Never Too Late

by Jo Barney

  “Mom, this is Sergeant Durrell. He wants to talk with you. About Dad.”

  I open the door wider. “I don’t understand.”

  “I insisted that I be here when he came to talk to you. It’s pretty ridiculous.” Brian lets the policeman step through the doorway. “Let’s just get it over with.” I lead them to the living room sofa. I sit down in my lounger. If I’m reading Brian’s tone right, I shouldn’t offer this man a cup of coffee.

  Brian takes charge, disgust and anger tingeing his words. “Dad died unexpectedly without any known physical reason. This being the case, when they took him to the hospital’s morgue, the law required an autopsy be performed to determine the cause of death. The coroner’s office called to tell you that this would occur before they released him for cremation, and I answered the phone and said I’d let you know.” Brian pauses, looks at me, and I give him a you’re-in-charge shrug. “This process held up the service a few days. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to stress you any more than you already were. Besides, I was certain they’d discover a heart problem, like we’d guessed, and that would be it.”

  He runs his hand through his hair, his father’s gesture, a similarity that I hadn’t noticed in the past. “It nearly was. Dad’s heart showed indications of a massive heart attack, as the death certificate stated. But they also took some tissue and blood samples. The results came back the day of the funeral.” He glances at the police officer, who is opening a pad he’s been holding.

  Tissue? Blood? Why? I’m suddenly listening.

  “We did a couple of tests.” The officer is reading his notes. “Your husband’s remains showed traces of Valium, along with some barbiturates, Mrs. Finlay. Combined with the 1.5 alcohol level the lab found in his blood, a drug overdose might be involved in his death.” He takes a pen from his shirt pocket, clicks it. “What do you know about his drug usage?”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Drugs? Art had a few prescriptions, an over-enthusiasm for supplements, in my opinion, aspirin, vitamin E, like everyone else. Drugs? “His doctor had him on Lipitor and something else.” I nearly stumble as I push myself upright and step around the lounger’s footstool. “The bottles and tubes are in the wastebasket, if you want to see them.” I can’t make sense of what I’ve just heard. Art. Valium? Barbiturates? Only movie stars die of stuff like that.

  I bring in the basket of vials and drop it in front of the sergeant. “I was about to throw these out.” I feel my face heating up. “My husband’s dead. His heart gave out. No matter what else you have found, he’s still dead of a bad heart, isn’t he?”

  “I’m sure we’ll figure it out, Mrs. Finlay.” A heavy man, he sighs a little as he strains to stand. “An insurance company has let us know they are interested in our findings.” He tucks his pad back into his jacket pocket and picks up the rattling basket. He looks back at us without offering his hand. “Thanks. We’ll talk again.”

  Once the door closes, I turn to Brian, so angry my lips are paralyzed. “He was at the service, wasn’t he, that man?” I force the words out. “He wanted to stop us from putting Art in the ground––for more tests? On a dead man’s ashes? Or, my God, had that policeman just delivered the ashes after they were tested in a police lab?” The idea is so sickening I feel as if I’m vomiting words. “Why didn’t you tell me? Do you believe I couldn’t handle the idea that your father may have killed himself, that the death certificate might be changed to read suicide?”

  “Mom—”

  “No, don’t. Art was a contrary, selfish man. Suicide would be a terrific punishment for a family and a life he hated. We’d be forever guilty of a wrongdoing only he understood.” Of their own accord, my fists thrash out toward my son’s chest; his hands open, catch mine. “I could kill him for that!” Then I hear what I’ve just said and my voice crumbles into a gag of a gasp. A ha of my own, I think, tightening my shoulders, pulling my hands back to myself. “Oh, Brian. I wonder what hell your father will take us to next.”

  Chapter Five

  Art’s clothes, dumped out of the bags, fill the hallway. I perch on a footstool, my knees almost to my shoulders, and I reach into the pile in front of me. My fingers sneak into pockets, feeling for whatever is lurking in their corners. I’m searching for answers to a mystery trailing in the wake of a dead man’s body, still making waves weeks later. The policeman has not called, Brian only shakes his head at my questions, at my quest for the truth, and I know I’ll not rest until I know what Art was up to.

