“Bring Christopher and James with you,” Charlene said to Davey. She remembered how when her brother was in the New Milford hospital with appendicitis, she was not allowed to visit him because she was only nine, not old enough, and she was certain she would never see him alive again. “And ask your mother to call the principal’s office and tell them the boys won’t be in school today.” She heard Davey cough on the other end of the telephone line.
“Okay,” he said.
“How’s the road?” Charlene asked. At first Davey hesitated. It seemed like a trick question. It fitted snugly in with a barrage of other recent questions, an entire lineup of hows and whats. What’s the prognosis? How did the tests turn out? What did the specialist say? How is she? How is she? How is she?
“The roads are pretty clear,” he said flatly, and he meant it. The man from the bank had already called once that morning. Bankers had to catch lumberjacks early.
“Be careful just the same,” Charlene advised—not that she still believed that it made any difference. Careful had nothing to do with it. You could make sure your child always had lunch money, always looked both ways crossing the street, did homework on time, never talked to strangers, never petted strange dogs, always took enough vitamins, and yet it still didn’t matter one whit.
On that fourth day, the day before God had made the whales, and the birds of the air, on that day, Charlene Craft stood staring down at her sleeping daughter.
“There is no God,” Charlene whispered, and then feared that Tanya might have heard her, down there in the coils of her sleep. And she felt somehow guilty, felt somehow that she had lied to Tanya. Just the day before, when Tanya had asked her about heaven, Charlene had been more than eager to promote the real estate of such a place. “It’s wonderful,” she had said. “Bonkers is there.” Bonkers had been Tanya’s beloved pet dog, her first puppy. “And flowers never die. They’re always in bloom. And there’s all kinds of colorful lights and beautiful music.” And she had gone on to describe heaven as though it were some marvelous pinball machine into which one need never drop a quarter. Now Charlene felt different. She felt as if that caul, the one that Davey had been so lucky to be born with, had been lifted from her eyes, and now she could see the truth looming before her. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see. What if Tanya were to ask her again? She’d lie, that’s what. She’d make heaven sound like Las Vegas. Jacuzzis for all the angels. Rolls-Royces for everyone. A Bonkers on every goddamn street corner.
***
It was still an hour until lunch when Davey appeared at the door with Christopher and James in tow. The boys wore big smiles on their own faces, happy to be free from school on a day that was actually sunny, a day they would not have to make up in June.
“Hey,” Christopher said happily to Charlene. She’d been braiding Tanya’s long hair into a single thick plait.
“Hey yourself,” Charlene answered.
James put a paper sack on Tanya’s bed. “Grandma sent you a cupcake,” he said. “And a piece of mincemeat pie. She said don’t let the nurse see.”
“Yuck,” said Tanya. “Mincemeat pie.”
“We tried to tell her you wouldn’t eat it,” said Christopher.
Davey had moved closer to the bed. Charlene noticed that he seemed to be shielding something in his coat. With a quick glance over his shoulder Davey unzipped his jacket. “Look what else we brought you,” he said to Tanya as Otis, the big yellow cat, bounded out onto the bed.
“Otis!” Tanya shrieked. It was the most energy Charlene had seen her muster in the past week. Maybe if she just took Tanya home, where she could be with Otis all the time and lie in her own bed, in her own room, surrounded by her own things, her own family…But it was at home where Tanya had grown so ill in the first place, wasn’t it? Charlene looked up at Davey’s drained face.
“A great idea,” Charlene said. At least somebody was still thinking of Tanya. The only thinking Charlene had managed to do in the last few hours was to decide that any true, loving God wouldn’t do this to a child, to a family. Giving Tanya a cat to bury her face in was a whole lot more beneficial than taking heaven away from her, just in case she might need it.
