by Deb Caletti
“We don’t even know Lillian. She’s like an unopened box.”
“Who knows? She could have been someone important in his life.”
“I had a friend in high school whose mother claimed to have dated Elvis. We all made fun of her.”
“Maybe she really did.”
“It just seems so improbable. A regular life, a regular person, intersecting with something large. Fiction, right?”
“Let me know if you find anything.”
“Ha. You’re hooked too.”
“Think dead body.”
“I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” she said.
I knew exactly what she meant.
I called him, of course.
“That didn’t take long,” Travis Becker said. His voice was like honey over the phone. I wished he were beside me; I wanted to taste that voice in my mouth.
We didn’t have much to say to each other. Talking wasn’t mostly what we were about. We listened to each other’s breath in the phone. Travis told me he wanted to see me. He had something to show me. I told him no more going to other people’s houses when they weren’t there. I didn’t, couldn’t, use the words breaking in. He said okay. He said it wasn’t like that—he wanted me to go to his house that coming weekend, Saturday night, after nine. I told him I would think about it. We both knew, I guess, that that meant I would go.
For a few days I was like a chocolate in a box, looking well behaved and perfectly in place, all the while harboring a secret center. The guilty knowledge I held of a wrongdoing about to occur made me brim with goodwill, as if already trying to atone for what I hadn’t even done yet. Might as well get a jump start.
My intentions screamed. I thought they did, anyway. I gave off a thousand clues that I was only going through the motions of living until Saturday night came. I figured that anyone who knew me well would just have to take one look at me to know that an imposter had taken my place. My eyes had a way of wandering off, seeking that figure in black that I felt might be watching me from anywhere. At Johnson’s Nursery, I would try to hold my focus, try, try, yet my gaze was pulled from Libby as she spoke to me, moving slowly toward that greenhouse and the glass panes where the orchids sat, tender and open. Libby’s mouth was moving, her hands gesturing, the words Corsican mint and weeping larch and pink wisteria flowing to my ears dreamily, like the words of an ancient, unfamiliar language. I had begun to doubt that anyone really knew me, or ever really paid attention. No one noticed a thing.
My mother was also obviously struggling with intentions of her own—for the last three days a letter addressed to my father sat on the table by the front door, stamp affixed in the corner and ready to go. She hadn’t yet made any moves to fix the hole in the kitchen. It gaped, open and hurting, and the bad part was I was getting used to the way it looked. Chip Jr., in what I guessed was an action meant to make us see the hole again, put an old G.I. Joe inside, facing out, as if he were a soldier in a bombed-out building in some war-torn country.
That Saturday afternoon my mother brought me to the Casserole Queens again. Just stick with it, she had said. They grow on you in ways I can’t explain. I went, though the guilt of premeditation dripped from me, I was sure, like sweat. I didn’t know what I was going to be doing that night—I didn’t even want to know, in case knowledge might burst that delicate bubble of anticipation—but I had plotted my escape, had planned my outfit. The bad thing was, I now felt accountable to the group of old folks, as well as to Libby and my Mom and Chip Jr. I guess if other people cared about you, then you ought to too.
“How are you doing, Harold?” I asked that afternoon as everyone gathered.
Harold was dressed smartly in his khaki shorts, with collared shirt tucked in crisply. For the first time I noticed the thick piece of pink plastic behind one ear. Hearing aids seemed such an invasion of dignity. Old age was such an invasion of dignity. Harold was holding Beauty, who was tucked up comfortably in his arms. He rubbed her head with one of his thumbs. “Exhausted. I have my son and his family visiting. My three-year-old granddaughter comes into my apartment for the first time. She looks around and says, ‘Nice place you got here, Grandpa.’” Harold chuckled.
I smiled. “She sounds cute.”
“Cute isn’t the half of it. She’s a tap dancer. Her mother’s got her in all these classes. She wears the tutu everywhere. Tap, tap tap, in the grocery store, on the kitchen floor, on the sidewalks. I got here two hours early to get some peace.”
