12. Andrew #2
“Eleanor Pemberton. Amanda is working at Stillwater this fall.”
“Is she?”
“Mrs. Pemberton.”
“Ma’am will do. Mrs. makes me look around for my mother-in-law, and she has been dead two dozen or so years, and I prefer her to stay dead.
” Eleanor smiled at her own joke, and Amanda smiled at it too, at exactly the right level, and Eleanor’s eyes narrowed by half a millimeter, which Andrew saw and which Amanda did not see her seeing.
“Amanda, you look extremely familiar to me.”
“Do I.”
“Yes.”
“That happens. I have one of those faces.”
“Well.” Eleanor turned the bidding pencil in her hand. “You are not by any chance from Texas.”
“Are you asking me if I am, or are you telling me I am?”
Eleanor laughed. It was a real laugh, short and surprised, and it changed her face for a second into a younger one. “I am asking, dear. You sound a little Texan.”
“I lived in Texas for a while. I have not lived there for some time.”
“And what is it that you raise at Stillwater?”
It was the second of Mary Jo’s two questions, and Andrew had not known until that moment that he had been listening for it. Beside him Amanda set her champagne down on the edge of the long table with a deliberate small click and held Eleanor Pemberton’s gaze.
“Right now, ma’am, I am raising a bottle calf called Lucky.
The pull was bad and his mama could not nurse him.
He lived. I feed him every four hours. He is eighty-six pounds and growing about a pound a day, and he butts me in the chest when I am late with the bottle.
That is what I raise at Stillwater. Mr. Stevens raises Black Angus and a little Hereford. ”
There was a small pocket of silence at the long auction table.
Then a voice at Andrew’s left elbow, very dry, said: “Eleanor, are you bothering my friend.”
Mary Jo could somehow cross a room without a sound, so Andrew had not heard her.
“Mary Jo,” Eleanor said. “Now you ruin everything. I was about to find out where this charming girl was raised.”
“At Stillwater, Eleanor. We just heard her tell you.”
“Before that, you difficult woman.”
“None of your business before that. Honey.” Mary Jo did not look at Amanda. Mary Jo looked at Eleanor. “Have you bid on the Russell yet?”
“I have. Eight thousand.”
“It will go for twelve.”
“Then I will bid twelve.”
“Then it will go for fifteen. Eleanor. Go look at the Audubon at the other end. It is a better print and nobody has noticed because they are all looking at the Russell. Take Carl.”
“Carl is at the bar.”
“Carl is always at the bar. Take him anyway.”
Eleanor laughed her real laugh again. She picked up her wine glass. She turned to Amanda and there was a smaller and more careful thing in her face now. “Amanda,” she said. “I hope I see you again this evening.”
“I hope so too, ma’am.”
“Mary Jo, go to hell.”
“I am working on it. Go look at the Audubon.”
Eleanor went. Mary Jo did not turn her head toward Amanda. Mary Jo lifted her own glass to her own mouth and said, into it, very low: “You did fine. Drink your champagne. Move.”
Amanda drank her champagne. Andrew moved her on.
They sat at Hugh Beaumont’s table. Hugh had moved his wife’s place setting to be next to Amanda, and his wife, Marcie, was already in the middle of asking Amanda whether she had ridden as a girl by the time Andrew sat down.
He was not seated next to Amanda. Hugh had put Andrew across from her, where Andrew would have to look at her over the centerpiece for an hour and a half. Hugh, in his way, was not a subtle man.
They ate. Somebody made a speech about the conservation easements at Cathedral Creek, and the speech was not bad.
Andrew gave when the cards were passed. He gave again on the table-pledge round because Hugh was watching him.
He drank one more bourbon and stopped. Across the table he watched Amanda answer Marcie Beaumont’s questions one by one, careful, plain, and a little funny, and watched Marcie Beaumont, who had loved one cattleman for fifty-eight years and would have loved him another twenty if she got them, decide before the second course was cleared that Amanda was all right.
He watched how Amanda held her fork. He had not watched her eat a formal meal since she arrived because she had eaten standing up at the counter every breakfast and shoveled cereal at the kitchen table every supper.
He had not let himself watch her eat in any case.
She held the fork the way she had been taught to hold it at six.
She did not announce that she knew how. She just held it, and ate, and laughed once at something Hugh said.
I am in trouble, he thought. I have been in trouble for two weeks and I have known it, and tonight is the night it gets known by other people.
He drank water.
He listened to Hugh tell a story about Andrew’s father he had heard six times before, and on the seventh hearing it caught him under the breastbone because for Amanda it was new, and her face was open, the look a face takes on hearing a story about a person somebody else had loved.
