by M Spio
When I get to the top of the stairs, I say my good-bye to her, tell her I remember how she took care of my family, that it’s appreciated, then I walk in. Services will begin soon. Outside, dusk is leaning in, and I search my mind for all of the details Ma and I have discussed: grounds, flowers, thirty-two people to call. I search the halls of the church for the pastor and reach in my back pocket for my wallet.
At the church, I can’t stand to sit in the pews and wait with Ma; for two days I have been by her side. When a couple of Pa’s old friends stop to give their condolences, I head back to the front of the church to get some air.
Before I get to the door, I can see her at the bottom of the stairs; she’s a stranger, but so familiar too. For days, she’s been turning soft circles in my mind, without beginning or end, only up and down, the red sweater floating in the air, the clink of her spoon, the distance between us. She never did call.
I walk outside and wait for her to finish speaking to someone; her skin is the color of cocoa in the afternoon light. The sun is sliding beneath the hills in the east, the mosquitoes are looming, cars park in the distance, my stomach rumbles. I try so hard not to fall to the pavement.
“Excuse me.” I look into her eyes for a long time before speaking. I don’t want to say the wrong thing again; I don’t want to break.
“Hey… I mean hi.” I hold onto the railing.
“What are you doing here? Aren’t you going back to Dallas?” She smiles.
“Eton’s home for me now. Eton, Georgia, population 318, well, 319 now. Well, with my pa gone and me back, I guess it evens things out now, doesn’t it? What are you doing here?”
“I have family here in Eton. I actually spent most of my childhood summers here. I know these back roads well. Sometimes I drive in and go to church with my aunt on Sunday nights. I wasn’t expecting to see you here…”
“Really? You spent summers here? How is it possible that we never ran into each other?” In that moment, I remember Eric, how I so easily walked away. The shame pulls me down by the neck.
“Luck, I guess.”
“I am about to bury my pa.” I push a rock off the edge of the stairs and look up.
“I’m so sorry to hear that. I remember you telling me how sick he’s been. What will you do here now?” She fidgets, pulls her bag back onto her shoulder, shifts her weight to one hip.
“Well, it’s all still coming together, but I think I’m going to take over my father’s furniture-making business. Help my ma out; take it slow for a while.”
We stand there for a minute or so, looking at each other, watching people as they pass by, up the stairs and into the church.
“Good luck to you.” She lets her eyes linger for a few moments before grabbing the rail of the stairs and heading into the church.
“Would you like to get together sometime? I could use a friend right now. Do people actually say that? Let’s go fly a kite? Row down the river? Eat pecan pie? Ice cream—it doesn’t matter what we do. Can we be friends?”
“I don’t know…” She softens her tone and leans into me a little.
I take a couple steps closer to her. “You’ve got nothing to lose but a little more time. Plus, I’ve spilled my guts to you so you know what I’m about. What’s there to fear? Can we meet after services tonight?”
“How about first thing in the morning. I’m not driving back to Atlanta until tomorrow night.”
“Okay. What time? Where?”
“Let’s meet on these steps again at noon.”
“Okay.” I turn to walk up the stairs and look back at her one last time.
She smiles.
“Carmine, I will be thinking of you and your family.”
* * *
Pa’s service begins at nightfall, just the way he wanted it. I can hear the crickets outside the clapboard walls, humming and singing; they do what they do the same every night, their bodies tapping the windows, they want out or in, they don’t know which, they don’t know any better than we do. Eton moves slowly beyond the sounds of the church’s organ, and people complain and work in their lawns and push food around on plates. I don’t know what to do with how this feels. I don’t know if I’m supposed to run from it or let it climb on me.
When the pastor begins to speak, I cannot take my eyes off his mouth: his syllables leave his chest and come out in long sounds, stretching in front of him and echoing, and he tells all sixteen of us how dust turns to dust and endings are beginnings. On and on it seems to go. Ma sits next to me sniffling, looking off into the distance, somewhere beyond the pulpit.
I don’t plan to get up to speak, but when there’s a pause in the sermon and Ma looks over to me, I stand and raise my hand. I can’t let this end, let him leave so easily.
“I do have a few words,” I say, as though I am talking to myself, the words pushing at the backs of my legs until I stand on the pulpit in my shirt and tie.
The church is so quiet, and the few faces within it so empty, an old neighbor, a past parishioner, the man from the lumberyard where Pa always bought his wood, then Pa’s drinking buddy, Ralph. No one sits on the same pew, and they are scattered like squares of an old quilt, nothing alike but in the same place and the same time and for the same reason. Stanley takes a seat in the front row and looks at me.
I pause for a long time and try not to put my face in my hands, let the tears run down my face and squint. Is this who I’ve always been beneath it all? I squeeze the side of the podium and wait for Ma to look up; I am still someone’s son, that has always been true.
A week ago we sat in the living room and ate grapes and old meatloaf and cold mashed potatoes and orange jellied candies, and I remember looking up and seeing Pa leaning on his cane in the doorway of his room watching us. His face sagging and somber, a slight glow around him, I saw him for the first time since I’d arrived. The sight of him made me hold my breath for a few seconds, made me fall into the back of the sofa.
