by Sally Mandel
“No. It was wrong.”
“You almost sounded happy on the phone,” she said.
“Happy,” he repeated, as if he had never heard the term, his eyes focused on a spot somewhere near her right temple.
“Don’t you feel anything?” she asked.
“Yes.” His eyes gripped hers now. They were filled with despair.
“Is the therapy helping at all?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“In hell,” he answered.
“Is there nothing, then? Nothing I can do or say to help you?”
He just stared at her for a moment, and then his gaze slipped away from her again. They sat in silence for several long minutes, the muffins untouched.
“Don’t do this to me again,” Stella finally said. “Not ever.”
She left him there. Whenever she felt the compulsion to reach for the telephone, to share with him perhaps some tidbit about Amy, she forced herself to remember the diner and steel herself against him—or, more accurately, to that specter inhabiting Simon’s skin who had no more to do with the man she loved than a figure in a wax museum. Her Simon was gone, replaced with a tormented soul whose pain was clearly beyond her capacity to imagine or to ease. She was a widow.
Rain
Lily & Simon: 1985
It was barely light when Mrs. Adams awoke, jarred by the eerie song of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. It was happening more often these days, but then she’d heard that old memories sharpen with age even as recent events blur into faded scraps. Even last week seemed like a patchwork quilt that had been laundered too many times.
If she were to keep her eyes closed to stay in Jerusalem, she could almost smell the meat roasting in the streets, hear the donkeys braying, the church bells clanging. What a glorious city, with its luminous stone, its desperate history. How lucky she had been to spend so much of her childhood in such a place.
She could not remember Jerusalem without thinking of Grace. They had met at the English-speaking school perched above the city on the Mount of Olives. Although small then, and shy, Lily had nevertheless been placed a grade ahead of her own age group. All the other girls seemed so sophisticated to her—especially Grace, with her confident style and clipped accent. Lily was the only American, and the sound of her flat Yankee “a’s” seemed to her ugly and crude. She never understood what it was that had made the English girl seek her out, but that very first day, Grace had marched up to her and asked, “Why are you here?”
“My father’s a minister,” Lily had explained. “A missionary. In the Presbyterian Church.”
“I thought missionaries went out into the jungle,” Grace said.
Lily shrugged. “Maybe because he’s kind of a businessman missionary.”
“Well, I certainly don’t believe in God,” Grace said.
Lily burst out laughing. She had never heard anything so outrageous in her life, and half expected Grace to be struck by lightning on the spot. Later, Lily would learn that Grace had been convinced Lily’s father was a spy. An intriguing thought, but then Grace was always full of fanciful notions.
The girls spent two years together in Jerusalem, and then, as luck would have it, another two in Alexandria, Egypt. But after that, years would go by without their seeing one another.
Over the course of Mrs. Adams’ long life, she had found that there were certain friends who would put themselves on the line for you, practically from the first meeting. They were few and far between, of course, but at the end of even the first conversation with such a person, it was as if they said, “A pleasure to meet you. Be sure to call me if you need somebody to step out in front of a truck for you.” Grace Vanderwall was one of them, and today was the anniversary of her death.
Ultimately, Grace’s son, Simon, had married Stella, Mrs. Adams’ daughter. She knew that Grace’s death had exacerbated Simon’s slide into darkness and his withdrawal from his wife and child. There had been a divorce. Still, Simon was Grace’s son. Furthermore, Mrs. Adams was fond of him in his own right, and worried about him—never more so than on sad anniversaries like this one.
She sat up in bed, taking inventory of her arthritic joints. Rain was coming, no doubt about it. The barometer would rob her of ambition on days like this, but she had determined to pay Simon a visit, and visit she would. Nothing wrong with her that a little aspirin and some exercise couldn’t fix. She would see her dentist this morning, have lunch and a quick nap and be on the road by three. She would make an adventure out of it, packing her overnight bag and staying at the motel she had frequented when Amy was little. Certainly, she would not phone ahead lest Simon invent some persuasive reason why she should stay home.
