by Diane Munier
“I forgot that,” Spencer says, leaning on the island where I eat my sandwich.
I can’t forget. But I can be different. I can set my routine, be vigilant, be committed, be kind. I can do so much.
So I pick at the crust on my sandwich.
“Sullivan, don’t make me feed you,” he says, sweet smile. It’s in his voice too--the smile. “If you’re worried about her you could call. Tell her goodnight.”
It sounds reasonable. But she’s not reasonable.
I clear my throat, “When Merle and Pearlie move….”
“They’re moving?”
“When they do…I think Leeanne will go. I think she’ll move to be with her uncles.”
“Okay. Is that okay?”
I look at him. “If people can’t change, they die. Inside. And outside.”
He blinks. “Oh. Okay. Yeah that’s possible. You think Leeanne might die? She looked pretty healthy….”
“I think she has to change, to live.”
His eyes have narrow, and his mouth loses its curve. “Yeah.”
“And Merle is taking Pearlie to Florida. They…have this daughter.”
“Hey, I’m jealous. Not that I’ll kill them or anything.”
I refuse to smile. “Cyro…he needs me.”
“He needs a new leg. That thing he straps on when he’s being good Cyro? It’s a mummy.”
I do kind of smile. “What?”
“It’s like a mummy’s leg. It’s Boris Karloff or something. Dude, get current, you know? What’s the deal there?”
Spencer retrieves his new dishrag, also Big-Mart, and starts to wipe down the island. “If I lost a leg I wouldn’t be strapping the old Model-T on, you know? I’d have the most super-duper, aero-dynamic, spring loaded piece of titanium. What is with that guy?”
“Did you tell him?”
“Sort of. He said that thing—‘paint my walls tell me what kind of leg, blah-blah.’ His go-to is asshole. Nah, he’s a good guy.” He’s scrubbing with two hands now, like he’s a galley-hand and this is the ship’s nasty spit-ridden floor. It’s pretty well gleaming in here.
I take a bite of the sandwich.
“Hey there’s a new guy next-door,” he says. His back is to me as he rinses the rag, shakes it out.
“Did you meet him?” I say.
“Yeah. No name, just initials. Pretentious shit maybe. But hey, it’s a rental made out of saltines and duct-tape so give us a name like Arnie Rabbit or something. He said he met you.”
“You talked about me?”
“No. He said he’d met my neighbor and I said okay. That was about it.” He’s smirking at me. “You want to hear it?” He walks around the island to where I sit. “Yeah, he said, ‘hey, who’s the lucky guy banging that girl with the cute little,’” he looks at my boobs and grunts, “’and the,’” he gets close enough to drag his hand down my back and pat my butt as it’s bulging on top of the stool a little.
I sit up straight.
“Sorry,” he says, not at all sorry.
“Yeah, I got that vibe from him,” I say, and I drop my head some while I pick apart the sandwich and take another bite. Now I am trying not to smile.
“Sarah,” he says pushing my hair over my shoulder. “Sarah Marie.”
I won’t look at him. I almost have my nose in my plate and I’m shoveling in bites with my fingers but I start laughing.
He is behind me and puts his arm around me and he’s laughing against my hair. “Him I may kill,” he says.
Me and Mom Fall for Spencer
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sunday morning we are not at church with Mom. We are at the park, the same one we’d taken that nap at before. We are here with the three dogs. And Cyro. He doesn’t know why he consented to this, he says, but he did consent. So he’s with us.
Before we’d left home Cyro had insisted we put his old camper top over the bed of my truck. So Spencer and me dug it out of his mouse-ridden shed and used eight C-clamps to secure it to the bed of my vehicle. The Amigos rode back there and it was a pretty great way to get around with them.
On the ride over here Spencer was in a talkative mood. He said he had spent last winter in Oregon. He said he watched so much television he caught up on years of programming. All his adult life he’d been busy. Then he left everything and walked the trail. When he was finished with the trail he lived in a motel and bought notebooks so he could write a book. But there was a secondhand bookstore nearby so he read books instead. Then he degenerated to binging on TV.
