Night of Miracles

by Elizabeth Berg

She is resting her head against the window, half asleep, when she hears Lincoln say, “I have an idea.”

  She turns around to smile at him. “What is it?”

  “We should open a bookstore in Mason.”

  “That would be lovely,” Abby says. She tightens her coat around her. She’s cold all the time lately, too. When she saw her doctor last week, he took some blood from her to find out what’s going on. Abby thinks she’s probably anemic.

  When they get inside the house, Abby says, “I’ll make some dinner.”

  “I got it,” Jason says. “You go and rest.”

  Abby has just taken off her shoes in preparation for lying on the sofa when her cellphone rings. She grabs her purse from the hook by the kitchen door where she has just hung it, pulls out her phone, and answers it.

  Jason is chopping carrots for salad and the noise is loud. She goes back into the living room to take the call. It’s her doctor, telling her that he needs to speak with her. Can she and Jason come in?

  “It’s bad news, isn’t it?” she says. And then, “Please tell me now. My husband is here. And I want to be home when you tell me.”

  The doctor hesitates. “It’s our normal procedure to have you come in.”

  “Please,” she says.

  After she agrees to come to the office the next day, he tells her. She sits for a moment on the edge of the sofa and then she goes back into the kitchen. “Where’s Linky?” she asks Jason.

  “Up in his room. On his computer, no doubt. He hasn’t used up his hour of free time yet. Why?”

  Abby moves to stand in front of Jason and wraps her arms around his waist. She says, “Sweetheart. I have leukemia. I have acute myelogenous leukemia.” The words are blocky in her mouth. “That’s a bad one.”

  “Abby,” he says. He closes his eyes, and together they sway. For one moment, she feels that if she can just stay here, nothing will happen.

  Polly’s Henhouse

  IN THE APARTMENT DOWN THE hall from Iris lives a taxicab driver named Tiny Dawson, who is the furthest thing from tiny she has ever seen. The man is very tall and is padded with quite a few extra pounds. But he is an extremely kind person—he carried all of Iris’s boxes when she moved in, and when Iris protested that he was doing too much, he told her he was in better shape than he looked. He has a friend named Dan, who’s the same size or bigger. They go out to eat on Wednesday nights, and Iris often sees Dan climbing into Tiny’s truck. There’s something touching about it, she thinks, those two big heads inclined fraternally as they go out to wherever they go. She wishes they’d invite her to come along.

  One morning about a week after she moved in, Tiny did invite her to have breakfast with him at Polly’s Henhouse. Iris ordered an egg-white omelet with spinach and feta cheese, and whole-wheat toast. Tiny didn’t have to order; the buxom waitress brought him a double-size platter of pigs in a blanket, his usual, apparently. He shrugged at Iris after the waitress put the platter down before him. “I guess I’m the pig,” he said, and Iris said, “I don’t think you’re a pig, I think you’re a very nice man.”

  “With a weight problem.”

  Iris began cutting her omelet into small, neat squares. “It’s mostly a problem if it bothers you.”

  “Then it’s a problem. I can’t quite figure out how to fix it. Nothing I’ve tried so far has worked.”

  “I might have a problem like that,” Iris said.

  “You’re not fat!”

  “It’s not weight. Not that kind of weight, anyway.”

  Tiny crossed his arms and regarded her. “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Forty-seven.”

  “That ain’t old.”

  My age isn’t my problem, Iris thought. But she was glad to change the subject, even though she had already sensed that Tiny would be a most empathetic listener, whatever the subject. He had kind eyes, and such a gentle demeanor. He had a way of offering encouragement without saying a word.

  “How old are you?” she asked him.

  “How old do you think?”

  Iris studied him. “Thirty-nine?”

  “Damn!”

  “Are you thirty-nine?”

  “Exactamente.”

  “Well!” she said, pleased.

  Tiny leaned back against the bench of the booth where they sat. “You wouldn’t think it to look at me,” he said, “but I’ve dated me a lot of women. A lot of different types and a lot of different ages. Your age? That’s the best age.”

