Off Keck Road

by Mona Simpson

  She just wanted to keep what she had.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” he said.

  Bill had told her once that he’d never adjusted to sleeping downstairs. He missed his old bedroom. There were trees that made sounds out that window; the acoustics were better. So every night now, Shelley heaved him over her shoulder and carried him up to his old room. He always gave her a shawl to drape on her shoulder first, so they didn’t exactly touch.

  Mornings, he could get down himself, clutching the banister.

  The next morning was Thursday, his early day. He was out before she was up. But he’d left her a card with Dr. Klicka’s phone number on the breakfast table.

  “The only doctor I’d go to is one that could fix my foot,” she said out loud. “And even God probably can’t do that.”

  XXII

  The first Thursday morning when Bill Alberts didn’t show up at Bosses, Bea waited until eight o’clock. They’d never made a plan in case one of them didn’t come. They were both always there.

  She mostly knew already. She was just letting it find her, maybe trying to outrun it a little. After all, it might be nothing. A person could be ill or oversleep. The man was seventy. And it wasn’t like that Shelley to heave herself up and deliver a message.

  Heads snapped when Bea Maxwell swung into the office at this hour, with a large take-out cup of coffee from the expensive chain that had recently opened on Madison Street. Bea did not keep regular hours—not because she’d entered a partial retirement, although, at her age, that would not have been out of the question. But no, Bea Maxwell was not the retiring type. Tall, vigorous, a regular golfer in the round-robin tournaments at the club, she had taken care of her mother until she died, and she had no children. Never married. She was stylish, in a way that made some people in town more suspicious than impressed, and others merely hopeful for her. “Well, but she keeps herself up,” they said.

  No. Bea Maxwell had no children and only a formal and frosty connection to her sister’s children, who no longer even came for their annual pilgrimage from Minnesota in the station wagon, now that the grandmother was dead and buried (and her will, presumably, long ago executed, already in their stone Minnesota banks). Bea was already at the age when some Green Bay people speculated about her own will. The Minnesota children? Most figured it would all go to June Umberhum’s girl, who would be grown already, through college.

  Never married. It was fair to say that of Bea now. She was now someone who had never married, not someone who had just not married yet. Once, in her thirties, she and her mother had been terribly offended when a lady at the bromeliad society said it was a shame Bea hadn’t married, because she was so good with children. They had always assumed, of course, that she would. She still would.

  Then, after not one moment but an unremarked cluster of days and seasons, that was over. And now it was done. She had not.

  Bea would continue selling houses, running the board at Heritage Hill, knitting shawls and playing in tournaments at the club for some time. She would listen to classical music on National Public Radio and also, now, to jazz, mostly Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson. She would hire local boys to mow the lawn at her mother’s house, where she had grown up and still lived. She would write her letters, generally of the unanswered kind, to local newspapers and even the mayor’s office, to put in her two cents about what she thought was wrong.

  Probably, too, she would continue her twice-annual shopping trip to Chicago, as long as she could, although the motive for these expensive clothes had shifted slightly. If she had once cultivated a dramatic style to lure the attentions of eligible Green Bay men, she had by now become accustomed to compliments on her attire, to women looking to see what she was wearing this season. Women her age and older, that was.

  She had kept up a subscription to New York magazine for as long as she could remember, although she had never actually been to New York. But she sent away for things. Clothes sometimes arrived in long shipping cartons, certain foods; special yarn from Italy came in boxes with yellow stamps. Her last extravagance had been ice cream made with tea leaves and rose petals, delivered to her door packed in dry ice. She’d invited her neighbors—with the children—in for that.

  No. Bea Maxwell kept eccentric hours because she could. She’d made the million-dollar mark for the first time in 1971 and twice in the 1980s, when everywhere, even Green Bay, was feeling the boom economy. She was good at her job, and nobody in the office would dare deny it.

