Karen Densmuir Smythe’s ear was hot and damp. She shifted the phone to the other ear and murmured a noncommittal response to her older sister’s advice.
Ruth DeWitt said, “You need to get involved in something outside of the house. You’re just bored and looking for problems where none exist.” Karen could see what was coming next. Ruth was about to leap wholeheartedly into her favorite topic, the unfairness of her life with her retired husband lounging around the house with the sole purpose of annoying her.
Karen thought, and not for the first time, of the irony of Ruth marrying Grayson DeWitt with his pretentious name, and her marriage to Bill Smith with his unpretentious name. Yet, here they were in their 60s and so much had changed.
Ruth with boring old Grayson who never made much of himself, content to drink beer with his old cronies at the Hitching Post day in and day out. Her Bill, in his public persona of William Anderson Smythe, was still the darling of the Hollywood crowd, even with his tamed down style of dress.
They had been on the phone for more than an hour. Her nerves were jumping, and she had to get away from talking. To Ruth she said, “It’s time Bill was up. I better go.”
Karen set down the phone and stretched. She moved to the large living room and looked out to see how her rose bushes were doing. The house was isolated near the point so when she saw the hippie-looking creature strolling up the road toward her house. Hippie? Did they still have hippies in this day and age? Whatever it was, this sexless creature was not someone she recognized. No one came walking all the way up here.
Karen shook her head, trying to dispel the chaos in her mind. She had not felt like herself for weeks and it was getting worse. Last night she had to get up and go to the spare room down the hall because her dreams were making her so restless.
She heard William coming down the stairs and she felt a clutching in her stomach that was becoming all too familiar. Ever since he had taken her to meet his family in Kentucky last month, something was wrong between them. Karen had taken to watching him, hoping for some insight into what had happened to him on that trip.
Karen knew she had forced him to introduce her to his family. It had taken five years and now she regretted her nagging. It had not given her the reassurance she had so desperately wanted. William Anderson Smythe had swooped into her drab Walkersville life and swept her off her feet seven years ago and the old spinster became the object of envy for the first time in her life.
Old spinster wasn't the most accurate description for her because she had been married, briefly, earlier in her life. It was so long ago and so short-lived that she dismissed that part of her life as something that had not touched her or left and imprint on her. She had lived her life modestly in her tiny home and her social life was her sister and her bridge games and keeping up on the local gossip.
William had been a bright yellow sun that changed all of that. She had been in awe of his fame and fortune when she met him and when his interest in her became obvious, she felt like she had to play a role to fit into his life. She had played a role all her life, so this was not a huge leap of effort. It was just a different role she had to play.
“Good morning, darling,” William said as he walked up behind her and put his arms around her and kissed the back of her neck.
“Good morning,” she said, nestling back into him.
“I missed you when I woke up.”
“I had one of my bad nights and I didn't want to disturb you with my tossing and turning.”
“Did you have breakfast? Do you want a coffee?”
“I would love a coffee. And yes, I had breakfast.” Karen had been up since six and had tea and toast. It was after nine and she would have coffee with him. She wished that she could tell him how agitated she felt. If she could get the words out of her head, maybe she could understand the pattern of the emotions she was experiencing.
“I'll make a pot and we can have it out here, if you like.”
“I like.” Karen smiled. He was such a good husband. She wondered if she should see the doctor. Her sister Ruth suggested that a sleeping pill might help. Ruth always like the easy solution to any problem. In the old days, she could confide in Ruth and Ruth always had an answer. Karen usually ignored the answers but being able to talk things out helped her find her own solutions.
There was no way she could discuss her concerns about William with Ruth. Ruth with her boring old drunk of a husband would revel in her rich-bitch sister having problems in her golden life. And what exactly was the problem? There was no name for it. No concrete example of any issue between her and William.
It was just that after their visit to the Smith clan in Kentucky, she sensed that he had changed. They were the kind of people that she expected. He had never given her any illusions about his origins. He was from a good old down-home bunch of hillbillies. He had left the hills early in his life, changed the spelling of his last name, and created his flamboyant persona.
