News From Heaven

by Jennifer Haigh

  Is that closer than California? she demanded.

  Farther, said Joyce.

  Ed said, No one knows for sure.

  The morning is cold and bright. An iridescent grit coats the windshield, the first hard frost. By unspoken agreement, Ed takes the wheel. Though exceptions are made—for disabled veterans, men crippled in mine accidents—it is local custom for the husband to drive.

  At the funeral home Ed parks beside the hearse. They are early, a chronic condition in their marriage. Joyce, with her abiding fear of lateness, hustles him out the door with the insistence of a drill sergeant. At church or movies or family gatherings, they are always the first to arrive.

  “Sandy’s friend,” he says. “The woman from California. She didn’t tell you anything?”

  “No,” Joyce says. “The autopsy report will take a couple of weeks.”

  Ed reaches for her hand, Ed who did not love her brother. Who remembers him as a teenage delinquent, a troublemaker and a truant. Ed, the high school principal, took a personal interest in Sandy Novak. He bent the rules to let the boy graduate—to score points, he later admitted, with Sandy’s sister. A week after commencement, Sandy piled into a car with some buddies headed for Cleveland and wasn’t seen for many years. That Ed’s favor was never acknowledged is a sore point they do not mention. Ed himself spoke of it just once, after one of Sandy’s late-night calls.

  It was twenty years ago, Joyce pointed out. What do you want him to do? Thank you every time he calls?

  I want him to make something of his life. I want him to stop disappointing you.

  Broken promises, visits canceled for no reason. Ed was too kind to remind her that Sandy had missed their wedding, that George had stepped in at the last minute to give away the bride. That Sandy had refused—twice!—to serve as godfather. Instead, when Rebecca was born, he wired a large sum of money for the baby’s college fund. A week later he’d declined to visit, claiming he couldn’t afford a plane ticket. Like most of his excuses, it made no sense at all.

  The family rides in two cars. Joyce’s wagon and George’s Cadillac line up behind the hearse, leading the slow parade to the church.

  The Gospel is a familiar story, the raising of Lazarus, Martha’s anguished cry to Jesus: Lord, if thou hadst been there, my brother would not have died. Joyce closes her eyes, imagining Sandy beside her, the smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

  Fairy tales.

  To her surprise, the church is crowded. Sandy was gone twenty years, but Bakerton has not forgotten. Afterward, on the church steps, she is waylaid, questioned, hugged. Sandy was popular in school, she is told, a clown and a cutup. Everyone liked him, the girls especially. They can’t believe he is gone.

  Again and again she answers the question: “Heart failure. It was very sudden.”

  The story is her invention. Certainly it is kinder than the truth, welcome as a rodent: He swallowed a bottle of pills. He took his own life. Like all the best lies, it contains a grain of truth. What is despair, really, but a failure of heart?

  The funeral luncheon is held at Dorothy’s house. Again Joyce and Ed are the first to arrive. She gives the kitchen a lick and a promise, washes the breakfast dishes floating in the sink. The donated casseroles will be served buffet-style, the usual hodgepodge of mismatched food: trays of cold cuts, stuffed cabbage, a lasagna, cakes and pies. A few neighbors—the Poblocki twins, Chuck Lubicki—will arrive with bottles or six-packs, the custom on Polish Hill.

  From the window she sees George’s Cadillac park on the street. He opens the passenger door and Vera Gold steps out, nearly his height in her towering heels. That morning every head turned in her direction as she swept into the church. Her black dress is suitable for a nightclub, cut low in front, showing deep cleavage. “Sandy’s friend from California,” Joyce explained a dozen times, fighting an urge she has felt her whole life: to protect Sandy, his reputation, her family’s. It is a habit she will never break.

  The guests arrive in waves. She welcomes neighbors and distant cousins, Ed’s colleagues from the high school. “Heart failure. It was very sudden.” The lie is smooth in her mouth, blameless white, lustrous as a pearl.

  She agrees that the service was lovely, that Sandy is in a better place now. She accepts condolences and prayers. It is her role, always: the public face of the family. Dorothy, whose backwardness is known and accepted, busies herself in the kitchen. George is nowhere to be found.

