Fellow Mortals: A Novel

by Mahoney, Dennis

  “Not yet,” Ava says. “There’s another pepper sandwich in the cooler.”

  “Maybe later,” he says. “Where’s Wing today?”

  “He’s home with Nan and Joan.”

  Then he’s silent once again and doesn’t ask about the Finns. She gives him time, thinking maybe he’s affected by their names, but he sits without a word. They always ask about him.

  “Henry didn’t tell me you were building out here.”

  “That’s surprising,” Sam says.

  “I can’t believe you did it by yourself.”

  “It’s easy with a plan.”

  “How did you lift the logs?”

  He looks at her and takes a sip of coffee from a travel mug, comfortable and smiling very faintly, like a swindler.

  “I use a block and tackle with the ATV. You set a pair of logs like ramps against the wall and pull the other log up.”

  Ava pictures it—a fairly simple thing, after all—and yet she can’t imagine Henry standing idle and observing it. She’s seen him look at Nan when he’s prohibited from helping, even when it’s baking or something else he has no business getting involved with. It must have killed him, picking weeds while the cabin came together, and she wonders if he really kept it secret from embarrassment.

  “You didn’t let him help?”

  Sam’s smile falls away. He looks at Henry in the distance, mulling what he sees. “He’s lucky I let him do anything.”

  Ava draws away, wounded by his tone. Sam’s mood abruptly shifts, just as Henry had described, as if the conversation siphoned off everything he had. His exaggerated sulk feels personal to Ava, a wall of humid air that cushions her away. The forest sags in, somnolent and dense. She has a very strong urge to slap him in the face.

  The heat’s grown heavy and the gnats are coming out. Ava yawns to get a lift but her chest won’t rise. She stands and moves away. Henry notices at once. He runs a hand through his hair, flexing inadvertently, and walks directly over like she wanted, like she hoped.

  She hugs him and his body feels succulent and firm.

  “He wants to be alone,” Ava whispers in his ear. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Right,” Henry says.

  They turn and face Sam, who’s slouching on the stump.

  “I think we’re heading out,” Henry says.

  Sam nods.

  “You need me here tomorrow?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Okey-doke,” Henry says, turning awkwardly to Ava.

  “Thanks for having me,” she says.

  Sam’s determined to ignore her. She hugs him where he sits, one quick pump. He doesn’t see it coming and he doesn’t see it ending, and she wonders if the gesture was a terrible mistake.

  She and Henry say goodbye and leave him there alone, sitting like a prop balanced on the stump. They walk along the path and feel the closeness of the shade. Even Henry doesn’t speak until the cabin’s well behind them. Ava picks a small red flower and examines it. She twirls it in her fingertips, holding it at the stem, until her body and her thoughts start to loosen with the petals. Henry’s sweat is a like fresh-cut onion on the breeze, too new to smell rank, closer to a chive. She wonders if the soil ever steams in the dark. She wants to feel pine sap melting in her palm, soft needles on her back and in the arches of her feet.

  She wanders off the trail until she’s ankle-deep in maidenhair, soft green leaves swishing at her calves.

  “Where you going?” Henry asks.

  She throws the flower at his feet. Henry picks it up as if he’s meant to read a clue. Ava bends low to let her neckline breathe, and then she looks at him and grins and beckons with her fingers.

  “Av, we can’t,” he says, wanting to but glancing up the trail.

  “Shh.”

  Ava turns, forcing him go follow.

  She finds a chestnut tree, out of sight from the trail, and leans forward on a low-slung, belly-high branch. Henry crackles up behind her, unfamiliar in his sounds. She hikes her dress to her waist so it bunches on the limb, pillowing the bark so it’s softer on her skin. She totters there a moment, heels off the ground, while she uses both thumbs to roll her panties to her thighs. Henry doesn’t move. Ava stares around the forest, far as she can see, and right as she’s about to pitch forward on the branch, he grabs her by the hips and pulls her back, nice and hard. She lets herself drape, hair crowding at her eyes and her breasts falling upside down around her throat. It’s slippery for a change when he shoves right in and now she couldn’t get away even if she tried. She reaches for the soil just beyond her fingers, and a millipede curls and the rot smells clean. With every sudden oomph, Ava gazes more directly, past the trees, and those behind them, and the shadows in the gaps, pressing urgently against him when he pushes her away, leaning forward to escape when he pulls her up tight.

