Rosemary Sewell Carlyle
Born: December 3, 1933 Died: September 15, 2008, 2:20 p.m.
Fulton, North Carolina
The small brick ranch baked in the treeless yard, dried overgrown azaleas the only adornment. A rotten canoe with her name in white stenciled letters leaned against the chain-link fence along with an assortment of paddles and a rusty bike. Inside, the drapes were pulled and stacks of magazines covered every surface of the bedroom where she lay in bed. The house was drenched in tobacco residue, the smell so strong that I never wore anything that couldn’t immediately be put in the washing machine; I often stripped my clothes off on the back porch as soon as I got home. When I asked about the photo on her dresser, she said it was the day she wed down in Dillon, South Carolina—not but fifteen. She was going to have a baby and had decided that might be okay because how else would a girl like her get a man like Joe Carlyle. Live and learn, she said. Live and learn. She dozed, in and out with the rhythmic flow of the mechanical breaths that prolonged her life. What to take? What to save from this one? Loss? Sadness? Her children were rarely in touch; she didn’t even know where her son lived. “They’ll be here when they think there’s something they can take,” she said. “They’ll all show up when I’m gone to get this little bit of nothing.”
When I asked if she had always lived in this county, she nodded. “I went to the North one time for a visit,” she said. “I rode a train and was so scared I didn’t get out of my seat for nearly fifteen hours.” She closed her eyes as if trying to see herself there, shuddered. “I was scared to death.”
When I asked about the canoe with her name on it, she said happier times. She said when she was a young girl the river was the place to be. Long ago that was the place to be—music and dancing on a summer night—but now who even remembered and who cared. That was a lifetime ago. She was quiet most of the time. She liked for the television to be on and turned up loud. She said she watched All My Children and the one that came on right before it even though she didn’t care about any of them or what happened to them. When I asked if there was anything I could do for her, she showed me her address book and asked that I make sure the people with red checks by their names get the news of her death. There were about a dozen addresses, all women in other towns, half in other states. She died during a commercial break while I was rubbing her feet, that address book open and on her lap.
[from Joanna’s notebook]
Rosemary Carlyle
She found all kinds of things in his pockets. Who goes to a movie right by himself in the middle of the day? And what business did he have traveling to work in places so far off anyway? Collecting addresses like you might collect green stamps. She hated getting hauled around and wouldn’t have gone even if he’d wanted her to. She never trusted him once they were married and why would she? She felt sorry for him there at the end—paralyzed and unable to talk—diapers and everything he would have hated to know. He never even changed a diaper for their children and then he had to wear them. He deserved that. She thought it served him right. She had come to hate him by then and hate will eat you up. It’s why she can’t open her eyes even as she feels the sun moving across the room. The river was nice but so long ago. What is a favorite day? that girl asks. Questions and questions she don’t know the answer to. Is there one? Can you go there? Think about it, but if there was one she forgot it. If there was one, it was a hundred miles away because her wedding day was hot and sticky and she felt sick as a dog and it was downhill from there on. But that lotion on her feet feels good. It smells good. Maybe this is the best day. Maybe this is it.
Sadie
IT IS HARD TO stay awake with Harley there purring like a fat little motorbike. He is so darling. Sadie loves him too good to talk about and she loves sweet little snorting Rudy and she loves Abby so much. Oh, and she loves her children and they are all so wonderful about calling and checking in on her. Paul wants her to come live closer to him, Lynnette wants that, too, but of course she has told them that she likes living right there where she has always lived. Horace is right next door and she has so many friends. She has too many friends to name and of course she has her own mother to think about. She has spent some time today cutting out a picture of herself that someone took just recently and now she and her mother are going up to New Hampshire where someone was talking about some time yesterday or today. Toby, maybe. Toby is so funny; it is like it is her job to make everybody laugh. And that Benjamin, she is so upset about him it makes her chest ache, what he is doing to that precious sweet child of his. A child is to be treasured. A child should always come before everything else.
Abby was here just a minute ago and she said something about her mother’s pants. She said she wished her mother would wear pants like other mothers. “High-waisted stretch pants and not cut to her crack like what a teenager would wear.” Sadie told her she couldn’t even imagine that and Toby said well she could. “And underwear up the crack like dental floss.” That Toby is something and it made Sadie laugh even though she didn’t want Abby to see her laugh. She told Toby she needed some time alone with Abby and that’s when they just sat side by side and watched some television.
“My sweet mother,” she told Abby. “I could have taught her so much.” She held Abby’s hand and squeezed it. She loves the feel of a child’s hand in her own; there is nothing better than that. “You might have to teach your mother,” she said, but then when Abby asked how she realized she had no idea at all.