Lunch was the same as breakfast, a half bowl of cornflakes and Sanka. She merely grazed these days. Her father had held that there were two types of elderly: “shrinkers” and “swellers.” Mrs. Adams knew she really ought to gain weight, but she was clearly a shrinker, and large portions made her stomach ache. She lay down on the couch to doze for a bit and when she awoke, she declared herself quite perky, particularly for someone pushing eighty.
She looked into her handbag, which held several hundred-dollar bills she intended to leave with Simon. As an old lady, bestowing money was her privilege—what else was she going to do with it now if not help out her children? Over the years, she had saved up what she regarded as a small fortune. She had never held a real job, hers being to deal with William and the household. He was what her mother called a “handful.” Feeling that she was entitled to some sort of compensation for that, Mrs. Adams had opened an account on her own, setting aside a little every week of “just in case” money, as she called it.
She poked her head out the kitchen door for a weather check. The day had turned out quite steamy, one of those September afternoons that might as well have been August. Mrs. Adams took the measure of the billowing white clouds that now filled the sky and, determining that they could easily lose their temper as the hours wore on, dropped an umbrella into the Oldsmobile before climbing in. How had it gotten to be four o’clock already? She felt equal parts excitement and anxiety. It had been a while since she had driven any farther than the supermarket, and it was a good hundred and fifty miles to Simon’s. Still, she had made that trip plenty of times over the years. Simple enough, really: a straight shot east along the Mohawk River and the canals to Albany and then south to Hudson. It would be a pleasant change of scene, and it would be a chance to reassure herself. She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Simon for six months.
The passing streak of rural New York scenery and the ribbon of asphalt stretching ahead into the distance encouraged her mind to wander, which didn’t help her driving any. She was an uncomfortable driver, and erratic in her speed, ranging from a crawl to greased lightning. Occasionally, a car streaked past her on the left or worse, on her right—horn bleating, but she was used to that. She stared at her hands on the steering wheel. It was startling how much they looked like her mother’s, now that the knuckles were swollen with arthritis. Someone ought to write a biography of a pair of hands, she thought, especially a woman’s. She would read a book like that.
It was pleasant to let her thoughts drift. She imagined Simon’s face, handsome in its angular way, with his mother’s same gray eyes, haunted with sadness from that early tragedy. “Superman eyes,” Stella called them. They could burn holes in you, she said.
The thing about Simon that Mrs. Adams had appreciated most was that he “got” Stella. With her delirious highs and desperate lows, she could be baffling, a challenging child to raise. It always took twice as long to get anywhere with Stella in the car; she was always shouting, “Stop! Stop! Do you see that view? I have to take a picture!” William hated to pull over once he’d put the car into gear, but Mrs. Adams always obliged. They had a closet full of boxes crammed with indistinguishable photos. Squint hard enough and you might make out
the backside of a deer disappearing into distant shrubbery. Or perhaps it was just a rock. Stella had celebrated the experience of seeing it, whatever it had been, and passed her exuberance along to you, her outsized capacity for joy like a gift.
Mrs. Adams had always worried that Stella would go down in flames in some spectacular nervous breakdown, but Simon somehow allayed her apprehension. His disposition in those days was even-keeled, and he observed Stella with a grin on his face, as if he were standing curbside at a wild parade his wife was leading. It wasn’t hard for Mrs. Adams to understand; her husband’s intense engagement in life had attracted her in much the same way. He could be outrageous and infuriating, but at least he made it harder for her to sit back and watch the world go by, which was her own inclination. She remembered the time they had gone to the closing party of a favorite restaurant. William had met her there following his weekly bowling game and had his ball with him. As the farewell speeches grew ever more lugubrious, William started bouncing his leg restlessly. Finally he got up, cleared an alley down the center of the room, placed some empty wine bottles at the far end and sent his bowling ball flying for a perfect strike. Who else would do such a thing? And when, on a fishing trip, William had snagged the dead body of a reveler who had perished in a drunken boating accident only three nights before, Lily was not the least bit surprised. Of course it was William on the front page. It always was William.
