Shadows Gray

Chapter Ten



After parking the Blue Beast almost exactly where I had stolen it from my driveway, Bar helps me carry my laundry baskets up the steps and waits for me while I fumble for my house key. By the looks of things, no one is home, but no one ever looks home even when we are. The broken blinds block a surprising amount of light, and the dated (so I’ve been told) dark, faux wood paneling on the walls make the interior somewhat gloomy. Not to mention we are people who are used to going without electricity and so we sometimes forget to use the lights much at all. So I’m not exactly taken aback when we walk through the door and Matthias and Harry are home after all. The television is on, the only glow in the room, tuned to a game show, and my two favorite brothers in the history of the world are sitting side by side on the couch, eating microwave TV dinners. Prue would be appalled, but she doesn’t appear to be home.

“Boys,” I say, still in Italian. Matthias and Harry, of course, speak it fluently (of all in my house they speak the most languages at a solid and nearly flawless 20 between the two of them) and they look up at me, then at Bar, curiosity in their gazes. “Boys, this is Bar. He is Lost, has just come from Germany during the war sometime, and he’s with us now. Shove over a bit and share that disgusting- looking food.” I nod towards them as I look at Bar and smile. My nod is supposed to convey trust, a sort of ‘it’s okay, don’t be afraid’ kind of thing. It seems to communicate well enough and with barely a hesitation, Bar strides over and takes each of the brother’s hands in turn. As I leave I can hear them talking in low voices, Matthias and Harry’s voices sympathetic and understanding, Bar’s shaky but with renewed strength.

I go to my room and put away my wrinkled clothes and then remember I have to use Gladys’ phone to let know Jim know that I’m okay and not hacked to death by an ax. I sigh. I really, really wanted a bath tonight. My hair still has a crispy, caramel residue on the ends and I feel grimy and dirty from my shift at the soup kitchen. Plus, my nightgown is clean and smells nice, like fabric softener, and all I want to do is don it and listen to my compact disk player. Oh well. I slip my shoes back on, where I had kicked them off only seconds earlier and trudge back out of my house and across the street.

I see the cat curled up under a tree and since I’m feeling cheery enough about my driving skills I stop and give him a scratch beneath his neck. If I had wrecked the car, I might have blamed it on my furry voyeur.

Gladys’ house is nicer than ours; actually, it’s the only nice house on the block. You can tell just by looking that it is owned by a little old lady who has lived here forever. It is sea foam green in color, with shiny white shutters, wind chimes hang from the porch (which does not sag, by the way), lacey white curtains that you can glimpse through clean windows, a handicap ramp that is fenced with a handrail, and a sweet looking porch swing that is upholstered in water proof, flowered oilcloth. There is a ceramic gnome in her flower patch and even Gladys’ mailbox is shiner and spiffier than the rest of the streets mailboxes; standing straight instead of leaning off to the side the way ours does, and painted pink. I knock on the door and later rather than sooner, it opens. Gladys’ small face peeks through the crack in the door.

“Oh, it’s you, dear!” she says, in delight. “You’re just in time for a nice cool glass of lemonade!” Gladys opens the door wide and shoos me in. Her hair is a soft white, so white it has a tinge of blue, and is curled all around her head like a poodle. She is very little, small to begin with and now bent over with age and crippling osteoporosis and I always feel like a bit of a giant standing next to her. Her eyes sparkle merrily up at me.

“I’m so sorry to bother you, Gladys, but I was hoping I could use your telephone?”

“Of course, dear, help yourself. I’m just going to pour that lemonade and see if I can find some other refreshments for us.” With that, she exits with surprising nimble speed.

I settle myself into a flowered chaise and reach for the phone. I know the soup kitchen’s number by heart, as it is the only establishment I have ever called in my whole life other than the coffee shop or Emme, and it is picked up on the first ring. Poor Jim, I did have him worried.

“It’s me, Sonnet,” I say cheerfully. “Nothing to worry about, I’m all in one piece and Matthias and Harry are befriending Bar as we speak. Seems they go way back.”

“Alright, then,” Jim’s boisterous voice sounds relieved. “Thank you for working today, and remember you don’t have to keep him. I’m sure he’s figured out how to take care of himself by now.”

I’m sure he has, I think. More than you know. Aloud, I promise to stay in touch about the situation and we hang up. Gladys has returned with two tall glasses of pink lemonade, a box of crackers and what she insists is cheese in a can. Although I think the powdered lemonade is rather nasty, I do have a fondness for crackers and I find the spray cheese the most fabulous thing I’ve had all this decade and so I stay on the flowered chaise and listen to Gladys talk for a full hour. She is after all, one of my only friends and though she may be from an era gone by according to most, I know this tiny wisp of a grandmother is far more modern than I will ever be. She pulls out a fat fabric covered photo album and I flip through it while she tells me all about her past and her family. It’s as though her whole life flashes before my eyes and I feel a pain in my chest when I think about how I don’t have this: these cohesive memories that line up in logical order, this stability, these people who last for years and years and don’t go away. I don’t have a photo album, in fact the only photo of myself I have is the one Luke took of me and my guitar. I don’t have the pictures of myself with siblings, lined up in front of the same plastic Christmas tree every year; each time everyone taller and broader, their faces losing their baby fat, other parts filling out, with each passing season. There are photographs of Gladys as a toddler standing by a doorframe that has pencil markings all over it, marking her and her brother’s heights. The same doorframe, different pencil marks, years later. I want a door frame with pencil marks. I want to see mine and Rose’s heights written in, year after year. I want to live in the same house as that door frame and measure my own children’s growth. Futile, self indulgent thoughts, I think, and I snap shut the imaginary photo album in my mind, closing with it daydreams and wishes of things that could never be.

