Deep Down True

by Juliette Fay

  Alder stared at her aunt and allowed her face to be wiped like a baby’s after a first attempt at self-feeding. The tears slowed, and her mouth softened, one side curling almost imperceptibly at the corner. “I’m sick of sitting in this car,” she said.

  Dana reached for the door handle. “We should keep the doors open.” She grinned over at Alder. “Your mother would say we need to let the bad energy out.”

  “My mother is the mayor of Crazytown,” Alder muttered.

  “Maybe,” said Dana. “But it couldn’t hurt.”

  Leaving the car doors ajar like the wings of an enormous metal dragonfly, they walked over to the stream and followed it a little ways to a low dam. Amber-colored water poured over the algae-slicked cement, rushing to the bottom and frothing into foam before it sped downstream.

  Alder took a deep breath and let it whoosh noisily out of her mouth. She leaned against Dana, who put an arm around her waist. They stood there watching the water plunge to the rocks below and continue on its way.

  Dana gently put a finger to Alder’s temple. “Reset,” she said.

  Alder pressed her own finger against Dana’s head. “Reset to you, too.”

  CHAPTER 28

  WHEN THEY GOT HOME, DANA BEGAN ASSEMbling the ingredients for turkey potpie. She planned to make two—one for Mary Ellen McPherson and one to bring to Jack’s apartment.

  “Let’s have dinner at my place on Saturday,” he’d said over breakfast earlier in the week.

  She’d found it annoying at first. Might as well say, “Let’s eat quick and have sex,” she’d grumbled inwardly.

  But then he’d smiled so earnestly at her and said, “It’ll be great to just sit and talk without any distractions or rushing or anything.” And she’d softened and happily agreed.

  Jet called. She’d changed her mind and wanted to go on the hike with the Wilderness Club after all. Alder smirked—“She’s gonna hate it!”—and went to stay over at Jet’s house to make sure she got up on time and didn’t leave the house wearing flip-flops.

  When the meal was ready and the two steaming potpies sat in cardboard boxes in the trunk of the minivan, Dana headed toward the McPhersons’ house. She regretted not checking the obituaries to see if Dermott McPherson might have succumbed to his illness by now. Once she had delivered a meal to an elderly woman whose sister was sick with emphysema, only to find that the sister had died the day before. Unmarried and without children, they’d quietly lived together for over eighty years in the house where they’d been born.

  When Dana had arrived with her baked halibut, the woman had opened the door, revealing behind her a house teeming with relatives. Dana had asked brightly, “How’s your sister feeling?” The woman had taken a quick look back into the crowded living room, stepped out onto her sloping front porch, and murmured, “She’s free.” Then she’d put a gnarled old hand up to cover her mouth and cried without a sound. It was one of the most desperate moments Dana had ever witnessed. And she’d been unprepared with any words or gestures, and so she’d said nothing more than, “I’m so sorry . . . I’m really sorry . . .” After a minute the old woman had collected herself, taken the foil pan of fish, and gone back into the house.

  Now as Dana turned onto the narrow street where the McPhersons lived, she tried to come up with something to say to Mary Ellen if her husband had in fact passed on, but it all sounded trite and hackneyed. Sorry for your loss . . . You’re in my prayers . . . He’s out of pain now . . . Dana snorted in frustration.

  By the time she was standing on the front stoop with the boxed turkey potpie and the bag of side dishes hanging from her arm, she’d almost convinced herself that Dermott McPherson had actually died. So it was doubly surprising when a man answered the door.

  “You must be the Good Witch of Cotters Rock,” he said warmly, though his face seemed cold and bloodless, as if his chin and brow and cheekbones were pressing too hard against his skin. He was probably no older than forty. Dana opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He held the screen door for her, chuckling. “It’s okay. Mellie says no one gets my jokes.”

  “Mellie?” Dana wondered for a moment if she’d come to the wrong house.

  “My wife, Mary Ellen.” He took the box from her and set it on a small table by the door. “She said she’d met you.”

  “Oh! Yes, of course.”

