Women’s Fiction – Chapter Three Section One
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Chapter Three begins…
Daniel heated soup and toasted baby Swiss cheese sandwiches while Lindsay returned calls from the phone extension, which now reached the narrow enamel table in the kitchen. She hung up with Sam’s sister just as Haidee called her back.
“Remember– “ she tried to calm Haidee before they hung up at nine o’clock, “remember bad news travels faster than good.”
“Unless,” Haidee said, “someone disappears and no one realizes.”
“Too much television drama?” Lindsay surmised.
“Crime scenes may be my scene soon.”
“So you have to think this way,” Lindsay said. “Give silver hair to your mother who tries to never think the worst,” to which Haidee replied that the worst had already happened to her and they were all right, so that Lindsay thought, just that fast the child had forgotten about her dad. Or she didn’t believe Sam would die.
“Good night, Haidee love, and remember to call your dad before eleven. He’s hopefully leaving the hospital by then.”
“Short on clean dishes,” Daniel said, placing a sandwich on a paper towel in front of her, then a mug of tomato soup. “Haidee doing okay?”
“I’m so proud of her.”
“She’ll do better now that she’s faced the merciless details of life the hard way.”
Lindsay laughed. “Yes, yes, the hard way.”
He sat down and with his silvery-blue gaze regarded her face, then her hair. “You don’t look too awful gray for weathering those episodes.”
“Not too. But my heart took the beating for all the rest of me.”
“I know.”
“I’m not sure how I’m going to do it, but I want to open The Vintage Gate, LLC.”
“The Vintage Gate, sounds inviting. You really going limited liability company?”
“Umhmm, to protect myself from business problems. I want this. But Sam needs my time now. And I don’t know how to coordinate all the problems of a new business with the dire necessities of a dying man.”
“One moment at a time.”
“One moment at a time,” she echoed, and Daniel sat there just smiling at her until she smiled back.
“You can do it,” he said, and she nodded, feeling she really could. “Lindsay, you know catastrophes have a way of taking care of themselves, hey, you know that.” She wanted to agree, but she was thinking she really didn’t know.
After their meal, she layered the dishes in the dishwasher. There were no new additions since the meal last night. She had given away too many sets in her need to simplify. A detriment when she needed extra plates and bowls on days like this. White ironstone preferred.
“You ready for bed?” Daniel asked with his hand poised over the light switch.
Shocked at the question, knowing better all the same, Lindsay nodded and avoided looking at him.
She simply said, “Good night.” Her back felt stiff because her willful body wanted to go the other way as she passed through the shortest hall in the world to the living room. Three steps seemed like thirty.
“See you in the morning,” he called from the back of the kitchen. He had to turn past the refrigerator in the cubbyhole, and then she heard him climbing the steep, narrow carpeted stairs.
They made it to separate bedrooms, she thought gratefully. So far so good. No no, never use Gooee’s expression.
Lindsay heard the weight of his steps on the thick-carpeted floor above the living room. He entered the large office-slash-library-slash-guest room where, along the windows, she had dressed a full-size wrought iron antique bed with a feather top mattress. She imagined him on the white goose down comforter removing his shoes, sliding around a little bit, deciding it was all too puffy to suit him.
She went in her room and closed the door, raising the layers of sheers to cascade over the glass panes to the living room.
Itty toddled toward Lindsay, raised her tail, scooted her front feet backward, compacted herself into a square shape and gave a sharp little stomp before she ran beneath her skirt, her tail tickling bare shins.
“There you are,” she cooed, snuggling the petite round skunk. “My Itty bitty pretty one, smelling sweet as a powder puff. My soft sweetheart.”
Fern came skidding around the bed. She nearly tipped onto her nose as she screeched to a halt and wheeled around, acting like she would spray.
“Fluffy Fern, I’m going to pinch your butt.” She snuggled Itty and tousled Fern after tucking her foot into a thick slipper for something besides toes to grab. Run away. Stomp. Skid back, stomp. Give a cheerleader twist. Wheel and pretend to spray. Fern, named for her proud tail, was three years old and not tired of playing. “I’m going to pinch you, I’ll pinch you,” Lindsay teased.
“Hey, Lindsay…” Daniel’s voice trailed eerily through the air vent in her ceiling.
She looked up. “Yes?”
“Pinch them for me too,” he said, and she realized he heard every move she made.