Simon, like Mrs. Adams, wasn’t a big “doer,” as William Adams complained, but neither was he passive. For one thing, he made appreciating an active art. And when Stella paid for her ecstasies with the corresponding plunge into misery, he knew instinctively how to handle her. Mrs. Adams remembered the first time she witnessed this dynamic firsthand. Stella had been on one of her early assignments, setting up a women’s health center in the Ivory Coast. She had become attached to a toddler who subsequently died in her arms. She contained herself for the remainder of the trip only to collapse as soon as she walked through the front door at home—wailing with grief, her sobs interspersed with apologies. As always, Mrs. Adams had stood by feeling helpless, horrified at this extravagant display, indeed, even a little guilty: how had she failed so dismally to equip her daughter for the realities of life and death? William was no help; he just threw his hands up in the air and went off to play golf.
But when Simon had arrived for dinner, he immediately absorbed the pitiful tableau and scooped Stella into the living room where he simply held her. She struggled against the embrace at first, but Simon only held her more firmly and murmured, “It’ll pass, Stella, it’ll pass.” Mrs. Adams had stood in the doorway and, incapable herself of such equanimity in the face of her daughter’s hysteria, watched with wonder and gratitude.
And that was why it was so sad when the light went out of him, when all he would do was sit for hours in front of the television. Simon had always hated television.
It seemed no time at all before the exit sign for Hudson popped up. Judging that a mile to the ramp left her plenty of leeway to overtake a pesky slowpoke of a truck, she passed it, veered back into the right lane and slammed her brake pedal before she could rear-end the station wagon directly in front of her. There was a chorus of horns—enraged, alarmed—that suggested to her that perhaps it might be wise to take a daily practice drive around Indian Wells just to keep her hand in.
She would invite Simon out to dinner. That dispiriting new apartment he rented—well, not so new now after five years—would simply never look homey or lived in no matter how long he inhabited it. It had taken him two years even to unpack the cartons from the move, and even that, she suspected, Amy had been primarily responsible for. Mrs. Adams would stop off at the little airport Simon mostly frequented that was on the way. It had used to scare Mrs. Adams half to death once he got his license and started taking Amy up with him. Later, after he began to lose interest in life, the airport became about the only place he seemed even halfway engaged. He left his job as a residential real estate broker, an occupation he had always enjoyed. He liked the stories, he told Mrs. Adams. Every homeowner or buyer was a potential saga. Now he spent most days either aloft or on his back under skimpy looking planes with a wrench in his hands.
There was no one in the airport office, so Mrs. Adams headed directly to the barn that served as a hangar. The hulking girth of Norbert Ewing, the airport’s manager, mechanic, and troubleshooter, loomed into sight from behind an all-purpose snowplow tractor. Where, Mrs. Adams wondered, had he managed to find overalls in such an enormous size? He stuck out an oil-covered hand, thought better of it and offered Mrs. Adams a heart-melting smile instead.
“Changed your hair,” he said.
“And you,” Mrs. Adams said, “are the first and only person to notice, you improbable man.”
“Drove yourself down, did you?” Norbert asked.
She nodded proudly. “I suppose I was having an adolescent episode.”
“He’s up,” Norbert said, gesturing skyward. “Late, too.”
“How late?” Mrs. Adams asked.
“Hour or so.”
A couple of folding beach chairs had been set out beside the single runway.
“Sit?” Norbert said.
He might have been a man of few words, but the worry in Norbert’s face was plenty eloquent. She sat down and scanned the sky for the dot that would indicate her son-in-law’s plane. Ex-son-in-law, she reminded herself. The clouds were towering now, their bellies angry and dark.
“Does he do this often? Stay up there too long?”