  “I’m Dermott.” He held out his hand to shake. “It’s cold,” he warned her, “but it still works.” And true to his word, the hand was icy. Dermott compensated for this by gripping hard and giving her hand a pump that sent tremors up her arm. He glanced at the potpie as if to size up an adversary. Then he gave a resigned sigh. “Do you mind carrying that for me?” His sweatpants dangled precariously around his hips, and he hitched them up to his waist before he turned. “I’m a little wobbly these days.”

  Dana followed him through the cramped living room to the kitchen. “How’re you feeling?” Immediately she pinched her lips together. Her mother had hated that question in her last days as she lay trapped in her bed, adrift like a tiny iceberg on an endless sea. Dana knew better and accepted his clipped response—“Upright and breathing”—as an appropriate rebuke.

  Dermott turned to see if he’d insulted her, and she met his gaze with a knowing nod. He gave his own head a brief, penitent shake. “What can I get you?” he asked. “Tea? Juice? Shot of tequila?”

  She laughed, knowing he needed her to, and accepted his implicit apology. “Well, that tequila sounds good, but I’ll be asleep by eight if I start now, won’t I?” She unpacked the bag of food and laid it out on the counter. “But you go right ahead without me, if you want.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “Like I don’t have enough toxic waste swimming around in my veins.” He lit the burner under the teakettle and sank onto one of the scratched wooden chairs. He ran his finger slowly over a line of green Magic Marker on the blond wood of the table.

  “Where is everyone?” asked Dana, turning to lean against the counter. “Usually this place is pretty busy.”

  “She took the kids over to a friend’s for a couple of hours.” He slid an elbow onto the table and propped his head against his palm. “Wanted me to rest.”

  “And here I am, keeping you from it.” Dana hastily gathered up the plastic bag.

  “No, stop,” he said. “I didn’t mean for you . . . I only . . . Would you please just sit?”

  Dana stopped shoving the plastic bag into her purse. The teakettle whistled. She looked at him, but he didn’t get up. She raised her eyebrows in question. He smiled back at her, relieved. “There’s lemon wedges in the fridge. Just put one in hot water for me, please.” He added quickly, “There’s real tea in that cabinet by the stove, if you like.”

  She was wearing her new blouse, the one Nora had given her, and didn’t want to chance spilling tea on it. When she’d assembled two mugs with hot water and lemon wedges and sat down, she asked, “Now, why are we drinking this?”

  He laughed. “Some Eastern-medicine crap about cleansing the liver. Mellie spends half the night on the Internet looking for miracle cures.”

  Of course she does, thought Dana. His face changed, went darker, and she could see him regret making a joke at his wife’s expense. He glanced up at Dana, let his eyes linger uncomfortably on hers. She felt as if she were being visually vetted for the Secret Service. Then he looked down into the steaming water of his teacup and poked at the floating lemon wedge with the tip of his finger. “I miss her already,” he murmured. Dana knew he didn’t mean today. “It’s like I’m already gone,” he went on, “facing a lifetime of missing them.”

  Dana felt her eyes sting—his words were so utterly hopeless it was all she could do not to weep. He looked up at her, and she wanted to apologize, to say, You must be so sick of sad faces. But her throat closed up, pulled tight like the cords around the mouth of a string bag.

  “Why do you do this?” Dermott asked her, apparently unconcerned by the sorrow she was trying so des
perately to hide. “I mean, I have to be here, and so does Mellie, and I suppose my friends and family members feel some obligation. But you’re a stranger. Are you really so nice that you’d keep showing up to a family you don’t even know, who’s this deep in the weeds?”

  Still not trusting herself to speak, Dana shrugged and attempted a weak smile.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, as if he had just noticed her state. “For some bizarre reason, I find myself accosting strangers with—”

  Dana shook her head at him. “My mother,” she said, speaking softly, testing her voice as if she were stepping out onto an icy pond. “My mother had lung cancer. She was old, and most of her friends had passed on or retired somewhere. No one came. No one helped. It was exhausting. My sister was there sometimes, but she works, so she couldn’t come every day. Mostly weekends.” The stinging behind Dana’s eyes intensified. “I miss my mother,” she said, “but I never thought about her missing me. I guess I assumed that wherever she is, she’s just . . . happy.”