  “Have you seen him?” Joyce whispers to Ed.

  “Back porch,” he says.

  Joyce slips into the dining room and glances out the window. George is standing on the porch with Vera and several neighbors—a Stusick, a Lubicki, both Poblockis—in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Joyce feels a flash of irritation and then gratitude. Her brother is performing a useful service, as practical as dishwashing, by keeping Vera occupied.

  “Joyce.”

  She turns. It takes her a moment to place Dick Devlin, bald now, one of Sandy’s buddies from high school. After graduation the two shared, along with Dick’s brother, an apartment in Cleveland, where they’d been hired at Fisher Body. Eventually the Devlin boys returned to Bakerton, married and raised families; and Sandy moved further and further west.

  Dick bends to kiss her cheek. “Joyce, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry now that I lost touch with him. I had no idea he was in such bad shape.”

  Joyce feels her heart working. “What do you mean?”

  Dick looks down into his feet. “To—do what he did. He must have been in a bad way.”

  She glances over her shoulder into the crowded parlor. “Who told you that?” she says in a low voice.

  “Vera. His girlfriend.”

  Joyce’s face heats. She thinks of Vera in the car, her chin trembling as she studied the house. Polish Hill. I’ve always wanted to see it. Vera, ten years older than Sandy, fifteen maybe, holding court on the back porch, dressed like a cocktail waitress and surrounded by men.

  “Who told you she was his girlfriend?”

  Dick shrugs, coloring. “I just assumed. He always had girlfriends. And she’s, you know, his type.”

  This is news to Joyce, who met none of these girlfriends. Sandy never mentioned any, and she never asked.

  “Anyways, I’m sorry.” Dick hesitates, groping for words. “Sandy wasn’t like the rest of us. He did whatever the hell he wanted. We were just working stiffs.”

  Joyce feels her eyes tear.

  “We had some times out in Cleveland,” says Dick. “I never had a better time in my life.”

  As a child Sandy slept in the back bedroom, small and square, its only window overlooking the woods. Joyce closes the door behind her and stretches out on the narrow bed. “Where are you?” she whispers. “Why did you go?”

  She is thinking not of his death but of that earlier departure, his disappearance like a magic trick, as dizzying and complete. His manic and determined flight from Bakerton, from the family, from her.

  On the one hand, she almost understands it. Family life, on the whole, does not fill her with joy. Her lively daughter delights but also exhausts her, and Teddy keeps her in a nearly constant state of panic: his fevers and infections, his cystic lungs that will never clear. Her sister, more and more, is a like a grown-up child, unwilling or unable to drive a car, maintain the house, or pay her bills on time. And yet Joyce could never leave them, run off to California or to Africa, as her younger siblings have done. Freedom is, to her, unimaginable, as exotic as walking on the moon.

  She hears footsteps in the hallway, a knock at the door.

  “Can I come in? I need to get something.” It is a woman’s voice, low and honeyed. Only then does Joyce notice the Pullman case lying open on the floor.

  Joyce sits up quickly. “Of course,” she calls, swiping at her eyes.

  Vera Gold opens the door. “Sorry. I need my cigarettes.” She kneels and rifles through the suitcase. “Damn. I thought I had another pack.” She glances up at Joyce. “Oh, honey. Are you
okay?”

  “This was Sandy’s room,” Joyce says, her voice trembling. “He had it to himself after Georgie went overseas. I can barely remember him living here. It seems so long ago.” Why did he leave us? she wants to ask. For God’s sake, what did we do?

  Vera sits beside her on the bed. A sweet, dirty fragrance—perfume and cigarettes—surrounds her like a cloud. “He was always afraid of missing something. Even in L.A. he got restless. And this place broke his heart.”

  The words hit Joyce like a slap. “But why? It’s home.”

  “That’s why.”

  (Heart failure. Her brother’s unknown heart.)

  “You told Dick Devlin,” she says softly. “What Sandy did. Why on earth would you tell him a thing like that?”

  “I’m sorry,” says Vera. “He was Sandy’s friend. I didn’t know it was a secret.”

  “This is a very small town.”