“I’ve told him a few times before, too many …” Norbert cut himself off. “There.” He pointed out at the sky with a huge square finger, but Mrs. Adams couldn’t see a thing except roiling thunderheads. What a ridiculous day to choose for a trip. Perhaps she was becoming delusional, like her bridge partner. Mrs. Adams was forever taking her own mental temperature in this regard. The last thing she wanted to be was a troublesome old dodo, and there was a perfectly comfortable apartment complex just down the road from her house. Ah, now she saw it. The dot was growing more substantial now, and soon enough was accompanied by a low buzz. But wasn’t it dropping too fast? She glanced at Norbert, whose eyes were stuck to that plummeting smudge in the sky. She stood up.
“That doesn’t look right,” she said.
“I’ve told him,” Norbert said again.
They waited in silence. Mrs. Adams had not realized until then just how late it had become, the sun by now a peevish orange glow just above the horizon while the clouds boiled overhead. Funny, that saying: my heart was in my mouth. Yet it was exactly right. Mrs. Adams could barely swallow against the throbbing lump. But time did some strange slow cartwheel until finally, finally, the little airplane slid onto the far end of the runway and taxied to a stop. Norbert stalked over, hands on his hips, and waited for Simon to emerge. The big man stood there, solid as a tree, emitting a series of indistinguishable grumblings. Mrs. Adams thought she heard the word “docked,” or was it “fucked?” Simon, his face inscrutable as ever, listened while Norbert had his say and then turned on his heel. Finally, glancing over her way, he recognized Mrs. Adams. His face seemed to light up for a moment. “Lily,” he said, coming to greet her with a kiss for each cheek.
“It appears that you’re in the doghouse,” Mrs. Adams said.
“He worries too much.”
“Well, I hardly blame him!” she said. “I certainly thought you were going to crash.” By now, it was actually dark. She felt a fat raindrop splash on her wrist.
“What brings you down here?” Simon asked.
“An adventure,” she answered. “I’m taking you out to dinner and staying overnight at the Eagle’s Nest.”
She watched as the joy, only moments old, slid off his face. It never lasted for long, since time together required interaction and Simon did not want any part of that.
“I’m not much on dinner,” he said. “I sort of snack all day.”
“I’d l
ike to fatten you up, but if you’re not hungry, you can just watch me,” she said. She wanted to slip her hand through his arm, but there was a shell encasing him, as if he were enclosed in that stiff, clear plastic they sold things in these days. “Maybe you’ll develop an appetite on the way to The Post House,” she went on. “You used to like a nice big steak.”
“You’re awfully bossy,” Simon said with a trace of a smile. It gave Mrs. Adams a pang. Simon’s grin used to always transport that melancholy face into a delicious display of gleeful creases. And his laughter was straight out of a comic book: ha ha ha! You couldn’t hear it without chiming in.
“I don’t see your car,” she said.
“I have a motorcycle now, but it’s in the shop. Norbert was going to give me a lift.”
“A motorcycle!” One more way to eliminate yourself, she thought. “You drive, then.” She handed him the keys. “Don’t smash into anything.”
There was a gigantic crack of thunder just then, a piercing report that left Mrs. Adams covering her ears. She looked up at the sky as the drops began to pelt them in earnest, weighty enough to feel like hail. Simon grabbed her arm and hurried her along to the Oldsmobile. He slipped in behind the wheel and shoved the seat back to accommodate his longer legs. The side mirror was splintered where a rock had been flung up against it. Simon shook his head.
“I know,” Mrs. Adams said. “I’ll attend to it next week.”
“I remember Amy asking you if they called it an Oldsmobile because it’s so old.”
Mrs. Adams smiled. Those were better days when Amy, Simon and Stella were bound in a union that seemed unassailable. They even had their own odd language, with made-up words. Mrs. Adams couldn’t keep track of them all, but she remembered that frith meant “love.” It was used a lot.
Simon pulled out onto the rain-slicked road. Absent of traffic, nobody with any sense was out here now. The wind had picked up, buffeting the car with torrents of rain that rendered the wipers nearly useless. Mrs. Adams grabbed hold of the door handle for security, and several times found herself jamming an imaginary brake with her foot. “My, it’s dark as a pocket,” she said.
