by Tom Larsen
He stops at the Quick Way for a pint. This drinking and driving has to stop, but for tonight, to level the playing field. Yuri gave him the names of two taverns north of town, ten miles of switchbacks into timbers, deer grouped in fields of haystacks, geese winging in a ragged V. Harry takes comfort in the dashboard lights, the wrap around feel of Caddy containment. He finds a country station on the radio and settles back.
The daughter, Lilly her name was.
***
“Hello?”
“Hi, uh, my name is Ed Baldini? Harry might have mentioned me.”
The midget maniac! Untold hours on the maniac!
“Baldini? No, I don’t recall the name.”
“I was his boss at the print shop?”
“Ooh, okay. Harry didn’t talk about his work much.”
“I just heard about it. Geez, it’s just . . . he never mentioned me, no kiddin’?”
“Oh, he may have. Harry worked in a lot of places. I couldn’t keep up.”
“I just wanted to say your husband was a good pressman and a good, uh . . . person. I mean we had our differences, sure, but we were up front about it. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“Thank you, Mr. Baldini. I’m sure Harry would be touched.”
“I could always count on him for the big jobs, the process work, the tight registration. There’s an art to that stuff, believe me.”
“I’m sure there is. My husband was a man of many talents.”
“Right, I mean we had our differences but, you know.”
“I know, and again, thank you.”
“My brother too, talk about differences, oh-boy! But man to man like, well, men.”
“Yes.”
“So I just wanted to pay my respects. I uh . . .” she hears muffled wheezing. Crying? No he’s laughing. The maniac is laughing!
“Mr. Baldini?”
“I’m sorry, whew! I was just thinking . . . no, I better not.”
“Please tell me. I’d like to know.”
“Oh Christ it was funny. I don’t know, that brother of mine. Harry and him were going at it. I forget about what, about the exterminator, that was it. We had a guy come in once a month,” more laughter, deep and phlegmy. “Harry didn’t want the guy spraying around his press. He had a mouse over there, didn’t want the mouse to, you know.”
“Die?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Harry never said a word about it,” she lies. But now she thinks of it he never told her how it was resolved.
“Right. So what happened is the mouse, well, he did die, I guess. This was a few years ago. We had a lunchroom back then. You sure he never told you this?”
“About the lunch room?”
“Yeah, my brother’s lasagna?” wheezing and something pounding. “Oh Jesus, just thinking about it.”
“Lasagna?”
“Leftovers,” wheeze, “big container” wheeze, wheeze.
“Are you alright, Mr. Baldini?”
“The mouse . . . buried, inside. Oh God, oh Jesus . . . my brother . . . crunching . . .” Wheeze, stomp. “Bleurgh!”
***
Harry kills the bottle in the parking lot, Kim’s truck listing badly by the front door. Dew Drop Inn, if you can believe it, a fake Tudor mess with diamond paned windows, neon letters glowing on the roof, blurred at the edges. He feels the cold seep up through the floorboards, but he doesn’t feel up for this anymore. Really should have eaten something, fucking bourbon wreaking havoc. How redneck bars creep him out, the air of hostility, nowhere to point your eyes. The night he drove home from the Apple Jack at a hundred miles an hour, Christ, where’d that come from? Last call watching the bouncing beer signs, ten minutes to fit the car key.
He crosses the lot without stumbling, finds Kim slouched in a corner booth, a bit foggy, but not surprised to see him.
“Yuri said you’d be here,” his smile is warm and sleepy.
“You talked to her?”
“She called.”
“She’s worried,” Harry slides in facing him. “You okay?”
“I’m afraid I’ve crossed some lines. Those flags you mentioned.”
“Drink up pal. Show’s over.”
“Have one with me, Gerry. We’ve miles to go before we sleep.”
Harry eyes the bartender working crosswords by the register.
“One drink and we’re gone.”
“I never got to the market,” Kim slips a cigarette from his pocket.