Hugh finished the story. Amanda said: “I would’ve liked him. ”
“He would have liked you, missy.”
Amanda smiled. She did not look at Andrew. Andrew did not look at Amanda. Marcie Beaumont, who had been married to Hugh for fifty-eight years, looked at both of them and said nothing at all.
They left at ten past ten because Andrew had reached the end of what he could manage in one room.
Mary Jo appeared at his shoulder while Hugh was still holding Amanda’s hand and said, “You’ve had enough,” without moving her mouth much.
Andrew nodded. Hugh made him promise nothing except that he would bring Amanda again, which Andrew answered with an answer that was no answer.
Marcie kissed Amanda’s cheek. Amanda looked surprised by it and pleased, and Andrew turned toward the coatroom before either feeling reached his face.
Outside, the cold had sharpened.
The gravel snapped under their feet. He walked her to the truck and opened the passenger door. She gathered the green dress in one hand and stepped up without his help. The silk moved against the bench leather, the same small sound that had been undoing him since Marlow.
He shut her door.
At the front fender, he stopped with one hand on the hood.
He had washed the truck. Shaved. Worn the shirt. Brought her into the room. Watched her sit across from him and make every person at Hugh Beaumont’s table see what Andrew had spent a month refusing to see.
Now he had to drive her home.
He got in.
The engine turned over. He put the heater on low so it would not roar between them and pulled onto the spur road.
Amanda looked out the passenger window. The lodge lights moved across her face and fell away. The green silk went dark beside him.
Neither of them spoke through the first switchback.
At the second she said, “You’re holding the wheel very tightly.”
“I am driving.”
“I’ve seen you drive through a blizzard with a half-frozen woman dripping blood on your floor mat. You weren’t strangling it then.”
He loosened his hands. The wheel required no strangling. Nothing in the cab required the amount of force he was using to remain in his own seat.
“You did well tonight,” he said.
“You’ve said that.”
“It remains true.”
“Thank you.”
They took the turn onto the pass road. The lodge disappeared behind the firs. Ahead, the highway ran empty through the dark, two pale lanes under the headlights and no vehicle in either direction.
She shifted on the bench.
Silk brushed softly against the bench seat.
Andrew looked at the road.
“I meant what I said before,” she said.
“You said several things.”
“That I would be all right.”
“You were.”
“I was more than all right.”
“Yes.”
“Hugh liked me.”
“Hugh likes his wife and possibly you.”
“What about his horse?”
“He would deny the horse.”
She laughed. The sound came softly in the cab and went through him with nowhere decent to stop.
“Marcie liked me,” she said.
“She did.”
“Eleanor almost knew me.”
“She did not.”
“She almost did.”
“Mary Jo handled it.”
“She did.” Amanda turned her head. “You did too.”
His eyes touched her once before returning to the highway.
“I didn’t need handling,” she said.
“No.”
“That was the point.”
“I know.”
“You never put me behind you.”
He felt the words land. They stayed where they landed.
“You didn’t need to be behind me.”
The silence after that had heat in it.
Amanda put her left hand flat on the bench between them. Her fingers rested a few inches from his thigh.
He drove another mile.
Her hand remained there. So did the small space between it and him. He felt every inch.
“Andrew.”
“Amanda.”
“You have barely looked at me since I came down Mary Jo’s steps.”
“That is not true.”
“You looked once.”
“Once was sufficient.”
“For what?”
He should have kept the answer.
“To make driving difficult.”
Her breath left softly.
The road bent around the mountain. A turnout opened ahead, an old logging cut on the right where county plows pushed snow when there was snow to push. Bare gravel tonight. No house in sight. No light except his own.
Her hand moved from the bench to his wrist.
Two fingers touched the place below his cuff.
He pulled off the highway.
The truck rolled thirty yards onto the turnout and stopped. He put it in park. The engine ran. The heater breathed warm air at their feet.
He kept both hands on the wheel.
Amanda’s fingers remained at his wrist.
“Look at me,” she said.
He turned.
She sat in the dim light from the dash, the green dress almost black, her hair loosening at one temple. Her lipstick had worn down through dinner. What remained was her mouth.
He had been avoiding that mouth since the first morning she took his mug.
He looked now.
“This is a bad idea,” he said.
“Probably.”
“I am older than you.”
“I noticed.”
“You work for me.”
“I shovel manure to pay for a fence. Let’s not make it sound like I’m climbing the corporate ladder.”
“Amanda.”
“Andrew.”
He could hear his own breath. Hers too.
“One kiss,” he said.
She looked at him for a long second.