“Are you in Sam’s room?” Sam’s was right over hers for a north lake view.
“No, but I can still hear you.”
“Goodness, thanks for letting me know. Night then, Daniel…” and he called softly back, “Good night, Lindsay.”
Quietly she put on her nightdress then whispered her prayer for no dreams just as she had since high school, and slid between the warm jersey sheets into the promise of white calm that held her mind safe.
A vision in light came before she slept.
A vision of an old man with long hair pulled back, a fathomless spirit that spun into a younger man with blonde hair pulled back.
A man with olive eyes. No, an owl.
But she was calm and safe.
A squeal like a teapot going off in the dawn sat her straight up for a second. Then she dropped onto her pillow and rolled on the bed toward the skunks in their wee bedroom corner by the windows. If one wanted to live with skunks, she thought, they must be willing to get up at four twenty-four every morning. That was precisely when her skunks decided to go to bed and began quibbling over which den they would sleep in. 
Fern was screaming in wrath today. Itty was on her side next to Fern, back against the wall, pushing with all her legs to get Fern off the white flannel sheets. But it was Fern’s bed. I tty’s was the plush den closest to the sweet alfalfa-filled litter pan for a reason.
Lindsay grabbed Itty and went to the mudroom to let Garth and Susanna outside. In the kitchen, she shook a dozen hulled sunflower seeds out of a canning jar for Itty. “You’re being a witch this morning. You do know Great Horned Owls eat skunks?”
Then Lindsay remembered the owl from her sleep, though an owl of a different kind. She wasn’t supposed to dream if she prayed, so what was going on?
Itty munched seeds with tail high then followed Lindsay for more. Instead, Lindsay made coffee, dumped lentils in a crockpot for soup, checked the dogs, started dishes and laundry. She needed breakfast, the dogs and skunks needed fed.
Oh goodness, wake up brain, Daniel was here too.
“Woo-hoo,” a woman’s voice called cheerily from the mudroom. No, oh no no no! Gooee. All-encompassing, abominable Gooee.
Lindsay backed toward the cubbyhole door, wanting terribly to flee. She could hide behind Maimee’s cottage until Gooee decided she was not here.
How did Gooee know she was here?
Lindsay had purposefully not spoken to her for fourteen months. Truly, the woman was just too out there. Just too– too– universal-minded. Lindsay was here and now. Earth unbound. Gooee was always projecting her thoughts into Lindsay’s brain and goodness knows how she managed that, but it worked for her. Lindsay wanted her privacy and for life to be normal.
“Woo-hoo. Didn’t someone need beautiful white ironstone china from England?”
This cannot be happening. Lindsay, uncombed and in her robe, cautiously rounded the corner to face a fresh vision of brown-eyed Gooee in red lip gloss. The shawl and long, red batik dress spoke her entitlement in the world, and though the undesired guest only had opened the door, not the screen, Lindsay felt intruded upon.
Gooee was a classic seventies Earth mother knockout in a silky gray pageboy. When she was twenty-two, Lindsay knew, she changed her name from Lois to Gwynevere, meaning ‘fair lady.’ These days she called herself Gooee. In Gooee’s own words, “might as well get real, darling.” She had actually dropped down to about two hundred and eighty pounds, Lindsay realized. Another sixty pounds lost and they would be the same size. Only Gooee would never have full breasts like her own. Then Lindsay acknowledged she was being more the witch than Itty. And that was because she definitely felt put upon at the moment, ironstone dishes or not.
“Hi, darling. I helped set up at a garage sale this morning and noticed these dishes, and just had to follow my instincts and buy them for you. A house-warming gift, my dear, to go with everything, so I know these will be perfect for whatever you needed.”
Gooee stepped inside, standing beside Lindsay, eight inches taller in her wedges. She laid the cardboard box in Lindsay’s arms.
“How did you know?” Lindsay asked, genuinely wondering though pleased with the dishes.
“We just know these things.”
Gooee was often too vague on really important answers. But always cheerful. Too loud, too crude. But brutally honest about herself and what everyone else could feel, if they only wanted to feel universal. ‘The Universe,’ was Gooee’s favorite phrase, given to saying it the way a universal joint salesman says ‘universal joint’ all the livelong day.