He said he would get hooked on one show for a while, then another. He said ultimately television, even the good stuff, does not feed one’s soul.
We have so much in common. Too much television is like too much fast food. I pretty much love the tube, and then I get sick of it. But about the binging, I have done that, with cooking shows, and decorating shows, and any good show about murder. I’ve been obsessed more than once.
And he has walked the trail, but I have walked just as far doing patrol, just not all at once.
He’s left his past in a canyon, but I’ve broken mine into bits I carried in my pocket and dropped like bird seed one night at a time. I did feel lighter…eventually. Was it like that for him?
So Cyro is seated at a picnic table holding Dusty’s leash. I have Lucky, of course, and Spencer has Ned. Spencer is in charge. He thinks he is going to train the amigos. He’s so earnest I don’t comment and I hope Cyro lets him have this.
“No,” he’s correcting me, “babe you have to be Alpha. You have to be in charge.”
“I was…”
“You were just suggesting. You’re too polite. You’re re-enforcing his bad behavior.”
“What bad behavior? I said ‘good boy.’”
“You don’t need to praise him like that. Now do the sound.”
“I don’t like that sound,” I say. I don’t get the sound. It’s not the way Lucky and me communicate. When I make my funny sound, my neck-sound, it’s never voluntary.
I hear Cyro laugh. I don’t mean to make a fool of Spencer but I don’t like the sound thing.
“Remember not to let him pull. And start off with the foot nearest him,” Spencer adds.
I try again and Spencer has more corrections. He is patient, and bossy and very eager. I don’t want to take this so seriously though because Lucky and I will work it out eventually.
“No, no babe,” he’s saying. “Hold Ned and I’ll show you.” He already has Ned trained. It took fifteen minutes. Actually Ned has trained him. I have reasons for saying this. He’s not as successful as he wants to believe. Ned is more open to suggestion than Lucky or Dusty. He’s only listened because he’s intimidated by Spencer and not sure what he wants.
Spencer calls to Cyro. “Now Cyro, you can work on lay, like I showed you, you motion toward the ground. Can you get that low…?”
Cyro clicks his tongue and points to the ground and Dusty lies down.
Spencer looks at me then Cyro. “Holy shit, that’s good, Cyro.”
Cyro snaps his fingers and makes a small upward motion and Dusty rises to a sit. Cyro doesn’t even pat Dusty and he sits there patiently giving Cyro the deep eyes, then his paw comes onto Cyro’s leg and you can feel the respect.
Spencer looks at me again. “He’s a whisperer.”
He’s true Alpha. I don’t want to say this to Spencer, because Ned is now rolling on his back trying to get a scratch while he twists his hind-end this way and that and flails his legs around. And whines.
“Ned,” Spencer rebukes but Ned ignores him. Spencer makes the sound, the click, and Ned sits and wags his tail but he’s quickly bored so he flops onto his belly again. “No,” Spencer says and Ned sits up.
“Now you try Sarah,” he says, sweep of his hand.
Try what? Lucky is sitting on my foot. I think I’ll try to get him off by moving my foot out from under him. It works.
“I think I’ll walk him around and practice,” I tell Spencer
. I am trying to escape. So I do.
“The guys will be alright back there while we go in,” Spencer is saying later as we sit in the diner’s parking lot. The memory of chicken dinner is strong in each of us it seems. We want that chicken so badly we might be willing to face the crowd to get some.
“I haven’t been in there for ten years,” Cyro says.
“I’ll bet it hasn’t changed,” Spencer says.
I think that’s the problem for Cyro, but I don’t say anything.
“Mom’s in there,” I say, not to encourage or discourage, but the truth sets you free and I hate surprises. I don’t see Horny’s car. Or Aaron’s.
But I’m not breaking my neck to look. Spencer is the first to open his door. Then Cyro. Spencer comes around but he stands back. Cyro has made it clear he can do it. He has the leg on, and he takes a few extra seconds, and he’s a little graceless, but he gets it done. I am the last out, of course, and Spencer does hold the door now. It’s nice, but pointless.
