Fellow Mortals: A Novel

by Mahoney, Dennis

  “She had me nail the trapdoor of the tree house shut,” Bob says. “She’d been saying all along that climbing wasn’t safe, then Henry came along and proved her right. I’ll tell you a secret, though,” he adds, with such a tantalizing look that the Finns lean forward in their chairs. “Danny and Ethan must have climbed up and gotten that football. I don’t know when, and I haven’t told this to Peg, but I found it in their room. How about that? Even I was scared to climb that tree.”

  They ponder this awhile, looking outside. They’ve been here for over an hour, but with the leaf bombs, jumped-in piles, and nonstop shedding of the maple, the boys have cleared very little of the lawn and only a handful of bags are twist-tied full. Nan’s delighted with their progress. At this rate, they’ll have to come next week, too.

  “How are you two bearing up?” Bob asks, giving Joan particular attention.

  Joan’s flustered by a question that pertains to herself. They’ve been focusing on Ava every day since the accident, rarely giving thought to any struggles of their own. Henry’s death is still a shock, needle-bright when it stings, and she hasn’t found any consolation in her prayers.

  “I don’t understand it,” Joan says, looking down. “He was such a good man.”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” Nan says. “We had a good house. That didn’t make it fireproof.”

  “I think about that,” Bob says. “We’re all afraid of heart attacks and car wrecks, and then it’s something like a ball or a fifty-cent cigar. Mysterious ways ain’t the half of it. And then the article they wrote…”

  “I sent a letter to the editor,” Nan says, referring to a story in the Waterbury Times. The writer hadn’t openly declared that it was fate, but there had been a line—he had used the word “logic”—that had almost seemed to justify Henry’s dying on Arcadia. “A journalist’s opinion doesn’t suddenly explain it.”

  “Where’s the meaning in it, then?” Joan whispers to herself.

  “We give it meaning if we really need to have it. What else can Sam and Ava do? What did we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Joan says.

  They talk awhile longer and the boys come inside with a clatter of doorknobs and hinges, flooding the kitchen with cold air and daylight and leaves, the color in their faces unbelievable to Nan, Joan, and Bob, who’ve grown accustomed in the gloom to one another’s pallor.

  “We’re done,” Danny says.

  Incredibly it’s true: the yard’s raked clean and all the bags are in a row. They join the company and talk, swallow cocoa and cookies and remind the Finns powerfully of Henry, how his appetite radiated more than it consumed. The boys are comfortable today, a far cry from their shyness in the supermarket, not only answering questions but asking about the Finns’ house, the framed puzzles on the wall, the other kinds of work—like snow shoveling and spring cleaning—that the sisters might hire them to do.

  They stay another thirty minutes, well beyond requirement. Finally the sisters make excuses to release them. Bob cleans up and stacks the dishes on the counter while the boys get their coats and struggle with their laces.

  “It’s good you’re learning knots,” Nan says. “Too many kids are growing up with Velcro on their shoes.”

  Joan hands them each a twenty and a brownie for the road. The brothers say thanks and then, unprompted by their father, Ethan shakes hands and Danny hugs them at the waist. The hugs are delicate and quick, lacking any strength, but they’re enough to give the Finns a noticeable lift.

  * * *

  The woods are stripped except for the pines and a few late-season maples, and the fallen leaves make the ground intimate and warm, as if the trees have come down to Sam’s level and he’s close, at last, to learning some elemental secret of the place.

  He’s eaten twice a week in Nan and Joan’s kitchen, and he finally has a cell phone and never turns it off. They call each other often, sharing news, trading notes, talking constantly of Ava: how she is, what she needs. He saw her every day following the funeral, less frequently of late and yet prepared at any hour, like today when she just needs company for lunch.

  He’s built a fire in the clearing, a welcome light to greet her, and he sees her on the trail through the bare-bone trees. She looks petite walking in, almost like a Finn. He would have met her at the street but she asked him not to come, preferring to hike the quarter mile alone—an urge he understands and hopes will do her good.

