by Larry Watson
“Oh. I don’t know. I can’t see myself back there. But I can’t see myself anywhere else either.”
“So,” Carla says, “definitely not lovelier? As in, the second time around?”
Edie lets this question pass. “Your first husband,” she says, “was he from Gladstone? A name I’d know?”
“Billings,” says Carla. “I was living there, working in my uncle’s carpet store. One day this big-shot developer came in wanting a deal for a new apartment complex. He made some kind of filthy joke about laying carpet, and when I didn’t blush I guess he thought I was the girl for him. We were okay until his business went bust. Then we did too. I came back to Gladstone with the boys because my mother had ovarian cancer. I thought I’d take care of her, but the way we fought I probably cut her life shorter. Roy and I just . . . He was here. I was here. No introductions needed.” Carla shrugs. “How about you and your mister?”
“Not so different from your story,” Edie says. “After I left Gladstone I landed in a kind of roundabout way in Granite Valley. I’d made friends with an older woman, Gladys Frost. Or it was more like she adopted me. She gave me a place to live and a job working the counter at her bakery, which I thought was funny because the apartment Dean and I had, you might remember, was over Flieder’s Bakery. This cheerful nice-looking guy started coming in every morning for a glazed doughnut. That was Gary. We started going out, Dean’s and my divorce came through, and pretty soon I was Mrs. Gary Dunn. It seems like the story should be more complicated, but that’s pretty much it. One bakery to another, one marriage to another.”
“Well, how’s this for symmetry: After Roy and I got together, my ex-husband moved to Gladstone. To be closer to the boys, he said. Now he and I are real estate competitors.”
“I think you and Roy make a great couple.”
“Well, I could tell you some stories. But you go ahead and think that.”
Carla abruptly pulls the car to the curb in front of a two-story white Colonial with an American flag flying from its wide front porch. “God damn it,” says Carla.
Carla climbs out of the car, walks across the front lawn, picks up the For Sale sign lying flat on the grass, and jams it back into the turf, leaning hard on it to use her weight to drive the prongs deep. Once she seems satisfied the sign is exactly where it ought to be, she returns to the car.
“Do you know whose house that is?” she asks Edie.
“I haven’t any idea.”
“Come on. The family lived there forever.”
“I don’t know. Really.”
“Judge Flowers.”
“As in Miss Flowers?”
“Yep. His sister. And get this, after the judge died, Miss Flowers called me about putting the house up for sale. And you know why she called me? Because she remembered me. I about shit. How long ago was that? Fourth grade? Fifth? But get this—once I agreed to handle the sale, she said, ‘You were a bright girl, Carla Stepke. You could have done something with that brain of yours. But you were boy crazy.’ Can you imagine? She’s saying that about a fourth grader.” Then Carla laughs. “She was probably right. Once I discovered boys, I was done for.”
“You, Carla?” Edie says. “It was the boys who were done for.”
“Look who’s talking,” Carla says. “They were lining up to drink your bathwater. But I forgot to ask—do you work anymore? Outside the home, I mean.”
“I was a receptionist at a chiropractor’s office for a while. But Gary didn’t want me to work. He said, ‘We need to keep you out of the public eye.’ ‘Gary,’ I said, ‘what does that even mean?’ ‘You’re a divorced woman,’ he said. I was flabbergasted. Does anyone say that anymore? Flabbergasted?”
“They should,” Carla says. “If it’s about husbands. Because they are fucking flabbergasting. And, Edie, didn’t any teachers ever tell you that you should go to college? You were always the smartest one in the class.”
“I think you’re confusing me with Ralph Varner. But Mrs. Allen, the guidance counselor, suggested I think about secretarial school or beauty school. Hell, when I got the job at the bank I thought I was lucky.”
“Mrs. Allen,” Carla says and puts the car into gear. “That bitch.”
As they pull away, Edie continues to gaze at the house, its hipped roof, its dormers, and its columns. “How can you stand it?” she asks Carla. “To be remembered for who you were in the fourth grade.”