As Charlene watched Otis curl up in the crook of Tanya’s arm, she thought about the commercials she had seen for years, attempts to raise money for tiny children in Ethiopia whose ribs ran beneath their skin like fragile rills. Children dying for a slice of bread, a bowl of rice. Mothers shooing the flies away from the dead bodies of infants. Why hadn’t she questioned God about those horrible things? Why did she wait for the truth to enter her own house and afflict at her own child before she could face it? Now she felt like a hypocrite for having waited so long.
“Otis has a cold nose,” said Tanya, and quietly stroked the fur of the big cat. Otis had begun to purr loudly, his throat vibrating with contentment at being back in Tanya’s arms.
“Shhh!” Davey warned the cat, holding a finger to his lips. “Do you want the nurse to hear you, Otis? Keep it down.” Tanya laughed, a genuine laugh, not one of her fake little laughs to please Charlene.
“Daddy, look!” Tanya whispered. “Otis has quit purring. He heard you.” Otis squinted his big yellow eyes, as if in agreement, and Tanya laughed again, the sweet, innocent laugh of childhood. Charlene wondered what Davey had told the boys on the ride down, if anything. It was difficult to say what kind of hysteria his mother may have been planting in their heads for the past four days. But now it wouldn’t be long until the newest test results, like uninvited relatives, would be in.
Christopher came back with three cans of Mello Yello from the machine in the visitors’ lounge. Charlene poured some for Tanya in her hospital glass and then a bit for herself.
“Yuck,” she said, borrowing from Tanya. “How can you kids stand this stuff?”
“You’re not supposed to taste it,” said James. “Just swallow it whole. It’s better that way.” Charlene looked at Davey and raised her eyebrows.
“I didn’t give birth to them,” he said. “You did.” It was meant as a joke, but suddenly they locked eyes, and it was no longer funny. Only the children laughed. And then Otis stretched out longer on the bed, a cat snore escaping through his nose. The children laughed again, and there was a warmth in the room that hadn’t been there before. Charlene would tell Davey this when she had the chance. “I want the boys here every damn day,” she would tell him. “I want that goddamn cat here every day too. This affects us all.”
“Do your Miles Standish,” James said to Christopher. “‘I ask you then, John Alden, to take my proposal to Miss Mullins.’” James said this with dramatic flourish, bowing courteously to the empty space before him.
“Make him stop, Mama,” Christopher pleaded.
“Stop it, James,” Charlene said, although he was quite entertaining. Poor Christopher. He was still so small for ten years old. Smaller now than James, who was only eight.
“And listen to this,” James added. “Elaine Monihan is playing Priscilla Mullins, and she’s a whole foot taller than Christopher!”
“Ma,” Christopher implored, and kicked at the leg of Tanya’s bed.
“Was Priscilla Mullins related to Dorrie and Booster Mullins?” Tanya asked.
“God, I wouldn’t doubt it,” said Charlene.
“Speaking of Priscillas,” said Davey. “Priscilla Monihan called Mom and talked her into signing the petition to close The Crossroads. I hear she’s getting quite a few names on the list.”
“Can’t she find more important things to do?” Charlene asked. She looked at Tanya’s little face. There were things so much more important.
“You can’t make his shoes orange,” Tanya squealed to James. She pointed an accusing crayon at James’s side of the coloring book they were working on.
“Yes I can,” said James. “He’s a rock star.” Tanya hooted. The kids were
being kids, the way they normally acted, and now Charlene wished she could do her part. She wished she had a stove there in Tanya’s room. She would make a big pot of spaghetti, the way the kids liked it, with green beans mixed up in it. She would scurry about setting plates, only half listening to the childish prattle. She was a homemaker, after all. It was what she did best, all she had ever wanted to do. Yet here she was, sitting awkwardly on the edge of her cot, watching her children drink Mello Yello and eat candy bars.