  Wing runs ahead and Sam claps him over, where he’s treated to a handful of Canadian bacon. He’s been clingier of late, not as openly rambunctious, but he’s glad seeing Sam and being in the woods. He’s on his own during workdays and waits for Ava’s car, and he’s always disappointed when she comes home alone. Every morning he’s convinced that Henry’s in the kitchen, in the yard, in the bathroom, right around the corner.

  “Gone,” Ava tells him. “Daddy isn’t here.”

  And with all the repetition, he’s begun to understand. Waiting at the window doesn’t bring him anymore. Maybe Henry’s here, Wing suddenly decides, and he’s off like a shot, round the cabin and the trees. He returns, panting hard with a dullness to his fur, and then he settles in the leaves and shivers near the flames.

  Ava, knowing better, has the same intuition, and she looks around the clearing like he really might appear. Sam hugs her and they set a couple chairs by the fire. He’s appraising her; she knows it when he doesn’t really look.

  Her tan’s worn away. She’s lost weight without trying and she looks like a widow when she sees herself in mirrors. Have her breasts always sagged? Has her hair always hung this bodiless and drab? Her appetite’s gone and sometimes, hours after dinner, she wakes up feeling like she got herself drunk. She spent a while last night dry-heaving at the toilet and the bathroom lights made her panicky and cold. Eventually she curled up fetal on the bath mat, Wingnut vigilant and breathing at her side.

  Other nights she cries incessantly or doesn’t cry at all. She feels the stupor of exhaustion lying wide awake, or grows incredibly alert and can’t perform the simplest tasks, like reading a magazine or brushing her teeth. In the nights she really sleeps, she dreams of everything but Henry. When she wakes she likes to fool herself, pretending he’s alive, fleshing out stories and entire conversations. She’s admitted this to Sam. He’s told her that it’s normal and they’ve fallen into sharing their imaginary lives.

  “We had an argument today.”

  “What’d you fight about?” he asks.

  “I don’t remember. It was one of those fights. He put his dirty socks in a basket of clean laundry,” she decides on the spot. “He apologized and gave me that grammar-school frown. But I couldn’t let it go after getting so mad, so I scolded him some more and let him suffer for a while.”

  The overcast sky makes the fire twice as colorful. Ava puts her foot right against the flames. Her shoe begins to steam but she doesn’t feel the heat; it fascinates her, watching it and toeing at the log.

  “I pretended I caught Laura cheating on me,” Sam says. “She’d gotten home from work and fallen right asleep. Her clothes were on the floor, and there was something in the way she’d left them on the rug … they looked, I don’t know. Used. Like someone else had handled them. I fished through her pockets and found a note, signed with another man’s name. Ridiculous.” He smiles. “Digging up proof.”

  He adds a fresh-split log and waits for it to catch, the wood impervious at first, two splinters flaring up but all the rest of it intact. Then the bark curls off, white-yellow when it burns, and the fire dims orange and the log turns black.

  “I imagined him, a doctor at the hospital,” he says. “Salt-and-pepper hair, really fit. He had a silver watch and perfect hands, a surgeon’s hands, and he did something outdoorsy on the weekends, like kayaking. He and Laura had coffee in the cafeteria. She admired him. He was a great guy, really decent, and he appreciated Laura somehow—made her feel good in some necessary way. And one night they went in a room, some little offi
ce in the hospital, and held each other close for two or three minutes. They didn’t talk and didn’t kiss. All they did was hug, and when I pictured it, she looked so beautiful and small. Holdable,” he says. “I’ve thought of it a lot.”

  Ava takes her foot from the fire, and it’s only when she plants it on the ground that her shoe feels dangerously hot. Overhead, where the canopy had been so full, the sky feels enormous with its high white clouds, and the light looks pale—more factual than warm.

  “I think about the morning at the pond,” Ava says, watching very closely out of the corner of her eye. He seems both rigid and entirely relaxed, as if he’s dreaded this but long ago resigned himself to facing it.

  “I’m sorry it happened,” Sam says.

  “I’m not asking for an apology.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Of course I did,” she says.

