by Deb Caletti
“I hear a car,” Miz June said.
Harold scooted back toward the window, peeked out again. “It’s them. Delores today.”
“Who’s Delores?” I asked my mother.
“One of Lillian’s daughters. Nadine is the other one.” Lillian was a neighbor of Peach’s and a recent newcomer to the group. Her daughters brought her, Mom told me later, as a part of a “stimulation program” they had developed to help improve Lillian’s condition after her stroke.
“That sports car is ridiculous,” Harold reported. “The poor nurse is jammed in the backseat with the wheelchair.”
“The nurse is a bimbo,” Mrs. Wong said.
“All skull and no brains,” Peach said.
Harold sat down quickly, opened the book they were reading on his lap as if he were a character on stage taking his place. “Delores is a bitch,” he said.
I wondered how anyone would be able to get a person and a wheelchair up Miz June’s porch steps, but it apparently wasn’t a problem, and when the trio came into view from Miz June’s living room windows, I could see why. Lillian’s hair was as white as the wicker chairs on Miz June’s porch, and she probably weighed about as much as one of them too. Delores was short but square and strong, with hair sprayed to attention and a blue-and-white shirt with a faux nautical feel. Ship ahoy! She and Nurse Bimbo had no problem lifting Lillian and setting her bones in the wheelchair. Delores dripped authority—you got the sense that Lillian’s stroke had now settled an old score between them, altered the playing field in a way that spelled victory for Delores. There was a slice of glee in the way she situated Lillian’s wheelchair in the circle of book club members and placed the Whitney book, Life Times Two, onto Lillian’s lap. One thing was for sure: Delores would always have the last word now. The stroke had left Lillian speechless except for an occasional sound, and her left arm and leg were dead at her side. She looked as unbearably silent and weary as the trays of pansies at Johnson’s Nursery left too long without water—drooped and limp, there not by will but only by nature’s thin strings. Lillian was so wispy that my heart wanted to break, the way it does when you see fragile things. Nurse Bimbo waited out on the porch, cracked open a can of Diet Coke that magically appeared in her hand. She must have known that Delores would be busy for a while playing Good Daughter in front of us, so she first slurped at the top of the can, then tipped back her long neck and drank that Diet Coke at leisure.
“It was very kind of you to indulge Mother this way,” Delores said. She placed a folded afghan over Lillian’s legs. It was too hot for an afghan. Even Lillian’s crane fly legs didn’t need that blanket, probably made by Delores, in red, white, and blue yarns. A patriotic afghan, which was pretty hilarious, if you asked me.
“You mean the book?” Mom said. “It wasn’t just for Lillian. We all wanted to read it. A Charles Whitney is always worth reading. I’d highly recommend it.”
Beauty, Miz June’s white cat, sauntered in and rubbed herself against Delores’ legs. Little white hairs clung to her navy polyester pants.
“Mother is the reader in the family, as you know.”
“I remember you said that she met Charles Whitney long ago. That must have made a lasting impression,” my mother said.
“I shook Neil Diamond’s hand once, and I wouldn’t wash it for a week,” Delores said.
Delores left and took Nurse Bimbo with her. I could see Delores brushing the cat hair off her pants, her big butt pointing upward, round as the top of a breakfast muffin. Nurse Bimbo crushed her Diet Coke can with one hand with power-lifter strength as they went down the steps.
“Lillian met the author of the book?” I asked.
“Lillian is not an umbrella stand,” Peach said. “Ask her. She understands everything perfectly. Don’t you, dear?” Lillian’s eyes looked out at us without blinking. They were a bit like a baby’s eyes, keen and alert and watchful on the other side of that window of nonlanguage. For a second, the baby seat in the back of my father’s van flashed in my mind. The baby, a sister, took on a moment of realness. A baby who saw things, reached for things, listened to the rhythm of my father’s voice and knew whose voice it was.