  * * *

  Sam thinks about the hug and the pressure of her hands. He was hugged so often in the days around the funeral that he finally ceased to notice it was happening at all. But for nearly seven weeks he’s been limited to handshakes, nothing more intense, let alone from a woman.

  The forest closes in and makes it difficult to breathe. It’s humid in the sun and windless in the shade. He takes his shirt and jeans off and lounges in his boxer shorts. Stands and walks around. Tries the radio, discovers that the batteries are dead, and leans against the cabin wall, tired in the glare. There’s a bird that he’s been hearing all week, Drink your teeeea, but he doesn’t have the will to go and seek it out.

  He finds the half-eaten sandwich Ava left behind. He peels the wrapper at the table, examining the peppers: visceral and thick, like slices of a heart. The bread’s soggy, cheese and mayonnaise oozing out the sides. He takes a bite, more focused on the texture than the taste, and he’s barely started chewing when he spits it on the ground. He’s swallowed some; there’s plenty more covering his tongue. The flavor shifts color, turning volatile and bright. He pants through his mouth but it rushes up his nose, all acid burn and firelight and Mexican alarm.

  He runs around the clearing—Jog it off, jog it off—until it peaks and he can’t help shouting out loud. The forest comes alive, flickery and fresh. He licks the cheese off his bagel, hoping it’ll help, and then he coughs and even laughs when the heat begins to fade, wishing Laura could have seen him at the mercy of a pepper. He collapses on the ground and looks around, wide-awake, and the dirt feels good beneath the bubble of the sky.

  A delicate perfume rises in the heat, drifting off his arm and intermingled with his sweat. He pictures Laura in her sleep the morning of the fire, feels the softness of her neck, the ridges of her spine. Down the valley of her back to the dimples at her waist, miniature fingerprints that always made him woozy. Round her iliac crest, down a long pale thigh, to the furrow in her calf with her muscle and her tendon. There’s a Band-Aid there; she had a blister from her shoe. The bottom of her heel snuggles in his palm. She notices and rolls, spreading open on her back, and he lies between her legs and all the length of her’s alive. When he kisses her, it feels as if she’s swallowing his tongue. Their temperatures converge until it’s difficult to tell if they’re together or apart. He can feel her in his lungs.

  14

  Billy finishes the drywall and gets a coat of primer on. The panels were a breeze to cut and hang, but the mud had been a mess and when he sanded the joints, he rubbed too hard and frayed a lot of the tape, forcing him to tear the sections clean and start again. There’s still a bit of mud splattered on the floor but basically it’s done and waiting for the final coat of paint—one or two days and they’ll be ready for the furniture again, and then he’ll start the bedroom, and look for cheaper siding, and—assuming he can foot the bill—vapor-lock the basement.

  He picks the ladder up and turns and knocks a divot in the wall.

  “Fuck,” Billy says, fingering the spot.

  He overcomes an urge to punch it even wider, takes the ladder to the yard, and
chucks it near the drywall. They need to get a Dumpster but there’s plenty more to come. Sheri scowls at the pile every day. So does Peg.

  Billy makes himself spaghetti and watches the television they moved into the kitchen. When Sheri gets home—two hours late—she’s mad he ate without her and lets him know by talking about her lousy day, clattering pots, and punctuating her complaints with cutlery and glass. The diner was “slammed” this afternoon, a word she got from one of her girlfriends at work, Mary or Kate, he can’t remember which. She has her own private world there, with holidays and seasons, in-jokes and habits Billy doesn’t know until they show up at home like second nature. Jake the dishwasher—that’s one name Billy has straight—taught her the best way to load a dish rack and now she’s militant about it, rearranging Billy’s order when he gets it all wrong. And suddenly in recent weeks she’s all about the Sox, talking like she hasn’t missed a game in twenty years.

  “It’s big at work,” she says.

  “With who? That dishwasher guy?”