He told her this when they started a relationship and said that she made him remember the good parts of his childhood with the kindness of neighbors and the strength of a small-town community.
She turned back to the window and saw the eighteen-wheeler barrel up the road and come to a near halt in front of the house. It turned into the yard and slowed to a stop at the top of the curve of the driveway. It was too big to be a delivery vehicle. It was one of those big trucks that hauled fish to the Boston market or potatoes from Canada or something like that.
What had William done now, she wondered. She watched as a skinny little guy got out of the truck on the driver's side. She didn't know him from Adam. She looked across the road at the dusty hippie who had stopped walking and was staring directly at her. That was a silly notion. There was no way he could see her through the window. Or she. It was hard to tell what gender the creature was.
The passenger in the truck came around the front of the truck and looped her arm into the driver's and grinned up at him.
Chrissi Smith. With her messy hair a strange shade of teal. She was wearing very short shorts with a lacy flimsy overblouse and wedge sandals. The man smiled down at her and returned to the truck and emerged with a large backpack.
They walked toward the front door and Karen heard the doorbell ring. William called to her, “I'll get it.”
“I've got it,” Karen said and went to the door.
“Auntie Mama Karen!” Chrissi enthused when Karen opened the door. “Uncle Bill.” Chrissi was leaping in the air, her teal tangles bouncing, her clunky shoes thunking on the hardwood floor.
“Well, Chrissi, this is a surprise,” William said. He slipped his arm around Karen. “Yes. Quite a surprise.” His tone was polite, pleasant, and subdued. This was not an unusual tone for him. Karen said nothing. She couldn't. She was speechless.
Chrissi was the daughter of William’s half-brother, Clarence. Clarence was long dead in some accident that Karen never fully understood. His widow, Doreen, just clamped her mouth shut and shook her head slowly whenever his name was mentioned. Doreen was living in the old family home along with William’s half-sister and his aunt. His parents were dead.
Chrissi had been in Nashville when they visited, and Karen had not had the opportunity to meet her. She hadn’t felt like it was much of a loss. Doreen was a grim and miserable woman with scraggly lank undyed hair, a lined face, and apparently no teeth. It was hard to tell if she had any teeth as she rarely spoke, and she never smiled. Her upper teeth were gone, that much was obvious. Her lips had deep wrinkles exacerbated when she took long deep drags off the cigarette that was permanently inserted between them.
She was sixty, the same age as Karen but she looked at least ten years older.
Chrissi didn’t look like her mother. You could see the family resemblance to William’s half-sister and aunt. Good bone structure, large dark blue eyes, and nice shaped eyebrows. Chrissi had plucked hers a little too thin.
“Come in, come in,” William said. The man set the backpack down just inside the door.
“This is my new friend, Jack MacLeod.”
Jack nodded and gave a half smile. “Nice to meet you,” he said. Chrissi didn’t explain who Karen and William were and Karen understood that Chrissi had done that on the trip to their place.
“Did you just arrive from Nashville?”
“Kinda.” Chrissi walked into the living room and looked around. “This is a big house.” She turned back to face William and added, “I got back home, and Mom told me I’d missed meeting you and I said, well damn it all, I gotta see my Uncle Bill so I just turned around and got on the Greyhound and headed up here.”
“Greyhound?” Karen said. She could barely croak out the word.
Jack spoke. “It stops on the 95 out at the gas station there near the Line Road. That’s where I met this little lady. It only seemed right that I give her a lift here.”
William turned to Jack and said, “What are you hauling?” and led the young man into a conversation about the transport company he worked for and how he hauled produce from northern Maine to Boston. It was a short run and he was looking forward to the day when he could do long runs to other parts of the country.
Chrissi had settled into a wing back chair and looked around the room with appraising eyes. Karen knew that any peace she had hoped for was gone for the day.
She sat in the matching wing back chair and sought for something to say to the woman. She had no words.