  “Sandy told me that. He said everybody knows your business.” Vera looks down at her hands, the collection of gold rings. In the dim light, her face looks smooth as a girl’s. “He thought about coming back here to live. I guess he told you that.”

  Joyce stares. He told her nothing of the kind.

  “It was a fantasy, really. Whenever he got into trouble, he figured he’d always have this place to come back to.” Vera smiles sadly. “He never could have done it, though. He would have felt like a failure. More than anything, he wanted you to be proud of him.” She gets to her feet. At the door she pauses a moment, like an actress making an exit.

  “The church today—it was a beautiful service, Joyce. But it isn’t what Sandy would have wanted. That wasn’t for him. It was for Bakerton, and for you.”

  She closes the door behind her. The click of her high heels fades down the stairs.

  In the kitchen Dorothy is putting away the leftovers. Joyce goes out to the back porch, where a Poblocki twin stands alone, smoking. “Have you seen Georgie?” she asks.

  “Vera ran out of cigarettes. He’s driving her to the store.”

  Joyce walks around to the front of the house. The lawn, she notices, is shaggy. She will ask Ed to run the mower when the guests have gone.

  She rounds the corner just in time to see it happen: Vera clomping down the front steps, glancing over her shoulder at George and laughing her throaty laugh. There is a sharp crack like wood splintering, and Vera teeters backward. In a split second she is down.

  “Oh, no,” says Joyce, rushing toward her.

  George hurries down the steps and kneels at Vera’s side.

  “My ankle,” she moans. “I think I twisted it.”

  “It’s broken,” says George, who many years ago was a medic in the war. Gingerly he touches her foot. “See that? That’s the bone coming through.”

  “Oh, Jesus. I can’t look.” Vera lies back against the stairs and hides her face with her hands. Her black dress is rucked up around her thighs. Joyce resists the urge to cover her.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” she says.

  “No need,” says George. “I can take her.”

  “Are you sure?” Ed calls from the porch, where a small crowd has gathered.

  They watch as George lifts her into his arms.

  Joyce never sees Vera Gold again. The emergency room doctor confirms that the ankle is broken and admits her overnight. The next morning, her foot in a cast, she flies back to Los Angeles. George Novak takes her to the airport, carrying first Vera, then her suitcase and crutches, up into the tiny plane.

  Joyce spends that day as she does many others: first in the car with Teddy, then reading outdated magazines in a doctor’s waiting room, then stopping to fill a new prescription. It is dusk by the time she leaves the pharmacy and begins the long drive home. By then Vera Gold seems no more real than a character in a movie, her visit fading like a dream.

  A week later a large envelope arrives in the mail. The return address is Santa Monica, California. There is a note on perfumed stationery, in a sweeping, nervous hand:

  Dear Joyce,

  Here are the papers Sandy left. There wasn’t much else, just some clothes and household things. Let me know if you want them. He sold his car years ago and by the end he had nothing.

  I guess we will never know what happened. I saw him the day before he died and this will sound strange, but he seemed happy.

  I loved him and always will.

  —V.

  The envelope holds a tan leather wallet—worn and creased, its rawhide stitching coming loose—and a thin sheaf of papers: Sandy’s birth certificate, unopened bills, and a pink carbon copy of a completed form, State of California Application for Unemployment Benefits. Between the papers are a few slippery photographs—snapshots of Joyce’s children, Rebecca and Teddy as infants, as toddlers. Each is marked in Joyce’s neat cursive: Teddy’s first birthday. Rebecca Rose Hauser, 22 months. A photo of her wedding, Joyce and Ed coming out of the church into a shower of rice. On the back, in her own handwriting: We missed you.

  At the bottom of the pile is a typewritten transcript from Bakerton High, listing Sandy’s quarterly marks: a string of A’s in Algebra and Plane Geometry, D’s in everything else.

  Why would he have a copy of his transcript? Joyce wonders. Was he going to apply to college? For a moment, from lifelong habit, she hopes fervently for his future. For a single cruel moment she forgets that he is gone.

  In the wallet she finds a dollar bill and a business card.