  Also, and this was unsaid, Bea had grown up here, on Mason Drive, she’d attended De Pere High. Her father was the revered Dr. Maxwell. Everyone had known her parents and the house they lived in.

  Now, she breezed into her office—“Morning, Edith. How’s the leider coming? And how’s Grace?”—a corner with a shivering bright Japanese maple out the long window.

  Other agents and secretaries, even the accountant, had certainly noticed that the two best offices were empty most of the time, but this observation provoked little more than sighs. No one would’ve thought of saying anything to Bill, or to Bea, for that matter.

  This morning, she took a letter from her purse, on frail onionskin paper, with colorful stamps. It was from Peggy, June’s daughter, who was traveling in India, taking photographs.

  She’d written Bea almost a month ago, to see what had happened to her grandmother’s house. She didn’t know if she could afford it, she wrote, but she wanted to buy it when it came up for sale. She said in Nepal, she had had a dream that she was living there in that house, as a grown-up, with a daughter of her own.

  Her grandmother’s house! Surely she would’ve heard about that by now, even in India. June would know, from Nance, if no one else. But there was, Bea supposed, always the chance that June and her sister-in-law weren’t talking. That night when Shelley had clomped into the Riverclub smelling like a truck driver, Bea had asked what June was wearing at the funeral. Shelley had just stared at her awhile, her features sharp—the stare of a bird—and then said June wasn’t even there.

  Her own brother. The idea caused a shiver to run through Bea—of horror and exhilaration. Even as out of touch as Bea was with her sister, she imagined they’d be standing there at each other’s funerals. Bea would be, anyway. She couldn’t not. Still, Bea hadn’t heard from her sister in over three years, discounting Christmas cards—mere Polaroids of the kids, without even such a thing as a human signature.

  It was not even nine o’clock yet, but Bea had done a little research. And she already had an idea. Across the road from June’s mother’s house was another little house. Shelley owned that now.

  Bea stood with an uptake of breath and walked by his office. The door was open, the desk with everything as it had been yesterday. He still had the copper vase he’d paid June to fill with flowers every week until she left town. It stood there in its own place, dry.

  “No Bill?” she asked Edith, who was sitting up straight, typing. Behind her, on the blackboard, it said: There are three sides to every controversy; yours, the other person’s, and the right side.

  “I don’t know where he is. It’s Thursday. He’s usually with you.”

  “Probably a late night at the club,” Bea said.

  But it wasn’t a late night. Bea had been there. He’d gotten up to do a short set himself, his head wagging, the tongue loosening out a little. Then they’d all headed home at ten-thirty, Bea in her own car, him up high in Shelley’s Jeep.

  Bea pushed through the front door. She’d drive out to Keck Road so she could answer Peggy’s letter properly. She’d send it today, then tonight write a longer one to June.

  In the early 1980s, when there was so much building going on all around, a subdivision opened the fields past the railroad tracks that crossed Keck Road. First one nursery bought out the other, then a developer targeted both parcels. Bill Alberts had been one of the partners. They had put up earth-toned two stories, each with its own tree and fenced-in yard. Bea had been put in charge of the fixtur
es and appliances. She’d hired Mr. Campbell’s protégé, a local boy named Buddy Janson, who’d been to the Twin Cities and come back. He picked out all the tile and paint colors. They did such a good job on that, Bill put Bea in charge of landscaping too. The city paved the roads. A school bus route was charted. Bill Alberts had made another fortune.

  A whole new kind of person lived in those houses now, couples mostly, with young children, who were not from here, but from towns farther out. To them, even there off 141, this was coming to the big city.

  And now the old houses on Keck Road were beginning to come down. Well, it was time. Forty, fifty years old, most of them were. As old as she was. After all, Keck, the son of a Milwaukee brewer, had opened the road and named it after himself, in nineteen ought six.

  One of Bea’s favorite mottoes was The only thing that works around an old house is the owner. She’d always lived by these words, renting apartments in new buildings and eventually buying the condo. Now that she’d inherited her parents’ brick Georgian, she knew her old saying to be true.