ROY REACHES DOWN and jostles his brother’s shoulder, but Dean remains asleep. Roy tries once more, and this time his brother stirs.
“There you are,” Roy says.
Dean blinks a few times. “Wow. I was out. Did they give me something?”
“Must have been the ride in the ambulance. Too much excitement.”
Dean looks around the room. “Mom—?”
“She’s getting you signed out. Early release for good behavior, I guess. Speaking of Mom. How’d you like to come over to our place for a while? Give Mom a break. She’s getting a little frayed. She and Dr. Hall sort of had a set-to.”
“That sounds fine,” Dean says.
“And if you miss your own bed, we’ll take you right back.”
“Sure. I mean, if I wouldn’t be putting you out or anything.”
“No trouble at all, brother. No trouble at all. Hey, Mom said someone came to the door asking for Edie. Do you know anything about that?”
“For Edie? No. Who?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Roy says. “A man. That’s about all she said.”
“Who else knows she’s here?”
“Damned if I know. Maybe she called ahead and told somebody she’d be in town.”
“Her boss at the bank?” Dean suggests. “What was his name? If he knew she was here, he’d for sure come sniffing around.”
“Cuthbertson? He’d be about the last person she’d call.”
“Where’s Edie now?”
“She and her daughter are staying at the Rimrock. But she’s over at our place right now. She and Carla are getting caught up.”
Dean points to the wheeled tray that’s just out of his reach. “Could I have some water?”
Roy lifts the cup close to his brother’s lips and steadies the straw so Dean can drink. After only a few sips he falls back again. Roy puts down the cup. He lifts the edge of the thin cotton blanket covering his brother and tucks it in tighter around his shoulders. “Did you and Dr. Hall talk?”
“About as much as we ever do. Why? Did he talk to you?”
Roy nods.
“What about?”
“You have pneumonia. Did he tell you that?”
“I guess.”
“They can give you something for it.”
“I believe they already have. Penicillin probably. That’s usual.”
Roy nods in agreement. “You’re getting to be quite the expert.”
“And I’m about done with all of it.”
“I’m not sure you—”
“Pills. Shots. Tubes. Treatments. Machines. All of it. I’m done. Isn’t that what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“How did—?”
“How did I know? Don’t twins know what the other one’s thinking?”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m no hero,” Dean says. “So no heroic measures.” His weak laugh ends in a cough.
“Okay.” Roy sighs deeply. “Okay. Do you want to talk to Dr. Hall or should I?”
“If you talk to him, I’ll take Mom. Deal?”
“I’d sure be getting the easy part,” says Roy. “But maybe we should both be in on those conversations.”
“Strength in numbers.”
“Exactly,” Roy says. “Now I’ll go see about getting you out of here. Didn’t Dad always say a hospital is no place to be sick?”
But before Roy can step away, Dean reaches out and grabs his brother’s hand. Roy doesn’t move. He remains by the bed, his hand inside his brother’s. Up and down the hospital corridors the sick and
scarred are being attended to. A doctor orders a drug, and the nurse shakes her head in hopelessness. A teenage hospital volunteer carries a tray of Jell-O and consommé to a patient who wants only to be able to chew. A priest peers into a room to determine if this is the hour. A mother tries to nurse her new child. And the Linderman twins hold tight to each other’s hands.
EDIE POINTS TOWARD room 106 and Carla pulls right up to the door. She parks next to the only other car in the lot, Edie’s Volkswagen Rabbit.
“This is yours?” Carla asks. “You packed that little car with all you need to start a new life? Plus a teenager? And a cat? Jesus!”
“When I left Gladstone twenty years ago,” Edie says, “it was with nothing but my purse and the clothes I was wearing. That turned out to be a good lesson for me. I learned how much I could leave behind. You’ve heard of traveling light? I learned to settle light too.”
Edie has a motel key in her hand, but then she notices the door has been left open a few inches. “That’s strange,” she says as she pushes the door open and enters the room, Carla following close behind.
“Jen?” Edie calls out.