I did as Peach said. “Did you meet the author of the book?” Lillian looked at me with those same eyes, then nodded. I started to think about how Lillian had once done all kinds of things—watered plants and fed babies and cooked a holiday meal. I learned later from Mom that Lillian had been bringing Whitney’s first book, The Present Hours, to every meeting since she first came.
“She more than met him, if you get my drift,” Peach said. “No one can convince me otherwise.”
“Don’t let her tease you, Lillian,” Anna Bee said.
“She had his picture on her nightstand!” Peach said. She scooted to the edge of her chair, trying to get her point to us more quickly.
“So you said a hundred times,” Harold said.
“Maybe it just looked like him,” my mother said.
“She had his picture on her nightstand.” Peach settled back on her chair again. “I saw it there, didn’t I, Lillian?” Lillian nodded. “She was selling an old television, and I went to look at it. We didn’t see each other much, did we? I’m sorry I wasn’t a better neighbor. You always seemed to like to keep to yourself.”
“What did you need another television for?” Anna Bee asked.
“It wasn’t for me. Mark and Justine had just gotten married,” Peach said. “I was trying to be helpful. They ended up getting a good buy at Costco. Anyway,” she said to me. “The next time I was there, to see her after her stroke, it was gone. Poof. Replaced with a photo of Walter on their wedding day.”
“Well, Charles Whitney was no doubt a lot nicer to look at,” Miz June said. She had put on her reading glasses and was giving the photo on the jacket cover a good look.
“Woo woo,” Mrs. Wong fake-whistled her appreciation.
I leaned over and looked at Harold’s copy. I didn’t know what the fuss over his looks was about, but keep in mind, the guy was eighty. Charles Whitney looked both sweet and wise. His eyes were smile-crinkled though his expression was serious, his white beard was rough and like a sea captain’s in a children’s story. He was shown standing on a cliff at the edge of the sea, hand toward the brim of his cap, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow.
“The picture she had was in a frame,” Peach said. “And it disappeared. I’m surprised Delores and Nadine let her bring that Whitney book with her every time. I’m surprised it didn’t disappear. I don’t know why no one believes me that there’s more to this than meets the eye.”
I knew why no one believed her. We’d been hearing the stories for a long time. Once Peach had convinced the group that she saw a dead body in her neighbor’s yard. My mom even called the police. The dead body turned out to be a garbage bag full of old lawn chair cushions, and Mom says the policeman she talked to still winks and smiles whenever he sees her. And then there was the time that Peach had the group convinced that Adolph Vonheimer, an old library patron, was a former Nazi. There was his name, for one thing, but more importantly there was the swastika tattoo on his leg, which later turned out to be a particularly bad case of varicose veins, according to Miz June, who saw him in shorts at Tru-Value.
“I saw them try to take that book from her once,” Mrs. Wong said. “Nadine took it from her lap. Lillian clawed her arm like a cat with her good hand.” Beauty, speaking of cats, had settled on Mrs. Wong’s slippers.
“Lillian has strong hands. All those years of playing the piano.” Peach moved her fingers along imaginary keys in the air.
“Bravo for you,” Anna Bee clapped her hands in Lillian’s direction.
“You should have told us about this,” Miz June said to Mrs. Wong. “We need to keep our eye on Lillian. We have a responsibility as her friends.”
“Damn right. I would have given that Nadine something she’d remember,” Harold said. He put a fist in the air.
“Smell that manly power,
” Peach said. “Bam, boom.”
“We should have known this, though,” Anna Bee agreed. “It is a little suspicious.”
My mother let out a little groan. Our eyes met, and she rolled hers at me.
“Sorry, sorry,” Mrs. Wong said. “Next time I will let you know. I will watch like a hawk.”
“I hope Neil Diamond washed his hand with Lysol after touching that Delores,” Harold said.
The Whitney book was a thick one—it seemed right that a life of eighty years should not be easily held in your hand—and my mother and the Casserole Queens had agreed to read it in quarters. That day the group discussed the first section: seeing Charles Whitney through a childhood with a demanding mother who’d turned to bookmaking and husband-hunting to get by; his stint with the merchant marines at the start of World War II; and the big band dances and bouts of drunken fights and women at various ports around the world during the war. All these explosions, of one form or another, and Charles Whitney’s discovery that writing was one way of ducking for cover. I wanted to go home and read it right away.