Davey had dozed off in front of the television, one arm hanging listlessly over the side of his chair. Charlene would let him sleep a few more minutes before she woke him. Then she would send him over to LaVerdiere’s Drugstore for some cat food, a plastic litter box, and some cat litter. The only one who could carry on as if nothing had changed was Otis. Charlene would see that he earned his table scraps. And she would have a little talk with the head nurse. There was no way in hell Otis was leaving the hospital until Tanya left it. Finally, for the first time in weeks, Charlene felt in control.
***
On Main Street, Dorrie found two empty parking spaces, plenty of room to parallel park the Bronco and its plow. She zoomed in, jammed on the brake, and came to a thunderous halt in front of the Green Stamp redemption center. The big yellow plow rocked gently.
“This close enough for you?” Dorrie asked Lola, whose thin arm was sore from the day’s bracing. Lola was there to cash in her books of stamps for a Deep Heat Whirlpool Hot Spa. “It heats the air to maintain constant bath temperature,” she’d told Raymond, who wasn’t sure he wanted a Deep Heat Whirlpool Hot Spa. “What in hell is it?” he’d asked his wife. “All you do is put the nozzle in your own bathtub, turn it on, and it beats up the water just like a real spa,” Lola assured him. “It even has little pressurized jets. They sell for almost eighty dollars at Service Merchandise, but I’m getting mine with Green Stamps.” But if Dorrie continued to chauffeur her, Lola would be putting the damn hose into her coffin, instead of her bathtub. If only one could get a driver’s license for ten or twenty books of Green Stamps.
“I’ll just be a minute,” Lola said, opening her door and then testing a foot on the pavement before she stepped out. She’d already fallen once that spring, on the icy sidewalk in front of Angelique’s Hair Factory, and Dorrie had laughed so hard that she’d accidentally tooted the Bronco’s horn. “I can’t help it,” Dorrie had explained. “There’s just something real funny about someone falling down.” Lola had no intention of giving her best friend further amusement.
“You run into Elvis in there, you be sure to come get me,” Dorrie said, and then winked. Lola slammed the door to the Bronco and inched across the sidewalk.
“Bullshit,” Lola thought. “I meet up with Elvis, and Dorrie Mullins won’t hear from me again until she gets a postcard from Graceland.” Lola wondered suddenly if Elvis had a driver’s license or if he, too, was always at the mercy of some power-loving chauffeur. And it was true that Dorrie was on a power trip when it came to chauffeuring Lola around. Half the time Lola came back from running some errand to discover Dorrie gone, and then she had to track her down all over Watertown. Lola always looked first at the food establishments. But surely Dorrie would wait for her today, what with the sidewalks a dangerous sheet of ice. Lola heard the pleasant sound of the bell above the door announcing her entrance, and so she set off down the aisle in search of a clerk.
Dorrie watched Lola disappear into the redemption center before she put the Bronco into first and eased back out onto Main Street. A Deep Heat Whirlpool Hot Spa! What would Lola Monihan conjure up next? Of course, Dorrie had not been able to fit comfortably into her own bathtub for several years. She was condemned instead to taking what was vulgarly called “a whore’s bath,” sponging herself down with a facecloth she dabbed into a sinkful of water. You could put twenty Lolas into a bathtub, however, thin and pitiful as Lola was. Dorrie slapped her blinker on and veered quickly into the parking lot of David’s House of Doughnuts, barely clipping the outdoor phone booth. The man inside dropped the receiver and covered his eyes as she whizzed past. A small group of Watertown schoolchildren saw the Bronco coming, the huge yellow lip of the plow in its usual sneer, and raced for cover.
“Move them little frog legs,” Dorrie muttered as the Bronco jerked to a halt in front of the big doughnut on David’s sign.
PRISSY A. TOWN: TO HELL WITH LIBERTÉ, EGALITÉ, & FRATERNITÉ
Carry proceeded into the hotel’s dining room, wearing a small pearl hatchet brooch… [She] then bawled across the dining room to Higgins, “I want you to bring me a glass of beer.”