Her daughter isn’t there, but sitting regally in the center of one of the beds is a black-and-white cat.
“The missing cat?” Carla asks.
“One and the same.” Edie scoops Mickey up into her arms and earnestly asks him, “Where’s Jennifer?”
She carries him into the bathroom. “Where’s Jen?” she asks again. “And where did you run off to?”
The bathroom, of course, is empty, so Edie and the cat go out to the parking lot. Carla joins them and says, “I’m sure she hasn’t gone far. Maybe down to the office?”
“Would you check there for me? Please?”
Just at that moment Jennifer comes into view, walking slowly, her gaze fixed on the buckling sidewalk at her feet. When she finally looks up, she shouts, “Mickey!” and breaks into a run. Mickey squirms out of Edie’s grasp and leaps to the gravel. He doesn’t run off into the street or the weedy lot but back to the motel room.
“Mom! Where’d you find him?” But Jennifer doesn’t wait for an answer. She runs after the cat.
“The daughter?” Carla asks.
Edie nods. “The daughter.”
When Edie and Carla enter the room, they find Jennifer on the floor, looking under the bed. “He’s not here!” Jennifer says. “He ran under here but he’s not there!”
“Say hello to Mrs. Linderman,” says Edie.
“Where is he?” Jennifer says to the darkness under the bed.
Now Edie is down on the floor too. “Mickey,” she says softly, “come out.”
And at the sound of Edie speaking his name, the cat appears, poking his head out from a rip in the fabric covering the bottom of the box spring.
“You little shit!” Jennifer says and grabs Mickey around the neck and hauls him out from under the bed, meowing in protest.
“Now pack up your things, Jen.” Edie says. “We’re staying with the Lindermans tonight.”
GARY DUNN HAS parked at the base of the long drive leading up to St. Michael’s Hospital and the emergency room bay where the ambulance deposited Dean Linderman hours earlier. There’s no shade here, and Gary has the windows rolled down. He waits with his left arm, mostly bare in a short-sleeved shirt, exposed to the sunlight. Every so often he moves that arm inside and compares its reddish-brown color to that of his right arm. But only for a few seconds. Then he puts his sunglasses back on and resumes his watch.
JENNIFER AND MICKEY now situated in the basement bedroom, Carla and Edie return to the kitchen and the wine they began drinking earlier.
“Your Jennifer is a looker,” Carla says. “And those long legs! I expect the boys are already barking at her door?”
“One in particular. Patrick. They broke up over his cheating, but Jen says they’re thinking about getting back together.”
“And you don’t care for the idea.”
“He broke her heart once and now she wants to get back together with him? He’ll just do it again. And I don’t want to see her hurt. Again.”
Carla points again to Edie’s injured wrist. “You’re something of an expert on the subject?”
“Dean never hurt me,” she says. “He annoyed me. He puzzled me. He frustrated me.”
“But,” Carla asks, holding up a finger, “did he flabbergast you?”
“He definitely flabbergasted me!”
Carla says, “But I wasn’t asking about Dean, was I?”
“Oh, Gary is like one of those little boys on the playground who just plays too rough. More clumsy than mean.”
“But possessive. Obviously.”
Edie nods. “And you know how men can be about their possessions.”
“They hang on tight.”
“Thank you again for putting up with all of us. You have a good heart, Carla,” Edie says.
Carla ignores the compliment and jumps to her feet. “Are you hungry? I have some cheese and crackers. I think.”
“I’ll wait for the others,” Edie says. “When did Roy say they’ll get here?”
“They shouldn’t be long. They were going to stop at Mildred’s and pick up a few of Dean’s things.”
Edie holds up her glass. “I should probably slow down on the wine.”
“Oh, drink up! You don’t have any place you have to be. Besides . . .”—Carla raises her own glass—“this is a celebration. Edie Pritchard returns to Gladstone!” Carla tips the glass to her lips and drinks. “And you know, don’t you, Dean probably won’t eat anything when he gets here? You see how skinny he is.”
“It won’t be easy for Roy. When, you know.”