  “Jake? He’s an Orioles fan. He grew up in Baltimore. You should hear Mary-Kate tease him every day,” and Billy can’t tell if Jake’s being teased about the Orioles, growing up in Baltimore, or something else entirely.

  “The living room’s done.”

  “Really?” Sheri says, brightening at last, and he almost has to jog to follow her up the hall. “Oh,” she says. “I thought you meant done.”

  “But that was the worst of it.”

  “You missed a spot,” she says, feeling at the divot, like he might have overlooked it if she hadn’t pointed it out. But then she says, “The couch’ll cover it up,” and walks around the middle of the room and even smiles. “This’ll look amazing with the color I was showing you. I’m totally impressed.”

  She smiles right at him.

  Billy takes her waist and holds her hand below his chin. They sway a little dance, turning in the room. She lays her head against his shoulder and relaxes with his breathing, balancing her feet on Billy’s toes until they’re laughing, almost stumbling, and her eyes are full of fun.

  “What do you say,” Billy asks, giving her the look.

  Sheri kisses him and lingers at his mouth. Billy hums.

  “I’m tired, though,” she says. “I won’t be any good. Let me take a nap. I’ll be great in half an hour.”

  After this many weeks, thirty minutes sounds sweet. He drinks another beer while Sheri’s showering upstairs and watches Wheel and Jeopardy!, knowing more of the answers than some of the contestants. All the women in the ads have a summery allure and Billy waits an hour, just to play it safe.

  When he goes to wake her up, he finds her sleeping on her stomach in her T-shirt and panties, one foot dangling off the bed. She’s sleeping so hard she almost looks drunk. Actually she is—on the table are a few mini bottles of Kahlúa, the kind you get in airplanes, empty in a row. He didn’t know she had them, can’t imagine where she got them.

  Her calves are faintly orange. She’s been using artificial tan and can’t get it right, streaking her skin and looking like she ate too many carrots. He’s thought about sending her off to a spa, a whole package to surprise her, but it would cost him more than he can justify and honestly, he shouldn’t have to try that hard. She looks good to him tonight, though, comfortable and clean. He kisses her and smells her apricot shampoo. He imagines they’re together at a tropical resort, and it’s thrilling when he’s naked with the warm air moving on his back. She rambles in her sleep and curls her fingers into a ball. He pulls her panties down slow and says, “You’re beautiful. I love you.”

  He straddles her and tries a little spit for lubrication, but he hurts her when he starts. Sheri clenches up.

  “Shh,” Billy says, smoothing down her hair.

  “Stop,” Sheri slurs.

  “Just relax.”

  “Said get off.”

  She’s groggy from the drink but waking up fast. Billy moans at how pliable and velvety she feels.

  “Billy…”

  “Shh.”

  “Stop…”

  “I said relax,” Billy growls.

  It’s better when she butts and wriggles up against him. Sheri bumps him with her head so Billy grabs her hair, burying her face until it’s muffled in the pillow. He tries to think of Ava and he tries to think of Peg, but he ends up imagining he’s Jake from the diner, and he pounds even harder, deep as he can go, until it feels like he’s pounding right through her to the bed.

  He shudders in a sweat, coming to a rest. The slipperiness between them turns clammy in the dark. At some point she must have quit struggling and collapsed; he didn’t notice at the time and he’s surprised by her now, lying so still, face flat against the pillow.

  Billy slumps off and gets a towel from the bathroom. When he comes back out, she hasn’t changed position and her underwear’s still around her knees. He leaves the towel at her side and takes a shower, soaping up hard in very hot water, but he doesn’t feel altogether rinsed until he urinates. He listens at the door and doesn’t hear a sound. He turns off the light and hides awhile longer.

  When he finally eases out, Sheri isn’t there.

  He finds her downstairs beneath a blanket on the couch, in the middle of the hall where they had to move the furniture. She’s tighter than a pill bug, curled toward the cushions. He can tell that she’s awake.

  “Sher?” Billy says.

  When she doesn’t move or speak, he gets a feeling like he killed her. He stares a minute longer and retreats upstairs, knowing it’ll stew until they talk and hash it out. The house is so still it’s like he’s standing underwater. He’s exhausted but he’s wired. He’ll be up all night. He has to do something but he can’t leave the room, can’t eat or watch TV with Sheri on the couch. So he slaps himself repeatedly, hard across the cheek, hoping she can hear how terrible he feels.