“I was in a school show one time,” Sadie told her, and then she told all about being in a show with Grover Fowler and they laughed and laughed. She always really liked Grover Fowler but she didn’t tell that part. Harley feels good there on her lap and he likes to put his nose up against hers and kind of bump. Yes, the children want her to move, but she can’t move. She has a whole business and people who would be so disappointed if they couldn’t come see her and have her make them up a picture. And Horace. When Horace was gone, she slept on his side of the bed so that instead of missing him, she was only missing herself and where she used to be. And she misses her bathtub, too. She might say she never knew until lately just what a comfort a good hot bath could be, but that would not be true. She knew as soon as she was without Horace that nothing could be taken for granted. She loved to lie there in the heat—her body not young but certainly younger than it is now—and she watched the light and in it the mimosa tree in the sideyard. Some call that a trash tree, but she said a trashy beauty with its little pink puffs and long seedpods she liked to shell as a child pretending she was shelling butter beans like she remembers seeing her mother doing. She heard kids and skates and car radios and yard sprinklers like a beautiful symphony. Call it July. And there could be a recording of each and every month and each and every day and that would be so nice, recording the days. She always wanted some day of the week underwear, but that seemed so extravagant, especially for someone who was married and taught school. But then she got Lynnette some and Lynnette never wore the right day at the right time, but that was okay. Lynnette was a child who hears that different drummer and Sadie is proud of the fact that she never tried to change what the child was hearing but instead encouraged her to do her best and be happy. In the middle of a dark night she liked to plant her open palm on Horace’s back and draw in the heat and then she would move her hand in slow steady circles. He will call soon. He always calls and she is always right ready to answer.
When it was time to go, Goldie just went. Goldie was old and blind and diabetic and she waited for them to go to the lake for the afternoon and then she took a little vacation, too. She wandered way up under the house to a cool spot and just drifted away. They searched everywhere, made calls and put up signs like little Abby did, and then Horace found her; he smelled her, of course, and it was hard to get her out from under there, but no one got upset with her about how she did it. They all knew that she had made her choice and done the very best she could. She was such a good girl and so was the one before her named for that young man who won all those Olympic medals. All of her children are good swimmers and it was important to her that they learned how. All children need to know how to swim. It is very important especially if you grow up in a place with a river and being so near to the ocean. She thinks she hears the children right outside the window there but she can’t say and she can’t quite open her eyes. They love to play kick the can and tag this time of day and when the streetlights come on, Horace goes out and cups his hands around his mouth and calls for them to come on inside. Supper, children, supper. That music is trapped in her head and she can’t get rid of it. It’s not unpleasant but she’s tired of it. She’s tired and maybe will take a little nap before whatever is supposed to happen next happens before Horace comes by.
“Goldie, dear, I think it’s time to go,” she says, and there’s scruffy little Rudy there at her feet and there’s Harley, sweet purring Harley, and his eyes are as green as Horace’s. Horace has beautiful eyes—sometimes green and sometimes gray and he always sends her a sprig of rosemary so she will remember him. She laughs, so silly, to think that she could ever in her life forget him. They have been together for years and they plan to marry in the summer. They both want children. He has left a message for her right there by the switchboard and she strains to read it. She needs her glasses. She needs to write back and let him know she is going now. She is going to find her mother because she has the grocery list of all they need: Clorox and paper towels and trash bags and some milk. He says, Oh honey, you can relax. I’ll go to the store so you can just stretch out there and relax and so she does. She does relax and there is someone at the door but it is way past her bedtime so she lets her mother answer the door. Her mother tiptoes and says shhhhhh. Hush, she says, hush, now, my baby is sleeping. And her mother sits down beside her and holds her hand; she says sweet dreams, my baby, sweet dreams—she says Sadie? Sadie?—and she says it’s suppertime—supper, children, supper—and there’s money in the jar if a child should need some, there always is.
C.J.