“No one gives a shit. Forget about it Kim.”
“Yuri does. It’s something of a regular occurrence. You see, Gerry, it seems I’ve ruined her life.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Yuri’s a survivor. Believe me, I know the type.”
“Doubles, right?” bartender sets them down, more like triples but what the hell. They clink glasses and down the hatch. Whatever it is it isn’t bourbon.
“You should have seen her when we started up,” Kim slumps back into the corner. “I really sold her on the program. All talk, that’s my style.”
“Seems like it’s going pretty good to me.”
“Her parents lent us the start-up capital. We limped through the summer, but the locals never warmed. The place was a real watering hole back when men folk gathered to stoke their ignorance,” Kim taps the table. “The Stewart House, a family sore spot going back to the steam wheelers. As it looks now, we’ll be bankrupt by May Day.”
Harry grunts. It’s a damn shame, sure, but try murder for something to unravel over. Murder and a death sentence for the little ski bunny, go on, live with that! And dragging your wife into it, for Christ’s sake, hounding her until she’d agree to anything, you want regrets? Try forcing her to face the music alone. Bankruptcy? Divorce? He’d give a kidney for Kim’s problems.
“That’s rough, I won’t kid you. But it isn’t the end of the world.”
“You don’t know Yuri. Last year she had a miscarriage. Nobody said it was my fault, but nobody tried to convince me otherwise.”
That’s more like it, life, death, the real stuff of meltdowns. Turns out the miscarriage was Yuri’s second, the first following a car wreck the year before, a rear-ender on the 9W, you-know-who behind the wheel.
“Kara Mia, we’d already picked a name.”
“Kara. That’s nice.”
“We couldn’t wait to have her running around the hotel, growing up there, meeting different people. My grandmother was raised in a boarding house in Austria. It’s all she ever talked about.”
“It was an accident, nobody’s fault,” Harry says, as if he has the faintest idea. “Things you can’t control, Kim. Knocking them around is a waste of time.”
Two kids on his conscience, it’s a wonder the guy’s not in worse shape. So much shit goes down in one lifetime it’s hard to see how it’s worth the effort. Kara Mia, can you beat that? Harry waves for another round.
***
“Hello?
“Oh Lena, I just can’t believe he’s gone. It’s me, Sue-Anne. We’ve been crying all day.”
“We?”
“Me and Laurie, she heard it from Diane. Everybody’s in total shock.”
Lena rolls her eyes. “Diane Petrone? I thought she was living in Florida.”
“She’s back. Her mom’s in a nursing home. God, it’s all starting to happen.”
“What is?”
“The dying. Once it starts it doesn’t stop. First it’s people you hardly know then . . . oh why did it have to be Harry?”
“I wish I knew,” Lena counts the floor tiles.
“He had everything: looks, brains, the moustache.”
“Harry shaved that years ago.”
“I used to have such a crush on him,” Sue-Anne sighs. “Once he kissed me at a Who concert and I nearly creamed my jeans.”
“That’s so sweet.”
“Me and Laurie have been going through the yearbooks. God, we all look like ch
ildren. You had that Twiggy thing going on, remember?”
Lena butts her head against the doorframe. “How is Laurie?”
“She’s doing better since the divorce. My kids call her Auntie L. Here, say hi.”
“No, that’s–”
“Lena?”
“Hi Laurie.” Hotpants, the enduring image. “It’s been a long time.”
“I’m really sorry for, you know.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“I just want you to know that I never meant anything to Harry. When he was with me all he talked about was you.”
“Really.”
“And that time I had the hickey on my neck? That was from Gerry.”
“I haven’t thought of it in years,” fucking Gerry, dead for years and still stepping in it.
“Anyway Lena, I hope you’re okay and that this doesn’t change anything between us.”
“Not at all, we were kids,” Lena assures the stupid bitch.
“Here’s Sue-Anne, bye.”