Gooee was a contradiction unto herself. In a nutshell, Gooee was as concise as she was long-winded. And the contradictory question on the tip of Lindsay’s tongue, but she was too polite to ask. ‘Was Gooee crazy or the sanest person on the planet?’
“Well, dear, you take those dishes inside, and I’m going to go to my bus for breakfast fruits. We can nibble while we get caught up.” And she went outside.
Lindsay knew to expect the orange bowl of organic fruits with dreadful lemon-honey drizzle. Sam made awful faces. Daniel washed off the drizzle, saying students in Gooee’s high school literature class wouldn’t eat any so Lindsay ended up with theirs.
She did love the ironstone. She peeked around the box, going up the two stairs into the kitchen.
“Hey, did I hear Gooee?” Daniel asked tiredly, scratching at his beard as he walked into the kitchen from the other side.
Lindsay got an electric shock from alarm. Yes! You did. No time to say it out loud.
She practically dropped the box on the pink enamel table beside them and held her arm out, pushing against his chest.
Daniel’s astonished blue eyes registered.
Wildly, Lindsay looked over her shoulder, shoving him.
“Gooee?!” He wheezed, wheeling for the stairs.
Lindsay pushed against his back to propel him. “Go go man!” she hissed loudly. “Go- Go- Go- Go- Go!!!” She heard every step of his escape to preserve their privacy.
Gooee let herself back in, Newfs with her. “I met the puppies.”
“They’ve been here four days today,” Lindsay said calmly.
“And where is he?” The baiting question. Gooee sounded like someone’s aunt about to pinch a cheek. “I see his truck outside.”
Lindsay realized they had been caught. “Sam is using Daniel’s truck.” She never never lied. But she was lying now. “We sold our old truck.” That was true.
Gooee turned from the kitchen to the living room, depositing the plastic bowl on the table without looking, instead her entranced gaze on the cottage. “This is nice. Oh, oh, so nice. I like it. I really like it.” She wandered around the living room like she could buy the place herself. “Oh, but I should be quieter. Sam must be sleeping.” She pointed at the bedroom through the French doors. “Is that your master bedroom?” she whispered.
The doors were open. Empty bed unmade. Itty and Fern were staring them down, standing on the rug belligerently pointing their tails at the ceiling that hid Daniel.
“A face off with skunks,” Gooee whispered. “Universal moment.” She tilted her pretty gray head to the far left, studying them. “They’re very square, aren’t they?”
“When they’re planning to stomp and spray you.” Lindsay warily lifted her gaze to the ceiling for half a second, knowing Daniel could hear everything.
“Sam’s not in bed,” Gooee said slowly. “I was afraid I would wake him.”
“Sam’s gone fishing. Very early.” Lindsay wanted to throw herself around the living room like Ron Conrad in Pants on Fire.
Lies. Dishonesty, rudeness, ingratitude, ungracious hospitality. Oh for goodness sake, she thought, what karma was going to happen to her for this?
Gooee took a seat on the edge of the taupe sofa. “I knew you were in here somewhere. I just kept following the road, and around and around it wound until there was your car. I didn’t know if it was this house or that darling yellow one, but I noticed Daniel’s truck and said, there it is, and Daniel is there already so I won’t be waking them. But you always did get up with the skunks.” Gooee laughed at her cute word play on skunks instead of birds or chickens.
Never mind that, Lindsay thought. She remembered Gooee had her telephone number a few days ago. “How did you know we moved to Koontz Lake?”
“I went by your house yesterday, the signs were out and it was void of furnishings.”
“And you knew we moved over here to Koontz Lake?”
“We just know these things.” And Lindsay wished she would stop saying that. It was never an answer. Definitely not.
“The good thing is now you’re even closer to me.”
“Oh, okay then.” That made her so much more composed.
“I lost your other phone number,” Gooee continued, and Lindsay thought that she had actually torn Gooee’s phone number and address out of her book. Goodness, she almost said that one aloud. She had to stop thinking like this. Gooee could distinctly hear her thoughts, that she knew.
“But now you have a new number,” Gooee said.
No chance in the whole wide universe.
“Your real estate agent was very helpful,” Gooee said.
And Lindsay despaired. Gooee didn’t need the new number, and she certainly didn’t need this address. Say something nice now. “Thank you so much for the pretty dishes. I was hoping to get more, just last night.”
“And here they are darling lady.”