  Last year, Wal-Mart bought out what had been June’s mother’s land, as well as George and Nance’s, from the people who’d bought from them.

  Nance would have heard by now, even in remotest Florida, and would she ever be mad. Again, Bea congratulated herself on her restraint. Nance would not be beyond suing the broker. Nowadays, Bea had read, brokers were taking out insurance. Edith had a small placard on her reception desk. If we’d only held on to it—Famous Last Words.

  It would be a good thing, anyway, to take a look. Since the Wal-Mart deal, she’d received calls from owners on the other side of the road. They all wanted to sell. Of course, who would want to live across from a huge parking lot where there used to be a hundred-year-old oak? But at the same time, they didn’t want to sell their houses for what they were worth, either.

  They wanted to get the big mall money without hanging on and waiting. It was just like the owners who cashed out, selling their houses when the market was high and then complaining because they had nowhere to live.

  Bea didn’t know if the houses were even still there. Maybe they’d already broken ground. She took along a camera to snap some pictures for Peggy.

  She had a golf game at one o’clock. She could make it back home in time to shower and change.

  Highway 141 was built up now, and very different from the development on the West Side. Every kind of fast food castle was here, standing on small adjacent lots. Arby’s and Taco Bell surrounded the old Kroll’s. Friendly’s, Big Boy, IHOP.

  June used to like the strawberry pie at Big Boy, one of the first chains, an old one. That was June. Bea avoided all the drek, but June, like Bea’s own mother, had been able to enter the world as if it were a huge bazaar and just pick and choose.

  Bea was turning now onto Keck Road. But for the small sign, she wouldn’t have recognized the corner. The farmhouse on one side had changed into some kind of bank. The tavern, apparently, was long gone.

  It was May, the branches rich with bright green buds, so beautiful it made her ache, for no reason that she knew, except not being young.

  She was driving up the still-bumpy road, passing the bad house, now plain gray, probably six owners later, but the place had kept its junk, the hood of an old Chevrolet and other rusted car parts littering the front yard.

  And then there it was, like a prison yard. An endless lot marked off by a chain-link fence. The houses were mostly down. A little crowd of children had gathered to look, fingers in the tin diamonds of the fence. There was a fire. A fire truck inside the enclosure was stalled at a diagonal. Bea parked across the road. She supposed you could park here. There were still no sidewalks and nothing saying you shouldn’t.

  George’s house was completely down, only the outline of its foundation still visible, but his jerry-built cabana was half standing. There was water in the pool, a murky shade of brown-green. June’s mother’s house was gone and the huge tree was burning. Bea was transfixed. She’d never seen a tree on fire. The branches were sprouting large flames and it seemed the trunk was on fire, near the top. Dense horizontal branches were growing black and she could see silver cracks forming as if in slow motion. One limb fell with a huge noise; then a black cloud of cinders bounced off the ground. Four firemen stood behind a hose, aiming at the flames. They looked like Keystone Kops, slow, not quite real. Their voices held none of the bright clarity of fear.

  Someone was touching her on the left side, and Bea realized it was Shelley.

  “What happened?” Bea asked.

  “First, they were going to move the houses,” Shelley said. “But then they had to have the land cleared by the end of the month. So they’re just lettin the fire department use it for practice. They set the tree on fire. They’ll put it out and then do it over again. My mom went before and took out everything valuable. Doorknobs. Appliances. Whatnot.”

  She stood with her hands in her pockets. There seemed no use for her strength. “That beautiful pool,” she said. “I’m glad he isn’t here to see it.”

  The letter from Peggy was folded in Bea’s purse. I should have written earlier but I was just—what?—disorganized, I suppose.

  Peggy would be sorry about the house. That was mostly sentiment. But what was worse was the tree. Bea remembered it bare and enormous, laden with snow, when she’d first come down this road. It would have been unthinkable to her then that the tree wouldn’t be here forever. Soon people would come who’d never even known it had been here.