C.J. HAS THAT WEIRD feeling that she’s being watched or like someone has been here in her space. She goes and checks in the bathroom where she keeps her journal and then in her top drawer where she keeps cash. Nothing is out of place and so she tries to relax, to think about how she can turn this night with Andy into a good one, get them back where they were in the very beginning when he was so generous and called her several times a day. She puts Kurt on his back and watches him play with the soft stuffed dog Joanna gave him last week. Joanna calls herself his fairy godmother, but the truth is that she is fairy godmother to C.J. as well and lately C.J. is trying to figure out some ways she might begin to pay her back for all the help and favors. She could give Joanna a manicure and pedicure—and not a French one, she would add. Or she could clean her house. She could fill in more at the Dog House—cleaning and refilling all the condiment bins after hours, which is something Joanna often does herself. Andy keeps asking if she has ever told Joanna about him, pressing to make sure that she has not broken her promise to him. “Who does she think you’re with all these nights?” he has asked, and “Isn’t she the least bit curious?” And of course, Joanna is curious and has asked a million questions but C.J. still has not told her anything even though there have been many times she has wanted to. She has even tried to imagine the look of shock Joanna would have with the news and then her asking, How? How did you wind up with him? And of course that would be the hardest part, telling her how she used to be—f*cking old creeps for peanuts and doing things that now make her shudder—and how he hit on her knowing it would be an easy hit and then how he kept coming back and how then he really seemed to care, especially once Kurt was born.
“You’ll tell her when the time is right,” Andy had told her. “You’ll tell her when everything is out in the open and our news won’t hurt anyone.” By anyone he meant his own children, one of them not much younger than C.J., and his wife who C.J. has nothing against and so doesn’t like to think about. She reminds herself how he has said the marriage was over ages ago—she was not his first affair—but now she is his only and the longest and certainly the only one with a baby. She likes the sound of our news—our news like a couple, like a family.
But they’re not there yet and now she is starting to worry that they might not get there; she is nervous about how pissy he has seemed lately. She’s worried that he might have changed his mind about her or found somebody new. They haven’t slept together in several weeks and his messages have been so weird the past several days. In the beginning he just talked about how much he wanted her, how he wanted to build a perfect little world and keep her there, dress her in expensive clothes just so he could rip them off and f*ck her morning noon and night. “When Kurt is asleep, of course,” she had added, and he laughed and said of course. He said he loved what a good mother she is to Kurt and how he hoped they’d have another one just like him. She could go to school if she wanted. Hell, she could do anything she wanted. And now she wants to get back to all of that, back to the good parts.
She makes sure there is nothing in the playpen Kurt might find and put in his mouth and goes to take a shower, leaving the door open so she can hear him in there making those cute little squeaking sounds. The bathroom window is open to let out the steam and she can hear the voices and laughter of people in line at the Dog House. It has become a regular hangout for a lot of teenagers, especially now that that girl who is all into vampires works there. She practices how she will approach Andy, practices how she will try to get things back to the way they had been. She decides to wear the white silk blouse he gave her for her birthday even though it is not her style at all; the price tag was still on it when he gave it to her and she almost said how she wished she could have the money instead, that she could get about ten shirts she liked and still have lots of grocery money, but it seemed to make him happy when he thought he was teaching her something so she laughed and said how beautiful it was and that it cost almost as much as her car.
The kids crowding the picnic tables outside the Dog House all turn and wave when she straps Kurt into his child seat and leaves; though they all seem like nice enough kids, something gives her the creeps. She has had the weird worry lately that one of them or some of them have gone in and out of her apartment when she’s not there even though she keeps the door locked. Why else does she keep having that feeling? The linen closet door wasn’t closed all the way, but lately she has had so many thoughts about what she wants to do for Kurt that she is in and out of there all the time adding to the list she keeps in her journal, for instance one of the nurses at Pine Haven had told her about a book she should read about child development and she had written down the title. Even if someone had been in there, there wasn’t anything worth stealing. Now that they know that, there would be no reason to go back unless they wanted a place to smoke pot or have sex and surely she would know if they had done either of those. She would definitely know and they wouldn’t do that. That would be stupid and she is being stupid, the whole thought of having to go back out into the cemetery giving her the creeps, but that’s stupid, too.
Kurt is asleep when she gets to Joanna’s house and so she carries the whole car seat inside. Joanna’s kitchen looks like a yard sale is happening, the counter covered with all kinds of pots and vases and junk.
“Whoa, look at you,” Joanna whispers. “I’ve never seen you so dressed up. And so conservative-looking. What on earth happened to C.J.?”
“Not a biggie,” C.J. says, and tiptoes into Joanna’s room to avoid looking at her. “I’m putting in an application at Macy’s, hoping to maybe work the cosmetic counter and thought I should look good.”
“Work? When? You’ve got a job and our deal is that you help me.”
“Oh, I know, this wouldn’t mess that up.” She places the car seat down in the corner where she can still see Kurt from the kitchen.
“I thought you had a date.”
“Oh, I do. And I’m meeting him there at the mall. He works at the Olive Garden.” She talks fast, all the answers she prepared for all the questions she knew Joanna would ask. “What’s with all the junk, are you having a yard sale?”
