“Robbie?” Mattie said quietly to her granddaughter, who looked up, surprised to hear her name in the midst of such commotion. “Come here.” Robbie rose from the chair. She stepped over Gracie’s Nikes and leggings and Rita’s big purse. In the kitchen, Mattie pulled her granddaughter aside, away from the door to the living room. The living room. What a place to watch Sonny die.
“What are you doing with Grandpa’s old suitcase?” Robbie asked.
“Listen, sweetie,” Mattie whispered. “I’m getting away from them Pac Monsters in there. So I gotta say this fast. You tell Peter Laforest not to worry about saving up that money for a down payment on a house trailer.”
“But, Granny,” Roberta said, trying to question this. Mattie stopped her by giving her a quick little shake that rattled her long earrings. Roberta fell silent again, her eyes full of deep concern, her face still tear-streaked.
“Just let me say this fast,” Mattie continued. “I’m giving you and Peter an early wedding present. I’m gonna get Elmer Fennelson to drive me to Watertown, maybe next week, and I’m gonna have that lawyer, that Mr. Ornstein, make it all up legal.”
“A wedding present?” Roberta asked. “Gran, you don’t have to do that.”
“I know what I have to do and what I don’t have to,” Mattie said. “Now listen. I’m giving you and Peter this house. It ain’t a mansion, but it’s a nice, comfortable little home. All Peter needs to do is fix a few shingles on the roof and them rickety back steps. And you could use a new water heater. I’ve been tempting fate each year by keeping the old one, but don’t you two do that. Spend some of that down payment money you saved for fixing everything up perfect as you can. You got something alive inside you to worry about now. You got a baby to think about. Life is as good as you make it, Robbie. So take off them blinders that most folks wear and go at it headfirst.” Roberta seemed ready to cry again, but Mattie had no time for any such sentiment.
“Gracie’s gonna be mad,” said Roberta. “You know she and Aunt Rita and Aunt Marlene all want to inherit the house. All three of them’s gonna hit the roof.”
Mattie nodded. “I know,” she said. “That’s why Peter needs to fix the shingles up there, so the roof will be good and sturdy when they hit it. And that’s why I need to see a lawyer first thing next week.” She gave Roberta a big hug, and her granddaughter’s small body curled into her own, thin and innocent and not really ready for babies and a husband and the rigors of Mattagash winters. Not ready for gossips whose tongues were already warped with whispery news of an early wedding, of a swelling stomach. Not ready for all those years to melt away, as they had for Mattie and Martha Monihan and poor dead Lester Gifford and Eliza Fennelson, just more years of the same, years of softball tournaments in which Peter and Roberta would stand back on the sidelines and watch Mattie’s great-grandchildren play ball, years of school lunches, and beds being made up, and clothes being handed down, years of fireflies eating up those same summer nights, thousands of Christmas cards being sent out, millions and millions of snowflakes falling out of those same dark skies, billions of words of gossip flying about like locusts, zillions of gallons of water flowing past in that same old Mattagash River. This is what Mattie felt when she hugged her grandchild’s little body. This is what she knew.
“Gran,” said Robbie.
“Listen to me, child,” Mattie whispered. “You go on ahead and marry your best friend. And then you two fill up this little house with children and laughter and love, ’cause in its day, there ain’t been a lot of the last two things. Now, let this be the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you. Don’t let your Mattagash neighbors ruin your life with gossip. Don’t you let them fine Christian souls, the ones who talk to God daily, destroy your happiness or your self-respect. And believe me when I tell you that they’ll try to do it.” Mattie heard Roberta begin to cry, who knows why, over Sonny, over her grandmother giving her the house, over a shiver, maybe, a hint of all those years just lying ahead for no other reason than to be used up and thrown away. Mattie released Robbie from the hug and pushed her back at arm’s length so that she could see into her eyes.
“Now go on back to the living room,” Mattie said, “and pretend you don’t know where I am if someone asks.”
“Where you going?” Roberta wanted to know. She wiped her eyes and Mattie saw thin, stringy beads of mascara running beneath each lid. She remembered Sheila Bumphrey Gifford, the daughter-in-law she had never met. She hoped someone kind was with Sheila at that moment. She had seen this woman’s face in the crowd. This wasn’t Sonny’s enemy. This was a woman who had loved him once, maybe still loved him. How could she not love him? He had never raised a hand to anyone in his life, male or female. “I’m not a fighter,” Sonny liked to say. “I’m a lover.” Granted, you could grow tired of Sonny Gifford, Mattie supposed, if you were a woman with children, a woman with a future plan. You could move on from him, even move away from him. But you couldn’t hate him. Only his sisters seemed capable of that.
“I’m going to find my best friend,” Mattie answered. “I’m camping out for a spell. I’ll be back when the smoke clears.”
“But what about Uncle Sonny?” Roberta wanted to know. Mattie stopped her questions. What about the funeral? How can you not be there? You’re his mother.
“Henry Plunkett has got everything under control,” Mattie answered. “I couldn’t leave my son’s funeral in better hands. Now, as for showing up at the grave, even your uncle Sonny would skip that scene if he could. You can represent me. Kind of like them tag team wrestlers your uncle Sonny loved to watch. You tell him I said good-bye.”
Mattie went out the back door and let it close softly. On her front lawn she paused to give her best regards to St. Francis. She had thought to grab her little flashlight from off the counter and now she took it out of her sweater pocket and turned it on. St. Francis glared at her with blank, empty eyes indented in cement.