So we are the Amigos walking into the diner. Nothing happens at first. We are a strange group, but between Spencer’s beauty and Cyro’s gait, we get some looks. And why am I with the two of them? I know that’s a point of curiosity.
I see Pearlie’s hair right off, and Merle. Leeanne. Mom is here. She’s with A. R., or possibly J. R.. Are you kidding me? Guess she went for him. For all I know he’s been to church too. He might even be converted by now. She’ll surely boink him for that.
She sees us, well we’re hard to miss for reasons already stated. And Cyro knew about the whole town once. I don’t wave to her. But she knows I see her…and him.
There is one empty table beside Merle and Pearlie and Leeanne. Merle is already asking the girl to move it against theirs and make a longer table so we can sit together.
We follow the girl and there’s some chair scraping and then we sit. We say hellos. Spencer shakes Merle’s hand. It’s such a funny custom, the handshake. It’s a man thing, a, ‘I won’t steal your woman thing,’ not that Spencer has ever given Pearlie the vibes, but he’s inherited this custom, and he complies.
Cyro has beads of sweat on his forehead.
“You alright man?” Spencer asks.
“Fine,” Cyro says, but the bloodlessness makes his dark skin pale.
We order for three and Cyro gets black coffee. The others have already ordered.
“Merle’s sister’s husband looked just like Clark Gable,” Pearlie tells me. “Only black, of course.”
A black Clark Gable? I guess it is possible, but Leeanne kicks me under the table for old times and we smile at Pearlie. She’s eying up Spencer. Well who can blame her in that blue shirt with the rolled sleeves and that longish hair and that face? I have to stare at my plate a minute.
Then Leeanne kicks me again, and I glare at her. She does it again I’m going to let her have it.
Cyro looks around a little but not so much. A man comes up to him, engages him in talk. Then another. Cyro is bragging on Jason going into the military. But all Cyro really knows is he moved out to live with some girl. He doesn’t say that, just says Jason’s in the military.
He introduces Spencer and they say they know me, knew me when I was little. Knew Dad. Know Mom. Yeah I’ve seen them both.
Our food comes quick and we’re left alone.
Cyro seems more relaxed, and Spencer’s leg is against mine. He serves me everything. He holds some of it on the spoon, raises his brows and I nod and he puts some on my plate, then his own. Merle does the same for Pearlie. Leeanne smirks when she notices and shakes her head. Sue me.
“You gonna feed her too?” Cyro asks, eyes on his plate.
Leeanne loves this. Over-laughs--and there is such a thing.
“If she wants me to,” Spencer says grinning at me, just no shame.
I smirk back but I know I’m red.
I can’t think of too much more than Mom eating with the creeper.
Then Mom comes over. “Well, glad to see you’re up and around.” She says this to Cyro. Maybe to me.
Spencer greets her, “Morning Marie.”
“You met our new neighbor?” she asks sweetly gesturing toward their table on the other side of the room thank God. Creeper isn’t there—call of duty I guess.
“Yeah,” I say and Spencer says. Cyro keeps eating.
“He sure is interested in you,” she tells Spencer. “Asks how long I’ve known you. What I know about you.”
“Me?” Spencer says before poking a fork full of mashed potatoes in his mouth. He lays the fork down, works his napkin over his lips.
“Nice to see you about,” Mom says to Cyro.
He barely looks at her. “What’s nice about it?”
“Day was…you were the life of the party.”
Cyro side-eyes her. “Got me mixed with someone else,” he says.
“Oh no,” she says. Of course there are plenty in here that notice Mom and Cyro in close proximity with their flaming history. But there’s nothing these days between these two. Too much of nothing.
So she waves her fingers and meets Creeper in the middle of the room and they walk back to their table, thank God. If she’d have brought him over to us I wasn’t sticking around for it.
“He asks about you?” I say to Spencer and everyone is listening, waiting for Spencer’s reply.
“Maybe he’s homosexual,” Pearlie says, and Leeanne’s face goes in to her napkin while her shoulders shake.
Spencer looks at me quickly and smiles. Then to Pearlie he says, “Why Miss Pearlie, my heart belongs to Sarah Sullivan.” He grabs my hand then and lifts it and kisses my knuckles right there in front of God and chicken.
