And there was the farm. Like a demanding invalid, it needed constant attention, even though the steady substitution of equipment for human labor had made much of the work less onerous than it had been in the past.
But there was something more going on here. Predictability is one thing, fear of change is something else. And Richard was afraid of change, any kind of change, in their marriage. Didn’t want to talk about it in general. Didn’t want to talk about sex in particular. Eroticism was, in some way, dangerous business, unseemly to his way of thinking.
But he wasn’t alone and really wasn’t to blame. What was the barrier to freedom that had been erected out here? Not just on their farm, but in the rural culture. Maybe urban culture, for that matter. Why the walls and the fences preventing open, natural relationships between men and women? Why the lack of intimacy, the absence of eroticism?
The women’s magazines talked about these matters. And women were starting to have expectations about their allotted place in the grander scheme of things, as well as what transpired in the bedrooms of their lives. Men such as Richard—most men, she guessed—were threatened by these expectations. In a way, women were asking for men to be poets and driving, passionate lovers at the same time.
Women saw no contradiction in that. Men did. The locker rooms and stag parties and pool halls and segregated gatherings of their lives defined a certain set of male characteristics in which poetry, or anything of subtlety, had no place. Hence, if eroticism was a matter of subtlety, an art form of its own, which Francesca knew it to be, it had no place in the fabric of their lives. So the distracting and conveniently clever dance that held them apart went on, while women sighed and turned their faces to the wall in the nights of Madison County.
There was something in the mind of Robert Kincaid that understood all of this, implicitly. She was sure of that.
Walking into the bedroom, toweling off, she noted it was a little after ten. Still hot, but the bath had cooled her. From the closet she took the new dress.
She pulled her long black hair behind her and fastened it with a silver clasp. Silver earrings, large hooped ones, and a loose-fitting silver bracelet she also had bought in Des Moines that morning.
The Wind Song perfume again. A little lipstick on the high cheekboned, Latin face, the shade of pink even lighter than the dress. Her tan from working outdoors in shorts and midriff tops accented the whole outfit. Her slim legs came out from under the hem looking just fine.
She turned first one way, then the other, looking at herself in the bureau mirror. That’s about as good as I can do, she thought. And then, pleased, said half out loud, “It’s pretty good, though.”
Robert Kincaid was working on his second beer and repacking the cameras when she came into the kitchen. He looked up at her.
“Jesus,” he said softly. All of the feelings, all of the searching and reflecting, a lifetime of feeling and searching and reflecting, came together at that moment. And he fell in love with Francesca Johnson, farmer’s wife, of Madison County, Iowa, long ago from Naples.
“I mean”—his voice was a little shaky, a little rough—“if you don’t mind my boldness, you look stunning. Make-‘em-run-around-the-block-howling-in-agony stunning. I’m serious. You’re big-time elegant, Francesca, in the purest sense of that word.”
His admiration was genuine, she could tell. She reveled in it, bathed in it, let it swirl over her and into the pores of her skin like soft oil from the hands of some deity somewhere who had deserted her years ago and had now returned.
And, in the catch of that moment, she fell in love with Robert Kincaid, photographer-writer, from Bellingham, Washington, who drove an old pickup truck named Harry.
ROOM TO DANCE AGAIN
On that Tuesday evening in August of 1965, Robert Kincaid looked steadily at Francesca Johnson. She looked back in kind. From ten feet apart they were locked in to one another, solidly, intimately, and inextricably.
The telephone rang. Still looking at him, she did not move on the first ring, or the second. In the long silence after the second ring, and before the third, he took a deed breath and looked down at his camera bags. With that she was able to move across the kitchen toward the phone hanging on the wall just behind his chair.
“Johnson’s…. Hi, Marge. Yes, I’m fine. Thursday night?” She calculated: He said he’d be here a week, he came yesterday, this is only Tuesday. The decision to lie was an easy one.
She was standing by the door to the porch, phone in her left hand. He sat within touching distance, his back to her. She reached out with her right hand and rested it on his shoulder, in the casual way that some women have with men they care for. In only twenty-four hours she had come to care for Robert Kincaid.
“Oh, Marge, I’m tied up then. I’m going shopping in Des Moines. Good chance to get a lot of things done I’ve been putting off. You know, with Richard and the kids gone.”
Her hand lay quietly upon him. She could feel the muscle running from his neck along his shoulder, just back of his collarbone. She was looking down on the thick gray hair, neatly parted. Saw how it drifted over his collar. Marge babbled on.
“Yes, Richard called a little while ago…. No, the judging’s not till Wednesday, tomorrow. Richard said it’d be late Friday before they’re home. Something they want to see on Thursday. It’s a long drive, particularly in the stock truck…. No, football practice doesn’t start for another week. Uh-huh, a week. At least that’s what Michael said.”
She was conscious of how warm his body felt through the shirt. The warmth came into her hand, moved up her arm, and from there spread through her to wherever it wanted to go, with no effort—indeed, with no control— from her. He was still, not wanting to make any noise that might cause Marge to wonder. Francesca understood this.
“Oh, yes, that was a man asking directions.” As she guessed, Floyd Clark had gone right home and told his wife about the green pickup he had seen in the Johnsons’ yard on his way by yesterday.
“A photographer? Gosh, I don’t know. I didn’t pay much attention. Could have been.” The lies were coming easier now.
“He was looking for Roseman Bridge…. Is that right? Taking pictures of the old bridges, huh? Oh, well, that’s harmless enough.
“Hippie?” Francesca giggled and watched Kincaid’s head shake slowly back and forth. “Well, I’m not sure what a hippie looks like. This fellow was polite. He only stayed a minute or two and then was gone…. I don’t know whether they have hippies in Italy, Marge. I haven’t been there for eight years. Besides, like I said, I’m not sure I’d know a hippie if I saw one.”
Marge was talking on about free love and communes and drugs she’d read about somewhere. “Marge, I was just getting ready to step into my bath when you called, so I’d better run before the water gets cold…. Okay, I’ll call soon. ‘Bye.”
She disliked removing her hand from his shoulder, but there was no good excuse not to remove it. So she walked to the sink and turned on the radio. More country music. She adjusted the dial until the sound of a big band came on and left it there.
“‘Tangerine,’” he said.
“What?”
“The song. It’s called ‘Tangerine.’ It’s about an Argentinian woman.” Talking around the edges of things again. Saying anything, anything. Fighting for time and the sense of it all, hearing somewhere back in his mind the faint click of a door shutting behind two people in an Iowa kitchen.
She smiled softly at him. “Are you hungry? I have supper ready whenever you want.”
“It was a long, good day. I wouldn’t mind another beer before I eat. Will you have one with me?” Stalling, looking for his center, losing it moment by moment.
She would. He opened two and set one on her side of the table.
Francesca was pleased with how she looked and how she felt. Feminine. That’s how she felt. Light and warm and feminine. She sat on the kitchen chair, crossed her legs, and the hem of her skirt rode up well above her right
