Everything Beautiful in the World

by Lisa Levchuk

  “Smiley,” he says. He’s got an evil look in his dark eyes. “I want you to take every goddamned can of tennis balls in this store and drop them on that bitch’s doorstep.” He whispers the word “bitch’s” for special emphasis. He grabs a large box and comes down from behind the pharmacy counter, where it is strange to see that he is actually a big, strong guy—maybe six three with a good build. He’s throwing six-dollar cans of tennis balls into the box, and despite the freezing temperature, the watery black streaks are rolling down his neck.

  The box of balls fits into my car, which is a relief because I didn’t really feel like driving Emory’s big old death mobile. As I pull away, a few cans on my lap, past the strip mall’s parking lot and onto the highway, I notice the sun is down but there is still light. Lined up outside the garden center across from the strip mall are stone statues of frogs and trolls and birdbaths that you might want to put in your garden. They are like cheerful gravestones. Every time I drive to the pharmacy from home I pass a graveyard, and it always scares me. When you think about it, death might not be half so scary if you could have a big stone frog with a walking stick and a top hat standing over you. I’d like a gnome in a pointed red hat strumming a guitar.

  I go up the winding roads toward the superswanky houses—so swanky that you can’t even see most of them. Emory drew me a map, so when I see 60 Edgewood Court, I pull up the long driveway and notice that the Goldsteins must be having some kind of cocktail party; Mercedeses and Beemers and other expensive cars that plastic surgeons and such can afford line the driveway. I go into high-speed mode, practically throwing the cans of tennis balls onto the doorstep before ringing the doorbell that they probably won’t hear and getting the hell out of there.

  Back at the store, Emory is sipping a V8 Bloody Mary complete with celery stalk while Dale works on some complex-looking papers.

  “What’d she say? Describe the look on her face,” Emory says.

  “They were having a party. I left them on the doorstep,” I say.

  “God damn it, Smiley, you are a coward.” Emory takes a sip from his drink. “That creepy friend of yours was here,” he says, and he laughs in a sinister way. “I told him you were out on a delivery, a long delivery,” he says. Emory is assuming I don’t want to see Mr. Howland, but I do. However, I don’t want Emory to think it’s important, so I just shrug like it’s no big deal.

  “Listen, Smiley,” Emory says. “I hate to do this, but Vinnie Russo called and he needs some bandages delivered. He got attacked by some nut at the racetrack.”

  Emory is telling me this with a serious look on his face, but you can see he thinks it’s funny.

  “If you don’t want to go, I’ll send Dale over there,” he says.

  “I don’t have a license,” Dale says, barely looking up from the paper.

  Emory knows I’ll go. I take the pharmacy bag with the gauze, tape, alcohol, and bandages inside and once again head into the surrounding swank. The Russos’ house is in the newer development, but the driveways are just as long as the Goldsteins’. At the gate, they have one of those black jockey statues, but someone has painted his face and hands white. Mr. Russo is standing at the top of his circular driveway wearing a white oxford shirt untucked over his fat stomach. The weird part is that the shirt is covered with giant ink stains and blood splotches, like he’s a human Rorschach test. He walks to my car.

  “Some jerk-off attacked me with a pen,” he says.

  I don’t even have to get out of the car—he takes the bag through the window and hands me a twenty-dollar tip.

  “Tell Emory I said screw you,” he says.

  He’s a pretty gruesome sight with the blood and the ink.

  It’s completely dark outside by the time I get back to the pharmacy, so the brightness and cold feel even more disorienting than normal. When Emory hears about the pen and that Vinnie Russo told me to say screw you, he’s amused. Even Dale thinks it’s kind of funny. We stand around the back counter talking about Mr. Russo and the pen and the tennis balls until the phone rings and Emory yells “Suicide Time” and Dale and I get ready to close up. Mr. Howland doesn’t come back—no cat’s eyes to be seen in the darkness of the parking lot.

