Improbable Solution Read online

  How could he fill her loneliness if he couldn't find surcease from his own?

  Sally poured the rest of the coffee down the sink. It tasted bitter, nasty. Worse than Georgina's. The cookies she put into a fancy tin, set them aside to give to Ernie Green tomorrow morning on her way to the Post Office. She was cleaning the counters, postponing her retreat upstairs when a crash sounded from the front room.

  "Oh, no," she sighed, wondering which of her mother's collection of china cats had been destroyed this time. She hoped it wasn't the Cheshire, with its purple and red stripes and its wicked grin. Of all the fragile little dust catchers, she liked the Cheshire cat best. She tossed the dishrag into the sink and went to see what new havoc her father had created.

  * * * *

  "I don't know, Wilma," Sally said, idly leafing through the collection of envelopes on the counter. "Some days he seems almost intelligent, but most of the time he's like, well, some sort of enraged beast."

  "Is he still tearin' things up?" The postmistress waved at someone behind Sally.

  "No, he hasn't shredded a magazine for a couple of weeks. Now he's pounding on the walls." She rubbed her eyes, wondering how long she could go without sleep. "Last night I was afraid he'd put a fist through the window in his bedroom, but he managed to miss it." Slumping, she sighed in defeat. "This morning his hands were bloody and the Sargent print—you know, that one he always liked because it reminded him of England when he was there on his junior year abroad—was all broken. Even the frame."

  Wilma reached across the counter and took Sally's hands, stilling their restive plucking at the pages of her copy of Dress, the journal from the Costume Society of America that was her only connection with her former life.

  "When are you gonna face facts, Sally? Your pa needs to be put away. You can't keep on like you're doing."

  "Oh, Wilma, I have to. I promised Mother I'd take care of him. And I promised Pop, too. He'd die if I ever took him away from the house. He loves it so."

  Her father had been born in the big old Carruthers house, had returned to it after he was discharged from the Army, and had brought her mother there, to live happily for nearly forty years. He'd always said if it hadn't been for the house he'd have sought his fortune elsewhere, for God only knew there were few enough fortunes to be had in Whiterock.

  "It might be a blessing if he did—" Wilma patted Sally's hand one last time before releasing it. "—before he turns you into a sour old maid."

  Agreeing, and hating herself for it, Sally essayed a laugh. It came out as fragile as her attempted smile.

  "I can't be an old maid, Wilma. I'm a gay divorcee, remember?"

  "Whatever." Wilma shoved the stapler into place, straightened the tape dispenser and otherwise showed her feelings with abrupt, angry motions. "All I know is you need to get someone in there to watch him once in a while, or you're going to wear yourself to a frazzle. You looked in a mirror lately?"

  She had, just yesterday. After the laundry man left. Gus. What she'd seen explained his abrupt departure—a middle-aged woman with frizzled hair and deep brackets about her mouth, drooping shoulders and empty eyes.

  "I don't like to ask anyone to watch him. He's so unpredictable."

  "Ask Milly Kemp. After what she went through with Jerry, nothin' your pa could do would faze her."

  Sally checked her watch. It was past time for her to get back. "I'll think about it."

  If only she didn't have to go home.

  * * * *

  Gus forgot his intention of taking the scenic route back to Ontario after he stomped out of the Carruthers house. He finished his deliveries and pickups with dispatch and got back to the shop a little before three. For a moment, he thought about telling Frank he was moving on. The last place he wanted to be was where a woman whose haunting eyes pleaded with him to fill the empty spaces in her life.

  He filled out his route sheet with half his mind, the other half thinking about what to take and what to discard. With each of his moves, he'd carried less of his past with him.

  Less physical evidence, that is. He couldn't seem to discard those reminders of his past he would most eagerly part with. Guilt could never be left behind. He had assumed a responsibility for another human being—for two others, ultimately—and he had failed in his duty. Failed in the worst possible way because he hadn't cared enough to cherish and protect them as he had promised.