  Once, there must have been trees that old all around, where her own house now stood, on the cobbled streets of pretty brick shops, florists, and quaint cafés.

  “I have a letter from Peggy Umberhum, June’s daughter. She wanted to buy her grandmother’s house.”

  “Sheesh. Too late now, huh?”

  “I was wondering if you’d want to sell your house here.” Bea nodded toward the small blue house across the road. “They’re similar properties. Same era, same size.”

  “You mean my gramma’s house? Heck, I can’t sell that. My brother and them are there. I told them they want it, they can have it.” She stepped back. Shelley had the appearance of someone who had always been very tall and narrow and who simply wasn’t narrow anymore, even in the well-cut slacks Bill Alberts had no doubt selected.

  “Did you know I was here?” Bea asked.

  “Followed you out,” Shelley said. “So—Peggy Umberhum, huh? Jeez Louise.”

  “You probably knew each other from when you were little.”

  “Wese played together. Then for a long time, I didn’t see her.” She stood surveying the distant fields, where the roofs of the Vandermill Houses could be seen. “We was kids once.”

  After a while, she said, “So, you selling many houses out here?”

  “Some. Here, it’s mostly development. And I get the odd duplex here and condominium there.”

  “You got land for sale, too?”

  “Oh, sure. Some people would rather build.”

  “I wanna buy some land up north. Anywheres with well water. I don’t like the taste of Green Bay water. And it’s getting too crowded for me around here.”

  “Well, that’s not going to help,” Bea said, nodding to the site in front of them. She felt the heat wafting over her arms. Before too long, there’d be a girl younger than Shelley who would step up in a uniform and say, “Can I help you?”

  “My sister Kim says if I think Green Bay’s crowded, I should see Tokyo.”

  “Or New York.”

  “I never been there.”

  “No, I haven’t, either,” Bea said.

  They started walking. “See if my folks are there. I can use their stuff to make us coffee.” Her parents weren’t home, but their side door was open. The cement porch was surrounded by thistles, Queen Anne’s lace, and long grass. Their steps set insects jumping.

  Shelley took out a brand-new coffeepot from a box, washed it out under the tap, and began to brew coffee.
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  When it was finished, they took their mugs out into the backyard. The view there was probably the same as it had always been. They could see the chimneys of the slaughterhouse, and the air was pungent, not necessarily bad, a hospital smell, sugary and somehow warm.

  Shelley’s coffee was good, as good as the new expensive place on Madison where everyone paid $2.50 for a cappuccino.

  There was a careful, tended garden, marked off with pine stakes and white string, the vegetables in rows: carrots, parsley, peas, different lettuces.

  “Did your mother always keep a garden?”

  “Oh, sure,” Shelley said. “He liked the taste of her stuff, too. I started coming to get fresh peas. I even had her planting the herbs he liked.”

  “I know you’re a good cook,” Bea said. “Not just from what Bill says, but once he brought a scrumptious rhubarb pie you made into the office.”

  “Oh, that,” she said, looking down. “I was just trying to make it taste the way we ate rhubarb out here.”

  Why did she look embarrassed?

  “How was that?”

  “Oh, just we cut it with a knife and our ma would give us a little pile of sugar on a plate. We’d dab it in and eat the stalk. The way kids do. Sugar’d get all pink. Yah, they didn’t cook anything fancy. We’d just stand there and eat peas off the vine.”

  On a clothesline tied between two pines hung clean T-shirts, white and navy blue, white socks, underwear, flannel button-downs, and big, long jeans.

  “I bet your parents married for love,” Bea said. That was what she’d thought looking at the neat display of laundry, and it just came out.

  “Round here, back then, there wasn’t much else to get married for. None of thems had any money.”

  There was a new redwood structure in the backyard, an octagonal enclosed porch, walled with window screens.