  When I find something, not a stick of gum but something that might lead me in some direction—a matchbook cover, suspicious because Art didn’t smoke, a business card, a wad of pink Kleenex, a dollar bill with a telephone number scribbled on it—I place the clue in a large manila envelope retrieved from Art’s desk. Not the budget envelope, which was the first thing I tossed when I cleaned his den, but a new one on which I have written WHY? with a Sharpie pen.

  By the time I’ve gone through all the pockets, have emptied the drawers in his desk, and have flipped through the pages of the books on his bookcase, I know what I have to do next.

  Brian thinks I’m nuts. Not that he says anything. Kathleen, however, because they have talked, informs me that she believes my search for answers is therapeutic, only a little nuts. If I need help, call, and she assures me she’ll come by and help sort it all out. But my daughter-in-law, who is convinced she knows more than everyone else, didn’t know Art. I, his own wife, apparently didn’t know him either. The not-knowing fuels the obsession which has taken me over. I have to find out who and what killed him.

  Because, my hands in his pockets, my fingers digging into his corners, I’m beginning to suspect the culprit might be me. My unlove of him. I didn’t hand him the barbiturates, of course, but my coldness might have driven him to them. Or to the Valium. Depressed for most of the years I lived with him, my husband never admitted to his dark side nor did he do anything to change his dour view of life. Despite his disposition, he maintained a steady course, working, coming home, managing our lives in his cold, efficient way for forty years. Why, then, a few months ago, had he begun leaving at night, coming home a few hours later with alcohol on his breath, going silent when I asked where he’d been and why? Could I be the cause of this change in Art, of his death? Maybe. I couldn’t remember the one moment that might have pushed him over the edge, but the accumulation of bitter years, and the thousands of angry, silent moments, might have been miserable enough to convince him that life wasn’t worth living.

  I can relate to that thought.

  I spread the pocket scraps over the top of Art’s desk and begin to sort through them. I put a couple of matchbook covers from bars or restaurants, a card with an unfamiliar name and business printed on it, the dollar bill, smoothed out, in plastic bag. I paperclip some Visa receipts and a few handwritten notes, numbers on them lined up behind dollar signs. The notes especially puzzle me, as does the pink Kleenex, each of which I stuff into another bag. Since I was taking the time to empty his pockets anyway, I save the coins I find and toss them into the glass that once held Art’s before-dinner bourbon. Then I wonder what next? Instead of eliminating a mystery, I seem to be feeding one.

  I should call his doctor. I’m placed on hold until a pleasant voice offers her sympathy for my loss and asks how I am doing. Then I’m transferred to Dr. Blakely and although we’ve never met, he sounds cooperative until I ask about Art’s prescriptions. “The police have called, Mrs. Finlay, and I told them what I could about the Lipitor and the atenolol. I don’t know of any other prescription drugs he might have been using. If he was, I didn’t prescribe them.”

  “He never spoke to you about being depressed?”

  “I have no note of that. I certainly did not offer medication for anything other than high blood pressure and cholesterol. The records from his former doctor indicate only Lipitor. Is there anything else?”

  “Do you even remember my husband, Dr. Blakely?”

  “I have ma
ny patients. His file says he was in several months ago. I have a vague memory of an older man who seemed impatient and perhaps tense. Our meeting lasted about fifteen minutes.”

  “How do you know? About the fifteen minutes?”

  “All of my appointments are scheduled for that amount of time.”

  “And no barbiturates, Valium?”

  “No. I note what I prescribe, Mrs. Finlay. No psychotropic drugs or sedatives.”

  “So how did he renew his prescriptions?”

  “Mr. Finlay wasn’t due for a checkup for three months. My patients fill prescriptions between checkups by phone with the pharmacist. And now, I need to get on to my next appointment.”

  I hang up. Dr. Blakely apparently does not like to be suspected of any part in a questionable death. “I feel the same way,” I say out loud as I pick up the matchbook covers. “I’ve got to get some air.” I sound a lot like my dead husband as he left the house to walk and maybe hummed “You Are My Sunshine.” Perhaps the cardboard scraps of matchbook covers will lead me to where Art went to get his air. I grab my red jacket and go to the car.

