“Yep.”
“And?”
“And he told me he hired two on-call employees. He bragged about it being a buyer’s market—two for the price of one. What an asshole!”
Mag, you and I both know that’s how Angelo says he misses you. Did you offer to cover weekends?”
“Nope. I didn’t think I could handle another rejection.”
“Give me a break. Really?”
“Sam, I’m in a weird place. You’re right, it was typical Angelo, but I couldn’t deal.”
“So, did you look at the photos of Catherine again?”
“I thought I’d wait to see how Issie reacts. I don’t want to influence her thinking. And, I’ll need the car tomorrow. I could drop you off and head to Issie’s. On my way back, I can stop at Woolworths to get some sliding screens.”
Sam said, “sure,” then reached across the stick shift and ran his hand up Maggie’s leg and traced the warm, damp skin under her cut-offs. “Speaking of Woolworths, Mrs. Tervo, do you still have that orange-checked apron?”
16
Close Encounters
Well, let me tell you ‘bout the way she looked, the way she acts and the color of her hair, her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright, but she’s not there.
—The Zombies, lyrics from She’s Not There
AUGUST 1968—Built on a cornfield in 1950, Serene Hills was sixteen miles west of Detroit on the flattest piece of land in Southern Michigan. Not a hill in sight. Two greenhorn speculators, wannabe developers, came up with the name after guzzling a couple six packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon and paying homage to soldiers who qualified for VA mortgages. Only two blocks from the main road, Issie and Eddie’s small faux-ranch was in the center of this cookie-cutter subdivision. Sixty-four houses shared the same simple design, red brick in front with gray asphalt siding on the back and sides. When Maggie saw a copy of the subdivision plat, with its equal size boxes, street after street, it looked like a checkerboard. Now, after eighteen years, maturing elms, blue spruce, fir and crabapple had transformed it into an oasis compared to neighboring subdivisions built on barren landfills and scrubbed wasteland.
Maggie was struck by how casually toys, bikes and wading pools were scattered throughout the neighborhood. Yet, there was monotony to it, like hitting the same key on a piano sixty-four times. Kids were buzzing everywhere, white kids, moving from one square box to another. An unrelenting, tedious tempo that gave sound to this human experiment of tenement housing with driveways and yards, but no music or color. Maggie’s mind tumbled into an old Sunday school chorus of red and yellow, black and white are so precious in his sight and tried to bite back judgment. This was, after all, Issie’s home.
Up close, their house was showing its age and slapdash construction—screens hanging from the storm door, dry rot on window casings, loose and missing asphalt tiles on the roof, no eaves or gutters.
Issie was sitting on the edge of the concrete porch sipping coffee. Her bare feet bounced up and down under a green and orange flowered moo-moo she’d worn when she was pregnant with both little Eddie and Raymond.
“Hey, Issie!”
Issie smiled, lifted her cup in greeting and said, “Thanks for making the drive.”
“You’re right, it’s been far too long. I almost stopped to call and ask what main road you were off. Then, I remembered Ford, ‘King Henry Ford!’ ”
“Yep. The owner of most of these here ‘plant-tation’ workers,” laughed Issie.
Issie’s comment hung in the humid air. The sarcastic edge to her voice and weariness in her eyes denied the laughter.
“Iss, you okay?”
Issie lifted her cup again and walked into the house. Maggie followed.
Inside, the living room was dark. Ten years ago the antiqued colonial furniture and hooked rug looked bright and inviting. Now the beige, brown, and red palate looked like road kill—frayed fabric bled crumbled foam, the rag rug pulled apart like entrails. In the corner, Issie’s ten-year-old mother-in-law’s tongue, with its long, sharp, succulent blades, was shrouded in dust. Evidence to support its notoriety as a plant you can’t kill. But the saddest sight was the desolation of the twenty-inch pot that once held Issie’s always-bountiful prayer plant, now two tiny orphan sprouts.
“My god, what happened to your beautiful prayer plant?”