But spray cheese? I can’t wait to tell Prue about it!

********************

When I leave Gladys’ I don’t feel like going home. I am feeling melancholy enough without hearing Bar’s story. It is selfish but I don’t want to know what he’s been through – I don’t feel as though I can handle it tonight. Although I still want my bath and my portable compact disc player, it’s too early to retire for the night. The evening is still hot from the heat of the day, muggy and humid. It makes the long strands of my hair curl up around my face as I walk. I will go to the coffee shop although I am not on shift tonight. I look longingly at the spot where the Blue Beast is normally parked, but it is gone; Israel must have driven off while I visited Gladys. He is probably angry with me for taking it earlier, but I don’t regret it. The exhilaration I felt while driving was unlike anything else I have felt in recent memory. I love driving, I think. I want to drive and drive and keep on driving, leave this existence far behind, not stop until I reach the spot where the pavement ends, where I can be someone else.

********************

The coffee shop is quiet and nearly empty of customers when I arrive. Micki works this shift by himself since it’s a slow one and as a result, the dulcet tones of elevator music waft down from the speakers. There are a couple college students with laptops, studying over their mochas, occasionally glancing up at each other and saying something or laughing. There is a frazzled looking young mother in exercise clothes, buying frozen smoothies for her rambunctious brood; probably on their way to the health club down the street. They make their purchases and leave, the children dribbling icy pureed strawberries down the front of their clothes and onto the floor as they walk. I wipe up their sticky trail with a napkin after they leave.

Micki is on the phone and so I help myself to a mug behind the counter and fill it with coffee and hot chocolate milk. As an indulgence to my moodiness, I top it with whipped cream. The guitar in the corner by the tiny stage seems to beckon to me and so I sit my beverage beside me on the floor, and pick up the instrument. My skirt is too short to tuck my legs under me the way I normally do when I play so I simply hook my shoes behind the cross section of the stool and balance the guitar on my lap. I run through the song catalogue in my brain, discarding Johnny Cash and Pat Benetar and Bonnie Raitt and Elvis Presley. I start with Stand By Me and when that is over I keep strumming, changing chords until I somehow segue into Unchained Melody. When I open my eyes Luke is sitting on the corner of the stage.

“You are so depressing,” he deadpans. “How about something upbeat?”

“Those are classics,” I point out stiffly, setting down the guitar. “And I’m not taking requests. I’m off the clock.”

“You’re singing depressed because you are depressed, is that it?”

I would argue but I don’t see the point. Normally I would lie, pretend that things are okay even if they aren’t, maybe to spare someone’s feelings so they wouldn’t feel obligated to cheer me up. But Luke doesn’t seem the sort to feel obligated to anyone. He actually looks like he is annoyed with me. My first initial pleased reaction at seeing him fades into a mutual annoyance. He has no idea how difficult my life is at the moment, and he comes here and judges me for my response to it? What a maddening person.

“I’m not depressed! I’ve had a hard day is all. I’m no closer to finding Rose and I’m worried. My time here isn’t going to last forever.” I won’t let my voice shake.

“Come here,” Luke says, patting the floor next to him. “What you need is a bucket list.”

“A what?” I obediently slide down next to him, but I am still feeling frosty. I stretch my legs out next to his; though mine are long and gangly, his are longer and end in brown hiking boots, the edges of his blue jeans faded and frayed, the threads hanging down like spider webs or the edges of my old nightgown at home. I am close enough to smell him; he smells like spice and soap. I wish again I had taken that bath and finished off my ginger pear bubble bath.

“A bucket list,” he repeats. “It’s a list of things you want to do before you die. In your case, what you want to do before you travel on. Things you couldn’t do in another century. Bungee jumping, for one.”

“No thanks,” I shudder. I’ve seen that on the television. “I drove,” I confess, feeling shyly boastful.

“Definitely a bucket list item you can cross off. Not bad, Gray. What else?”

There are so many things I haven’t done yet, I’m at a loss for words. Where to start?

“Have you flown?” Luke prods.

“No! And I’ve never taken a bus either.”

“Sky diving!”

“No!” I laugh. “Dye my hair.”

“Get a tattoo.”

“Surfing.”

“Been to a zoo.”

“E-mailed someone.”

“Try to aim a little higher on the excitement scale, Gray. Ridden a bike.”

“Gone to an art show.”

“What? How did you go from tattoos and surfing to an art show?” He cocks one eyebrow up.

I point next to his head where a poster is taped up to the wall advertising an art show. “I was running out of things to suggest,” I admit. “But I have never been to one and I am certainly not getting a tattoo.”

Luke squints at the poster. “It’s tomorrow, right around the corner at the gallery. Fancy schmancy.” He turns his soap and spice scented self towards me. “Pick you up at eight?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, but unfolds his legs and before I can recover from my surprise, he is gone.