“Don’t take any wooden nickels,” Mattie told him. She threw the beam of light before her, then followed it carefully. No need to fall into the ditch that stretched in front of her house, maybe break an ankle. Once on the road, she flicked the light off. Dark was coming on steadily and overhead the stars were glittering and bright. Gracie had told her once that Greek shepherds used to believe that the stars were little lamps. And some folks even thought they were shiny nails holding up the sky. And Gracie said that natives down in Central America believed that their heroes were up in heaven smoking cigars, and that the stars were the glowing tips. Like Henry Plunkett’s earthly cigarettes. Mattie liked that story. She looked up at the sparkles hanging in the sky above her and wondered if Lester Gifford was smoking one of his favorite cigars. Maybe he was lighting up a second one and passing it to his boy, Sonny. Maybe the two of them could have that father-son talk they never found the time to have on earth. Maybe now there could be some peace between them.
Since Elmer’s house lay west of hers, Mattie felt as if she were following Venus to get to him, the way those wise men followed their radiant star. She could hear the summer peepers creating a ruckus in the swamp, down in that marshy place where Sonny used to pick his irises. Jupiter rose above her left shoulder as she walked—dear Henry and his special knowledge of things—and somewhere up there, not too far away, the nighthawks were circling. Mattie could hear their soft, excited buzz. Just ahead, she saw Lola Monihan’s house rise up out of the night like a mighty spaceship. The Enterprise, maybe. All the lights were blazing. Lola was most likely at the helm of her ship, answering the phone, sifting through the latest news about Sonny, keeping a sure eye on the television set. Mattie wondered what her own girls were doing just then and if they had discovered her gone. She smiled at the notion. “Don’t you let them Pac Monster sisters of mine come down on you like cops on a doughnut, Mama,” Sonny had said. Well, she wouldn’t. Sonny would be proud.
She clutched the suitcase close to her side as she rea
ched Elmer’s mailbox. In the early starlight, she could see that the box was open. She closed the creaking door and heard Skunk bark a response from inside the house. Elmer’s kitchen light was on, a soft yellow square of warmth, like a patch of homemade quilt. Yellow instead of lavender. Mattie could see him there, at the kitchen table, his reading glasses perched on his nose. She would tell him quickly: Pack your things for a week. Pack Skunk some dog food. We’ll take the honeymoon first and worry about the wedding later. I’m gonna teach you some stuff Henry taught me. I’m gonna point to the brightest star you ever laid your eyes on and say, “No, that’s Jupiter, Elmer. And that there’s Venus. They’re planets, but ain’t they pretty as any star you ever saw?”
The walk across Elmer Fennelson’s lawn was as long as any walk Mattie ever took, even that walk down the aisle with Lester Gifford at her side, in those shoes that hurt her so much, carrying that heart inside her chest that would hurt, too, on all those lonesome nights, back in those days when she was young and crazy and stupid enough to think that planets were stars. But this time Mattie was walking in her old sneakers, the ones she liked to wear when she worked in her garden. We’re gonna live in your house, Elmer, and let my granddaughter have mine. You’re gonna teach this old dog the new trick of driving a car. And when the time comes for one of us to die, then the other one will be standing by. Right up until we leave this world, Elmer, we’ll always know where the other one is. That’s important to some folks, that tiny bit of knowledge. I know it, and you know it. So let’s do this crazy thing.
Mattie climbed up onto Elmer’s front porch and heard Skunk go wild inside. It would be a matter of seconds now before Elmer laid his reading glasses aside and came to see what was wrong. He was always coming to see what was wrong where Mattie was concerned. What was it she had promised herself, that first time she stood before the altar and agreed to marry someone?
“I will be happy,” Mattie said. “I will be happy.” Then Elmer was opening his front door, the warm yellow of his kitchen rising up like sunlight behind him.
About the Author
Author photo by Doug Bruns
Cathie Pelletier was born and raised on the banks of the St. John River, at the end of the road in northern Maine. She is the author of eleven other novels, including The One-Way Bridge, The Funeral Makers, and Running the Bulls (winner of the Paterson Prize for Fiction). As K. C. McKinnon, she has written two novels, both of which became television films. After years of living in Nashville, Tennessee; Toronto, Canada; and Eastman, Quebec, she has returned to Allagash, Maine, and the family homestead where she was born.
A Year After Henry
Available August 2014 from Sourcebooks Landmark
An exquisite new novel from acclaimed author Cathie Pelletier.
Bixley, Maine. One year after Henry Munroe’s fatal heart attack at age forty-one, his doting parents, prudish wife, rebellious son, and wayward brother are still reeling. So is Evie Cooper, a bartender, self-proclaimed “spiritual portraitist,” and Henry’s former mistress. While his widow Jeanie struggles with the betrayal, Henry’s overbearing mother is making plans to hold a memorial service. As the date of the tribute draws closer and these worlds threaten to collide, the Munroes grapple with the frailty of their own lives and the knowledge that love is all that matters.
With her trademark wry wit and wisdom, Cathie Pelletier has crafted an elegant and surprisingly uplifting portrait of the many strange and inspiring forms that grief can take in the journey to overcoming loss.
Praise for Cathie Pelletier
“That master juggler of literary tears and laughter is at it again.” —Wally Lamb, author of She’s Come Undone
“Nobody walks the knife-edge of hilarity and heartbreak more confidently than Pelletier.” —Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls
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