Issie looked at the near empty pot then back at Maggie and said, “Neglect. God, Maggie, this has been the summer from hell. Eddie took a voluntary layoff for the model changeover and they haven’t called him back. We’ve been getting by on unemployment checks, but that ends in September. That’s another reason I couldn’t drive out to see you. We’re on lockdown until we can afford gas. The union keeps telling Eddie to ‘hang tight, the plant will be calling everyone back before September 1st.’ But Eddie’s convinced he pissed off the local president when he refused to cover for a stoner who almost shut the line down in June. It’s a mess. I’m a mess. The house is a mess and the poor plants are dying from neglect. Coffee?”
Maggie took in the bright yellow kitchen, with yellow gingham curtains Issie made to catch the morning sun. Dishes from last night’s dinner filled the sink and a load of clean clothes overflowed from a wicker laundry basket in front of the stove.
“Holy crap, I’m sorry. Sam might be able to get him in at Jingo Motors.”
“Thanks, but that dog won’t hunt. Eddie’s got over ten year’s seniority at Ford, and it’d be hard for him to go back to the dirt jobs. He’s at the union hall today. Keep your fingers and toes crossed.”
“This really hacks me off. How long has he been paying union dues?”
“I know. When management isn’t screwing you, it’s the frigging union. Eddie knows all about the written and unwritten rules. The ‘wife me’ is proud he stood by his morals. The ‘grizzly-mama-bear me’ wants to knock him on his sorry, do-good ass. Sit, let’s see what’s left of Sara Lee after Eddie and the kids got to it.”
Maggie and Issie picked at the remains of the ransacked coffee cake with their fingers as they gazed out the window at an uneven ten-foot-square, freestanding red brick patio in the middle of the backyard. Sand, between the bricks, gave crabgrass easy entry to invade this territory, tipping and lifting the clay bricks in an abstract decoupage.
“I call this Eddie’s Venture in Landscape Architecture. When he started his layoff, he and the boys took the wagon and went from house to house asking for old bricks. I tried to tell him he needed a concrete base, but no, he said he wanted something more natural in the grass so he could mow over it and not have to edge around it. As an afterthought, he snagged a wheelbarrow of sand from a new sub to tie the bricks together. Someone told him the sand would turn to cement once it rained. For real! I swear he’d be the one guy to buy a bridge because he trusts everyone. So, I try to think of it as a conversation piece. It may be our generation’s answer to Stonehenge. Imagine the archeologists a century from now scratching their heads and thinking ‘what the hell?’ ”
Maggie loved Issie’s stories about Eddie’s ventures. Some of her other titles were: Badass Motorcycling to the Corner Store; Backyard Fly Fishing; Play Houses in Perpetual Progress; and Bondo, The Universal Fix. Maggie used to beg Issie to put her funny, inventive stories on paper. Issie always replied, “You’re the ink-slinger, not me!”
Maggie and Issie had been talking an hour before Issie finally trolled through the three piles of photos between them, while Maggie made her observations and asked her questions.
“Oh, Maggie. What the hell? We’ve been living in a game of Clue all these years. Did Professor Plum do it with a candlestick in the library? What do you really want to know? The unknowable? Give me a break. Let it go.”
“Let it go? Seriously? You don’t care? You don’t want to know? What if they’re alive?”
“Your bag, baby girl, not mine. I spent way too long trying to solve this goddamn puzzle. Seriously, I don’t give a flying flip if they’re alive or not. If they are
, they sure as hell aren’t interested in seeing us. Hard enough to live our own broken lives, and for god sakes, don’t drag Sam down this perverted road to nowhere.”
“Iss, I need your help. You’re the only one who knows what was going on during the first five years of my life.”
“Marguerite, I love like you like a mother, big sister, best friend. You name it. I couldn’t love you more. Because I love you, I’m not going to jump into this quicksand with you. I’ll be here to pull you out when you’re ready, but I’m sure as hell not going to spend time on two parents who abandoned us or are long dead. Either way, they lived their lives, made their choices. There’s not a damn thing you or I can do to change history. Leave it alone.”
“God, Issie, why are you so pissed? Why are you taking it out on me?”
“Marguerite, listen up, I’m not going to waste any more time on this mystery. I’ll answer your three questions, but that’s it. No more.”