  Sam presses on his temples, leaning forward in the chair. Ava slumps and her tears start drying from the fire, stiffening her cheeks and reddening her eyes. He reaches over the arm of her chair, prying through her interlocked fingers in her lap, and she doesn’t pull away when he takes her by the hand. Wingnut stands, noticing her tears, and there’s a decency about them, in the way that they surround her.

  “We loved him,” Sam says. “He would have liked us here today.”

  She loops her hair around her finger, absentmindedly at first but continuing to twist until her fingertip’s white and strands begin popping at the roots.

  “I started making half-pots of coffee,” Ava whispers.

  “I don’t even drink it anymore,” Sam says.

  She contracts toward her knees, still clutching at his hand, pretending that it’s Henry’s and they’re sitting in the yard.

  “Listen,” Sam says. “Why don’t we have Thanksgiving here at the cabin. We’ll invite Nan and Joan … see if my new stove can cook a little turkey.”

  “I’d like that,” she says, warming at the thought. “I’ve been scared of Thanksgiving all month.”

  “So have I.”

  23

  Ava’s in the produce section of the supermarket picking potatoes. The air’s ripe with too much off-season vegetable and fruit, and the feel of the potato makes her think about the burial. She puts it down and wipes her hand, and when she leans against the cart for a moment of support, it rolls a few feet and forces her to walk. She turns the corner into the pharmacy aisle and there’s Peg Carmichael carrying a basket full of yogurt. They’re at opposite ends of the aisle, Peg reading vitamin jars, Ava drawn forward by the natural momentum.

  The market turns brighter, almost clinically fluorescent, and the floor has the high bright luster of a hospital. Peg sees her coming and clutches a jar of chewable iron. She doesn’t look away or feign familiarity but waits, inexpressively, to gauge the situation. Ava steers the cart directly at her hip.

  When they’re close enough to talk, neither woman speaks but there’s a mutual appraisal, instantaneous and sharp. Peg’s professionally minted—pantsuit and heels, hair immaculately bobbed—but she’s exhausted and her makeup’s thick to hide a zit.

  “I don’t know the right thing to say.” Peg sighs. “I wish it hadn’t happened. From the bottom of my heart, I wish that none of it had happened.”

  Ava nods, hearing nothing she can rightly contradict. Peg wasn’t at the funeral but her family had attended, and Danny and Ethan had sent her a drawing of Henry standing in the tree house. She keeps it on the fridge and sees it every day.

  “How are your sons?”

  “Shaken up,” Peg says. “Between the fire and … the accident. They really aren’t themselves. I’m calling different therapists.”

  Ava twists the handle of the cart until it squeaks. She needs a bathroom soon and hopes the burbling isn’t audible.

  “Please thank them for the picture and the card,” Ava says. “Henry spoke of them a lot. He was always thrilled to see them.”

  “Mm,” Pegs says. She puts the iron in her basket.

  “If there’s anything I can do,” Ava finds herself saying.

  “No,” Peg says. “No, you’ve all done enough.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I appreciate the offer—”

  “What do you mean we’ve done enough?”

  Peg frowns condescendingly, summoning her tact, as if responding to a question any child might have answered.

  “I’ve tried to move my family past the fire,” she replies. “I even compromised, against my better judgment, when I let Sam Bailey and your husband build that fort in the yard. But I didn’t want help. I never asked for it at all. I wish to God he hadn’t climbed that tree…”

  “You could have stopped him.”

  “How?” Peg asks, almost chuckling at the thought.

  Ava moves around the cart, cornering her in, pressing up tight until they feel each other’s breath. Peg backs away as far as she can manage and her heel taps hard against the bottom of the shelves.

  “I’m not going to have this conversation. Out of respect for your loss—”

  “Shut up,” Ava says. “Shut your mouth before I slap it.”

  Peg trembles like a windowpane ready to explode.

  Ava thinks about the boys, the civil suit, the tree house. She thinks about the football stranded in the tree. They listen to a cart pass behind them in the aisle and she wonders what it looks like, two grown women close enough to kiss. It seems to her that Peg has the same self-awareness. She glances over Ava’s left shoulder with a blush and then she murmurs something short and difficult to hear.