“No.” Joanna reaches and fingers the silk blouse and raises a questioning eyebrow. “I told you I want you to take something. Every time you come over you can just take something.”
“I thought that’s what we were going to do at your wedding.”
“Yeah, right. The wedding. Well, I’m impatient,” Joanna says, and holds up a giant white vase. “How about this beauty and I can throw in a never before used knife sharpener and colander?” She laughs. “Seriously, C.J., who is this guy and why are you being so secretive? Do you need money because I can loan you—”
“No. It’s just that I don’t want to jinx it,” she says. “But I promise to tell you soon. Either way, I will tell you soon.”
“What does that mean either way?” Joanna steps closer. “And why do you look like you’re about to cry?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. I’m nervous and you’re making me more nervous.”
“About?”
“It’s stupid. It’s as stupid as you giving away all of your junk.” She blots the corners of her eyes and forces a laugh. “Really. I should be quizzing you like you’re not planning to off yourself or something are you?”
“What do you mean?” Joanna turns and the look on her face is one C.J. has never seen, clearly very upset. She puts the vase down. “That isn’t funny. I told you my story and you told me yours and neither one is a joke. I would never do such a thing and I can’t believe you’d even joke about it.”
“Good,” C.J. says, “ I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. Jesus. And I do mean good. Kurt needs you.”
“And I need him.” Joanna starts putting things back in the cabinets. “Do you even know this person you have a date with?”
“Yes, Mother,” C.J. says. “We were in high school together. And by the way, I need you, too.”
“Yes, I know you do which is why I do ask all these questions. I worry. You’re so secretive lately and I don’t understand why you feel you can’t trust me.”
“It’s not that and you really need to trust me. I worry, too. Like I think you need to get all dressed up and go on a date. And I worry because Kurt is starting to roll all over the place and you have to watch him every second and your house is full of crap everywhere.” She points to the floor as if he is there rolling and turns quickly to leave. She hates if anything ever makes her cry; she hates how ugly crying makes a person, the way your face gets all twisted and ugly and f*cks your whole face up.
“Honey,” Joanna says, for a minute sounding so much like C.J.’s real f*cking mother she can’t stand it. “What is it? Do you need money? Are you in trouble?”
She paws the air and then fans her face so her mascara won’t run. “No! Nothing like that. I’m just PMS or maybe I’m just all f*cked up. Maybe I’m nervous about having a date. Who wants to date someone with a six-month-old?”
“Lots of people would,” Joanna says. “Look at you. He’s lucky and he better treat you that way.”
“How’d you learn to say all those mom things?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I know all the things I wish someone had said to me long before I did try to vacate the planet Earth.” Joanna pats her shoulder and pushes her toward the door. “No reason for you to have to wait to learn all those things, right? So go and have fun and when you come back first thing in the morning, we’ll start all over again with you selecting a fine piece of kitchen or glassware to claim as your very own.”
“It’s a deal,” she says, and leans to the side once more so she can see Kurt sleeping, his head leaned to the right, pacifier still in his mouth. “You sure you want him to sleep over?”
“Instead of you waking me up at one or two? Um, yeah, I think so.” Joanna paused. “And if you decide to go home early, just call and swing by.”
“Okay. If you’re sure,” C.J. says, and takes a good deep breath—a cleansing breath, Toby would say. She is feeling better. She is feeling hopeful. “It’ll be early because I promised Rachel Silverman I’d ride her around tomorrow and give her a tour of the town. She’s pretty cool. You’d like talking to her some time when you’re over with the living ones.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Now go, have fun. Kurt’s fine and I’m fine and you’re fine,” Joanna stands in the doorway and waves. “And take good notes so that someday when you actually decide to let me in on what is happening in your life, you won’t forget a thing.”
“I do trust you. I do want to tell you.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“You know me,” she says, and sticks out her tongue. “Always something up my sleeve.” C.J. waves and takes another deep breath. She starts the car and notices Kurt’s new stuffed dog there on the seat beside her, but she decides not to go back in; she’s afraid she would tell everything if she did and for now it’s best to keep the secret. She will hope for the best and even if the best doesn’t happen, she still has plenty of good stuff going on. She has Kurt and she has a job and a place to live and who knows what could happen with Sam Lowe and actually that big white vase isn’t so bad at all. In fact, she can imagine filling it with something like peacock feathers or sunflowers and tacking little lights up along the ceiling of every room. She’s already thought how she wants to paint Kurt’s room so it looks like he lives in a castle; she wants him to always feel like he has a good home. A family and a home. The parking lot at Pine Haven is empty and she’s twenty minutes early so she lets herself in the side door and goes to the beauty parlor to check her hair and makeup and make sure she doesn’t have mascara or baby spit on that new blouse. This place is like a tomb after about seven, faint buzzings of televisions behind apartment doors and of course that goddamned music Mr. Stone can’t get enough of. If it was this quiet during the daytime hours, she would have to beg him to listen to something else because it would drive her crazy but in the daytime, she has her own music going and lots of hair dryers and nail dryers and a bunch of people who can’t hear anyway and have to scream at each other. She takes out her lip and nose rings and brushes the spikiness from her hair, wipes the smudge of burgundy lipstick from her mouth. It surprises her lately how much she looks like her mother. Some nights before bed—her face stripped clean of all makeup and studs—she can’t even bear to look.