“We have no beer,” he replied. “So please be quiet.” One of the men present suggested, “Have a cocktail,” which hardly helped matters.
“Yes,” cried Carry, “bring me a cocktail. I understand you have it here.” As guests erupted in an uproar, she resisted Higgins’s attempts to quiet her, shouting, “You are running a hell house and I mean to expose you.”…Unimpressed, Mr. Chapman (the proprietor) removed Mrs. Nation from her chair. To the applause of the remaining guests, he ejected her… A struggle ensued to jam Carry into an elevator and send her to her room. She manhandled the poor elevator boy, “all the time storming about the ‘hell den’ and using other strong language”… Mrs. Nation went straight to City Hall, where she called Bangor not a decent place to live. “Bangor is so rotten, I could not even get a lawyer.”
—Incident at The Bangor House, August 29, 1902, involving Carry A. Nation, as recalled in the Bangor Daily News, September 1989
It was right after the Mattagash school bus lurched past The Crossroads on its way to turn around at the St. Leonard line that Sally thought she heard something outside. She decided it must be Beena’s kids, happy to be free from school for the weekend and now celebrating with loud, wild play in Beena’s backyard just across the road. Or maybe it was the first crowd of snowmobilers, females out on a last crusade before the kids needed supper. Whoever it was, they were boisterous, their voices ringing together like frosty tin cans. Sally had just hung up from talking to Libby, who phoned with a bit of gossip about little Tanya Craft. The news had been passed around like a relay baton before Libby heard it, but it was said to have begun originally with none other than Selma Craft, Davey’s mother and a horse’s mouth if ever Sally saw one. Tanya was stricken with some horrible disease that rooted no place else but the soil of Connecticut, that Mecca to so many Mattagashers.
“They say she won’t live out the month,” Libby said, her voice breathy with excitement.
“See that?” Sally asked. It was her motherly I-told-you-so tone. “And here you been, pestering me to death to let you move to Connecticut.”
“Do you think it might be AIDS?” Libby asked. “I kept house for them only two weeks ago. I even kissed their cat.”
“What’s that racket?” Pike Gifford asked now. He and Ronny Plunkett were seated at the bar and in the middle of a best-of-three cribbage tournament. If Pike didn’t hurry up and peg his ass past the skunk point, four holes away, that’s just what he would be: skunked. Ronny had first count too, as luck would have it, and he needed only eight points to win.
“Snowmobilers, I think,” said Sally vaguely. She now had her arms up to the elbows in the perpetually soupy dishwater behind the bar, and her mind on Tanya Craft.
Ronny played a queen and the countdown began. “Ten,” he said. Pike eyed him suspiciously. All Pike Gifford could hope for was to peg enough to get past that embarrassing, invisible skunk line, four measly points away. He had kept small-numbered cards just for that purpose, two aces and two fives, hoping he could score with them. Getting a cribbage skunk at The Crossroads was a serious matter. At other, less discerning drinking establishments, a list of poker or pinball champions might be displayed, and the team winners of the most recent Charlemagne card tournament. Or if cribbage was the favored game, one might expect to see a short list thumbtacked to the wall na
ming those rare and lucky souls who’d managed to get a “twenty-nine” hand, the perfect score in cribbage. The Crossroads saw things differently. The Crossroads figured a man could be counted on to do his own bragging. But his worst defeat, well, that was a thing to flaunt in his face as he sat before a much-needed drink. A lined sheet of notebook paper was neatly taped to the front of Maurice’s General Electric microwave. November Skunks, it was titled, and it listed two names: Pike Gifford, (by Billy P.) and Pike, (by Billy). Below this a second title in Sally’s black marker print read: Double Skunks, and beneath that was a single, most doubly unfortunate name: Pike Gifford, by Billy Plunkett. Pike couldn’t wait for December to roll around, when the sheet would be torn down and a new one pasted in its place.
The Weight of Winter Page 28