So he has declared himself—come out of the closet, so to speak, and the closet…is mine.
Merle sputters as he’s getting a drink of his water. Leeanne looks up from her napkin, a smile on her face as she looks at Merle. Like me, she loves Merle’s subdued reactions to everything Pearlie says and does, but Leeanne’s smile quickly melts. “Merle?” she says.
Merle’s face has reddened, and he pulls at his neat bow tie.
“What’s the matter?” Leeanne says, and all eyes are on Merle. Then Merle face plants in his mashed potatoes and Pearlie’s mouth drops open. But it’s Leeanne who screams Merle’s name.
Cyro calls for an ambulance, and everyone is on their feet. Some of the main occupations around here have to do with some form of health care, and one of the local EMT’s is already on her phone. She and others have Merle stretched out on the floor and they are checking for breath sounds and starting CPR.
I go to Leeanne right away. She’s nearly hysterical. Pearlie doesn’t know what hit her, and Spencer is with her telling Pearlie they will help Merle.
“But he was drinking his water,” Pearlie says.
“They know how to help him Miss Pearlie,” Spencer says, shielding Pearlie from the growing crowd.
“Give him air,” one of the EMT’s, and there are two now and a nurse on the floor around Merle, is on his cell with the ambulance, I assume. He’s saying they can’t get a pulse.
They keep working. “Is he going to breathe?” Pearlie asks Spencer. Leeanne has gotten hold of herself and she goes to Pearlie. I am behind her and Spencer is helping her to stand.
“C’mon, Miss Pearlie. Let’s get outside so we can follow the ambulance.”
One of the EMT’s digs Merle’s keys out of his pocket and gives them to Spencer. “I’ll follow the ambulance, Sarah. Leeanne can go with us to help Pearlie and you and Cyro can follow in the truck?” Spencer asks.
“Go with them,” Cyro says to me. “I’ll get the truck home.”
I want to protest, but if he can do it, it would help. The dogs need someone to look out for them or I wouldn’t worry about it at all.
So we work our ways to the front of the restaurant and the guys from the ambulance are coming in with the bed as we’re going out.
Pearlie is quiet and overwhelmed and Spencer is practically carryi
ng her outside while Leeanne hangs on and I follow. We get Pearlie in the car and Leeanne and I pile in the back and Spencer starts Merle’s car as we watch them bring him out and load him in. We follow the ambulance then.
“Poor Merle,” Pearlie finally says as we follow the ambulance at a good pace.
Leeanne has her hand on Pearlie’s shoulder. Leeanne’s face is wrecked. She looks at me, and we quickly clasp hands. Yeah. This is bad.
I picture death like this—someone crosses the River Jordan, the dark waters closing over their head and they keep walking on the river’s bottom until they can surface again. Now the good thing, they’ve been pulled the whole way, whether it’s a hand holding on to them or just a forceful current, they’ve been unable, maybe unwilling to resist the pull of this water. So they finally get to the place where the water overhead is diminishing enough they can see, they can feel the light coming back, and after some steps their head surfaces, but they don’t take a breath.
They don’t need one.
And they’re looking forward at all this…beauty. And they walk right out of that river into this marvelous light and in that light, those they’ve loved and longed for start to emerge, arms out-stretched, hands reaching. Pets are there too. All of them. See, that’s what dries the tears. They are home.
No matter how much it hurts to stand at the casket, to make sure Pearlie has a chair while Pastor Stanley speaks in a velvet voice about Jesus and heaven, to have your arm around her as she touches that same box for the last time, to drive away from Merle’s remains laying in that box like a precious piece of jewelry…no matter how much…you wouldn’t call him back from that place to go through it all again.
Not once he’s made his journey.
Donna is taking Pearlie home. Leeanne is going along until Pearlie is settled. She tells me the night of the burial when I’m walking. I can’t believe her courage. I know how it is for shut-ins. A small victory, one most people don’t even think twice about, a shut-in will just gloat over forever, like God has spoken from Mount Sinai and written some new law into stone, something that says, “You are not a loser after all.”
