I concentrated on the stream and, after a moment, caught the glint of silver weaving through water. “I see one,” I said, unexpectedly excited. I followed its progress as the silver-scaled body fought its way upstream and over a concrete step, only to be propelled back again and again by the force of the water. “Will it make it?”
“Eventually.”
“Do they ever give up?”
Faye shook her head. “They're hardwired not to.”
“Amazing,” I said.
“Every year they return here to spawn.”
“How do they find their way back?”
“It's their home stream. They recognize it.”
“By instinct?”
“By smell.”
“Smell?” I assumed she was kidding.
“Biologists have discovered that every brook or river or stream has its own distinctive chemistry, its own particular odor.”
“Just like people.”
“Exactly. And that's how an alewife identifies its home stream.”
We watched as the alewife continued with its fierce, determined futile leaps. It seemed impossible that the fish would ever make it over the step of the concrete ladder. I knelt and dipped a hand in the stream so icy it made me gasp. The fish circled in the pool at the base of the step. Without thinking, I bent forward and cupped my hands, prepared to scoop it up and deliver it to the next level.
“Don't,” Faye said, reaching out to stop me.
“I was just going to help it.”
“I know, but it won't help.”
“Why?” The alewife made another futile attempt.
“Just by touching it, you can harm it.”
“Oh,” I said, chastised. The alewife disappeared beneath the shadow of the water, hidden and quick. “I didn't mean to hurt it.”
“To wish to do no harm is not at all the same as not doing any,” Faye said. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Things have to find their own way, Jessie.”
Just at that moment, the fish reappeared, made a last leap, and in glistening triumph, scaled the ladder. I couldn't describe the elation this small victory brought me.
We stayed on at the mill for another hour, walking the length of the run and then circling the millpond, where gulls swooped overhead, one occasionally diving to capture a fish in its bill.
As we walked, Faye's words eddied in my head like the water swirling at each step of the run. Things have to find their own way.
six
EASTER DAWNED WITH a return to the cold and rain. When I arrived at the Ryder house, Nona's friend Helen was already in the drive, engine revving, and Nona was waiting at the door.
“It was good of you to come,” she said, “it being the holiday and all.”
“I was glad to,” I said, and handed her the box of candies I had settled on after all. “Happy Easter.”
“Oh now,” Nona said. “You shouldn't have bothered.”
“It wasn't a bother.”
“I hated to ask you to come on the holiday, but I haven't missed an Easter service in thirty years.”
I couldn't imagine this. I hadn't attended church since I left home for college.
“I should be back by twelve thirty,” Nona said, “but the service often runs late on Easter and Christmas.”
“No problem. I can stay as long as you want.”
“Do I look all right? This is the only decent thing I brought with me.”
Nona wore a dress, her concession to the holiday. Her legs were bony, the shins knotted with varicose veins. “You look beautiful,” I said.
She sighed. “It's so hard to go through the motions of ordinary living,” she said in a voice so soft she might have been speaking to herself. She looked over at the closed door and gave another sigh.
“Go,” I said. “I'll take care of things here.”
After she left, I flicked on a lamp to dispel some of the gloom and stood for a moment listening to the television blaring from behind the closed door of Luke's room. I thought fleetingly about knocking, then just as swiftly dismissed the idea. I snitched a few jelly beans Nona had set out in a dish on the coffee table and headed for the kitchen to pour myself some coffee.
There was a portable sewing machine set up on the table. A pair of men's pants was folded by its side. I couldn't remember the last time I had seen anyone mend a pair of pants. Or anything, for that matter. I trailed a finger over the fabric, sucked on the candy. When the telephone rang, I was so startled that I nearly choked on the jelly bean. By the third ring, I'd recovered enough to pick up.
“Nona?” A man's voice, deep, the resonant tone of a disc jockey.
“She's not here right now. Can I take a message for her?”
“Is this Paige?”
“No,” I said. “This is Jessie.”
“Hospice Jessie?” the man said. “Freckled nose, blue eyes, perfect posture.”