  The Metrobar hunkers in the midst of blocks of low-lying warehouses. The only thing metro about it is its neon sign flashing against the dusky evening air. When I walk toward the door I can see, through a gray cloud rising from the gaggle of smokers at the entrance, a man behind the bar, two or three people leaning over it. The smell of the place, cigarettes, beer, the peanut shells crunching under my shoes, makes me want to turn around, get back in the car, retreat from this weird mission.

  And I wish I’d dressed for the part. A female my age, about to hoist herself onto a bar stool, should have red lips and ginger hair and stretch jeans and a sequined black jacket. At least that’s what the only other old woman is wearing, her elbows on the counter, chuckling through smoker’s gurgles at the bartender. “You’re right, Sam. They shoot horses, don’t they?”

  How Jane Fonda has gotten into the conversation might be a mystery to anyone listening, anyone under sixty. They’ve been talking about getting old, the woman and the bartender, and she is a little drunk, in the sloppy way old women relive what they once knew of sex, youth, desire. “I’m not there yet,” she turns, sends a dismissing glance my way. “Still functioning, if you know what I mean. Not like some people.” She turns her back to me, and flashes what I now see are inch-long lashes at the bartender. After I test a sticky stool, yes, it’s stable, I pull myself onto it, and the ginger-haired woman glances over her shoulder and sizes me up. “I don’t believe I know you.”

  One set of eyelashes is askew, making the woman look cockeyed and a bit crazy.

  I adjust my buttocks and find myself becoming someone else. I wink at a man with a tattoo on his neck and a huge round thing in his earlobe, and I say, “I’ll have what she’s having,” a line I know I’ve heard somewhere. I rest my forearms on the bar so that my boobs overlap them and puff up, filling the V-neck of my T-shirt.

  “I’m Edith,” I say to the woman next to me. “Can I buy you a beer or something?”

  “Mildred.” Mildred seems in a quandary. Beer or bartenders? Beer wins out, and she turns on her stool and raises her glass. “Sure. I’m all for new friends.”

  I know I’m not much of a threat to Mildred, plain, gray, un-eye-lashed as I am, simply a source of refreshments. But maybe Mildred will be helpful. “Come here often?” I ask, and as soon as I say it, I remember the cartoon of the old guy asking the bargirl, “Do I come here often?”

  I’m not breathing right, nerves a spinning Rolodex of silly jokes. Unleashed. I could be out of my mind, for real. The beer in front of me may calm me down a little.

  Mildred shrugs. “Kind of like family, you know?’

  I look around.

  The tattooed man setting up glasses, the white-bearded geezer at the end of the bar looking at us over his inflamed cheeks, the three twenty-somethings, giggling into their pink drinks and watching the door are all expecting something or someone, just as I am.

  I sip my beer and set the glass down on its paper napkin. “Do you know Art?” I ask. I hope I sound only curious, not desperate.

  “Art?” Mildred shrugs. “Don’t recall him.” She grins. “Did you lose him?”

  “In a way, I guess. Somebody I used to know. I heard he hung out here sometimes.” I hear myself mimicking Mildred’s slur.

  Mildred’s eyelashes flap. “Know an Art, Billy?”

  The bartender stops wiping the glasses and looks at me. “Know a couple of them.”

  “Older guy, a little overweight, scar on his cheek, probably came in late at night, maybe once a week or so.” I remember his midnight breath. “Drank bourbon.”

  “Yeah, maybe. That Art. Scar. Haven’t seen him lately. You a friend?”

  “Kind of. Kind of his wife, you know?” I pull out a photo I’ve kept in my wallet for ten years for some unknown reason, certainly not so that I wouldn’t forget him.

  Billy squints, seems to accept what I’ve just admitted. “Yeah. Doesn’t drink too much, just enough to get home.”

  “What did he talk about?”

  “Like most old guys, just ‘I should have’s’ and ‘why didn’t I’s?’ Oh, yeah, for him it is a gas station he could have made a fortune with…you know how they talk.”

  “If only…”

  Billy keeps wiping the counter. “They all have if only’s.”

  “If only I hadn’t gotten pregnant…” I suggest.

