrel, was tucked under her chin. Without facing Rye, she moved away from his warmth and walked to the front door.

He followed and let her out.

She passed under his outstretched arm and made her way towards the truck, which he’d parked in the shade of the old elm tree next to the garage. After he pulled back the tarp, opened the tailgate, and took the sculptures one by one from her hands, her eyes finally met his. Then she turned and slowly—although with much more agility than she would have imagined—climbed under the tarp and onto the mattress spanning the length of the truck bed.

He stood for a moment looking at her before he moved aside the small box holding the sculptures and joined her under the tented tarp.

***

Jackie’s hand was steady as she lit the tapered candles. She’d found them in a drawer, thrown in with lots of other things she didn’t use anymore. She used to put out the candles at Christmastime. Ken used to help her decorate the house from top to bottom.

At the stove, the pasta cooked underneath a cloud of steam. She glanced at the timer and peeked at the dinner rolls browning in the oven. She’d poured herself some wine already, thinking again about the medication, only she’d dumped the remaining tablets into the toilet an hour ago. Already, she second-guessed that decision.

Ken’s car purred into the driveway. Looking at the table, she realized how stupid the candles were. It was summer, light outside until after eight o’clock. Still, she thought they added something. She wanted to make an effort. She wanted to try.

Through the sheer curtains, she watched as Ken heaved himself from the car and turned to shut the door. When had he gotten so old, so out-of-shape? He stood for a moment, looking back at the street, then trudged toward the house. On the top step of the porch, she clearly saw him hesitate, take a long, deep breath and pull his shoulders back before he entered. As though he dreaded walking in.

He took in the tablecloth, the wine, the candles, and looked up to see her in a clean blue sundress. She’d pulled her hair back on one side with a barrette. “Jackie?” he said.

“I made dinner,” she said, turning back to the kitchen.

“How soon will it be ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

“Let me clean up,” he said.

She listened as he walked down the hallway and opened the door to their bedroom. He still used the master bathroom, but she’d moved all her toiletries into the guest bath. It seemed much easier than sharing sink space and a shower with him. What had happened to them? A wave of fear passed over her. Why had she thrown away the pills? She thought about an aunt and uncle of hers, who had lived in separate bedrooms for decades. She used to think it was terrible.

The nurse from the rehab place had called earlier, while Jackie was in the shower. She said that her dad had a new rash on his arm. They think it was caused by the IV tape used; sometimes it happened to patients with certain sensitivities. They didn’t want her to be alarmed when she saw it, they said. And of course she felt guilty for missing her visit, although she doubted her dad would even notice, or notice the rash, or anything else that happened in that dreadful little room. Loss after loss after loss.

Jackie swallowed the last of her wine and turned off the stove. The water around the pasta bubbled, smaller and smaller, until it stopped. She pulled the rolls out of the oven and dropped them into a basket. Then she walked down the hall, looking for Ken, stopping briefly to admire the wooden horse on the entry table by the front door. She’d take it tomorrow to show her dad.

In the bedroom, the curtains were pulled shut, save for a slice of muted, orange sunlight that cut the bed into two equal halves. The bathroom was bright, all shiny surfaces, and Ken stood at the mirror, brushing his teeth.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “We’re going to eat.”

He shrugged and seemed embarrassed. She smelled a whiff of cologne too. Maybe the dress, the candles—he thought something would happen. A rush of tenderness rushed through her. Her husband, her Ken.

“I have to talk to you,” she said. “I did something today.”

He spit a stream of water and wiped his mouth with a towel, all the while watching her in the mirror.

Slowly, she reached down and grabbed the bottom of her dress. She pulled it up and over her head and stood behind him in her bra and panties. A fresh bandage glared white just under the bottom right side of her ribcage.

“What is that?” he asked, turning.

Carefully, she loosened the corner of the bandage and pulled it off. She saw herself in the mirror, still red-haired, the expansive breasts, wider hips, the same good legs. She looked at her husband.

His eyes had widened, and she tried to gauge his reaction as it changed, gradually, from surprise to confusion to something else. He turned and leaned down to see more closely. When he straightened up, he grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her right in the eyes. “I love it,” he said. “I sincerely, without a doubt, love it.”

“You do?”

He pulled her against him, and she could feel him trembling. “Yes,” he said.

She laughed and he laughed, and they held each other like that, shaking a little. After some time, she put her dress back on, and he put his arm around her shoulder.

“Let’s go eat,” he said. “I want to hear all about it. Did it hurt? How did you decide what to get? Where did you go, that place on Sierra Highway? Do you think I should get one?”

Jackie leaned her head on his shoulder and let herself be led down the hallway, listening to the unchanging, familiar sound of his voice, looking around the house at all they had, and making all sorts of promises to herself, and to him, under her breath.

Mary Vensel White is the author of the award-winning young adult novel Things to See in Arizona, and the novels Bellflower, Starling, and The Qualities of Wood, the first book published under the Authonomy imprint of HarperCollins. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous publications. She is an English and writing professor, an editor and publisher, and the current president of the California Writers Club, Orange County branch. Born in Los Angeles, Mary has lived in northern California, Denver, and Chicago, and now resides back in SoCal. She believes in second chances—in most cases—and in our ability to imagine and forge a new path. Her first collection of short fiction, Resonant Blue and Other Stories, will be published in November.