I paused, caught off guard. “Yes.”
“Hi. Nona told me about you.”
“And who is this?” I felt my face grow hot and wondered what else Nona had said about me.
“Rich,” he said. “A friend of Luke's.”
“Oh,” I said. “Hi.” It was odd, but until that moment, I hadn't thought much about Luke actually having a life beyond the room he lay in, although I supposed, of course, he did. Certainly he had friends even if I hadn't yet seen any.
“I'm just calling to check in. How's he doing?”
I paused. “About the same.” Faye had instructed the volunteers that we weren't to give out patient information.
“Well, tell him to let me know if there's anything I can do, anything Nona needs.”
I carried the receiver to the hall and looked at the closed door. “Do you want me to tell him you're on the phone?”
“I don't know. Is he asleep? Don't bother him if this isn't a good time.”
I didn't know what to say. I had no idea what Luke was doing in his fortress.
“Listen,” he said, “just leave a message that I called.”
“Okay,” I said, returning to the kitchen. “Anything else?”
“Will you let Nona know I'll be by sometime late in the week to pick up any trash she has for the dump?”
“Trash for the dump,” I repeated. “Got it.”
“And tell her I'm disappointed.”
“Disappointed?”
“She didn't tell me about the accent. I'm a fool for a girl with a southern accent.”
I rolled my eyes. “You got one part of that wrong,” I said.
“How so?”
“I'm not a girl.”
“What part did I get right?”
“Try and take a stab at it.” After I hung up, I poured myself a cup of Nona's lethal coffee, replayed the conversation. I knew the type. There had been enough of them in my past. Cocky as hell. Always fishing for a good time by throwing out a line. Half the time, I bit and swallowed, although lately I had been getting smarter. Hadn't I? Or was it just that I hadn't had occasion to be tested?
A faint sound broke into my thoughts. I paused, listened. It took a moment to realize it was Luke's bell. It rang again. The sound I had been waiting for since the first day I stepped into this house.
“Coming,” I called, while my heart skipped and pulsed. I knocked and when there was no response, pushed open his door. My eyes went first to the empty hospital bed that occupied the center of the room facing out toward the window. He sat in a wingback chair, his legs covered with a woven throw, the black Lab at his side. He was thin as a wire hanger—his shirt just hung on him—and his skin was jaundiced. He had on leather slide-in slippers, the kind old men wore, and it was the slippers—more than the baggy clothes or the pallor, the hospital bed or the aluminum walker set to one side— that marked him an invalid.
What had I expected? I supposed the man in the photos that hung in the hall, the one I had been thinking about for weeks, had dreamed about. A fisherman with crow black hair, a man who loved his truck and his dog and his daughter
. A man who once headed down to the basement several times a week to do curls and bench presses and dead lifts. A man so fit he seemed incapable of weakness or death. I wouldn't have recognized him as the person in the photo. Except for the raven hair.
I tried to conceal my shock but not quickly enough. He turned away, looked out the window, but not before I saw his mouth tighten.
“Hi,” I said. “I'm Jessie.”
He stared out the window, stroked the Lab's back with long, precise fingers. I gave a quick look around the room, took in the clutter of books, magazines, a couple of plastic jugs of bird seed, a half dozen empty glasses with bent drinking straws. A stained mattress pad scrunched into an oval that served as a dog bed. There was a small telescope by the window and a pair of binoculars on the sill.
“I don't know if you heard the phone ring a few minutes ago,” I said. “Your friend Rich called.”
He had no interest in small talk. “Look,” he said, “I need you to do something.”
I hesitated, praying it wasn't anything that would make me queasy, some requirement of a personal nature. “Okay,” I said.
He turned and looked straight at me, his eyes daring me to show sympathy or pity. “I'm out of cigarettes,” he said. “I need you to buy me some.”
You can't be serious, I thought.
“There's money on the desk,” he said.
“You want cigarettes?” The man was dying. He looked like shit in a shirt.
“Winstons. And a six-pack of Coke while you're at it. The real stuff. Not that diet crap.”