Abby
THE SIDE DOOR OF Pine Haven is still open and so Abby is able to slip inside without setting off an alarm or having to ring a doorbell. Usually things are all locked up by now so she is relieved. They feed people at five thirty or six and then a lot of them go on to bed or to their own rooms to watch television. Rachel Silverman says she does not like that made-for-preschool children schedule one damn bit, but Sadie says she doesn’t mind because she likes to watch Jeopardy in her pajamas. She sees C.J. all dressed up in front of the big mirror in the beauty parlor. Normally she would love nothing better than to find C.J. there alone; she would ask her to read her palm or do those fortune cards, but Abby is not up for anything tonight. Nothing sounds good. There is not a person at the desk so Abby runs past without having to check in. She knocks lightly and then opens Sadie’s door and moves into the room. It’s almost completely dark, just the faint light from her bathroom window and the nightlights by her bed that come on when it gets dark. Harley jumps when she comes in but then comes when she calls him. Sadie is still sleeping, the piece of paper Abby had forgotten earlier in the day in her hand.
Sadie, Sadie? She shakes but Sadie doesn’t stir so she decides she’ll just curl up and wait. She turns the television on and the volume way down. Sadie has slept right through Jeopardy because the television is on the Weather Channel where she keeps it the rest of the day, so Abby leaves it there and closes her eyes. The thought of Dollbaby getting hit and then left in the middle of the road makes her cry all over again. She hates whoever hit her and the farmer who buried her. She hates her dad because he built a shitty fence and her mom for never being nice to Dollbaby in the first place. She’s sick of them, sick of everybody. I’m so sick of it I could die. That’s what her dad said that time about her mom. I’m so goddamned sick of it I could die.
“Sadie?” she whispers. “Sadie?” She will let her sleep a while longer and then she’ll wake her and tell her the bad news about Dollbaby and about how her parents didn’t even try to do anything about it. You might have to teach your mother some things, Sadie had said, but what did that mean? She wishes it were last night when she was still hoping Dollbaby was okay, when her dad pulled a big ostrich feather from his sleeve and gave it to her, promising more where that came from at her party, and when she asked him if he thought there was a chance Dollbaby was still alive he said, of course he did. “There’s always a chance,” he said even though most of his stories were about no chances at all, like the one the other night—a train wreck in this very county in 1943 where over seventy people died, most of them soldiers trying to get home for Christmas. Sadie said she remembered it well; she was Abby’s age when it happened and the whole county was devastated by the disaster. She said she has never seen a train since that she didn’t think of it. “Some mistakes were made,” her dad said like he always did. “They should have seen it coming.”
“Why do you fill her head up with all that awful stuff?” her mother said, one of those times she didn’t know Abby was listening. “You’re going to make her so weird.”
But now she’s glad it’s all in her head—the brakes and screams and all those loud sounds that can keep her from thinking. Why do you fill her head up with all that awful stuff? You’re making her weird. Mistakes were made. They should have seen it coming.
“Sadie?” she whispers. “Sadie? Are you awake? Please wake up.”
Kendra
THE HOUSE IS QUIET and now, finally, she can call Andy. No answer. No answer. No goddamned answer. It’s been like this all day long. She kicks at a loose bolt Ben has dropped there in the front hall—bolts and screws everywhere and for what? A stupid disappearing chamber when he is who she wishes would disappear. Let him disappear and all this shit he leaves around for that stupid theater like anybody in town even gives a shit. Who would notice if he stopped it all other than a handful of ancients from next door and whatever kids he can coax in to watch things like Jerry Lewis movies and stupid westerns. She will go take a nice long hot shower, relieved that Ben left and went wherever it is he goes with his loser self. She has just turned the water on when her cell phone starts ringing and she races to pick it up. It was him so she hits dial back. It’s his house phone, but she is feeling brave; if something screws up and Liz answers, she will act like she was calling her.