My hands shake as I stand at the pulpit and look at Stanley, try to pull together a few calm words. I am crying now and I can’t stop; a flood of memories slide past my eyes and then leave, it’s all coming so fast.
I look around and remember when Pa’d been removed from this very same church for being drunk one too many Sunday mornings and that he left without a word. I don’t think he ever believed in God after that, as though his faith was attached to some guarantee, the two of them parting ways, Pa giving up for good. I left shortly after that and never remember him being anything other than the angry man walking out the church doors or yelling late into the night or holing up in that shed in a cloud of sawdust.
But now I see him in that light, that warm and hazy light, a man, a body, both broken. I can barely remember the man I was in Dallas. How is it possible to be one thing, then another? What will I turn out to be after all?
“I want to say something good about my old man; I want to tell you stories; I want to say that life won’t be the same without him—but I can’t. I don’t even know how much I really loved him. But I forgive him for the trouble he made. I won’t spend another second hating him, and that’s got to be a little like love.”
I look out over the pews and stop crying for a moment; a kind of soft peace slides over me and my shoulders fall. I find Pastor Stanley’s eyes, then Ma’s. I can see a sliver of the moon outside one of the tall windows.
After the service, old friends come up to me. Tell me stories about Pa, how he used to dance the jig, how he used to wear his pants too short, how his hair was the color of cotton when he was little, how he once gave a man CPR and saved him from death.
The neighbor, Lucy, the one that lives on the corner, comes up to me last and takes my hand in hers. Her hair is the same color as the other Lucy, the one on TV, and she smiles, her pale, wrinkly skin coming close to me. Her perfume reminds me of the cosmetic counter at Dillard’s.
“I enjoyed your eulogy, son, I did. People don’t realize that a man is just a man and nothing more, and he
can’t always help that now, can he?” She goes on to tell me how she watched me grow up and how lost my parents were after I left home, how Pa used to mow her grass on Saturday mornings. I stare at her while she speaks and listen to each word as it comes out of her mouth, the pieces falling together into a picture.
* * *
An hour later, Ma and I drive home. The mortuary has come to collect Pa’s body for cremation. It all ended so neatly.
Eton is quiet and serene, almost no one on the narrow roads as we drive through town. The windows are down, and I breathe in the mountain air, cold in my chest; the space between my mother and me feels delicate now.
I park the old truck in the drive and walk around to help her out; she leans in to me, more brittle than the day before, and she sighs so deeply that my legs bend at the knees from her weight and I have to grab the side of the truck for support.
“Come on, Ma.” I put my arm around her shoulders. When I unlock the front door, the yellow light of the lamp greets us and we sit down on the sofa together. The house is so quiet, nothing but the buzz of the refrigerator coming from the kitchen, a few bugs hitting the glass of the windows. I want a drink, but let it go. I look at Ma’s face for a long time.
“Don’t worry, Ma, I’ll stay around. You won’t be alone.”
I see a tear roll down her pale face, but she doesn’t say anything. Her foot taps the floor and she grabs the TV remote.
“Get me a blanket out of the hall closet, would you?” She lays her head on the end of the couch. I get the blanket and cover her.
CHAPTER 15
I CAN’T SLEEP THAT night; think about Pa, Z, everyone I’ve ever known, see all of this space in front of me with no clear path. I wonder when it’ll be shown.
When I step out of my room to leave in the morning, Ma is on her corner of the sofa. When she looks up at me, a little more of her gone, her eyes look gray and absent.
“Did you eat, Ma?”
She takes a sip of coffee and holds her breath a minute before replying.
“I had a piece of toast with jam. Didn’t sleep a wink. It’s like my mind was searching this house for him, you know what I mean?” She crosses one leg over the other and smiles at me weakly, turns away.
“I know, Ma. It’s gonna take some time, maybe a lot of time, to get used to the idea.” I take her coffee cup from her hand and take it to the kitchen to refill it.
“I’m heading out for a while, okay?” I tell her as I hand her cup back to her. “But I’ll be back soon.”
She smiles and waves her hand at me as she lights up a cigarette.
* * *
I am walking up to the steps of the church when I see her there. The sun is high and bright, and I have to squint hard to see her completely, but there she is, sitting on the stairs, her legs folded beneath her, in a white strappy shirt with the same red sweater on her shoulders.
“Good morning,” I say, and I sit down beside her and look into her eyes for a long time. She smiles slightly, understands me, I think, and then looks away. The building is silent behind us, and we sit still for a long time. It’s the longest I’ve ever sat still, I think, in the presence of another human, and it is slightly uncomfortable.
“This is for you.” I hand her a long-stemmed sunflower.
She takes me in, one piece at a time, and says thank you.
She runs her hands up and down her jeans. I can hear the soft sound of the material, her long brown fingers kneading the muscles in her thighs; I smell honeysuckle nearby.
She stands up and looks down at me.
“So, what do you want to do today?” She is so tall, a steeple, a woman; my insides relax, fold, but my palms begin to sweat. I stand up and look her in the eyes.