  “Yes, all right,” Iris said. “Thank you.”

  “When you told me your age, you were thinking it was old, right?”

  She said nothing.

  “Well, it ain’t. Not by a long shot. I’ll tell you what’s old, and this is the God’s truth. You ready? Here it is: ninety-three. That’s it. You hit ninety-three, and you’re old. And that’s when you can start smoking. ’Cause it ain’t going to kill you before you’re dead anyway.”

  When Iris got home that day, she took off her jacket, and along with it came all the bonhomie she’d just experienced. She stood still in the living room for a while, then went to the desk in her bedroom and pulled out the quietly elegant stationery she’d bought specifically for this purpose. She drew in a breath and began to write. After she finished the letter, she read it, made a few corrections, and read it again. Then she ripped it up and threw it away. A shame, really, the way the heavy cream-colored page with a gold embossed hummingbird at the top now lay in ragged pieces, mixed in with orange peels and bill envelopes.

  This morning, Iris lies in bed for a while, watching the light come to her window. When the rose colors have given over to a whitish yellow, she gets up and showers, dresses in a pair of jeans and a high-necked, pumpkin-colored sweater. Everything’s pumpkin now. Clothes, lotions, tea breads, ravioli. People complain about it, but Iris likes it. She’s all for celebrating everything. She’s grateful to the people who leave Christmas lights up well into February, who bedeck their front porches with flags for the Fourth, with ghosts for Halloween. She likes glittering hearts for Valentine’s Day plastered on windows and doors, and blown-out eggs dyed pale pastel colors hanging from trees at Easter time. Never mind that she seems to be an elegant and sophisticated woman, a well-dressed blonde with a Boston reserve and awfully good grammar. At heart, she’s a rank sentimentalist.

  She makes her bed, looks at her watch, puts on the (pumpkin) coffee, and goes down to the lobby of the apartment building to see if the weekly local paper has arrived. A cat, she’s thinking. A dog? And it’s time: a job. She has to start meeting more people and adding structure to her days. Nobody looks for jobs in the paper anymore. But in small towns, they do.

  Iris pulls out a copy of Our Town Crier from the middle of the pile that has been left on the lobby bench. Then she stands by the elevator to go back upstairs. She pushes the elevator button twice, then again, though she knows that does no good at all.

  Generally, she likes using stairs in place of elevators anyway, but when she used the stairs here yesterday, there was a wolf spider on the banister that seemed to be poised to jump on her. It had a distressing body size of a good inch and a quarter and it seemed to Iris that all eight of its eyes were focused on her. She was bitten by a spider as a little girl: a trip to the ER, a shot, and nightmares that still crop up every now and then featuring giant arachnids. Iris is an animal lover, but spiders and centipedes don’t make the cut.

  The elevator door opens and there is Tiny with his magnificent-size (which is to say extra-large) lunch box in hand, apparently off to work.

  “Hey, Tiny,” she says.

  “Hey.”

  Normally when she sees Tiny, he lights up and chats amiably; his schedule, after all, is his own. But today something is wrong. He won’t look at her, and his expression is deeply sad.

 
“There’s a really big wolf spider in the stairwell,” she tells him, then immediately regrets it. Is that supposed to cheer him up?

  His eyes widen. “Now?”

  “I saw it yesterday on the banister at the bottom of the stairwell. It’s really big.”

  “Bigger than a breadbox?”

  She smiles. “Just about.”

  He puts his lunch box down on the bench by the lobby door, then turns to her.

  “Watch my lunch. Unless you want to help me kill it.”

  “Oh, don’t kill it!”

  “Why’d you tell me about it, then?”

  “I don’t know. You looked like you could use a little conversation. It was all I could come up with.”

  “Yeah, I’m having a bad day. Guess it’s obvious, huh?”

  “We all get them.”

  “Guess so.” He draws in a breath and strides purposefully toward the stairwell.

  “Don’t kill it!”

  “I ain’t going to kill it. I’m going to capture it and put it in your apartment.” He looks over his shoulder at her. “I’m kidding. Come on, watch me get it.”