Liz’s voice is cool, suspicious. She knows something. Then without any waiting or beating around the bush she says it: she knows he’s been having an affair.
Is it a trick? Kendra doesn’t know what to say so she opts for nothing. She says, Oh, and then nothing, but Liz keeps talking. She says it’s all over and they are going away to figure it all out. Going away. A day, a week, forever?
“Do you hear me?” Liz asks.
“Yes.” Kendra stands there in a towel, aware of the water running in the shower and of how dark it is outside the window, no moon and the streetlight on their corner burned out.
“And?” Liz asks.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Neither do I.” Liz hangs up and Kendra is left in silence with no idea what to do. She almost dials his cell phone but then stops. It is so rare for her not to know what to do, but she has no idea and something in the stillness of the house completely unnerves her. The little white sticker she had put under the table on Ben’s side of the bed is visible and she rushes over to remove it. She’s not used to the silence. She’s not used to being alone. It’s not supposed to happen this way. She’s not supposed to be alone. She’s afraid to be alone.
Joanna
AT FIRST IT SOUNDS like a shutter has blown loose again and is whining against the wind, a creaking strain, open and closed, but then it is too rhythmic for the wind, too measured. It’s the hammock. Someone is on her porch. She looks out the kitchen window to see Ben’s car parked in her driveway. It has been his car these recent nights, circling, stopping. She goes and cracks open the front door.
“Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Who’s there?”
“Guess.”
“What are you doing here?” She still stands behind the screen door, latch in place.
“I come here a lot. Sometimes I fish, sometimes I sit.” He tilts a bottle up to his mouth, then offers it out. “C’mon, join me.” He sits, legs hanging off the side and pushing against the floorboards. “It’s like old times.”
“You come here? To my house?”
“Yeah, amazed you haven’t noticed before. Come on.” She goes and brings Kurt’s carrier closer. He’ll be waking soon and she likes to reach him as close to that first cry as she can make it. “Are you there?”
“Yes. I’m here.” She shushes him, tells him she’s babysitting and to keep his voice down, and then he immediately starts talking about his kid. “You’ve met her,” he says, and Joanna nods yes, says she sees her often over at Pine Haven. “Well, it would suck to be her right about now,” he says. He reaches for Joanna’s arm and pulls her there beside him then drops his arm around her shoulders and squeezes. “Been a long time since we sat this close, hasn’t it?” he asks, and she nods, aware of his thumb circling her bare arm, the smell of him exactly the same though she never could have described it in a million years except it was his smell; it was his childhood home, any jacket or shirt or magic show prop he had ever tossed her way.
“I know Abby’s dog is missing,” she says, and takes a deep breath, uncertain of where any of this might go and afraid to even wonder.
“Not just missing. Dead.” He says the word in a low whisper, dragging out its hard ugly sound. “And a dead dog is just the beginning.”
She turns, waiting for him to continue and there in the dark of the porch, he looks very much the way he always did, the night erasing just enough years that he could be that boy; it could be that time.
“I mean it all sucks. Marriage is like a job and some people love what they do and some people hate it. Some stay because they feel like they have to and some just say f*ck it. I mean we all have people in our lives we have to tolerate, right? They’re selfish or hateful or narcissistic, but goddamn, it really sucks to marry one of those.” He laughs and hugs her close again. “Now you never lingered, did you? You’re the one who can just say f*ck it and walk right off.”
“No, that’s not true,” she says. She takes the bottle from him and drinks, some kind of whiskey that nearly turns her inside out, and then she quizzes him, what had made him want such a girl in the first place—was it all about appearances? Did he need drama? Want drama? What would possess someone to go there unless he thought he was rescuing her—poor little thing, but was he so blind? Was he so stupid? “Once upon a time you had a pretty good brain,” she says, and twists out from under his arm. “In fact, there was a time when I thought you were really smart.” She pauses. “And nice. I used to think you were nice.”
“You’re one to talk. You’re the charity bride, right?” He drains the bottle and throws it off the porch into the shrubs. “Married a million times. Married a gay dude. That’s pretty desperate, isn’t it? Bet that was a fun honeymoon.”
“Actually, it was.”
“And then the widower. Talk about a pity party.”
“Must be it. So glad you cared enough to keep up with me.”
“Well, I felt responsible. You see.” He grips her shoulders and forces his forehead against her own. “I made you disappear.”
“You don’t have that power,” she says, voice shaking but determined not to let him get the best of her. “I’m more like Mary Poppins. I go where I’m needed and then the wind shifts and I’m needed elsewhere.”
“Oh yeah. So what brought you back?”