“I don't know,” I stalled, my voice guarded. “I mean, I don't think I should go out. Nona isn't here. I can't leave you alone.”
“Jesus Christ,”he said, giving all three syllables equal emphasis. “Do I look like I need a babysitter?”
“That's not what I meant,” I managed. “I just don't think you should be—you know, smoking.”
His look silenced me. Once, outside a bar in New Orleans, I saw two men fighting, and what struck me—terrified me—was the violence of their rage, a wave nearly physical, so hot it felt like a flame. I saw something akin to that anger in Luke's eyes. And something more, too. His eyes stared straight into mine as if everything I had ever thought, past or present, was laid bare. As if I had no secrets. Never in my life had anyone ever looked at me like that. It was like looking into death. Or truth. I know you.
“So are you going to get me the friggin' cigarettes or not?” he said.
Not, I started to say. And then I remembered something Faye told us during our training. Try to imagine what it's like to be dying, she urged us. Imagine that, bit by bit, nearly everything has been taken from you. Your work. Your health. Your future. Your pleasure in ordinary things like a good meal, a glass of wine, sex. Your freedom to do the simplest things, like drinking from a glass. Try to imagine what it is like to be unable to go to the bathroom without help. Or to wipe yourself when you are done. Then she handed out a yellow sheet of paper with the title “The Patient's Bill of Rights,” among which were their right to be angry and to make their own decisions.
I knew I shouldn't leave Luke. Nona was clear about that. But sometimes what a person wants collides with all good sense, and— even when my smart self was shouting that I needed to sit up and pay attention—I went straight with the desire. At this moment, my fiercest desire was to help Luke. I knew what it was like to feel helpless.
“Okay,” I said. “I'll get them.”
“And the Coke,” he said.
I nodded. “And the Coke.”
Months later, I would think: That is how it happens. We make what seems like a simple choice, no more extraordinary or complicated than buying a quart of milk, but then we learn that even the simplest decision carries with it ramifications. Consequences that we can never envision. This was my first choice in one of several that I would later have cause to regret.
THE WHOLE thing didn't take more than twenty minutes. Max. I left the engine running while I ran into Meservey's and grabbed the Coke and Winstons. As the clerk rang up the total, I threw in a foil-covered chocolate rabbit, then rushed out, refusing the clerk's offer to bag my purchases. Nothing was going to happen to Luke in the few minutes I was gone. But still.
When I pulled up to the house, I saw the blue Volvo waiting in the drive. “Shit,” I muttered. Paige waited inside, her fury pulsing in waves.
“Where the hell were you?” she said. She faced me, arms akimbo.
“Your dad asked me to—,” I began, but was cut off before I could explain.
“You weren't supposed to leave him,” Paige said, shouting. She all but stamped her turquoise boot. “That's the entire reason you're here. My grandmother doesn't want him to be left alone.”
“Let's calm down,” I said.
“Don't tell me to fuckin' calm down.” Paige looked down at the purchases in my arms. “What? You left him to go get yourself a pack of weeds? I can't fuckin' believe this.”
“I left,” I said evenly, determined not to lose control, “because your father asked me to run an errand.”
Paige eyed the purchases again. “You bought him cigarettes?”
“Listen—”
“Listen, shit. Did it occur to you that maybe his doctor has told him not to smoke?”
“Look,” I said in the reasonable tone I would use for a student who was acting out, “I'm sorry if I've upset you, but I'm here for Luke, not you. He wanted the cigarettes. It was his decision to make. Not mine.”
“Jesus,” Paige spat. “Where do they find you people?”
“Paige.”We both turned at the sound of Luke's voice. He stood at the door, weight supported by an aluminum walker. “That's enough.”
“Fine.” Paige flung the word at him. “Go ahead. Smoke. Kill yourself. You're just as stupid as Mom always said you were. Well, just don't expect me to cry at your funeral.” She pushed past me and headed for the door, her eyes hot, hard.
“Hold on, Paige,” Luke said. “Just hold on.”