  TERRY’S BAIL BONDS—FREE BAIL INFORMATION—

  STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL—24 HOUR SERVICE IN

  HOLLYWOOD AND WEST L.A.

  In an inner compartment is the stub of a raffle ticket, To Benefit Van Nuys–Reseda Little League Grand Prize Color TV. The drawing took place on October 3, 1974—Sandy’s fortieth birthday, the day his body was found.

  That’s all? she thinks. A whole life, her brother’s life, distilled down to this small sad pile. Not a whole life: half a life. The second half he discarded on purpose, the precious years cast to the wind.

  The ticket stub is clearly marked: NOT NECESSARY TO BE PRESENT TO WIN.

  She decides that this is good news.

  Thrift

  Agnes has never spent a winter in a trailer. From the window she watches Luke leave for work, his truck roaring down the lane, gouging tracks in the muddy earth. It’s a blustery morning in November, the ground slick with wet leaves. A storm overnight knocked the last color from the trees. Now the narrow kitchen feels drafty without him, and smaller, as though its aluminum sides have contracted in the cold.

  The coffee is tepid, but she finishes it anyway, then picks at what’s left on Luke’s plate: a few bites of scrambled egg, a half-eaten slice of toast. She remembers a summer job—thirty years ago? is that possible?—busing tables in a restaurant. How the customers’ leftovers disgusted her, contaminated by saliva from strangers’ forks.

  Once, when her niece was small, Agnes watched her sister share a lollipop with the child, the little girl squealing with delight as she passed the sticky thing from her own mouth to her mother’s.

  That’s unsanitary, Agnes told her sister.

  To which Terri merely shrugged. She’s mine.

  Is it odd that Agnes feels that way about Luke? That his body belongs to her and no part of it displeases her. That she can love his feet and armpits as she loves his eyes, his hands, his groin, his mouth.

  She clears the dishes. From the window she sees a strange car make its way up the lane, tires sliding in the muck. The car is small and sporty, a new hatchback. The hunters and fishermen drive Jeeps and pickups. The nearest year-round house is a half mile up the hill.

  Then the car stops and her sister steps out—as though, in thinking of the lollipop, Agnes has conjured her from the air. This has happened her whole life where Terri is concerned: simply thinking of her is enough to make the phone ring. Today she wears a long sweater-coat trimmed with fake fur. In stiletto-heeled boots, she picks her way through the mud. The white sweater-
coat, a size too small, gapes open at her wide bosom. She is a woman whose clothes never fit properly; she is always dieting or gaining. She clutches the collar with one hand, close at her throat.

  Agnes steps back from the window, her bare feet silent on the linoleum. She catches her reflection in the mirror above the sink: pale, shiny face; hair loose and needing a wash. It’s her day off from the hospital, and she wears green scrub pants, no bra, an old flannel shirt of Luke’s. The shirt is soft from many washings, gentle on her skin.

  Terri’s boots climb the stairs, sharp and adamant on the porch Luke built. The high, shallow windows have no curtains. Agnes has been meaning to make some. Oh, hell, she thinks, crouching low.

  Terri knocks at the door. “Agnes? Are you there?”

  Agnes holds her breath as the doorknob turns. Every morning Luke kisses her goodbye at the door. That morning, luckily, she remembered to lock it behind him.

  “I know you live here. I saw your name on the mailbox.”

  Agnes nearly groans. Luke bought adhesive letters at the hardware store and spelled out both names, GARMAN and LUBICKI. She asked him to leave hers off, but it wasn’t practical. Their bills—gas and electric, insurance for Luke’s truck and motorcycle—come addressed to her.

  “I can’t believe you’re living in a trailer.”

  Agnes waits.

  “I’ve been trying to call you, but you don’t answer. I’m starting to worry.” There is a long pause. “We missed you at Thanksgiving. The kids miss their aunt Aggie.”

  This is a blatant lie. Agnes’s niece is a sulky teenager, indifferent to relatives. The little twins might miss the candy she brought, the gifts on their birthday; but her company, itself, was never much of a draw.

  “I just want to see you,” Terri warbles. “To make sure you’re okay.” Her tone is one Agnes recognizes; it means she is about to cry.