The Market
by
Greta Igl
Perhaps it’s his lack of vision that has him in this
predicament, standing under a canopy in a hot, crowded
farmer’s market while some stranger embraces his wife. He
plays it over in his head, the look on her face. First,
surprise, as she looks up from the fingerling potatoes and
sees this man, whoever he is. Then, the worrisome
softening.
“David.” Her voice surges.
Now she’s in this David’s arms.
Mark watches. The sun beats down hot on the braid of people
browsing asparagus at white-canopied tables. The capitol
dome arcs across the too-blue sky. A relaxed Saturday
morning scene, complete with shoppers reclining on the
thick green lawn, Ecuadorian pan flute music drifting over
from the corner. Someone yells Get your
hot and spicy cheese bread here! Cheese bread,
for God’s sake.
David.
Mark feels like he should know the name. But he never
wanted to know about what came in Leslie’s life before him.
It was neater that way. Less room for misinterpretation.
Only now he sees the error in his thinking. Leslie plus
this grabby David person equals a complete unknown.
Then David leans over and presses his mouth to Leslie’s
cheek.
There’s something in the way his lips linger, like he’s
reveling in the curves and scent of her. Leslie’s lashes
drop and Mark’s throat tightens. He knows that look, how
she hides behind her lashes.
Mark notices she doesn’t pull away.
“David,” she says again, when David eventually pulls back.
“What a surprise!” Her voice is too high and a little
skittery, like the time she told him about the ding in the
Lexus.
“I live here now,” David says.
“Oh! I didn’t know!” She laughs and her fifteen years with
Mark makes him feel her nervousness like a hot wire.
“What about you?” David says, whoever he is. “What are you
doing here? Do you live in Madison?”
David’s hopeful nosiness makes Mark inhale with a slow
rasp.
“No.” Leslie’s hand fiddles with the potatoes, turning them
like worry stones, her eyes locked on them. “We just came
for the day.” A flush splotches her cheeks. Mark feels the
awkward hanging of her we.
Mark clears his throat, taking it for his cue to enter the
peculiar stage play.
Leslie turns. “Oh!” Her hand flutters to her chest. Time
stretches. “David. My husband. This is Mark.”
Mark tries to ignore the juxtaposition, but it makes his
legs and smile stiff as he staggers forward. He holds out a
sunburned hand.
“Mark Jacobs. Don’t worry. I’m the husband, not you.”
The joke trips and lays there.
Mark notes David’s hand is clammy.
“David Shaw.”
Whoever that is, Mark thinks, then reminds himself he’d
probably know if he wasn’t such a damned coward.
“Is your wife here?” Leslie asks, then she must catch
herself. “I’m assuming you’re married. I mean, I think
someone told me that.”
Mark wonders who she heard it from, this helpful friend or
acquaintance or maybe even relative who provided news
flashes to Leslie about old boyfriends.
“Yeah,” David says, his own hand dropping to the potatoes.
“She’s here. Somewhere.” He looks around, shrugs. “She
wanders.”
Mark feels his eyes go tight and squinty.
A large family pushes past, Indian, the women in saris,
while the men and children wear American t-shirts and
shorts.
“Excuse me,” the woman in the yellow sari says. She reaches
between Mark and David to examine some bunched scallions.
Mark steps aside, making David a pair with Leslie. David’s
arm brushes Leslie’s and she starts.
“Sorry,” David says, but Mark sees he’s not, that his
breath has grown shallow and his eyes are melting as he
stands there touching Mark’s wife.
Leslie looks down, eyes again behind her lashes. Mark’s
heart beats with helpless panic.
The sari woman pays for her onions and leaves.
“David!”
Mark shakes off the jittery heaviness. A woman in a denim
jumper and white t-shirt prances up, smiling, clearly
oblivious.
“Excuse me,” She says as she squeezes between David and
Leslie. “Wait until you see the strawberries I found.
Fabulous! I thought I’d make…”
Something must register with her. She steps back and looks
at the uneasy group clustered around the fingerlings.
“Hi.” Her voice is careful now, in front of this larger
audience.
David clears his throat. “Nancy.” He runs a hand through
the hair at his nape. “This is Leslie. And her husband.
Mark.”
Mark sees Nancy stopped listening at Leslie.
Nancy’s eyes narrow, then she forces a smile.
“Leslie.” She gives Leslie a hard stare that clashes with
her smiling mouth. Mark sees a side to her that David must
find a bitch to live with. “How nice to meet you.” She
threads her arm through David’s crooked elbow and hangs.
Leslie smiles, but behind it, her face looks guilty. “Yes,”
she says, her voice a murmur. “So nice to meet you, too.”
They stand there, lost in their own shades of awkward.
“I just can’t believe this coincidence,” Leslie says
eventually. Of course, Leslie is the first to speak. She
never could stand those uncomfortable silences. He
remembers their first date, how they’d sat fiddling with
their drinks, their minds stretching for something to talk
about.
He wonders if she’d struggled like that with David.
“Yes,” David says, grabbing her conversational lifeline.
Then the pause comes back and David seems reluctant to let
things go. “Of course, I’m not one to believe in
coincidence,” he continues, “Isn’t that right, Nancy? You
know how I’ve always believed in fate. And that’s what this
is. Fate. It must be. It’s fate that we ran into each
other.”
Leslie’s eyes widen. Nancy clamps her lips tight. David
smiles sheepishly with an apologetic eye wrinkle.