Maggie squinted her eyes, squared her jaw and stared at Issie. Issie shook her head and started to stand up. “Got it. Just these three questions. Promise.”
“Okay. One, Raymond was a lunatic. He’d disappear for days, weeks, sometimes months. Anna told me he was dealing with his demons. But Raymond brought them home. He’d go into rages because the house was a mess, dinner wasn’t ready or he couldn’t find the front page of the newspaper. Once, Anna and I made banana splits for dessert. Jacques had given her a set of eight banana split dishes he’d found in a restaurant supply warehouse. Anna was thrilled. She and I put them together—vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream scoops over a banana, topped with hot chocolate, peanuts, whipped cream and a cherry. We called them our chef d’oeuvre. Raymond and you were sitting on the patio out back. You must have been three. Anyhow, Anna and I were both glowing when we reached the patio and held up our masterpieces. As always, Anna served Raymond first. I saw his face darken. Then, he stood up, tipped the table over and yelled Conne! Vous savez bien que je n’aime pas les cerises! So, because he doesn’t like cherries, he flips the table, calls her a bitch, bolts into the house and locks the doors. Asshole. He was totally wigged out. You started to cry, which started the whole world crying. Then, Anna put down her dish and took my two and set them on the deck. She turned over the table, shook out the placemats and napkins, wiped the spoons and reset the table for three. Anna called us into her arms and we huddled forehead-to-forehead. She said something like ‘Raymond wants to fight his demons. That’s his choice. But tonight, pretty ones, we’ll celebrate this beautiful world we call home.’ Raymond split before we finished our splits. He was gone a lot after that. I wondered if he was at the funny farm. I never asked. Anna never said.”
“But you called your son Raymond.”
“When I was lost in the quicksand, I’d forget about Raymond’s meanness. I’d recall the times when he was sweet and funny. That’s what I chose to remember. Maintaining the fantasy was something I practiced for years. Now it’s your fantasy Maggie. You’re living the one about our parents being the objects of a manhunt by the evil Brits and Americans. Really? Think about it. It’s like saying the whole world is mad rather than saying our parents were bonkers.”
“That’s what you think?”
“Let’s stick to your three questions.” Issie made the sign of a cross with her two index fingers, as if warding off bad spirits, and chanted, “Avoid the quicksand. Question two—Jacques was a regular visitor to our house in Quebec when Raymond was quote, unquote, travelling. During my first year at Amadeus, Anna, you and I would visit ‘Uncle Jacques’ at his townhouse in Toronto. You must have been four.”
“Are you suggesting Anna and Jacques were a thing?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. Moving back to our script and your last question, I never met or heard Jacques mention a secretary named Catherine Caron. A secretary stopped by his townhouse once or twice when I was there. I’d describe her as short, plump and dowdy. For some reason I had this morbid fascination with her fleshy cheeks, as in ass. In any event, she was the extreme opposite of Anna. That’s it, Maggie. Finito.”
“What about Blue Mountain at Christmas?”
“No way. No more games of Clue, conversations or visitations with the past. From this point on, I want to hear about you, Sam, his new job, your new job, our lives and the future.”
For the first time that morning, Maggie felt the tension leave the room. They talked about the plight of infants with doe-in-the-headlight mothers, Pampers versus cloth diapers, cleaning products, then their favorite topic of whether Aunt Jo and Angelo had something going on.
Issie said, “Hah. I can hear Angelo saying, ‘So Jo, I got nothing to do tonight, so if you want to check out the sheets on your bed, well, you know how to reach me.’ ”
Maggie laughed and offered Aunt Jo’s reply, “Earth to Angelo. If you want to spend time with me you’ve got to take me on a date. A date. No one checks out my sheets, capisce?”
“A date? Who dates after thirty? I’ll bring pizza and a nice bottle of Cold Duck,” panned Issie.
Issie then sat up on her knees on the kitchen chair and leaned forward. “How about, ‘so, Jo, maybe we could take a nap after church on Sunday and see if we have our own religious experience.’ ”
Maggie snapped, “Like what Romeo? You want to light my candle?”