  “Yeah, they all talk about stuff like that. Wife pregnant, investment gone south, a book that would have made a million only someone else wrote it first—you know, times you turn something down for good reasons, only it turns out the good reasons aren’t that good.”

  “So did Art talk about a lot of turned-down good chances?”

  “Not much. But that’s the song I hear on this side of the bar. Every night, just old guys regretting.”

  “Many nights? He came in here?”

  “Every once in a while, kind of late, like he’d been somewhere else before.”

  “Like?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “A woman?”

  “Just somewhere else, to close the night. He is a quiet guy, lots on his mind. He mostly just drinks, listens, leaves.”

  The nights he had to get some air. I was usually asleep when he crawled into bed. Sometimes in the mornings his pillow smelled of alcohol and smoke and one night, oranges. I look at the tables behind me. No ashtrays on the tables. No oranges.

  “Is he okay?” The bartender takes my glass. “Another?”

  I shake my head to both questions. “He had matches from this place in his pocket.”

  Billy points to a basket near the door. The matchbooks piled in it have overflowed onto the peanut shells on the floor. “I put it there to encourage people to take their cigarettes outside. We get lots of complaints from nonsmokers.”

  “Art’s dead,” I say as I push myself off the stool and stand up, crunching.

  Billy nods, keeps wiping the glasses in front of him.

  Beside me Mildred gives a little moan. “My husband, too. Five years ago. Dropped dead on a street corner…” Having found a kindred soul, she would have gone on, but I head toward the basket. Matchbooks and a messy path lead out through the door onto the sidewalk to somewhere else. Where is the car? I glance left and right, choose right for no good reason except I always choose right when I don’t know which way to go. Art used to grab my arm as the department store elevator door opened and guide me toward the exit. On my own, I’d often end up at a makeup counter or plowing through tables of sale underwear before I found my way out of Meier & Frank’s. Art always knew where he was going. I make a U-turn. See my car ahead. I should have gone left.

  As I pass the bar, Mildred appears in front of me, calls, “Oh, hi!” She moves to my side. “I want to talk to you. About having a husband die. Okay?”

  I am too startled to tell the woman to go away. Mildred bumps against me as she sways
. She reaches for my arm.

  “I tried to figure out what he was doing on that street corner in the first place. In the heart of Chinatown, kitty-corner from a Chinese social club. Herb didn’t even like Chinese food. Then I noticed the porn shop a half block away, Fantasy Land. And it all clicked. The Visa charges, the coming home late from work, the scummy books I later find hidden on the bookshelf behind the ones he hadn’t read—you know, history of this, biography of that. Discovered all that after he died. You’re looking for answers, too, aren’t you?” Mildred stops at the curb. “Be careful. You may not like what you find.”

  I want the woman to let go of my sleeve. I also wish I could straighten that un-glued set of eyelashes. “I’m not sure what you’re saying. My husband died in our bed. We had few secrets from each other.” I pull away from her hand. “I just need…”

  “Please don’t say closure. It doesn’t work that way.” Her grip tightens. “I went into Fantasy Land, you know, looked at videos, looked at foreign objects and wondered how they were used, tried to imagine Herb in this place, maybe fingering the same plastic cocks I picked up. And I could imagine it. And I still do. I can still see my husband getting his rocks off in a dark cubicle sticky with cum. I see him standing at that counter, maybe getting hard, wishing for someone.” Tears are leaving trails down Mildred’s rouged cheeks, and she lets go of my coat and takes a tissue from her pocket, wipes her nose, dabs at the corners of her eyes, dislodges the drifting strand of eyelashes and plucks it from her eyelid. Feels for the other set. “Someone not me. I see him every night until I fall asleep.”

  I can’t think of anything to say, so I surprise myself by hugging her with one arm. I smell beer and I step away before the hug is returned. “You’re tired,” I say. “It’s time to go home.”

  Mildred stuffs the tissue, now wrapped around both rows of eyelashes, back into her pocket, her eyes plain, empty. “Yeah. Thanks for listening.” I watch as the ginger-haired woman straightens her shoulders, walks unsteadily away from me down the cracked sidewalk.