“Yes,” Nancy says, her eyes drilling into David. “I’ve
spent hours listening to your discourse on fate, David.”
Mark shifts on his feet, looks away from David. As much as
he dislikes the guy, he can’t violate the unspoken rule: no
man ever watches another man get henpecked.
“Can I help you?”
Mark tries to shake off the funk he’s in, sees the woman
who runs the stand smiling at them with exaggerated
patience. Mark can’t blame her for not wanting their little
drama to unfold at the feet of her business. She looks like
a forty-something, hippie version of Heidi, two gray-laced
brown pigtail braids trailing over her pendulous,
unbrassiered breasts. A tie-dyed sleeveless sack dress
brushes the burnished buckles on her Bierkenstocks.
“Did you have any questions?” she asks, her smile widening
now that she has their attention. “Perhaps you wanted to
purchase some potatoes?”
“Um, yes,” Leslie says, slipping into her usual smiling
self. Mark knows she’d never be rude to a stranger, even if
her world was crashing down around her. “I’ll take two
pounds of baby Yukons.”
Hippie Heidi starts scooping them into a paper bag. Before
long, Leslie hands over the money and the transaction is
complete.
“Well!” Nancy says, her mouth a wedge of counterfeit glee.
She places a hand on David’s arm. “As lovely as this has
been, we’d better get going, David. My mom has bridge with
her lady friends in about an hour.” She says it as though
it explains everything.
David looks down. The toe of his left sport sandal scuffs
the sidewalk. Again, he looks up with that sheepish grin.
“Kids,” he says. “Nancy’s mom had the kids overnight.”
Leslie lets out a long breath, swallows and nods.
“Yes,” she says, hugging her bag of fingerling potatoes
close to her chest. She shakes her head and smiles. “Yes,
it’s been lovely seeing you, David. And to meet you, also,
Nancy.”
David’s eyes meet with Leslie’s and Mark watches from the
sidelines, wishing he could erase whatever was happening,
go back to this morning before they saw this David, go back
even further to all the nights he stayed late at work when
Leslie begged him to come straight home. If he’d only
dawdled a little over his shave this morning. Or refused to
take Addison as a client. It was Addison who wore Mark
down, with his complex portfolio and his questionable
ethics. It took all Mark’s shrewdness to keep his feet this
side of legal.
Nancy pulls at David’s arm and David starts to drift with
it, a few shuffling steps that put him back in the stream
of pedestrian traffic. He’ll be gone now, Mark thinks, this
David and his penetrating looks and his unhappy,
fake-smiling wife. He can feel something humming off
Leslie, a resonance that stands his neck hairs on end. It
will pass, he tells himself. They’ll go home and she’ll
feel badly for awhile, a little melancholy for whatever she
thinks she’s missing. But slowly, they’ll drift into their
comfortable routine: Leslie busy with her garden and her
painting, Mark with Addison and his portfolio and tax
landmines.
Then David stops and turns.
“It really has been great seeing you again, Leslie.”
Leslie lets out a shuddering breath.
“You too, David.” Her words float out on a sigh.
They watch each other again, his wife and David. Mark’s
eyes meet Nancy’s and it’s like a carnival mirror, fear
reflecting fear reflecting fear into infinity. He can’t
tell which one of them is the source.
“Perhaps…,” David says and his eyes blaze. “Perhaps we
could get together for lunch when you come into town next?
Or I get back to Milwaukee often enough. It would be nice
to catch up. You know. When we have more time.”
Mark waits, his breath held. The crowd braids around David,
the stream of men and women and children diverting and
converging around him. Mark wants to pull Leslie close, to
squeeze her shoulder, but he’s too sour with fear and the
pounding of his cowardly heart.
“Sure,” Leslie says. “That would be nice.”
Mark sinks. He waits for Leslie to offer their phone
number, for David to hand her his card, but the stream of
pedestrians grows denser and Nancy’s tug on David’s arm
more relentless. David teeters, fighting the flow, but a
lady with a double stroller presses the surge until slowly,
David is swept away, one splayed hand raised toward Leslie.
“I’ll call you!” he cries over the laughter and the
convivial Saturday morning chatter. Then David and the
moment are gone.
The sun beats down. The capitol dome gleams white under the
sunshine. The crowd flows past, full of harmless faces.
Mark makes a choice.
“How nice for you to run into an old friend.” He strokes a
hand down Leslie’s sun-warmed arm.
Leslie looks down. Mark holds his breath. Eventually, she
raises liquid-sad eyes. Her mouth slides into a melancholy
smile.
“Yes,” she says, hooking her arm into the crook of Mark’s
elbow. She lets out a long breath. “Now, let’s go home,”
she says. “I think I’ll make a torta
with these
little potatoes.”
Something wells in Mark. He presses a kiss to her temple.
“That sounds delicious.” His voice croaks, thick with
relief.
This time, he decides, he’ll pay closer attention, watch
more carefully, come home every night before six. Okay,
seven. Come Monday, he’ll tell Addison to go to hell, to
find some other financial advisor to deal with his tax
evading bullshit. That will fix this mess, make Leslie
happy. Maybe he’ll plan that trip to Europe they’ve always
talked about.
His hand finds the small of her back, absorbs her familiar
feel. Warm, with enough curve to rest his hand on. They
merge into the throng of pedestrians, the bag of potatoes
clutched to Leslie’s chest. They’re swept toward the car
and home.
Copyright
2009 by Greta Igl