  “You know what? I’ll wait out here. I’ll get the door for you so you can let it go. But take it far from the building. Take it over by the river. Don’t let it go in the parking lot. It might get run over. Take it by the river but not too close to the water.”

  “You’re an interesting woman, Iris,” he says, and disappears into the stairwell.

  Iris sits waiting, thinking maybe this is not such a good idea. Maybe he’ll get bitten. And it will be all her fault.

  Moments later, Tiny emerges from the stairwell with his hands cupped. “Got it!” He moves toward a trepidatious Iris, and when he is before her, opens up a narrow slit in this hands. There the spider is, frozen in place.

  “Ick,” Iris says.

  “I’ll let him go, and then do you want to go and get some breakfast at the Henhouse?”

  “Yes!”

  “Doesn’t the very word make you happy? Breakfast? Always does me. That and a rooster on a menu. Give me a rooster on a menu and I’m going to sit right down and order.”

  “Don’t you think you should put that spider out before he bites you?”

  “Spider bite ain’t going to hurt you none! But hold up here a minute and then meet me at my truck.”

  “I’ll drive,” Iris says. “You drove last time.”

  “Nah, I’ll drive,” Tiny says, and when Iris starts to protest, he says, “I can’t fit in your car.”

  It’s an SUV, Iris thinks, but all right.

  She finds the classified section in the little paper. There are seven listings under HELP WANTED, all of them for part-time positions, and two could actually work for her. One is for a childcare assistant at Building Blocks Daycare Center for weekends, 3 P.M. to 8 P.M., and the other is for general help for an unnamed small home business, 9 A.M. to noon, Monday through Friday. Iris has always thought it would be more satisfying to have two part-time jobs rather than one full-time one. So she’ll apply to both. The salary won’t be much for either job, she’s certain, but she has enough money to last a long time. For the rest of her life, actually, considering the savvy investments she and her husband made, half of which she was entitled to, and took, on the advice of her formidable female lawyer. Iris didn’t want to take anything. But her lawyer said, “Please. Don’t be ridiculous.” So Iris is set. Financially, anyway. But she thinks a woman her age should work. She thinks she should, anyway. She has to make one last quick trip to Boston to tie up some loose ends with the woman who bought her store, and then she’s free.

  She stands when she sees Tiny running—well, kind of running, running as best he can—toward her, furiously shaking his hand. “Little fucker bit me!” he says, when she runs out to meet him.

  “Oh, no! So did you kill him?”

  “No, I didn’t kill him! I set him down and he went tearing off into the woods!”

  And now, although Iris is not an unsympathetic person, she bursts out laughing. So does Tiny.

  “Shall I take you to the ER?” Iris asks.

  “The ER!”

  “Yes!”

  “What are they going to do?”

  “Treat you for a spider bite?”

  “The hell they will. First we’ll sit in the waiting room for a day and a half. Then they’ll weigh me and try to keep a straight face and then they’ll do an EKG and blood work so they can ogle my cholesterol and whatnot. A spider bite will be the least of their concerns. They won’t even get to a spider bite. No, I ain’t going to the ER. I’m going out to breakfast.”

  “Let me see the bite,” Iris says, as though she would have any knowledge about whether or not Tiny needed treatment. But when he shows her his hand, she sees nothing.

  “Doesn’t look too bad,” she says. “Let’s go and eat. Guess what. I’m getting pigs in a blanket.”

  “I’m getting the spider-bite special.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s where you get whatever you want on account of some asshole bit you.”

  In the truck on the way to the restaurant, Tiny says, “Know why I’m having a blue day? Woman trouble. I got a bad crush on one of the waitresses at the Henhouse and I just can’t seem to…I can’t get going with her. Dan says it’s because I’m a pushover. He says you have to play hard to get. But it’s hard to play hard to get if someone isn’t trying to get you. And I don’t think Monica is.”

  “Is she the one who waited on us last time?”

  “Nah. She wasn’t there last time. She’s got long black hair, dimples, gorgeous skin. She’s really friendly and she’s got a beautiful smile.”