“He’s always thought Dean’s the one who depended on him. I think he’ll find out different.”
“Have they been close since . . . since I last knew them?”
“For maybe six or seven years after you left—and by the way, for a long time they’d talk about how you ran out on Dean, and don’t tell me they didn’t learn that from their mother’s lips—they hardly ever saw each other. Holidays. An occasional Sunday dinner at the trailer. Mostly they were both going their own way. Roy doing what he always did, screwing women and customers. Dean kind of turned into a hermit. Went to work and that was about his only human contact. Oh, he dated a couple women but never anyone long term. Then at some point the two of them got closer again. Even before Dean got sick. They don’t do much of anything when they’re in each other’s company, but that seems to suit both of them. I asked Roy once, ‘What do the two of you talk about when you’re sitting down there in the basement all evening?’ ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘You have to talk about something,’ I said. ‘No, Dean doesn’t need to talk and I’ve learned to do without too.’” Carla laughs. “Any of this sound familiar?”
“I remember nights when he wouldn’t say a word,” Edie says. “We’d sit in front of the TV for hours in total silence. ‘Are you mad?’ I’d say. He’d shake his head. ‘Is everything okay?’ He’d nod. ‘Will you please just tell me what’s bothering you?’ ‘Nothing, nothing’s bothering me.’ I’d get so angry, which didn’t do either one of us any good.”
The telephone rings, and Carla gets up to answer it. To Edie she mouths the name “Roy.”
“All right,” Carla says. “So how much longer will you be?”
After another pause, she asks, “How’s he doing?”
While Carla listens to the answer, she holds her glass out to Edie and nods. Edie empties the bottle into Carla’s glass.
Carla says good-bye, hangs up the phone, and comes back to the table.
“What did Roy say?”
Carla shrugs. “He won’t die tonight.”
WHEN THE TWINS arrive, Carla, Edie, and Jennifer all go onto the porch to greet them, though Jennifer soon ducks back into the house.
“Your daughter?” Dean asks Edie.
“Did you think you saw a young Edie there?” Roy says.
“There’s Edie,�
�� Dean says and smiles in her direction.
Edie steps forward to help Dean into the house but then steps back. It’s plain that the Linderman brothers have perfected this dance.
Roy guides Dean into the living room and the big leather chair. Then Roy sits on the sofa with Carla and Edie.
“I’ll be right back,” Edie says and leaves the room.
Jennifer is in the kitchen, staring out the window. Edie touches her on the shoulder. “Come and meet Dean,” she says.
Jennifer shakes her head no.
“Come on, Jen. This is what we came here for.”
“This is what you’re here for.”
“Oh, Jen. Don’t.”
Jennifer moves away from her mother. “I told you before. I don’t like being around sick people.”
“He’s not sick, not exactly.”
“Are you kidding? Look at him.”
Edie steps close to her daughter again and puts her arm around her shoulders, holding her tighter than mere affection would require. “Just come and say hello. Then you can go downstairs and watch TV or something.”
Jennifer allows herself to be led.
“Here she is,” Edie says when she enters the living room with her daughter. “Everyone? This is Jennifer!”
“What’d I tell you?” Roy says to his brother.
Dean shakes his head. “She looks like herself,” he says. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he says to Jennifer. “All this must be pretty strange for you.”
Jennifer’s shoulders rise and fall. “I guess.”
Dean tries to push himself up to a standing position. After only a second however he gives up and slides back down into the leather cushions. “Well, it’s pretty damn strange for me.”
Edie nods to her daughter and mouths the words, “You can go.”
And then the four of them, with their long, broken history, fall silent. The light from the setting sun travels its last journey of the day across the neighbors’ rooftops and enters through the sheer curtains.
“I thought the boys would be here by now,” Roy says.
“Jay called earlier,” Carla says. “He said they’d be a little late.”
At this dusky hour the mourning doves have begun to perch on the branches, telephone wires, and rain gutters. If their call weren’t so familiar, the people in this room might believe a low tremulous question were being asked of them: “Who? Who? Who? Who?”