  A Trip to the Hospital

  MY FATHER MAKES IT PRETTY CLEAR that I have to go to the hospital with him. It is the end of May, and since tennis season is over, I no longer have any valid or invalid excuses not to go and see my mother. I know which afternoons and evenings I am working at least a week in advance, and there is no chance my father would believe me if I told him that I am actually helping by not going to New York. Technically, my mother should have been home by now, but she had to have her hip replaced where the cancer attacked the bone, and there were some complications.

  The night before we are to go I have a crazy dream. I dream my brother, Tommy, and Peter Robin and I are riding in the car together. None of us is driving, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem. We go past the hill where in real life my father had let me shift gears, and we are on a long stretch of road that goes straight through the desert. I am looking at Tommy and waiting for him to say something because I want to hear him talk, but he doesn’t. Peter Robin is sitting next to me, and he looks like a cross between a regular robin and a cartoon crow like Hekyll or Jekyll. Then I am all alone in the car, and the fact that no one is driving is suddenly a very big deal. The car is headed toward a cliff, and there is a woman dancing at the edge, making strange waving movements with her arms. I wake up a moment before I go over the edge.

  I meet my father at his law office. Right there, behind my father’s office, is the most beautiful tree I have ever seen. It is a magnolia tree, and the thick, soft-looking flowers are streaked white and purple. Here is another side to my father. He has filled his yard with rosebushes—white, red, yellow, and pink roses are blooming all over the place, and there, right next to the parking lot, is this incredible tree that makes you want to lie down and cover yourself with those satiny purple and white flowers. My father is a real nut for wildlife and most living things. Aside from G.I. Diary and the Knicks, he also watches any show about nature.

  In the back I see Karl, a black guy who does random odd jobs for my father, stuff like watering the roses and getting coffee. He lives in the small garage behind my father’s office, and he wears three coats no matter what the weather. It drives my mother crazy that he wears the shortest coat on top. My father took me into the garage one time because he wanted to get a mailbox from Karl. Karl isn’t quite right in his mind, and he collects mailboxes among other things. There must have been about fifteen brand-new mailboxes in there as well as alarm clocks and about one hundred calendars. My father told me that Karl got hit by a bus when he was a little kid and that he isn’t able to have a regular life. What doesn’t make sense is why my father, who isn’t exactly the friendliest man in the world, lets Karl live in his garage and even sit on the front porch of his law office whenever he feels like it. Karl waves to me, he always waves to me, and I wave back. Waving at Karl always reminds me that Karl once saved my father’s office from being burglarized. The robber hit Karl over the head with a bat, but Karl didn’t back down. He showed me the bloody-looking welt on his head right at the edge of his hairline.

  “They hit me on the head,” he repeated. It was clear that Karl was proud of having protected the office.

  In my mind, I am trying to form a clear connection between the tree and the roses and Karl. Each one of those things tells me something important about my father, something he cannot tell me himself. They represent pieces of an impossible puzzle that I am pretty certain I will never solve. But I keep paying attention anyway. Beautiful roses and a black man wearing three coats who is willing to lay down his life for you must be significant clues.

  My father emerges from his office. He looks tired; his hat is cocked to one side. I like how men from my father’s generation wear hats to work. I wish Mr. Howland would start wearing hats. We get into my dad’s Oldsmobile, the
good car, leaving my car out in the parking lot under the magnolia tree. He doesn’t say anything to me about the fact that it is the first time I’m going with him to see my mother. That is one good thing about my father. You can always count on him not to say anything because he doesn’t really like to talk. He’s like Mister Ed, he only talks when he has something to say. As we pull out of the driveway, I see Karl take a seat on the front porch, and I wave one more time.

  Driving to New York, my father looks like he is about to say something, but he doesn’t. I believe he may even be having a conversation with himself inside his head, but I couldn’t say for sure. The reason I think this is that he is gesturing with his hand every so often—karate-chopping the air in a way that makes it look like he is telling an imaginary person something very important.