  “What was that?”

  Peg pales until her zit glows red.

  “What?” Ava asks, menacingly now.

  Peg firms up, taller by a head. She pushes out her breast as if to say, “Who are you?” and scowls like it’s all been the raving of a widow. It’s terribly effective—she’s imperious and beautiful, rising like a woman who’s been boorishly affronted. She pushes Ava backward with the corner of her basket, walking off with a sniff and a haughty recomposure.

  Ava can’t think, can’t move or look away. It’s as though a kind of paralyzing fear has come upon her. Then she fixes on the jar of iron supplements and says, “I hope you have anemia.”

  But Peg has turned the corner.

  * * *

  “What happened?” Nan asks.

  Ava clomps up the hall with her hands like Wait, as if the Finns have come to her house and stormed through the door. They’ve never seen her this way, so furious and raw. She can’t quit moving and her eyes skit around. Joan’s shaken by her force, unsure of what to do, waiting in the living room for Nan to calm her down.

  “I saw Peg.”

  They’ve been dreading this for weeks, the inevitable run-in, praying that it wouldn’t go as badly as they feared.

  “Where?”

  “At the market, just now. I left my groceries in the cart and drove straight here.”

  “What hap—”

  “She isn’t even sorry that he died!” Ava yells. “It was all fake sympathy and bullshit and that was just the start. She talked about her boys, how hard it’s been for Danny and Ethan, but she didn’t even care about them. She made it sound like one more problem on her plate, like Henry dying at her house was bad enough, and now her kids are giving her a headache about it. And she didn’t want to talk out of respect for my loss. She’s furious her siding got burnt, but I’m the one dragging things on, still complaining that my husband died…”

  Ava’s dripping from the rain, scarlet at the neck, everything about her scalding and alarmed. She continues this way for several more minutes, repeating herself, embellishing the scene, growing wilder and less and less coherent till she finally sputters out and shivers in the damp.

  “Come and sit,” Nan says, drawing her inside.

  By the time they reach the kitchen, Ava’s sobbing on her arm, trembling in the warmth and indescribably petite.

  Joan helps her jacket off
, hangs it up to dry, and guides her to a chair with a hand-knit cushion. Ava huddles with her hands pressed between her knees. They’ve had the oven on today; the kitchen’s warm enough to sweat. Nan drapes a blanket from the sofa on her shoulders. Joan starts a kettle and prepares a pot of tea and no one talks until it’s brewed and steaming in the mugs.

  Ava picks one up and holds it by her chin. She cradles it and sips when the boil simmers down.

  “I’m sorry,” Nan says, worn with disappointment. “This kind of thing is like a heartworm. You have to let it go.”

  “I can’t forgive her,” Ava says.

  “I regret never saying it to Henry,” Nan admits. She swallows and her wattle has a noticeable quake. “I thanked him but I never really told him I forgave him.”

  “Henry tried,” Ava says. She grips her mug until her knuckles pale. “Why does Peg get a pass? Why does she have a husband? She shouldn’t be a mother after everything she’s done.”

  Nan’s chastened by her vehemence and has to look away, seeming feebler than her sister and reluctant to respond. Ava stares out the window to the lawn behind the kitchen, where the grass has a smattering of new red leaves. The blanket and the tea begin to soothe her anger and she’s thoroughly cocooned, past the point of moving.

  “It keeps getting worse,” Ava whispers to herself.

  Joan holds her arm with a liver-spotted hand. “I used to be afraid,” she says, “especially in winter. There were months when I would worry that the spring wouldn’t come.”

  “She was clinically depressed,” Nan quietly explains.

  “I was living on my own. I was terribly alone.”

  With the passing of the rain, the yard shifts hues—amber when the sun nearly penetrates the clouds, pewter in the shade, dimming and suffusing. The effect makes its way through the windows of the kitchen, altering the colors of the table and the walls.

  “I remember one night,” Joan says. “It must have been in February … maybe early March. PBS ran a show about the climate and the glaciers. They said another ice age could happen anytime. It was such a hard winter, I was worried it had come. I didn’t feel safe until the crocuses were up.”