“Let’s go to the park,” she says, pushing her bag over her shoulder. When she starts walking toward a white Honda, I follow.
“Get in. I’ll drive us.” She’s behind the wheel as I climb into the car beside her, see my shadow cast across the dash. I feel like I float above my body, the real me watching this new version of myself trying to figure out what he’s doing.
She puts the windows down and the car in drive, and I smell the honeysuckle again, the leather of my jacket, count the bumps of her knuckles on the steering wheel.
“I’m just curious… why did you decide to come out with me anyway? You left so abruptly the other night.”
She’s looking straight ahead at the road, and I can see her smile as she seems to count the cars on the road. She takes a deep breath before answering me.
“Carmine, the truth is, I really don’t know. I just… I just thought I’d take a chance on this.” She taps the wheel and smiles again and fidgets in her seat. I remember a girl in first grade that I loved, soft and sweet and amiable like this.
I tell her, “I don’t really understand anything right now, only that maybe that’s okay for once. I’m trying to figure out how I can start over, if it’s even possible, or if you have to keep what you have to make it something new. I am not making any sense, am I?”
“No, I get it, I do, I know what you mean.” She pulls into a parking space near a green slope of hill at the park and then looks at me. Her eyes seem afraid but wide-open.
We get out and she pulls a picnic basket out of the trunk of her car. The wicker is old and swollen, and inside she has tucked a few things: wine and a tray of cheeses and a wedge of French bread. At the bottom of the basket is a book of poetry by Rumi.
“I put a few things together for us,” she tells me as she walks toward the hill.
In the distance, we can hear children playing, their joy echoing through the fall air. There are trees all around us, and on a field to the left, a group of men play soccer.
We sit down on the green grass and fold our legs beneath us. She takes a few things from the basket and hands me a glass of wine, puts some crackers and cheese on a paper plate, rests on her back and elbows in the grass. The sky is a tender blue above us.
I pick up the book of poetry and flip through the pages. The wind blows between us, soft. I can feel our differences, our pasts circling around us.
“‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.’” I run my pale finger over the black font of the letters… pause on some of the words… out… wrongdoing… you and there. I don’t ever remember reading a poem in my life.
“Do you think there is such a space?” I ask her.
She pops a grape in her mouth and starts to talk.
“I’d like to think there is, but I don’t know.”
A small girl runs past us with a kite; it’s purple and pink colors trailing after her. We both smile.
I move closer to her and smell her skin, laundry detergent, the faint smell of plastic strawberry on her lips. I reach out and touch her hand, feel her tense, then relax, myself tremble. I want to be close to her so bad.
I start thinking about Dallas and remember the power, the glory, and I worry that the old Carmine is trying to slip back. It would be easier to be that than this.
“So, what do you do in Atlanta, Z? I mean, besides working at the club.” I adjust my feet, cross my legs in the grass, breathe deeply, and listen closely for my old words, watch carefully so they don’t slip from my mouth.
She rubs her hand over her jeans again. Squints in the sunlight. Her mouth is rich.
“I love Atlanta, exploring it, checking out little shops. I love the way the city vibrates and moves so fast. I like that energy. I sing, too, but not the way you heard me in the club that night.” She takes a sip of wine and looks around, stretches out, and continues talking.
“When I was a girl, my daddy used to ask me to sing, and it made me feel so special, so important. I drive to Eton sometimes just so my Aunt Tina can tell me stories about my father, her younger brother, and sometimes when we sit in her old foyer, I’m hoping that she’ll ask me to sing the way that he did so I can remember what it was like.” She gets lost for a minute, smiles as sh
e remembers, then straightens up as she remembers the present.
We relax, and for the next couple of hours, we talk about our fathers, and she tells me how hers was mostly absent but so loving and I tell her about Pa’s anger, and as we do, the wind picks up and blows at us. Sometimes as she’s speaking, her hands make big circles in the air and she forgets that she can’t trust me, and I tell her about how the numbness has been wearing off, how my whole life was an escape plan, and I feel like what a waste. I tell her how Pa’s death has affected me, how it has made me question the things I held onto for so many years, the things I coveted, the things I hid from. “What is the truth?” I ask her.
“I think a family is a circle, a ring, and when there’s a death, the circle has to change, things ‘have’ to shift. For me, when my father left us, I suddenly felt as though I didn’t know who I was anymore, as if I existed in his eyes only, how he saw me. I’m still trying to figure it out, who I really am, if I’m at all like he thought I was. I still want to know why it was so easy for him to pop in and out of our lives as though it didn’t matter.”
We go back and forth like that. Why did he do this, you think, and how could she do that?
As the sun starts to set over the trees, we begin to fade and realize how much we have in common, how much we’ve shared. Sometimes the thought gives me a sense of panic, where is the control? Other times, I can see myself sinking into it, swimming in it.
When the streetlights pop on, we get up and start to pack everything up. I escape back into my mind, but notice her every move, how her shoulders curve in and her toes are painted red.
“When will you drive back to Atlanta?” I ask her as we walk back to the car. She seems far away again, with the sun gone, the contents of her mind different now.