“Goodbye Laurie,” and drop dead, could you?
“Lena, listen, we were thinking. Me and Laurie joined the gym and for a third membership you get a discount. I know you’re probably busy right now, but later, if you ever feel like working out, I don’t know, it would be great all of us back together.”
“Sounds good, I’d like that,” not a chance.
“Well, I’ll let you go, oh wait, here’s Harry with the band. Geez, I didn’t even know I had this picture. There’s you, Lena, with the go-go boots?”
“Let me see,” Laurie whines in the background.
“God, he was hot, like Jim Morrison only skinny. Look.”
“Who’s that guy next to him?”
“Move your finger, Oh, that’s . . . oh, what’s his name.”
Lena lugs the phone down the hall, reaches outside and pushes the doorbell.
“Oh hell, someone’s at the door. Listen Sue? I gotta go.”
“Started with a ‘P’. Peter?”
***
“Your sister?”
“Maddie. She had cystic fibrosis. I used to lay in bed at night and smell her pain.”
“Christ, that’s awful,” Harry’s glass misses the table on the down stroke, clanking to the floor then rolling under the booth behind them.
“And when she died?” Kim‘s head moves with a life all it’s own. “My dad put a padlock on the door to her bedroom. No one’s been in there in twenty-three years. Now do you see, Gerry?”
“Know what I think?” Harry gives him the eye that’s working. “I think on Judgment Day? Oh man, I can’t wait for that fucker.”
“Judgment Day?”
“Yeah, when they tally up the score and everybody gets what they deserve.”
Kim slams the table. “That’s what I’ve been telling you! It doesn’t matter what you do when the Man upstairs has it in for you.”
“Fucking justice, man!”
“Okay, that’s it,” barman barks. “You two are flagged.”
“One for the road, Ray,” Kim wheedles.
“Forget it. I should have cut you off hours ago.”
Harry pushes to his feet, but by the time he gets there he’s forgotten why.
“In that case,” Kim struggles to join him. “My friend and I will take our business elsewhere.”
Ray shakes his head. “Come on, Kim, no one’s gonna serve you in your condition.”
“We’ll see about that,” Kim hands Harry his coat. “Shall we?”
They take the Caddy, keeping to the back roads at Kim’s direction. The liquor store is still open so they stop for a bottle, something sweet and scorching, whatever. Half-moon bright above the mountains, the mile-wide Hudson streaked in silver. They end up in the old town cemetery, high beams on headstones going back to the colonies. Kim calls off names and dates, Harry blows lunch out the window.
“‘Sarah Jane, wife to Orrin, resting in the sleep of peace’”
“Urgh.”
“Sort of clumsy, hic, resting in the sleep?”
“Whoooaaa,”
“Old Casey might have something, you know? Reading to the dead. I mean, what could it, hic, hurt, right?”
“Reciting, ooh.”
“Let’s see, there was a young woman from Nantucket.”
Harry’s head comes to rest on something, the ground. Blades of grass curl under his cheek, the smell of dirt, a good smell from long ago.
“You look a sight, Gerry,” Kim observes. “I’ll have to ask you to let me drive.”
Dewdrops glisten at eye level and Harry touches his tongue to one.
“Gerry?”
Something teensy scrambles over his eyelid.
***
He wakes to the noon whistle, a vacuum above him thumping walls. For a second Harry thinks its Sunday, that he’s missed calling Lena, but playground racket makes it a school day. Which one, he couldn’t say. Harry runs down the blackout checklist, keys and wallet on the nightstand, bridgework in place, insides in order, no bleeding or broken bones. His clothes stacked and folded on the bureau, coat hanging from the hook on the door.
***
“Sister Muriel! What a surprise!” My God, there’s nothing left of her!
“Hello, my dear. Yes, I don’t get around like I used to. But I had to come see you.”
“Come in, come in,” Lena steps out to help her. Stoop salt crunches underfoot and a stiff wind catches the old nun’s habit.