“My dad.”
“I thought maybe it was me. I thought maybe you were once again seeking true love.”
“I gave up on that a long time ago.”
“Ouch. Because of me?”
“You give yourself an awful lot of credit, don’t you?” she says, and he sighs and leans back, one arm hiding his face. “You can come and go like the wind until you have kids and even though they weren’t my blood, they felt like mine. I was helping to raise them. But it didn’t work.”
“Yeah? So where does that leave you other than alone?”
“I don’t know.” She reaches and pulls his arm from his eyes, waits until he is looking at her. “Being with someone isn’t as important as it once was. I’m alone, but I’m never lonely. How’s that? I’ve got a life, people I care about, work I find very satisfying.”
“So, is it too late for us? Are we too old?”
“No, but you are married.”
“Oh yeah.” He laughs, leans back and pulls another bottle he’d obviously stashed in the dark corner, takes a drink and passes it to her. She just sits holding it for a long while, their feet pushing off the floor, the sound of the ocean in the distance. He talks about his marriage and how he really wants to leave. He talks about the disappearing chamber he has spent many weeks building and painting. “The job’s still yours if you want it,” he says. “My loyal assistant and disappearing girl.”
“I was the disappearing girl for way too long,” she says, and against her better judgment, hands the bottle back to him when he reaches for it. “And I did disappear, remember? I disappeared for a very long time.”
“Glad you reappeared.”
“Thanks.”
“Sorry I haven’t been much of a friend.”
“Understandable.”
“She hates you.”
“I gathered.”
“But she hates everyone.” He pauses. “Unless of course they have something she needs.” He laughs and rubs his hand on Joanna’s head the way you might a child or a dog. “People really do say you’ve been married too many times to count.”
“I know.”
“So what’s the real story?”
“Does it matter?” She turns to look at him and he leans in to kiss her but she pushes him back.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Really. I’m just trying to figure out how I got where I am. How did I get here?”
“You’re asking me?” she asks, and moves away. “The physical here in the hammock on my front porch or the abstract here?”
“Yes, I’m asking you and the latter.”
“Oh, I see. Now I get it. Because I’ve been there so many times before. Thanks so much, speaking of people who only show up when they need something from you.” She goes inside and lifts Kurt from his carrier and then brings him back out with her. He wakes and stirs as she lifts him but then settles right back in against her chest as soon as she sits in one of the rockers.
“So, then, why don’t you tell me how you got here.” He stretches full length in the hammock and closes his eyes. “Tell me about the life that didn’t work. The one with the kids you left behind. Tell me why you didn’t live happily ever after.”
“He was grieving when we met and for a while I filled up the empty space and then he fell in love with someone else.”
“Ouch.”
“He couldn’t help that. It was just what happened.”
“And the gay husband?”
“He taught me how to love. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”
“Ouch again.”
“Grown-up friend. You’re someone from childhood.”
“You make it sound like another planet,” he says. “I’m still your friend. I’ve always been your friend.” He opens his eyes, but she doesn’t say anything, just breathes in the smell of Kurt’s damp sticky neck. “I am your friend. Why are you being this way?”
“We haven’t seen each other in years, Ben. I don’t know anything about your life. I know a boy who wanted to be the next Houdini—David Copperfield his distant second choice. We were friends—the best of friends. We even had sex once, remember that?”
Ben’s cell phone rings and he can’t find it to turn it off. She stands when Kurt starts to cry and jiggles him on her hip. Seconds pass and it starts ringing again, the shrill sound like an alarm sounding, breaking the strange dark silence.
“Of course I remember that,” he says, and stares into the lit face of his phone. “How could I forget that? And you may not be lonely, but I am.” He slams the phone shut and stuffs it in his pocket. “I’ve got to go. Looks like Abby has run away and Kendra is hysterical. I’m sure she’s next door with Sadie Randolph like she always is, but I have to go before every cop in town is called.”
“I’m sorry, Ben,” she says. “I really am. I hope everything’s okay.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” He hands her the bottle and she puts it down on the table by the hammock. “Can we try this again some time?”
“Okay,” she says, and shifts Kurt up a little higher, presses his sleep dampened cheek against her own. “We can try it again.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” he says. “Don’t leave.”
She watches until his taillights disappear down the road and then takes Kurt inside to change his diaper and give him a bottle and get him all settled in for the night. The longest and most expensive journey you will ever take is the one to yourself. She imagines Luke there in his black satin nightshirt, flipping through old albums and his stack of 45s, Tammy on the floor beside him, and she tells him he’s right and that thanks to him, she is now miles and miles from where she began. Gregory Luke Wishart and Willis Hall—keep us close, keep us alive—Mary Grace Robertson and Suzanne Sullivan. The pull, the pull. I am their mirror. You are my little girl.