  "How'd it go today?" Frank Tsugawa again perched himself on the corner of the table. "You getting acquainted with your customers?"

  "Most of them," Gus said. "Especially on today's route, There are so few, it's easy to remember who they are."

  "There's some interesting people out there, all right." Picking up a pencil, Frank rolled it between his palms. "They may seem a little standoffish at first, but all-in-all, they're worth knowing."

  "I guess so." He wondered what his boss was getting at.

  "Take Whiterock, for instance."

  Gus couldn't think of anywhere he'd want to take a town as dismal as Whiterock, but he tried to look interested.

  "It used to be a thriving little place, before the mine closed." Putting the pencil down, Frank began stacking the money wrappers into neat piles.

  "Mine?" He knew a little about mining, and he hadn't seen anything around Whiterock that looked like a mine.

  "The Carruthers Chalk Mine," Frank said. "It was out south of town, about three miles. At one time it shipped more diatomaceous earth than any other mine in the country. Closed down in the eighties."

  Gus shrugged. He'd been mildly curious where the money came from to build a big, fancy house like the one Ms. Carruthers lived in. Now he knew. He began sorting the bills in his moneybag, stacking them into neat piles of ones, five, tens and twenties, each smoothed and facing in the same direction as those beneath it.

  "The Carrutherses had their fingers in a lot of pies—cattle ranches, the mine, a shipping company, even an aerial spray service, until Eddie, the younger brother, was killed in a crash up Willow Creek way."

  Gus sorted coins into nickels, dimes and quarters, stacked coins of like value into columns of ten.

  "Uh-huh." As long as Frank was his boss, he'd listen to what he was trying to say, but that didn't mean he'd pay any attention to what he didn't care about.

  Like a woman with eyes as deep as infinity.

  Gus cursed silently and forced his attention back to Frank.

  "The older brother, Will, and I were in the County Boosters together. He was always one to volunteer his time when we had a community improvement project. One year he even played Santa Claus and flew in on a helicopter." Frank stared off into space. "Paid for it, too, as I recall."

  "What happened to him?" Gus really didn't care, but it seemed polite to ask.

  "Oh, Will's still alive. At least his body is." With an easy hop, Frank was on his feet and at the door. "Awful waste. Him losing his mind like that and Sally breaking her heart over it." He shook his head—sadly, it seemed to Gus. "Alzheimer's" he added as he turned away.

  Gus wondered what Frank had been trying to tell him. Was his boss playing at matchmaking? Between him and a shy, lonely woman who looked to be a good five years older than he was?

  Of course, age only mattered to the older, more mature member of a relationship. The person who had to take care of the younger one, the dependent one, the child-wife, who could refuse responsibility because she believed it was her privilege to be cared for, protected, pampered.

  Gus clenched his teeth so hard his jaw knotted. He had known what Marilyn was when he'd married her. Her helplessness, her dependence had been part of what attracted him to her in the first place. For the first few years of their marriage, he'd been completely content with her. Her total femininity had strengthened his masculine self-esteem.

  Then he and Roger had opened their own firm. He had quickly discovered that owning his own business left little time for anything else. Marilyn had simply not been able to adjust, and he should have taken
that into consideration instead of being so single-minded. In his quest for success, he had walked away from his responsibilities.

  And he would never forgive himself.

  INTERVAL

  Introduced component affecting events. Useful?

  Consider ramifications.

  FOUR

  For the next few days, Sally spent quite a few hours taking a long, hard look at what her life had become.

  Empty.

  Hopeless.

  Wasted.

  And whose fault is that, Sarah Elaine Carruthers? Not Pop's. He can't help what he's become. Put the blame squarely where it belongs, girl. On your own head.

  She started with the kitchen, cleaning the cobwebs from the high corners of the ceiling, washing the windows inside and out, scrubbing the walls and woodwork. The cupboards still wore the dark cream paint her mother had favored, a color that offended Sally's artistic soul. They never looked quite clean.