“Look, Peach got her hair permed,” Anna Bee said. She stood behind Peach’s chair and patted her curls. “She hates it when I do this.”
“Get your damn hand off my head.” Peach sat in the cushy chair that I had sat in the last time. This time Peach had gotten there first.
“But it feels so sproingy,” Anna Bee said.
“Let me feel,” Miz June said. She was wearing a new silk scarf. She said she’d gotten it from a beau, a pursed-lipped word that made you think of bowler hats. She went and patted Peach’s head. “It is sproingy. Try it, Ruby.”
They were right. It was bouncy but soft. It reminded me of the poof on the top of Fowler’s poodle’s head.
“It feels like that hippie’s poodle,” Miz June said.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” I said.
“Goddamn it,” Peach said. But she didn’t move away. In fact, she kept her head very still. I think she liked the attention.
Harold came over. “Here, hold the cat,” he said to me. He transferred her to my arms. Something about passing a cat makes them seem to grow twice their length. Like passing an accordion or something.
“I want to feel,” Harold said.
“Over my dead body,” Peach said.
“Yippee,” Harold said, but he snuck a quick, mischievous pat before he went to answer the door.
“You’re late,” he said to Mrs. Wong.
She set down her bag and it landed with a clunk. “I had to follow that cheat Mr. Wong. When he goes out, I know what he is up to. Hanky-panky.”
“Did you catch him?” I asked. My mother glared in my direction. We weren’t supposed to encourage her.
“He went to the store. He bought stamps. This time,” she said. She took off her shoes, put on her red slippers over her knee-high nylons.
We waited around for Lillian. “I’d hate to start without her,” my mother said. We waited a while longer, and then my mother began, summarizing what they’d since read. Charles Whitney had met the love of his life, the woman he would only call Rose. After docking in New York and falling in love with Rose, he became ill with pneumonia, and Rose did a shocking thing for the time—she took him in to live with her at her apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, where she lived during the war, writing poetry and supporting herself through her job at a munitions factory. Rose nursed Charles, who wrote the first chapter of The Present Hours at that time; it was initially a short story, but sold as a novel a year later. Rose, apparently, was a passionate nurse, and it wasn’t just the infection in his lungs that made Charles short of breath and panting during their time together. “‘Everything about her left me breathless,’” my mother read. “‘Her beauty, her skin, her poetry, the abundance of spices in her bad cooking.’”
“I’m worried about Lillian,” Anna Bee interrupted.
“Me too,” Miz June said.
Mom sighed. “Me too.”
“We could go over there,” Peach said. “It did look quiet this morning.”
“I’ve got binoculars in my purse,” Mrs. Wong said.
“We’d better wait awhile,” my mother said.
My mother continued the travel through Charles Whitney’s life. Charles recuperated and found work on the waterfront. He’d asked Rose to marry him, but she had said no. Charles had drunk heavily during the war, and his habit had continued. Until he stopped she would not, could not, be his wife. He asked again, but she declined. She loved him, she said, more than. she had ever known was possible, but she would not recklessly hand him
her life. In a fit he would describe as a tantrum, he left Rose. He continued to write, and thought of her. A year later he had stopped drinking entirely. His stubborn, rejected heart did not allow him to call her. By the time he realized he could take it no more, another year had passed. He tracked down Rose through her family. The news devastated him. She had married an Army lieutenant the week before.
The phone rang. Miz June got up to answer it. Harold took advantage of this break and went to the kitchen to make tea. Miz June returned a moment later. “Ann? It’s Delores.”
My mother left the room to take the call. “Lillian’s not coming anymore,” Miz June told us.
“What?” Peach said.
“Delores said that last time had been too much for her. They took away her Whitney book. She said it was causing her mother too much upset.”
“Taking away the book was what upset her!” Anna Bee said.
“Afterward Lillian had pulled out all of the books on her shelf that she could reach.”
“She was angry,” Anna Bee said.
“She was looking for something,” Mrs. Wong said.
“She’s Rose. I know she’s Rose,” Peach said. “Can’t anyone else see what’s right in front of our faces? Names changed to protect the innocent.”