“Yes, and here they are. You found the perfect ones. Really, I love white ironstone.”
“Just following my instincts, darling, and keeping up with my friends, since it’s been so long… I’ve missed you terribly…. Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Gooee turned her head to the right, slightly raised her chin, poised. “Delicious is a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling.
“How beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and the true! The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed: there is no winter and no night: all tragedies, all ennuis vanish, – all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of beloved persons.
Please stop, Lindsay begged with her thoughts but Gooee wound on, “Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.”
Lindsay decided this must be the crazy lady. Maimee had a premonition and here she was, all ready to torment and tribulate Lindsay. Maimee’s wish for revenge was Gooee.
“But, darling,” Gooee said, now gazing over Lindsay’s face. “Let’s not wait to see one another during this lifetime, we only have so long and then we’re gone, what a waste, there may be a thousand years to be apart later.”
Gooee looked like she was taking a deep breath, to see her through the next paragraph, or three, and she rushed on. “I know I don’t have a stop button on my mouth, lucky for everyone concerned that I don’t have a rewind and play either. We’re all better off most of the time if we just don’t remember what comes out of me. But I want you to know that whatever I have done to offend you, I am truly sorry and wish to be forgiven because I really like you. I love you. You are such a wonderful person to talk to and you always listen and try to understand everyone and you are so beautiful in your heart, I miss being around someone like you. Because there aren’t too many people like you, Lindsay dear, there really aren’t. Ralph Waldo Emerson. ‘When a man becomes dear to me I have touched the goal of fortune.’”
Lindsay blinked once and put her hands over her face. Deeply remorseful, that’s what she was now. This – this– dear dear woman.
Goodness, this was what Lindsay loved about her. Gooee would always take the chance and open her beautiful heart to people. Lindsay knew that she had never been as open as Gooee. She had never in her life said anything so beautiful to anyone as Gooee just said to her.
“Oh, darling, darling, don’t cry, my apology was to make you glad,” Gooee said in singsong. “Don’t hide your face.”
“A-shamed,” Lindsay managed, shaking her head. “Just ashamed.”
“Why ashamed?” Gooee coaxed softly.
She uncovered her face. “I never said anything or called for months. I just disappeared.” Lindsay couldn’t tell her why, as some things were better left unsaid, mind reader or not.
“Well, you have a chance to do it all over again. Right now.”
Lindsay was regaining her composure. And wondering, just a little bit, why this was a good thing, her getting to do it over. She met Gooee at a pottery class and, basically, was adopted by her. But Gooee had such a precious heart that much was so apparent, regardless of her abominable presence and all-encompassing intellect. People always wished her to go away. But Gooee only desired to be genuine for their benefit.
Lindsay would try this friendship again. There just were times Lindsay would have to speak up.
“There’s an upstairs too,” Gooee said, standing. “I want to see.”
Now Lindsay had to speak up. “There’s no time for me to show you.”
“Oh? Ohhh.” She sounded a only little defeated. “Okay, you have somewhere to go,” and Lindsay agreed, saying, “Yes yes, I still have to shower and dress.”
Gooee started for the kitchen. “Where are the stairs? Couldn’t I just take a little self-tour while you get ready?” and Lindsay said, “No-no,” like she was speaking to a toddler.
“Oh.” Gooee paused, now sounding deflated, confused and hurt.
Lindsay decided if they were starting over then she had to tell the truth. Only some of it. “Sam is in the hospital.”
“Oh, finally you tell me–”
“What? Finally?”
“We just know these things.”
“Oh, really, Gooee–”
“But if Sam’s in the hospital–” she paused, turning slowly to the bedroom where they could see the silver-blue extended cab pickup parked outside the white fence. She pointed questioningly.
Goodness, just splendid. She never could lie. “Sam is borrowing Daniel’s truck.” How far was she willing to take this? Gooee would definitely be back. She talked to everyone. And truly, she did not have a censor device between her brain and mouth. “Okay. Daniel is upstairs,” Lindsay admitted. “He slept over so we can get back to the hospital early. He was very tired after midnights.”
“Well I knew that all the time, dear, I was just wondering how long it was going to take for you to tell me. And I assure you no one will be told so you don’t need to worry yourself over that. Just between you, me and the lamppost up there, so far, so good.”
Sure, Lindsay thought.