  As we head north on the turnpike, I feel my stomach starting to seize up. When I was a little kid, I used to pretend to be sick about once a week so that I could stay home from school and be served peeled apples and watch The Price Is Right. But then, ironically, I did get a stomach problem that has troubled me on and off. Lately, I’ve noticed that every time I’m around my father, I get a pretty severe pain in my stomach. This pain is coming on top of my normal car sickness, and I’m trying not to double over in the seat. It’s like there is an alien living in my stomach, moving around creating havoc with my intestines. I tell my father to pull over, and I puke all over the side of the turnpike while cars and tractor trailers are whizzing by so close that I don’t understand how we haven’t been crushed. My father doesn’t say anything; he simply hands me his handkerchief and I wipe my face.

  You might think puking would make me feel better, but it doesn’t, and I won’t go into the gory details of what happens next, but my father has to stop at this horribly seedy-looking motel where pimps and hookers and drug addicts go to find one another. I have to use the bathroom there because it is nothing short of an emergency. When I come out of the bathroom that I won’t even describe, I am still sick and colorless, and my entire body is shaking like I have malaria. My father is standing there in the scary lobby with his hat still cocked to one side looking at me like I am the world’s weakest girl and a massive disappointment—both being true, I realize.

  Without discussing what happened, we get back on the turnpike headed south, and my stomach starts to calm down a bit as we get farther away from New York and my sick mother. Without any warning my father starts quizzing me about directions.

  “If you look to your left, which direction would you be looking?” he asks.

  The fact is that I have no sense of direction whatsoever. Because of the war, my father is obsessed with directions and with distance.

  “West?” I guess wildly.

  “No, not west,” my father says.

  “North?” I try.

  “Where is the sun?” he asks. “You need to know where the sun is setting.”

  I have no idea what he is talking about. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, I think, but that gives me no help with directions. When my father gets like this, it is best to listen and not speak. My stomach is experiencing aftershocks that could escalate, so I know I’ve got to tune him out. He goes on about the East River and about the setting sun, and I’m not even sure he cares if I answer anymore. He keeps talking and talking, emphasizing how important it is to know directions. He’s gesturing with his hand, karate-chopping, which confirms he was talking to himself the whole time we were driving toward New York. If he knew how my stomach felt, I’m pretty sure he would stop talking, but he doesn’t. He never mentions my mother at all, which in a way makes things worse.

  As we get to the road that leads to our house, I want to ask him something. I want to ask him what happened to Tommy. Instead, I ask, “How’s Karl doing these days?”

  My father disrupts his monologue to look at me in a way that makes me think he had forgotten I was even there.

  “He’s all right,” he says. “About the same as always.”

  “Was he murdered?” I blurt out. “Did someone murder Tommy?”

  My father keeps looking straight ahead. He is thinking about the question like there is nothing strange about my asking. He considers it as if he had been expecting some such question.

  “Did someone tell you he was murdered?” he asks.

  “Well,” I say. “Barbie asked me about it once when we were kids.”

  “No one murdered Tommy,” he says. “People didn’t understand about him. It was a different time.”

  “How did he die then?” I ask.

  We are very close to home now, and my stomach has momentarily calmed down.

  “He drowned,” my father says. “He drowned in Maine, in the ocean. He was making some progress. He was very smart.”

  “How do you know he was smart if he couldn’t talk?”

  “Oh, you could tell. He would have been very smart. I wish you could have known him. I wish we’d had more time with him.”

  “What happened to that psychiatrist?” I ask him.

  My father shrugs and gets a pained look on his face. This might be the part that he really does not want to talk about. Surprisingly, it was clear he liked talking about Tommy. He is waiting for me to ask more questions, and I want to ask more questions. I want to know who was responsible. I want to know exactly how my father could tell Tommy was smart. But no words come out of my mouth. It is a relief, however; it is a bigger relief than I can say to know that no one killed him.