“His central problem seemed to be one of longing,” Miz June said.
“Everyone’s central problem is longing,” Harold shouted from the bathroom over the monsoon sound of his own peeing. Harold drank too much of Miz June’s tea.
“There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with longing,” Anna Bee said. “Longing has led to great things. Every great discovery and accomplishment has its base in longing. It’s only when you look to someone else to fill that longing that there are problems.”
“She read ahead,” Harold shouted from the bathroom again. He had great hearing for an old guy.
“How would you know if you didn’t read ahead too?” Peach shouted back.
“Both of you read ahead,” Miz June said. She probably did too.
“At any rate, love shouldn’t be the answer. It’s not even the big question,” Anna Bee said. “It’s more . . .” Anna Bee’s hand trembled gently as she held her teacup, like a blade of grass in a slight breeze.
“Background music,” Miz June said. “The perfect background music.”
“Setting?” my mother ventured. I heard a flush, then the faucet running, and then Harold appeared.
“The yeast, but not the flour,” he said.
“Christ, give me a hankie,” Peach said.
“Background music,” Miz June insisted. “Benny Goodman.” She snapped her fingers.
“Well, I for one know someone who let love take the place of everything else,” Harold said.
“Mrs. Wilson-now-Mrs. Thrumond,” Anna Bee said quickly. The tag was sticking out of her sweatshirt.
“Ditching us the moment she got married.” Mom had made Chip Jr. and me go to the wedding at the Senior Center. Mrs. Wilson-now-Mrs. Thrumond wore a white dress and a veil, and some old guy who looked barely alive played the accordion. The little plastic people on top of the cake had shiny black hair and looked about twenty. Mr. Thrumond had to sit down and rest after their first dance.
“Never trust a man,” Mrs. Wong said. “Mr. Wong cheats on me every chance he gets. Men are trouble.” Poor Mr. Wong. According to my mother, he was as faithful as Mrs. Wong’s slippers, formed to the very curves of her feet and willing to walk a million miles for her. He’d never had the full love of Mrs. Wong, or of anyone else, for that matter.
“Amen to that,” Peach said.
“You were happily married for fifty years,” Miz June said. “I’m not sure why you’re agreeing.”
“He left me,” Peach said.
“He died,” Miz June said.
“Same thing,” Peach said.
“I’d like to read one more passage before we end,” my mother said. “It marks the transition, the turning point in the book and in Charles Whitney’s life. V.J. Day 1942. It’s the passage just after Charles sees Rose for the second time that day—imagine the odds? In that chaos of New York City.
‘There was something about her mouth that made me feel possibilities,’” my mother read. “‘The way a train ticket holds possibilities, the way a boat docked at sunset does, the way a voice on the radio announcing victory does. A mouth can have that. It can seem brave, and bold. Finite and infinite. After a war, you need both of those things. “Why don’t you kiss me,” she said. “Celebrate a new world.” And so I did. I could not forget that kiss. I still cannot. I put my fingertips to her face. Indeed, the world changed that day, but the change in my life was no smaller or less significant. That moment took my sorrow and made it swarm the streets in victory, shouting in joy and rightness, and from that I have never quite recovered.’”
We were all quiet for a moment. My mother always did read beautifully.
“Lovely,” Anna Bee said.
“Refreshing. Now that’s the way it should be. Today everything is sex, sex, sex,” Peach said. “Love today is undulating. Oh, no.”
We followed Peach’s eyes. Lillian had begun to cry.
“It was your undulating comment,” Harold said.
“It was not, you idiot. It was the book.”