“I’m coming down now,” Daniel called through the vent, true defeat in his tone being he was on the losing team this morning.
“Daniel, dear, I hope you have your clothes on,” Gooee called up the vent.
“He slept upstairs with his clothes,” Lindsay said.
“Oh, I know.” Gooee laughed. “I’m just tormenting him.”
“My goodness, Gooee,” she said, “I don’t know how much torment I can take.” Lindsay went into the kitchen and scooped some of the honey-lemon drizzled fruit for Daniel into one of her own bowls. “I’ll keep a little fruit. But thank you for bringing all this over. It’s just that we have to get back to the hospital right away. Sam may be released. If not, then I want to be with him.”
“I understand fully, dear, and I’m going to go now but I’ll be back very soon to help you out and we can catch up then.” Gooee grabbed Daniel by the hand, swinging their arms flirtatiously. “Daniel is a good friend for you and Sam, I know that, so don’t mind my harassing.” She hugged Daniel then Lindsay and opened the door to the mudroom.
“Oh, Lindsay,” she said, “I noticed a business for rent on the corner when I turned off the highway several times trying to find you. And I kept saying to myself, over and over as I passed, ‘Lindsay Davinson is so creative, she could really do something universal with that place.’”
Gooee took off in her seventies white Volkswagen bus with black-and-white Woodstock scenes along both sides. The image of a newspaper page blowing past the window at six in the morning if Lindsay didn’t know what she was seeing.
Lindsay was scowling for ten minutes after Gooee left. She ate breakfast, avoiding the fruit. She grunted agreement with Daniel about the weather and Garth’s soft coat until Daniel broached the Gooee subject that had Lindsay so riled.
“She’s alright, really,” he said.
“Daniel, you never liked her.”
“I never said I didn’t like Gooee.” Daniel was at the sink rinsing the fruit. “I don’t like sour drizzle, hey some things a person has to avoid. But Gooee, she’s got a big heart.”
“And mouth.”
“And mouth. Unfortunately, she will mention me being here to someone she shouldn’t say anything to. Consequently, we won’t be happy. But we would do it again if we needed to. Since we did nothing wrong, Lindsay.”
“Nothing.”
“We do our best to always be able to say we did nothing wrong. We’re okay. And Gooee will be Gooee.”
Lindsay was done thinking about Gooee. She took a shower and Daniel went next.
Lindsay dressed in her flax-colored rustic cardigan and the black denim skirt, didn’t even put on socks with her mules. She grabbed the Newfer-scooper, an obvious chore, and the leaf rake. Raking dead grass from what Sam called their postage stamp lawn was the most mindless, therapeutic activity she knew. She needed mindless.
She had dodged Gooee for fourteen months and now she was back. Okay, Lindsay would live with that. She could see all the admirable traits of Gooee, or Gwynevere or Lois. Or Gougou, that legendary sea witch from Miramichi Bay. Whoever she was in reality.
She knew she was at this place to build a new life, not leave behind her old life.
Grass sprouts rifled her senses. Freshly mown lawn. Rolling on spring grass with Sam. Piling grass over their giggling girls. When they were so newly married everything hurt, though it shouldn’t have. Now she was so extensively married, and everything still hurt. But she didn’t want to lose him by him dying.
A new life before he died. That was why they were here. Lindsay had decided on the tiny village of Koontz Lake because her husband was never planning to leave his crane job, even with two hundred and thirty-one days left. Otherwise, they might be somewhere truly scenic.
Koontz Lake. Not so scenic.
One of those northern-like villages in the middle of everywhere such as television paradigms. Almost no one lived here. Just people passing through on their way to the other place, passing through as they whiled away the weekend, passing through after staying the summer. A place where nothing changed as everything around you modified. They needed a place where nothing would change while they went through the greatest adjustment of their middle-aged lives.
She decided to come here because the town had a lake along the east. A lake felt necessary for their life change. They could pretend they were retired and seventy instead of Sam barely making fifty.
They always wanted a pontoon and water-faring Newfoundland. Now they had two Newfs, the cottage she loved, and the lake. She wanted to get the pontoon now, so Sam could go out and fish.
“I need a pontoon,” she murmured as she raked more slowly, the edge off her stress.
Gooee, the name meant stress for her. A pontoon meant less stress. Sam could work, then sit out there and fish. And be with her, of course.
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