“Why does she have to be Rose? Charles had lots of lovers,” Anna Bee said.
“You read ahead!” Harold shouted from the kitchen.
“You read ahead,” Peach shouted.
“What? I can’t hear you,” Harold shouted. He was such a liar.
“Delores says that her mother’s mind is obviously going,” Miz June said.
My mother came back into the room, sighed. “They’re not letting Lillian come anymore.”
“We heard,” I said.
“She had his photo on her nightstand,” Peach said.
Harold came in with the tea, poured a few cups. I could see the peek of a tattoo under his shirtsleeve. My mother sat down. “I have something to tell you all.”
“You’re running off with the hippie librarian,” Harold said.
My mother ignored him. “I don’t even really know whether to say anything. In fact, it’s against my better judgment. But I found Lillian’s marriage certificate. She married Walter in 1948, the same year Rose wed. They married in New York. Walter was an Army lieutenant. I found him listed in the military records.”
“I told you,” Peach said.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. There were lots of Army lieutenants in New York after the war,” Harold said.
“I shouldn’t have even said anything,” my mother said.
“I’m going over to see her,” Peach said.
“Now, wait,” Mom said. “I want you to remember the dead body. I want you to remember poor Adolph Vonheimer.”
“Certainly, we do still have some reading to cover,” Anna Bee said.
“The moral of the story today is that love stinks,” Peach said. “Now let’s go.”
“You’re just bitter after the mass murderer,” Harold said.
“He wasn’t a murderer,” Peach said. “At least I don’t think so.”
“Peach entered into a correspondence with a gentleman through a newspaper advertisement. When he sent a photo, we noticed he was wearing prison coveralls,” Miz June explained.
“Car mechanics wear coveralls,” Peach said.
“They aren’t usually orange with ‘Department of Corrections’ on the pocket,” Harold pointed out.
“Those walks on the beach he mentioned in the ad were going to be a tad difficult to manage,” Miz June said.
“Not if he jumped over barbed wire and managed to avoid being shot by the guards,” Mrs. Wong said.
“Tea?” Harold said sweetly.
“I blame that asshole Henry for leaving me,” Peach said.
“He died,” Miz June and Mrs.Wong said together.
They sipped their tea. “At least you tried to move on, Peach. Henry’s been gone for a long time. Everyone else seems so eager to jump into love,” Anna Bee said. “Everyone is looking for themselves in someone else.”
“You-know-who was certainly eager,” Peach said.
“Mrs. Wilson-now-Mrs. Thrumond,” Mrs. Wong said.
“Couldn’t even stay in the book club a second after the ring was on her finger,” Harold said. “The husband was barely cold.”
“I married a cheater. He always goes behind my back for hanky-panky. Here’s what I say about love: Two Wongs don’t make a wight,” Mrs. Wong said.
Everyone groaned. “How many times do we have to hear that one?” Harold said.
“Sorry, sorry,” Mrs. Wong said. She still looked pleased with herself.
“Oh, my gracious!” Miz June said. “Your teeth!” she said to Mrs. Wong.
“What?” Mrs Wong said.
“You too!” Anna Bee pointed.
“Anna Bee, yours too.”
The ladies bared their teeth at us. They were stained a garish shade of blue. God knows how many soakings with denture cleaner it would take before they got that out.
“Harold!” Mrs. Wong shouted.
When we got back home, I had only an hour before I left for the night to meet Travis Becker. A great burst of guilty goodwill sent me outside, where Chip Jr. sat with Poe on the front lawn. He looked lonely. Chip Jr., not Poe. Chip Jr. was tearing off grass and putting it on Poe’s back.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
“What do you care?”
“Fine, never mind, then.”
We sat in silence for a moment and watched Poe get decorated with grass. Finally Chip Jr. said, “I was just wondering what dogs thought about.”
“Oh,” I said. “Easy. Food. Pooping in places they shouldn’t. What to chew up.”
“No, I mean, I wondered what they see.” He stopped putting grass on Poe. He had quite a nice green cape now.