  * * *

  Henry, Nan, and Joan share a supermarket cart, and while the sisters choose ingredients for brownies, Henry hums a melody they all recognize but can’t identify. They spoke about the tune in aisle three, more than once, and when Henry couldn’t name it Nan insisted that he stop. But the melody’s persisted in their heads, especially since Henry keeps forgetting not to hum, and it’s nostalgically entwined with everything around them, from the muffiny aroma of the bakery to the little blue turkey on the box of Bell’s seasoning.

  “Henry,” Nan says.

  “What? Shoot, sorry.”

  “It’s a Christmas song,” Joan says.

  Henry’s swayed for a moment by a passing whiff of cinnamon.

  “It’s not a Christmas song,” Nan says. “We need vanilla.”

  “It’s Bob Carmichael,” Joan declares, and the name assumes a yuletide glow, like Bing Crosby or Johnny Mathis, so familiar that at first Henry’s certain she’s correct: the song’s a Bob Carmichael holiday standard.

  Bob says hi and snaps him to attention. He ambles down the aisle with his boys, Danny and Ethan, leaning his weight against the cart even though it’s virtually empty: a single loaf of Wonder Bread, half a dozen eggs.

  Nan addresses them but doesn’t lose her supermarket game face: pleasantries are fine, but let’s remember why we’re here.

  “How are you, Bob?” she asks.

  “I’m good, good,” he says, the double good resonating powerfully with Henry. Bob greets Joan and compliments her sweater; she almost gets teary with appreciative delight. “How’s the house hunt going?”

  “Peg’s doing her best,” Nan says.

  “She always does,” Bob agrees, rather mournfully it seems. How’d a man like me, Henry almost hears him thinking, and a woman like her … he can hear him trailing off.

  “You remember Miss Finn and Miss Finn,” Bob says to his sons.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi, Miss Finn.”

  “Hello, Danny,” Nan says. “Hello, Ethan.”

  “You’re getting tall,” Joan says. “You look like first and second graders no
w.”

  “They’re going into second and fourth,” Bob says.

  “Are you?” Joan asks, widening her eyes.

  The boys shuffle at the cart, stealing glances at the mailman.

  “You’re Henry Cooper,” Bob says, growing serious but not at all cold. He shakes Henry’s hand and says, “We ought to clear the air.”

  “Mr. Carmichael…”

  “Bob, call me Bob. Listen, Henry, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this”—whispering now in front of the boys—“goddamn lawsuit. I’d have dropped the whole thing the day we cashed the Allstate check. Honestly, the house is even better since the renovations, whatever anybody keeps saying. But ‘anybody’ says we have to sue, Allstate says we have to sue … It’s nothing I’m happy about.”

  “You’re suing the postal service, not me directly,” Henry says, lowering his head and looking up through his eyebrows. “I hope you know I’d pay you out of pocket if I had it.”

  Nan hits his ankle with the bumper of the cart. She’s warned him not to talk this way, even with a person as innocuous as Bob.

  “I never got a chance to apologize to you personally,” Henry says.

  “Let me stop you right there,” Bob tells him, holding up a hand traffic-cop style. “I understand you’ve already talked to Peg. That’s enough for all of us, far as I’m concerned. You’re helping Nan and Joan, I understand you’re helping Sam Bailey. I’d just as soon call it water over the bridge, or under the dam, or whatever you like.”

  “Over the bridge,” Henry says, and Nan just throws in the towel and starts reading a box of chocolate. “So these are your sons,” he adds, standing back to formally size them up.

  “This is Danny,” Bob says, putting his hand behind the smaller boy’s head. “And this is Ethan.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Henry says. “I’m sorry about the fire.”

  Ethan nods.

  “None of our stuff got burned,” Danny adds.

  “Tell me something now. You guys had a swing set, right?”

  Danny bites his lip; Ethan says yeah.

  “What about bikes?” Henry asks, widening his stance to more vigorously brainstorm. “You could go wherever you want.”