  Redecorating was out of the question. It wouldn't do any good, for as soon as she had the walls clean Pop would smear food on them. If she put the still-beautiful oriental rugs back on the hardwood floors in the living room and library, he would soil them, one way or another. Or worse yet, he might trip and fall, might break his hip. She just couldn't handle having him bedridden in addition to being senile.

  But she could wash windows and curtains throughout the house, open the blinds and let the springtime light brighten the high-ceilinged rooms and the dark inner hallway. She could get out there and clean up her mother's rose garden, pulling last year's dead sow-thistle and wild lettuce, pigweed and bindweed. She could call in young Buster Jones to mow the lawn and prune the hedges, something she hadn't seemed to find time to do as often as she should have last summer.

  Sally stood on the back porch, looking out over the yard. Both black locusts needed pruning, too, a job beyond Buster. A branch had blown off, narrowly missing her car, during the windstorm in January. It still lay where it fell, with last fall's unraked leaves piled around it by the gentler, more capricious winds of March. She just parked a little farther from the back door these days.

  Running her hands through her hair, she wondered again if she should get Milly Kemp in to stay with Pop for a day. She hadn't had a haircut for nearly two years. It hadn't seemed to matter, for who saw her anyway, besides the people who'd known her all her life? They'd seen her spotted with chicken pox and chuckled at her skin peeling in sheets after a long nap in the noonday sun the July she turned sixteen. They'd smiled at her, glowing in her wedding gown. Then they'd looked at her with pity when she came home, feeling like a failure, to recover from a divorce she'd wanted as much as Jeff. And they'd mourned with her at her mother's funeral, when she had no more of herself to give, yet was already suspecting that her father would be her next patient.

  Lately she seemed to be seeing her life in a brand-new perspective. Yesterday, she'd noticed Georgina wearing a new shade of lipstick, a bright pink instead of the ghastly fuchsia she usually favored, and Wilma's hair had been suspiciously lavender. Grip had almost seemed to gambol when he came to the fence to bark his obligatory warning.

  And the rain last week had washed the worst of the bird droppings off the elk.

  The least she could do was spruce the place up a bit, in keeping with the town's springtime reawakening.

  INTERVAL

  Energy dissipating at greater rate than accumulating...

  Carruthers resource weakens, dwindles. Only two remain. One is obsolete, and therefore useless. The other is disoriented and nonfunctional...

  Alternatives? Other available energy sources are weak and unfocused...

  Supplementary sources are needed...

  Increase glamour? Enhance environment?

  Anticipated alternative is eventual termination...

  Worthwhile gamble?

  Affirmative!

  FIVE

  Winter had lingered much longer than usual, everyone said. March was cold, windy and bleak. When the wind howled around the wooden eaves of his upstairs apartment, Gus thought about howling with it, except he hadn't the energy.

  Or the interest.

  Life was easier if you gave people nothing to complain about, so he did a good job, even for minimum wage. Avoiding hassles wasn't the same as caring.

  Neither did he care about the woman in the big house in Whiterock. Never mind that she'd insinuated herself into his dreams more than once. She was needy. Far too needy, with her big, lonely eyes, her soft, wistful voice.

  April brought rain, even in arid eastern Oregon. More than once Gus considered the gray-brown landscape and wondered if May flowers would actually follow. Not that he cared. He felt at one with lowering clouds and sad little drizzles.

  The drizzle was turning to authentic rain when his truck topped the ridge outside Whiterock. The town was half-concealed in wind-blown gray curtains, with shabby structures lurking darkly among still-leafless trees.

  He pulled up before the Carruthers house, once again acknowledging its foursquare tenacity. The cold rain had washed its drab clapboards cleanly white. Its black shutters glistened as though newly painted. Grabbing seven plastic-protected garments and three paper-wrapped parcels, he ducked his head and ran to the front porch, squinting against wind-driven droplets. He jabbed his finger against the doorbell and heard the Westminster chimes echoing inside. But no footsteps approached. Again, he pressed the bell. Waited.