Tears rolled down Lillian’s wrinkled face; her thin white hair seemed as soft as dandelion fluff that might blow away with a puff of air. She was too fragile for pain. The wristwatch she wore seemed cruel, like a KICK ME sign stuck on someone’s back. A lump grew in my throat. I was embarrassed and ashamed to be young and witnessing what should be private.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” my mother said.
“I will get a tissue,” Mrs. Wong said, and got up.
“Lillian?” Peach said, and patted Lillian’s small shoulder.
Lillian raised her good hand from her lap. It trembled as she moved it toward her face, which she touched with her fingertips. Harold looked down at his lap.
“Didn’t I tell you people?” Peach said softly. She kissed the top of Lillian’s head, the little white poof. “It’s all right, dear.”
“Harold!” Mrs. Wong shrieked from the bathroom. Herro! it sounded like. She appeared in the doorway, tissues in one hand, her blouse and the front of her pants splotched with water. Apparently Harold had moved on to the second phase of his two-part faucet plan, and had been having some fun with the masking tape again.
“It wasn’t me,” Harold lied.
It was true that I didn’t think about Travis Becker the whole time I was there with the Casserole Queens. It was not just distraction, though, the way it was with the Frankenstein movie. Maybe all of the years in that room just made the world seem bigger. Being with them had been like sleep, the way it steals your mind sure as a thief and takes you to this land you both are and are not fully a part of. And then you wake up, of course, and there is the life you know, which you look at blind and blinking, like you’ve just come out of the movie theater.
I couldn’t sleep that night. The moon was nearly full and it was a hot night, and I stuck various parts of me out of the sheet to see what they would look like in the zebra stripes made by the moonlight coming through the slats of the venetian blinds. I gave my legs zebra stockings and my arms zebra gloves, and my foot a zebra boot. I turned over my pillow to the cool side, a fresh start on a new attempt to sleep, but that didn’t work either. Thoughts nagged at me—my father, a baby. Charles Whitney on that crowded New York street. But more than that, one particular thought nagged at me, and it was the image of that phone number written on my arm, that blackness like a vein under my skin, coursing with blood and with a life of its own.
I imagined my finger on those numbers, could see them glowing green on the phone in the night, a loud buzz of the dial tone in my ear. I could imagine the ringing in Travis’ dark house, breaking his sleep in his turret room. He would know it was me, of course. I did not think about what the Casserole Queens had said about longing. To an untrained eye, need and love were as easily mistaken for each other as the real master’s painting and a forgery. All I could do right then was feel this wrenching hole in my stomach and heart and call it lov
e. It felt something like Travis’s hand on my head, pushing me down, down under that water.
I rolled over for the hundredth time and realized that there was a sliver of yellow light under my doorway. Someone was up, and after a few minutes I decided to investigate. Before I knocked at her bedroom door, I could hear that my mother had the computer in her bedroom on. It was an old one; it had a loud hum that was annoying and comforting. The thing was heavy enough to anchor a small ship, but she’d gotten it free from the library when they got newer models.
“Come on in,” my mother said. “Did I wake you?” Her hair was frazzled and looked confused and cranky to be awake at that hour. She wore a huge white T-shirt (a pang—I hoped it wasn’t an old one of my father’s) and her glasses.
“It’s just hot,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“Something stupid. Ridiculous. A stupid idea.”
We McQueens were hard on ourselves.
“What?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m thinking about Lillian. And Charles Whitney. What Peach said. I’m doing a search on him.”
“Uh oh.”
“I know it, I know it. They get me every time. I vowed I wouldn’t let it happen again. I told myself, Remember the dead body. Remember the dead body. It’s crazy.”
“Maybe it’s not so crazy.”
“Something about that book has really gotten to me too. I feel awake again. For the first time since your father told me about the baby. It makes you remember that this is only one chapter in a long life.”
“It would be so great if Lillian really did know Charles.”
“Oh, God, you see? That’s exactly how I get into these things. Come on, Charles Whitney? I’m sure Peach is just concocting a little excitement for her life. Again. She wants to be Miss Marple.”
“Why should we think that just because we know Lillian, she shouldn’t know someone famous?”
