During that time his fear increased, and when he spoke to her on the Sunday in between, and he said, “Really glad you’re coming to see me,” he thought she’d have an excuse and say it wouldn’t work out. Instead she said, “Oh, me too.”
So he set about cleaning the house. He bought some cleaning stuff and put it in a pail of hot water, watching the suds, then he got down on his hands and knees and scrubbed the floor; the grime there amazed him. He scrubbed the kitchen counters, and was amazed by their filth as well. He took down the curtains that hung in front of the blinds and washed them in the old washing machine. In his mind they were blue-gray curtains, but it turned out that they were off-white. He washed them a second time, and they were an even brighter off-white. He cleaned the windows, and noticed that their streaking was on the outside as well, so he went outside and cleaned the windows from there. In the late August sun they seemed to still have streaky swirls when he got done. He thought he might keep the blinds down, which is what he usually did anyway.
But when he stepped through the door—the only door to the house, which opened right into the small living room and the kitchen area to the right—he saw things the way she would see them, and he thought: She will die, this place will depress her so much. He really didn’t know what to do. He drove to the Walmart outside of town and bought a rug, and that made a huge difference. Still, the couch was lumpy and its original yellow flowered upholstery was worn; at points it was threadbare. The kitchen table had a linoleum top, and it was impossible to make it look newer. There was no tablecloth in the house, and he had doubts about buying one. He gave up. But the day before she was to arrive he went into town and got a haircut; usually he cut his own hair. Only when he was driving home did he wonder: Was he supposed to have tipped the man who cut his hair?
That night he woke at three with nightmares he could not remember. He woke again at four, and could not get back to sleep. She had said she’d be there by two in the afternoon. At one o’clock he opened the blinds up, but even though the sky was cloudy the windows still looked streaky, and so he closed the blinds again. Then he sat on the couch and waited.
At twenty minutes past two, Pete heard a car in the pebbly driveway. He peeked through the blind and saw a woman step from a white car. When he heard the knock on the door, he was so anxious he felt his eyesight had been affected. He had expected—he realized this later—that sunlight would flood the house, meaning that the presence of Lucy would shine and shine. But she was shorter than he remembered, and much thinner. And she wore a black jacket that seemed like something a man would wear, and black jeans, and black boots, and her face looked so tired. And old! But her eyes sparkled. “Petie,” she said, and he said, “Lucy.”
She held her arms out, and he gave her a tentative hug; they had never hugged in their family and the gesture was not easy for him. The top of her head reached his chin. He stepped back and said, “I got a haircut,” moving his hand over his head.
“You look wonderful,” Lucy said.
And then, almost, he wished she hadn’t come; it would be too tiring.
“I couldn’t find the road,” Lucy said, and her face showed real surprise. “I mean, I must have driven by it five times, I kept thinking, Where is it? And then finally—God, I’m so stupid—finally I realized the sign’s been taken down, you know, the sign that said ‘Sewing and Alterations.’?”
“Oh yeah. I took that sign down over a year ago.” Pete added, “I figured it was time.”
“Oh, of course it was, Petie. It’s just my stupid old mind kept waiting to see it—and I— Hello, Pete. Oh my God, hello.” She looked straight into his eyes, and he saw that it was her; he saw his sister.
“I cleaned up for you,” he said.
“Well, thank you.”
Oh, he was nervous.
“Petie, listen to this.” She moved to the couch and sat down with a familiarity that surprised him, as though she had been sitting on that couch for years. He sat slowly in the old armchair in the corner, and watched while she slipped off her black boots, which were more like shoes, he saw now. “Listen to this,” Lucy said. “I saw Abel Blaine. He came to my reading.”
“You saw Abel?” Abel Blaine was their second cousin on their mother’s side; he had come to stay with them a few summers when they were children, along with his younger sister, Dottie. Abel and Dottie had been as poor as they were. “What was he like?” Pete had not thought of Abel for years. “Wow, Lucy, you saw Abel. Where does he live?”
“I’ll tell you, hold on.” Lucy scooted her feet up under her, leaning down to push aside her black shoe-boots. Pete had never seen anything like them. Little zippers went up their backs. “Okay.” Lucy brushed at the front of her black jacket and said, “So, I’m sitting there signing books, and this man—this tall man with nice-looking gray hair—he was standing very patiently, I noticed that, all alone, and when he finally got to me he said, ‘Hi, Lucy,’ and his voice sounded familiar, can you believe that, Pete? After all these years, he sounded like Abel. And I said, ‘Wait,’ and he said, ‘It’s me, Abel,’ and I just jumped up, Petie, and we hugged, oh God did we hug. Abel Blaine!”
Pete felt excited; her excitement made its way right to him.
Lucy said, “He lives right outside of Chicago, in kind of a ritzy neighborhood. He’s been running an air-conditioning outfit for years. I said, ‘Is your wife here?,’ and he said, No, she was sorry she couldn’t make it, but she had some auxiliary meeting or something.”
“I bet she just didn’t want to come,” Pete said.
“Exactly.” Lucy nodded vehemently. “You’re so right, Petie, how did you know that? It was just sort of obvious to me, I mean, it seemed like he was lying, and I don’t think Abel could ever really tell a lie.”
“He married a snob.” Pete sat back. “That’s what Mommy said years ago.”
“Mom told me that too, way back when I was in the hospital and she came to visit me.” Lucy tugged her black jacket closed. “She said that Abel had married the boss’s daughter, that she was a hoity-toity. He was dressed very well, you know, an expensive suit.”
“How could you tell it was expensive?” Pete asked.
“Well, right.” Lucy nodded meaningfully. “Petie, it has taken me years to figure out what clothes are expensive, but— Well, you can just tell after a while, I mean, the suit fit him perfectly and was made from nice cloth. But he was so glad to see me, Petie, oh, you would have died.”
“How’s Dottie?” Pete leaned his elbows onto his knees, and glancing around briefly he realized that there were no pictures on the walls. He seldom sat in the chair he was sitting in now, and so he must never have noticed. He always sat where Lucy was sitting, facing the door. The walls just hung there, plain and off-white.
“He says Dottie’s good. She owns a bed-and-breakfast outside of Peoria, in Jennisberg. No kids. But Abel has three kids. And two little grandchildren. He seemed very” —Lucy slapped her knee lightly—“very happy about those grandchildren.”
“Oh, Lucy. That’s nice.”
“It was nice. It was just wonderful.” Lucy ran her fingers through her hair, which partly—toward the front—went to her chin and was a pale brown. “Oh, and guess who I saw in Houston? I was signing books, and this woman—I really wouldn’t have recognized her—but it was Carol Darr.”
“Oh, right.” Pete sat back; the bare walls seemed to be darker in the corners. “Yeah, the Darr girl. She moved away. She lives in Houston?”
“Carol was in my class, Petie, and she was so mean, oh, that girl was so mean to me.”
“Lucy, everyone was mean to us.”
For some reason this made them look at each other, and they briefly—almost—laughed.
“Yeah,” said Lucy. “Oh, well.”