“You’re by yourself?” Lena takes her elbow, knobby as a walnut. “You shouldn’t be out in this cold. I’ve been meaning to get over to see you.”
“Now I’ve saved you the trouble. They think I’m in chapel. It’s the only time I can get anything done.”
“Come sit,” Lena guides her into the kitchen and offers her Harry’s chair. “Can I get you something? Some coffee, tea?”
“If it’s no trouble,” she fusses with her habit and Lena hears the rosaries rattle. “Coffee please, black.”
“Father Mac said you’d started a novena. I wanted to thank you.”
“We’re into the third week. Somewhere around seven we tend to lose track. It’s no fun growing old, Lena.”
She really did intend to drop in on Muriel somewhere down the road. Now that she’s here Lena feels a fresh stab of guilt. Lying to the world is one thing, lying to Sister M is something else entirely.
Lena sets two cups on the table. “So how are you Sister?”
“I’m well, Lena,” the old woman takes one in both hands. “Oh, I’ve cut my activities down to the nub, but I still have my moments of usefulness. The question is how are you?”
“I’m okay. I keep waiting for it to hit me, but there’s so many distractions.”
“They say a mother’s worst fear is to outlive her children. You were all my children and I’ve buried four of late. Now Harry. I believe my faith has been shaken.”
“Don’t say that Sister M. It’s the last thing Harry would have wanted.”
“I admit it bothered me as a young girl. The pain we all endure. I must have thought I could do something about it, but in the end the bad catches up with you. Harry was a fine man.”
“Now he’s in heaven. We’ll see him again.”
Sister Muriel takes off her glasses. “I used to block all of that out, the afterlife, the eternal reward, but the day comes when you must make your peace with it.”
“What do you mean?” Lena pulls her chair around.
“You learn a lot as you get older. You start to see things differently. When Sandusky died I couldn’t make sense of it. It’s not my place to question the way of the Lord, but certain things demand an explanation.”
“I . . .”
“Spend your life in the classroom and it’s easy to spot the special ones. I remember when Harry first started at Sacred Heart, the kids just seemed drawn to him.”
“Mac says Harry will be okay,” Lena tel
ls her. “A stretch in Purgatory maybe.”
“Purgatory,” Muriel’s scoff is pure Harry. He saw Purgatory as a medium security prison with conjugal visits.
“You don’t believe in Purgatory?”
Sister gazes off. “Just the name, like some small country in the Soviet Union.”
Lena takes her hand. “You taught us that the Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“Too mysterious for my taste, and cruel to the point of criminal. Fifty years explaining God to children. Will it ever make sense?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t,” Sister sips her coffee. “And since we teach the children not to question, the answers become meaningless. Take yourself, Lena.”
“Me?”
“Yes, your husband is taken and you’re resigned to God’s will. No anger, no bitterness. If it wasn’t for the church making His excuses you’d see it for the outrage it is.”
Whoa, the unthinkable, Patron Saint of Pennsport having her doubts? Lena always thought faith was something you had or you didn’t, like freckles or a fear of heights. Muriel’s spent her whole life in the convent. If she loses it now she loses everything.
“Can I be honest with you Sister?”
Muriel just looks at her.
“Harry had a vision right before he died.”
“A vision,” sister frowns.
“I know, it sounds spooky, but he said Gerry came to him and told him heaven was everything you said it would be.”
“Gerry? In heaven?”
“I know, right? But Harry said Gerry said that they didn’t keep score. Not like a permanent record thing. God just looks into your heart and sees your true worth.”
“And Purgatory?”
“He didn’t say. But I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. It’s like outpatient therapy. You’re not really in the hospital but you’re pretty close.”
“A vision,” Muriel mulls it over. “It doesn’t sound like Harry to me.”
“He was really getting in touch with his spiritual side toward the end.”
“I have to tell you, I never put much stock in visions.”