  “No wonder you’re in love with her.” Iris watches a bird fly from a tree, and it reminds her that she’s meant to ask him something. “Hey, Tiny, I’m wondering if you could do me a favor. I’m going to Boston this weekend for a quick visit, I’ll just be gone for a couple of days. I put food out on the kitchen windowsill for the birds every morning and I don’t want them to think I’ve forgotten about them. I don’t want them to stop coming.”

  Funny how important those birds have become to her. But people need something to depend on. They need something to love.

  Monica

  MONICA MAYHEW BELIEVES THAT A man’s disposition can be broadcast by the tilt of his hat. At least she believes that about Roberto Hernandez. The short-order cook at Polly’s Henhouse wears a paper hat jauntily at the back of his head when he’s in a good mood, and as far down on his forehead as he can get it when his spirit is dark. Today, when Monica comes into the kitchen, she sees that Roberto’s hat is nearly obscuring his eyes, and he stares fiercely at the hash browns and onions, his hands on his hips.

  “Roberto,” Monica says, “give me a cup of oatmeal, will you? I’m going to take my break while it’s quiet out there.”

  “We’re out.”

  “What do you mean we’re out?”

  “What do you think I mean? It’s gone.”

  “Can’t you make more?”

  He doesn’t answer, just scrapes away some burned bits into the grease trap.

  “Roberto?”

  He turns around. “You got to have oatmeal? You can’t have cold cereal?”

  “I don’t like cold cereal.”

  “You don’t like it, so I have to make more oatmeal that no one else will eat. We are done with oatmeal for the day. I know these things. Oatmeal stops at eight. Every day. No one wants oatmeal after eight.”

  Monica knows for a fact that this is not true. But there’s no point in provoking him further. He’s normally a happy man; she’ll forgive him this unpleasantness and just eat a couple of slices of bacon. She reaches for them, and he slaps her hand lightly.

  “What?” she says. “I can’t have bacon, either?
”

  “We’re running low. See?”

  Monica looks at the big pile of bacon Roberto is pointing to. He really is in a bad mood. She grabs three slices.

  Roberto puffs air out of his cheeks.

  “What’s wrong, Roberto?”

  He makes a wide gesture toward her shoulder with his long-handled spatula. It looks as though she’s being threatened or oddly knighted.

  “You don’t know what’s happening in my house.”

  Monica waits.

  “With my wife. And don’t even ask. ¡Humillante! That a loyal man has to endure such a thing! I pray for it to be over soon.” He kisses his crucifix, flips a row of pancakes. “Don’t even ask me!” he says.

  Monica doesn’t. She chews her bacon.

  “All right!” he says. “I will tell you. My wife has these little figures, worry dolls, she calls them. She keeps them in a box, but last week, she takes them out. What are you worried about, I ask her. Nothing, she says. Then why do you have the worry dolls out? I ask. I ask her nice. She don’t answer. I get nothing. But I hear from my neighbor Carlos. After I go to work the other day, she is putting on lipstick and swinging her hips for other men. Out she goes to Costco, and she pushes her cart like she is selling herself.”

  “Roberto, that can’t be true.”

  “Carlos saw. He is sitting at the café having his hot dog and there she goes down the aisle, like in a parade. All made up, her rhinestone clip in her hair. Who do you think bought her that clip?” He jabs his finger in his chest. “Me! I bought it!”

  “Maybe she just needed to get a little dressed up and go out.”

  “To Costco?”

  “Sometimes a woman just needs to get out of the house. My mom used to go to the five-and-dime and talk to the parakeets. She got dressed up to do it, too. Hose and heels.”

  “Then your mom, she was a lonely woman who didn’t have no love.”

  Monica waits a careful beat, then says, “Is it possible that Lollie is feeling neglected?”

  Roberto snorts. “No way. Every night, I am a bull. You know what I mean. And believe me, she appreciates. But lately, no. She don’t laugh, she don’t talk much. So you know what? Today, I take those dolls with me. I have them right here in my apron pocket.”