  Dermott gave a bitter little smile. “That’s what the brochure says.” He ran his finger along the Magic Marker streak again and said, “But how could I be happy without them? I mean, how could that be me?”

  When Dana saw his eyes go glassy with tears, she reached across the table and took his hand very lightly in her own, and he allowed this. They sat for maybe a minute or so, but it seemed like the longest, quietest moment of her life.

  “Jeez,” Dermott said finally, reclaiming his hand and giving his eyes a quick swipe, “You’d think I wouldn’t have a drop left after all the puking I’ve been doing.”

  “Pretty bad, huh?”

  “Well, it’s experimental. I’ve run through all the normal stuff, so now I think they’re secretly trying out household cleaning products. Pretty sure this last batch is either Tilex or Drano.”

  She smiled at the dark humor. “Maybe they think you’re made of enameled porcelain.”

  “And this is just a really bad case of soap scum.” He grinned.

  Almost recovered now from their shared sorrow, they chatted for a few minutes longer. When the hot lemon water was gone, Dana took the mugs to the sink.

  “Hey,” he said, standing to walk her to the door. “Um, I know this is kind of a huge favor, and possibly against the rules or something . . . but could you keep bringing meals for a little while . . . after? Maybe just for a couple of weeks? You’re like the Queen of Yum around here, and I think they’re probably going to need it.”

  “Of course,” said Dana as they reached the front door.

  “Also . . .” He glanced away, embarrassed, then forced himself to continue. “Could you tell Mellie what I said . . . about missing them? I just think she’ll want to know that she’s not the only one, you know . . . feeling the loss.”

  “Absolutely,” she murmured.

  He nodded his thanks, and opened the door. “Well, off you go, Good Witch. You must have a hot date or something.” He laughed at her startled reaction and added, “Hey, with a blouse like that, I know you’re not running out for groceries.”

  As she drove over to Jack’s, Dana tried not to think about Dermott McPherson missing his young wife from the grave. But no matter what she turned her attention to—the upcoming Veterans Day school holiday, the new bra that poked against her ribs just a little, her first husbandless Thanksgiving in fifteen years—her thoughts veered back to Dermott and the requests he’d made on his wife’s behalf. Food and the assurance that, though dead, he would be just as miserable as the living.

  Jack lived at Velvet Mill, an old textile factory in Manchester that had been converted to apartments in the early 1990s. It was considered a very hip place to live when it first opened its doors, he’d told her, and he’d been one of the first to sign a rental agreement, securing a “primo spot” on the top floor. He met her at the apartment door, curled her into an enormous, smothering hug, and murmured, “How come you’re late?”

  She didn’t really know why she chose to lie, saying a road was closed and she’d had to find a different route. All she knew was she didn’t want to talk about it.

  In fact, after putting the turkey potpie into the oven to warm and seeing his contributions to the meal—a bag of frozen corn, a bowl of Ruffles potato chips, and an elongated loaf of white bread with the words “French Bag-ette!” written on the paper wrapper—it was she who set the evening’s activity in motion. She turned away from the sight of embedded grease around the stove burners and pressed herself against his chest, which was as solid and toasty as a sun-warmed stone wall.

  She leaned up on her toes, because even wearing boots with heels she was not nearly tall enough to square her face to his. But when he curved down to her and she felt his full lips on hers, she could finally settle the vision of Dermott’s bloodless face and cold hands into a distant corner of her awareness. Her lips parted, and so did Jack’s, the tip of his tongue slipping in just as far as the edge of her teeth, then retreating, then penetrating a little deeper until she wanted to climb him like a tree and cling to the safety of his branches. He was a good kisser, the best she’d ever kissed, and that’s all she wanted to think about just now.

  CHAPTER 29

  ON SUNDAY EVENING WHEN KENNETH BROUGHT the kids home, he came into the house with them instead of saying his good-byes in the driveway. He stood just inside the mudroom door, watching them drop their overnight bags and jackets onto the floor as if he were studying the migratory patterns of a nomadic tribe.

  Morgan’s cell phone beeped; she tugged it out of her jacket pocket and squinted at the screen. “Kimmi’s sleeping over tomorrow night,” she announced.