She stormed out without looking back. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I could certainly guess. The car door slammed. Moments later, I heard the sound of the Volvo roaring out of the driveway.
Luke turned and made his way back to his chair by the window. I could see the angel wings of his shoulder blades through the fabric of his shirt. “She's been a hothead since she was old enough to talk,” he said. He sounded more proud than apologetic.
“Looks to me like she comes by it honestly,” I said before I could stop myself.
He surprised me by laughing, and in this moment, for the first time, I could see something of the man he had been before cancer. Handsome. Dangerous. A crash course in the blues if ever there was one. Even this wasted, there remained a sexual energy about him.
He held out his hand for the Coke and cigarettes. I crossed the room, handed them to him. He looked at the foil-covered rabbit but did not take it from my hand. I placed it along with his change on the desktop, embarrassed now that I had bought such a childish thing.
“Is it true what Paige said?” I asked. “Did your doctor tell you not to smoke?”
He snorted. “Doctors tell you lots of things.” He slit open the wrapper with a thumbnail and shook out a cigarette. “Want to know the best thing about dying?”
I held back the denial that sprang to mind: You're not dying.
“The rules don't matter anymore,” he said. “Not one of them matters a good goddamn.”
“What rules?”
“All of them. Wear your seat belt. Eat fiber. Exercise. Cut back on fat. Lower your cholesterol.” He looked over at me. “Anything you want to add?”
“You forgot flossing,” I said.
“Yeah. That, too.” He lit up, took a deep drag, deeper than I would have thought possible from the looks of him, and stared out the window.
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “you don't look a like a man who has spent a hell of a lot of time paying attention to rules.”
He rewarded me with a laugh, that deep laugh I'd heard when he was with Jim, and it stirred something low in my belly. Then he inhaled again, but this time, the drag provoked a coughing fit. “Tastes like shit anyway,” he said, grinding the butt out in a saucer.
I looked around, searching for a reason to keep me in the room. I pointed to the binoculars by the window. “You're a bird-watcher?”
“Amateur.” He closed his eyes, rested his head against the back of the chair. Beneath the yellow cast, his skin was ashen. The butt smoldered in the saucer.
I resisted the urge to cross over and put it out. “Can I get you anything? A glass of ice for the Coke?”
He flipped the tab top, then took a straw out of one of the empty glasses and poked it into the can. “This'll do fine.”
The dog looked up at him, tail thumped against the floor.
“Rocker, right?” I said, nodding at the Lab.
“Right.”
“How'd he get that name?”
“My ex,” he said. “She said I was off my rocker to get him. Said I wasn't responsible enough to take care of a family let alone a dog.”
I kept quiet. How could you respond to that?
“So where are you from?” he asked. “Somewhere in the South, right? Maybe Virginia. Or Maryland?”
“Richmond, Virginia,” I said.
“What brings you up here?” He didn't look at me but continued to gaze out into the yard.
“Taking a year off,” I said.
“Divorce.” It wasn't a question.
“No.” For one instant, I was taken by an impulse to tell him everything—my tumor, the operation and treatments, my recovery— but in the end, I simply said, “Lost my job.” I waited for him to ask what I did, but instead, he picked up the TV remote and punched up the volume from Mute.
“Close the door on the way out, would you?” he said, the conversation clearly over.
Any other man acted that way, I'd be on the highway before he could draw a breath, but Luke wasn't any other man, and not just because he was sick. I didn't even know him, but I already understood that he was a man I'd bend the rules for without even knowing why.
I returned to the living room and, within five minutes, had polished off the bowl of jelly beans while I replayed every word of our conversation. When I pictured him, thin and ill, the image totally erased that of the strong, vital man in the photos hanging in the hall. I considered his ex-wife's remark that he was irresponsible and wondered again what the story was behind their divorce. Whose idea had it been? Had he been unfaithful? Had she? Exactly what had Nona meant when she said Marcia was not kind? I recalled the words Paige had flung out in anger. You're just as stupid as Mom always said you were.
The Lavender Hour Page 7