I crouched down alongside Poe, in his same position. I put my chin low to the ground. The grass smelled good. “He sees his own paws, the fence, and the roof of Sydney’s house,” I said. “Mom’s old tennis racket you left on the lawn.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “What things look like through their eyes. Oh, never mind.” Chip Jr. often got frustrated with us mere mortals. I put my head against Poe, listened to his heart beating. It was a solid sound, but a scary one too. It made me remember that we are just a collection of working parts that could stop working at any time. I lifted my head.
“Let’s play Things I Hate,” I said. Chip Jr. loved that game.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“Why are you being so nice? You walk around with your eyes all funny for days and now you want to be nice.”
“What do you mean, funny?” Of course he had seen, I thought. He always saw when I thought no one did.
“You don’t look at anyone when they talk. You’re always looking around like those people you used to hate. The ones you always say talk to you but are looking around, hoping someone better will appear.”
I had the strongest image come to me then. Chip Jr. and me and Mom at the drive-in movies when there was still a drive-in movie left around here. The metal speaker hung from the edge of the window, and Chip Jr. and I were wearing our pajamas. The voices through the speaker were tinny and faraway. We were young enough that Chip Jr.’s pajamas had rocket ships printed on them and feet attached, the plastic feet that shish-shished when he walked. Chip Jr. sat snug right next to me, the three of us crammed into the front seat eating Red Vines and drinking cream soda. His breath was sweet, and he had red between his teeth from the licorice. When I turned around I could see the big looming screen of the movie behind us, not a Disney cartoon like we were watching, but a serious-looking adult one. It was large and mysterious and somehow removed in spite of the size, the lack of sound keeping you out of that world inhabited by the cars facing the other way.
For a moment I missed those rocket sh
ip pajamas something fierce. My heart felt like it could break. Poe got up, shook the grass off his back with something that resembled patience. For his good behavior, I patted his side. Also for my own sake—there was something very comforting and solid about the thup, thup sound of patting the side of a dog.
I looked at Chip Jr. for a long time. A good long look, so he knew it was him I saw. “I’m sorry,” I said. And then, “Things I Hate. Paper cuts.”
“Sore throats.”
“Those paper seats in the bathrooms. You get them all positioned and then they whoosh off when you go to sit. Or stick to your legs after you’ve been swimming.”
“We don’t use those too much.” He thought. “When that elastic on the sheet pops up from the corner of the bed.”
“I hate that.”
Chip Jr. pointed to his head. “Bang massacres.” My mother had given him a bad haircut. You could never trust my mother with the scissors, or hedge clippers, for that matter. It was true; Chip Jr.’s forehead had grown to embarrassingly huge proportions. He was calling it The Bang Massacre of July 27th.
“It’s not that bad,” I lied.
I looked at him, my brother with the glasses and the bad haircut and the odd way he had of watching out for me. He was always the one who noticed. I had the sudden longing to be back there in that car at the drive-in, jammed into the front seat next to those pajamas with the little balls of lint on them from so many washings, us passing the can of cream soda awkwardly to each other, our elbows maneuvering like people on a crowded dance floor. I wanted to see the movie reflecting in his and my mother’s eyes as they stared forward through the windshield. I wanted to look back over my shoulder where the other movie played, where mouths moved wrongly to the cartoon voices playing in our car. But most of all I wanted to turn back around again and face front, to be fully in the world we were immersed in, where the voices matched the moving lips, where everything fit just the way it should.
That night the air was cool and almost wet, the way it is when the clouds are stuffed with liquid but it hasn’t rained yet. Heavy, lethargic clouds had lain around all day, a sudden and surprising interruption of the energetic sunshine we’d had for days before. That’s what happens in the Northwest during the summer—manic-depressive weather. Sun and optimism and bathing suits and the confident, playful smell of sun lotion, and then bam, you wake up to the sound of the furnace going on and the dusty smell of warm air whooshing through vents that haven’t been used in a while. You have to put on socks, and the browning lawn looks relieved. Mrs. Wong and Anna Bee had brought their sweaters to the book club that day; both sweaters had little pearl buttons.