  He waited a good two minutes. There was no place on the porch where he could safely leave the dry cleaning. Most of the floor and the front wall of the house shone with blown-in moisture. Perhaps there was a back porch.

  He removed his jacket and wrapped it around the already water-spotted parcels. A little rain wouldn't shrink him, but it might damage the garments he'd brought for alterations.

  By the time he reached the screened back porch, he was soaked. Fortunately, the door was unlatched. He slipped inside. A handy coat hook beside the door would hold the hangers, and the floor was dry, so the parcels could sit there. He had to assume Ms. Carruthers would look out here when she realized she'd missed him. Next time he saw her, he'd make sure they had an understanding about what he should do if she wasn't here to take them in.

  He was at the rear corner of the house when he heard the plaintive sound. It seemed to come from the shrubbery massed against the old barn. He paused, decided he was mistaken when he heard nothing more. He headed on toward the front yard and the dry sanctuary of his truck.

  "Damn it, Pop!" This time the voice was a full shout. "You're gonna die of pneumonia if you don't get inside."

  He hesitated. Whatever was going on, it was none of his business.

  "Please, Pop, stand up!"

  Oh, hell, I can't get any wetter.

  He found a path into the shrub thicket, followed it. Around the second sharp turn, he came upon Sally Carruthers crouched in the mud beside an old man. Both were drenched. Ms. Carruthers, clad in a wet, clinging chenille robe, was sobbing and swearing as she tried to force the old man to stand. Not resisting, but not cooperating either, he sat like a lump. His face, what Gus could see of it, was slack, expressionless. His gray hair hung in dripping strands across his face, and his flannel pajamas clung to him, soaked through.

  Gus shivered in sympathy.

  Sally looked up and Gus was there.

  "Help me, please. He must have been out here for hours. He's so cold—"

  All her tugging and shoving at Pop hadn't moved him.

  Bless the man, he wasted no time in pulling Pop to his feet. Although her father was not a small man, Gus handled him as if he were, lifting him easily in a fireman's carry.

  She ran ahead to open the back door.

  "Let's take him into the bathroom." She shivered as a gust of wind caught her wet robe.

  "Where?"

  "Straight through the kitchen, the second door on the left." She slipped around him to push the kitchen door open, then again to lead him to the bathroom. By the time he was
there with her father, she had the water running in the shower, was holding one hand in it to test the temperature.

  "Look out." Letting Pop slide from his shoulder, he hauled him upright with both arms. He let go for a moment to unhook the chain that held his wallet to his belt. "Keep this dry, will you?" As soon as she took it, he pulled Pop tight against his chest and walked him into the shower stall.

  "Your shoes!" Sally protested.

  "They'll wash," Gus said. "Hotter." His arms were wrapped around her father, supporting him. Pop's teeth were chattering and his body was wracked with shivers, but his vacuous expression didn't change.

  Sally shut the door when water splashed out onto the linoleum, but she didn't move away. Through the frosted glass, she could see Gus's uniform, Pop's tan pajamas. Their shapes and colors were indistinct, but she could see that Gus held Pop still, in spite of his increasing struggles.

  I wonder what he'd look like in tights and a leather jerkin.

  As soon as the thought emerged, Sally quashed it, horrified. Pop could be halfway to pneumonia, and here she was drooling over a hunk in a wet Tsugawa Linen Supply uniform.

  "Go make some coffee," he said, interrupting her shameful thoughts. Reminding her that he was the dark, bitter man who'd stomped out of her house a few weeks ago.

  She went.

  When the water began cooling, Gus shut it off. He had to fight to get the still-struggling old man out of the shower stall, stripped of his wet pajamas and dried off. The old fart had to be completely around the bend. He hadn't seemed to give a damn about being cold, hadn't cooperated in his own warming up and was putting up a good fight against donning the robe Gus found hanging on the back of the bathroom door.

  At least he no longer in the grip of those awful, bone-deep shivers.

  There was a tap on the door.

  "Are you decent?"

  "C'mon in," Gus said, while trying to force the old man's hand into the other sleeve.