C.J.
SHE WALKS OUT INTO the cemetery, a small flashlight illuminating the ground around her feet, but Andy isn’t there. She shines the light all around to make sure he isn’t hiding and about to jump out at her. He has done that before and she cried for over an hour, ashamed of her fear but still not able to stop. Esther Cohen devoted wife and mother. She steps closer and there’s a note tucked into Esther’s urn. Go home. Dinner is waiting. She turns and looks all around once more and then starts making her way back to her car, walking quickly now, feeling relieved by the note she clutches, careful not to smudge her white silk blouse. This is the kind of note he always left in the beginning. This is the promise of some kind of good take-out food and maybe like the time he had a hot bubble bath waiting for her and all kinds of candles and lotions. She gets in the car and drives through town as quickly as she can. She could get mad at him for making her drive all the way in and then all the way back out, but right now she is too relieved to even care. She sees Abby’s old magician dad, there at the stoplight, but he doesn’t see her, and if she weren’t afraid of waking Kurt, she would call Joanna to tell her that she passed him on the road from the beach, and that he probably is riding by her house all the time. But she’s almost home. There’s a light up in her window and Andy’s car is parked where he always parks, across the street at the far back corner of the Texaco station.
She can’t get there fast enough, running up the rickety steps and into the room where he is sitting and drinking a glass of champagne, one already poured and waiting for her. She puts Kurt’s stuffed dog in the playpen and then throws her arms around him and breathes in, trying to smell what’s for dinner, but all she smells is Andy, and for some reason, for just a second, she is reminded of the smell of Sam Lowe’s shirt—nothing more than detergent and sweat—when he hugged her hello the last time she saw him.
“You scared me!” she says.
“What are you talking about sweetheart?” He kisses her and hands her the glass of champagne. “What’s got you so frazzled?”
“What’s got me frazzled?” She notices there is a little box all wrapped with a bow on the table. “Oh my God, you scared the shit out of me. You acted mad at me and then you sent me out to the cemetery.”
“I see you’re upset.” He clinks glasses and motions for her to drink up. “But I wanted to surprise you. Where’s Kurt?”
“Joanna’s. He’s there for the night.”
“Perfect, even though I really can’t stay long. I have to go out of town tomorrow. A conference in California.”
“I wish I could go.” She drains her glass and takes off her shoes, goes into the kitchen to see what’s in the oven. Nothing. “Hey, you said dinner was waiting.”
“Patience,” he says, and motions for her to come sit beside him. “Patience is a virtue.” He fills her glass and tells her all about his day at the hospital, about the person who really should have died there on the operating table today but, thanks to him, is still alive. “You should have seen the look on his wife’s face. Grateful doesn’t even touch it.” He keeps talking and filling their glasses. “It was nothing short of a miracle.” He unbuttons her blouse and asks where she’d want to go if she could go anywhere in the world and what kind of house does she want to live in and how many kids and what kind of car. “Dream big,” he says.
She carefully hangs the shirt on the back of a chair, telling him that she happens to know it is a very expensive item, and then she laughs and answers all the questions—Switzerland and a house like the big brick one on Main Street where Marge Walker used to live with lots of chimneys and a pool. She would love to have at least one more kid, maybe two, and a car that doesn’t overheat all the time, one with air-conditioning and a CD player that works.
“And who is the person who keeps calling here? Last name Lowe on your caller ID.”
“What?” She barely turns, head spinning, and he’s there, leaning hard against her. “I’ve been watching you. And reading you.” He pushes her toward the bedroom where he has all of her papers spread out on her bed. He has taken her journal apart, pages ripped and strewn. “You think somebody wouldn’t figure out who I am? I can figure out all the other weirdos you’ve been with, except of course whoever this kid is you’ve started to mention all the time. The one you can always talk to,” he mimics, “always count on.”
“He’s just a friend,” she says, and he pushes her down in the chair by the window, the only thing in this whole apartment that her mother had owned. Her mother loved that overstuffed chair and Joanna had it reupholstered for C.J.s birthday in a soft blue velvet. She knows he knows that. She knows she told him. “This has all gotten out of hand,” he says. “I’m the one in charge. I call the shots. I leave the notes. I decide how much money when. You’re a risk.” Her head feels heavy and she leans back to catch her breath; her heart is racing. The light from the Dog House sign is still lit even though they closed at eight and in the distance there is heat lightning—flashes of silent light.