  “But it’s a—”

  “No it’s not, Mom,” Morgan corrected. “We don’t have school on Tuesday. It’s Soldier Day, or whatever.”

  “Duh, Morgan, it’s Veterinarians Day,” said Grady. “They get it off so they don’t have to deal with pelican guts and goat poop and junk like that.”

  “Ew.” Morgan registered her disgust without looking up from texting Kimmi.

  “Actually, it’s Veterans Day,” said Kenneth, trying to stifle a laugh. “It’s when we remember all the people who fought for our country.”

  “Remember?” said Grady. “I didn’t even know any to begin with.” He grabbed Kenneth’s hands. “Mom, look. I can still do that spinny thing.”

  As he walked his feet up Kenneth’s legs and pushed off to flip over, Kenneth let out a grunt of exertion. “You’re getting too big for this, buddy.”

  “You just need to work out more,” said Grady. “Hey! Maybe I can stay over tomorrow night and we can go to the gym again!”

  “I can’t,” he told Grady. “Even though it’s Veterans Day, I still have to go in to the office.”

  “I could just hang around with Tina until you get home.” He took Kenneth’s hands again to do another climb and flip.

  “Tina has to work, too,” said Kenneth, disengaging his hands and patting Grady on the shoulder. “But, hey, I’ll see you in two weeks, and we’ll definitely go to the gym, I promise.”

  Grady stopped trying to grab at Kenneth’s hands. “Two weeks?” he said, staring up at his father, his voice muted by surprise. “Two weeks?”

  “Grady, you know it’s every other weekend,” said Kenneth defensively. “That means there are two weeks in between.”

  The boy looked to his mother for a denial of this wholly unbelievable calculation.

  “More like twelve days,” she said.

  “Oh.” Grady stared down at his overnight bag for a moment. “Well, bye,” he muttered, then turned toward the kitchen, dragging his sock-clad feet across the floor tiles.

  “Bye, Dad,” said Morgan. She gave him an awkward hug and followed Grady out. Kenneth watched them go.

  “Everything okay?” asked Dana, suspicious now that the kids were gone and he was still standing there.

  “Absolutely.” He zipped his jacket up another inch and yanked the waist down over his hips. Da
na waited, annoyed by his fidgeting and his failure to leave. “I might stop in on Wednesday while you’re working late,” he said. “Depends on a couple of account reps. I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Okay.” His hand gripped the door handle for a moment, and then he left.

  Dana padded through the house later that night, turning off lights and slipping the sticky ice-cream bowls into the dishwasher. Suddenly there was a buzzing sound. Searching around, she saw Morgan’s cell phone on the counter and picked it up. There was a text from Kimmi: OK BUT ITS FUNNER IF ITS MORE KIDS.

  What’s funner? Dana wasn’t a big texter. She could reply to Morgan’s occasional messages to BRING SNEAKERS FORGOT GYM or CAN U GET CELLO AFTER SCHOOL. But it took her a minute to figure out how to see the entire text thread. She was also slowed by a momentary qualm about snooping at a private conversation. But what exactly was so much “funner” with more kids?

  WANNA SLEEP OVR MONDAY NITE? Kimmi had begun six hours earlier.

  WHOS HOUS, Morgan replied.

  MINE.

  HOW BOUT MINE I HAV TRIPL CHOC BROWNIE MIX, Morgan offered.

  YUM.

  The texting veered off toward a debate over triple-chocolate brownies versus maple-frosted sugar cookies, randomly interspersed with updates on each one’s activity of the moment (from UGH HATE STUPD ENGLSH to SRRY BACK NOW NAILS DRY to IDIOT BROTHR TOOK PHN).

  Then Kimmi suggested, WE CUD SNEAK OVR TO DEVYNNES.

  YEAH FUN, replied Morgan. But this was quickly followed with MY MOM WANTS ME HOME CUZ ITS R TURN TO HOST.

  Kimmi asked, U LIKE DEVYNNE?

  YAH DEF, responded Morgan. VRY COOL.

  CAN DEVYNNE SLEEP OVR TOO?