  We pull into our driveway.

  “Will you tell her I tried to come?” I ask.

  “Why don’t you call her?” he replies. “I’ll dial the number for you.”

  “I can’t right now,” I say. “I’m sick.”

  He shrugs his shoulders and walks into the house, into his private room with his statues and creatures. By the time I get into the hallway, I can already hear the voice of the narrator from G.I. Diary, and I know that my mother and I are safe for the night.

  Up in my room, I try to think of a new prayer to say, something that might help me fall asleep, but the only thing that comes to mind is the time my father made me go with him all the way back to Freehold to bring Karl a clock that he had left at our farm while doing yard work. Why would we drive five miles out of our way to bring someone something he didn’t really need? I am wondering if my father was so nice to Karl because Karl couldn’t say what it was he wanted, the way Tommy couldn’t say what he wanted. Karl said he wanted a clock, but without being a psychiatrist, it is still easy to see that no one wants a clock that much. He must have liked something in particular about it—the way Kippy liked to have a clock in her bed when she was a puppy. Whatever it was, my father understood Karl wouldn’t be all right without that clock.

  My mind shifts gears and starts thinking about Mr. Howland again, about how he played the guitar that time at Patty’s house. He really had a great voice. I try to remember the song about the woman in the lighthouse, but I have forgotten all but the beginning.

  Tommy

  TONIGHT I HAVE ANOTHER DREAM about Tommy. I am standing in a grassy field, and Tommy is sitting on a cloud high above me wearing overalls and a straw hat and holding a fishing pole. I’m looking up at him, and he’s looking at me from where he sits in the sky. The cloud floats down, and he’s sitting right next to me with his fishing pole, though we are nowhere near any water.

  “Can you hear me?” I ask him.

  He nods his head yes, but he still doesn’t say anything. Then the cloud starts floating back up into the sky, and my brother looks happy to be leaving the earth again.

  Mrs. Howland at the Pharmacy

  IT IS TUESDAY EVENING and one of those times when I am standing behind my register staring off into space. I’m standing there surrounded by film and batteries and cartons of cigarettes, not printing any losing lottery tickets for people who look like they can’t afford to buy them. The phone light is on—Emory is talking to someone and probably will be for hours. Dale is busy doi
ng actual pharmacy work in the back, and there isn’t one customer in the store. It would be a good moment to steal some film or cigarettes, but my thievery has not been giving me the same rush that it used to and I’ve been contemplating giving up cigarettes altogether. To pass the time, I start tossing Tic Tacs into the garbage pail that I’ve placed about five feet away—it is a game I made up. Because I’ve missed quite a few times, there are tiny white mints on the carpet surrounding the pail.

  I am bent over picking up the errant Tic Tacs when Mrs. Howland, a.k.a. Melinda, comes walking into the store. She has a new haircut; her freshly frosted hair is layered, and she looks more stylish than she did the night at Patty’s house. She doesn’t look at me, but I can feel she is here to see me. Despite the cold, I am suddenly sweating like mad. Big wet circles are growing under my arms. My impulse is to crouch down and hide behind the counter, but that would be stupid, because as soon as she gets close enough she’ll see me. There is no doubt that I am trapped. She pretends to be browsing for a while and then walks toward me.

  “Well, what do you know?” she says. “It’s my husband’s favorite student.”

  She’s standing in front of me with no merchandise, staring at me.

  “Hey,” I say. “How’s it going?” I try to sound cheerful, but the sweating gives me away.

  “Two packs of Newports,” she says. “Please.”

  She’s glaring at me with mockery, but I still am not sure that she knows anything about Mr. Howland and me. I have an active imagination.

  I ring up the cigarettes. Before she walks out the door, she glances back like she might know, but she might not. She definitely doesn’t look like she feels sorry for me for being the poor girl with a sick mother. She takes a step toward me. She looks like she is planning to say something that requires her complete concentration.