Part 3: Summer of 1974, Summer of 1998
by Jack Mauro
[Editor's Note: This is the third chapter of Jack Mauro's five-part summer fiction serial. Last week, Enola started to tell Olive about her new love, Drew, and Drew told his friend, Robby, about Enola.]
Summer is thought to be an especially sexy time of year because, not unexpectedly, more panting is done and fewer garments are worn during it. As these are symptoms of lust on the wing, we tend to diagnose the season as erotic.
Summer is sexy, yes, but not because we wear little and breathe heavily. Rather, unrelenting heat brings about in the human animal the sense that we are all going to die soon. And better get some, fast.
The August of 1974 was merciless, and Knoxville itself was a Dogwood-studded kiln when Layne Burrows escorted Olive Hogarth to a show at the Tennessee Theatre.
Who was in love, on that evening?
Olive's hand, a baby shovel, slipped into Layne's as they stood under the marquee with the other patrons. She wore a light khaki jacket over a thin khaki dress, an unfortunate shade for a young woman of her proportions. Her skin fair and smooth, her hair black and fresh, the girl Olive was still as cubed in arrangement as the woman Olive; thus the military colors lent her the aspect of an infant all-purpose vehicle, not yet grown into full tankhood.
But Layne cared nothing for whatever attractions Olive did not possess. Layne was in fact supposed to fall for Olive's friend, an airily dimwitted Southern nymph of elegant limb. Olive had been the friend to round out—unkind language!—the introductory foursome set up by Layne's chum, Res Ketchum, months before in the more innocent spring. Yet it had been Olive's number Layne dialed the next day, Olive with whom he had felt at ease, and happy. And, as the courtship progressed, Layne's family and friends grew daily more respectful, if not awed, of what must have been his finer nature. To pursue treadmarks in the soil, when slim little footprints traced a path to follow as well—how rare in a young man, to see beauty and worth in what was patently unbeautiful. Everyone in Layne's life felt good about this. His mother even rejoiced in Olive's boxy and plain looks, as many mothers wish good-natured and homely women for their sons. So many potential dangers are averted in such unions; the mother is relieved of the painfully Oedipal competition of the gorgeous daughter-in-law.
"How about I get you something from the lobby?" Layne asked. "Something cool to drink?"
Olive smiled in response and gently touched a stubby finger to his damp shirt collar. Layne was—is—a tall man with a long, shy face like a cowboy's, and reddish-gold hair. His eyes complete the western motif, as they are the milky blue of cornflowers. Olive was never able to look at him without experiencing a sharp twinge of pleasure at the back of her neck. If the truth be known, it happens still.
"I'm just fine." And she gave his slender hand a squeeze. Which hurt a little.
Who was in love, that evening? Olive Hogarth. Deeply, deeply.
Eee-no-la Tyrwhitt. You tell me about this boy, now." Olive's very voice calls for truth by virtue of the resounding bass within it. The raspy quality above the bass does nothing to diminish the impact. Olive sounds like a female, Southern God with a cold.
"Well, Miss Burrows, he's—"
"Ahhh-live. Damn, girl."
Enola smiles in the manner we call sheepish. "Olive. Olive, he's just...well, he's just a sweetheart."
Olive stares hard at Enola. In a sense, her gaze is that of the doctor first hearing a na�ve patient describe a mysterious lump as though it might be a gift of some sort.
"What he do?"
"He do?"
"How, girl, does the boy earn a dollar?" What Olive does to the word "dollar" would make Margaret Mitchell weep with joy.
"Oh. Oh!" Enola relaxes a bit, confident in her beau's material status. "Drew works as an investment counselor. Or broker, or something. Right next door in the Tower."
Con artist, thinks Olive. But she nods solemnly. Which is taken as approbation by Enola.
"Good-lookin' boy?"
Enola's eyes widen in eagerness. If any young woman could call forth Drew's beauty with absolutely no trace of pride in her acquiring of it, it is Enola. It is as though she is describing a fairytale castle on a distant hill.
"He's gorgeous. He's just so handsome. I mean, not just to me. I never saw anything like him." This delivered, breathlessly and pleased, Enola sits back a little.
But I have, Olive thinks. I've seen very good-looking men. And the singular mortar and pestle job we perform when our best intentions to advise get ground into the bitter pills of our own experience, when the heavy shadow of our own truth darkens our prognosis of the untouched and justifiably hopeful, is enacted under the black and gray curls of Olive Burrows. It's a hard thing, that only experience is equipped to counsel and yet is unfit to do so by virtue of its own, tainted history.
To Olive, there was—is—no more handsome man than Layne Burrows.
She slips off the desk like the flagship of an attacking force bravely taking a trench. Better, to her mind, for the boy to be homeless, better for Enola to have said that he's missing at least one arm. But he is handsome, so handsome that Enola's face becomes a beacon of rapture in the attempt to relate it. This girl is doing too much of the loving. This girl, Olive believes, is doomed.
Olive had intended to impart good sense to a lovesick child. She had not realized, but ought to have known, that the subject of love is not one she can ever near without finding herself once more flailing about in the old love she otherwise walks firmly upon. She is utterly at a loss.
"Baby, you go on, now. We'll talk later."
So Enola exits the office of her employer, a little confused and more than a little relieved. And, left alone, Olive is stunned that again, again!, she not only feels love for her ex-husband, but that she believes he deserves it.
Next week: Harry's
July 4, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 27
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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