Issie moaned as if she was in the throes of an orgasm and said, “Oh god, I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
Both Maggie and Issie doubled over in laughter. Play-acting gave them uncensored, creative license and Maggie loved to laze in Issie’s lightness, laughter and irreverence. She thought Issie might be right. She’d spent most of her life playing a board game, trying to find parents to fix her world. Too little time in the here and now, and too few banana splits!
On her way out, Maggie crossed the front yard and encircled Eddie, Jr. and Raymond in a close huddle, their heads touching. She huddled long enough to take in the ripe smell of sweat, salt and dirt. Boy smells. Just then Issie slammed through the aluminum storm door waving a cracked and yellowed plastic container that held the tattered copy of the 1950 Toronto Tribune with photos of Raymond and Anna, subjects of the manhunt. Visible through the dusty plastic, the date was eighteen years ago to the day.
All glass, the over-sized front doors of Jingo Motors were impressive. They pulled you into a lobby showroom of their latest models. Sam promised to be waiting on the sidewalk. No Sam.
Maggie parked just beyond the entrance and pulled a book out of the glove box. Dr. Spock’s 1968 revision of Baby and Child Care. She and Sam had decided to take a running start because Sam thought it would take at least two to three months for his rambunctious sperm to find her egg. With the temperature topping ninety, Maggie was wilting. She cranked down both front windows to create a breeze. None. Maggie then hiked up her red handkerchief sundress and tucked it between her legs. Her legs stuck together. In desperation, she stretched her right leg over the stick shift at a right angle to the dashboard and propped her heel on the base of the open passenger-side window. Lost in a section about prenatal care, Maggie didn’t see Sam and another man approach the car until both bent down to look in the passenger window. When Maggie looked up, Sam’s face was stuck in a half smile over the crest of her bare knee. The other man was in full grin. Maggie froze.
“Ah, Maggie, this is Skip Malone my new boss. Skip, this is my wife Maggie.”
Any move Maggie made would risk more exposure, so she lowered her book, smiled and said, “Nice to meet you, Skip.”
Sam opened the door to move Skip back and mumbled something about tomorrow. After Sam closed the door, Skip bent down one more time to stick his head in the window and said, “Nice meeting you, Maggie. Hope to see you again!”
As they pulled away, Sam whispered “I bet you do,” looked at Maggie and they both burst out laughing.
“Mag, I’m too new to be asking for favors. Plus, Issie’s right. It would kill Eddie to give up his seniority and lose
his pay grade, vacation time and bidding rights. He’s worked too hard to start from scratch. Besides, if he’s made some enemies at the UAW, moving to Jingo won’t change that. He’s got to make his peace, throw himself on the union sword—whatever it takes.”
“Fine.”
“Fine? What does that mean?”
“It means fine. What do you think it means?”
“That’s it. Fine? No argument, begging, pleading, cajoling?”
“Nope.”
“Hmm. Maggie, you okay?”
“Yep. Just turning over my day with Issie and thinking about the Soulier quicksand. Do you think I’m in quicksand and just don’t know it?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? What do you mean by maybe?”
“I mean maybe.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? Jesus, Mag, I’m not used to you giving up so easily. You’re definitely not okay.”
“I’ve been reading Dr. Spock.”
“And?”
“And, I’d like to jump your bones, Samuel Tervo. I want to make a baby.”
“Here, on the couch?”
Maggie lifted the spaghetti straps on her red handkerchief dress and started to pull it over her head. Sam began unbuttoning his shirt. The heat and humidity in their dingy rental house transported Maggie to Hemingway’s house in the Florida Keys. She could hear jazzmen playing in the streets while sea gulls cried and flapped their wings. The sun would set soon. In the Keys, a flash of green light along the horizon would thrill the rum drinkers and sun worshipers. Here, in a tiny shell of a house, crashing waves licked the living room floor.
17
Dead Rabbit
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face—and the world is like an apple whirling silently in space—like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.
—Noel Harrison, lyrics from Windmills of Your Mind
If the Moon Had Willow Trees (Detroit Eight Series Book 1) Page 14
