The Man in the Window (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries)

by Jon Cohen

  Al, who was not playful, stared disapprovingly at his new wife as she poured the glass of ice into the palm of her hand, and frowned deeper still when she handed him, embedded in a large chip, the wedding ring. Looking very glum, as if he thought the ring was a mysterious suitor’s challenge to his claim on Lucy, Al cracked the ice chip on the end of the refreshment table. The noise captured the attention of all the wedding guests who were not already staring at the strange behavior of the bride and groom.

  Al held the ring up and turned it in the sun. “Well, sweet Jesus,” he said. The wedding guests pressed closer. Al read out loud the inscription on the inside of the ring. “Norman Keeston. May 10, 1886.”

  May 10, 1886, was the date of Norman Keeston’s wedding day. The date of Norman’s demise was just three days ago, and his preservation on ice and subsequent burial yesterday morning was courtesy of Rose’s Funeral Home, Bill Rose, director. Lucy fainted right then and there and was immediately attended to by her bridesmaids and all the other women present except for Edith Rose, who remained standing behind the refreshment table beside her ice chest. All the men gathered around Al with one exception, Big Bill Rose, who slipped quietly away to his Studebaker, and sped off for the safety of his funeral home.

  It didn’t take long for the men to deduce the chain of events that placed Norman Keeston’s wedding ring in the bottom of Lucy Jameson’s glass of Pepsi-Cola. First, they ruled out that Norman’s ring came out of the Pepsi, because it was too large to pass through the opening of the glass bottle. Then Al remembered that it had been half-frozen in a piece of ice, and all the men turned their eyes toward Edith Rose. Her brother’s name emerged unbidden from her lips. “Bill,” she said. “I got that ice from my brother Bill.”

  It took less than five seconds for the wedding guests to understand the implications of ice from brother Bill. A great gasp went up from the crowd, particularly and especially from those whose drinks were cooled with Big Bill ice. At this point in his telling of the story, Atlas would make awful spitting and throat-clearing noises, imitating the guests, then grin at Gracie and Louis.

  Weakness of the flesh had been the culprit. Poor Norman Keeston’s finger, already contracted with age, contracted further still as he reposed upon a bed of ice on the embalming table. When Big Bill and his assistant had transferred Norman to the dressing table the morning of the funeral, Norman’s ring slid off and disappeared among a thousand frosty chips, all bound for the Jameson wedding.

  But for a timely catastrophe, that would have ended the career of Big Bill as Waverly’s sole funeral director. Sergeant Marple of the Waverly police brought the news, pushing his way through the crowd of men who’d driven to Rose’s Funeral Home, until he reached Frank Pearly, his chief. Chief Pearly was trying to keep Al Jameson from strangling Big Bill. Sergeant Marple’s news made the men go slack. The Mader twins and Stu Kipner had drowned in Waverly Lake after their boat capsized. No one spoke until Big Bill cleared his throat and uttered the words that saved his career.

  “Neighbors. I’m sorry for the unfortunate incident of the ice. Please bring those boys to me and I will attend to their funeral needs at no cost to their families.” His voice caught a little on the “no cost” part, but he managed to get the words out. The wedding crowd nodded their silent approval and then made their way to their cars.

  Al Jameson was the last to go. He hesitated in the doorway, turned, looked Big Bill in the eye, then tossed him Norman’s wedding ring. His curse echoed in the funeral parlor as if from the walls of an Egyptian tomb. “May you choke on this ring, you greedy bastard.”

  For seventy-five cents, his profit from the Keeston/Jameson ice deal, a profit he didn’t even have in his pocket because his sister Edith had yet to pay him, and probably never would, Big Bill got stuck for three free funerals, was shamed before his community, and cursed by an enraged groom. All in all, not a very good day for the funeral industry in Waverly.

  Even though he couldn’t see them, Louis knew from the silence downstairs that his mother and Jim Rose were reliving the unfortunate incident of the ice. Gracie’s eyes had softened, then closed for a long moment as she remembered Atlas telling the story year after year at the dinner table. His details were the details she remembered, even though she had actually been at the Jameson wedding and he had been away at basic training at Fort Jackson. He’d gleaned his story from the stories of others until he formed a version that was his own. “You should have seen Lucy Jameson’s face,” he’d say, and Gracie would say, “I was there, Atlas, I did see it.” “But no,” Atlas would say, “you should have seen it.” And somehow it got to be, from the sheer force of joy he derived from the telling of it, that she saw Lucy or Al or Big Bill or Sergeant Marple the way he saw them, as characters in a wonderful fiction that was true. These people, whom she encountered every day on the streets of Waverly, were elevated by Atlas’s recounting of their lives, taking on proportions they did not necessarily possess.

  Of course it was unkind of Gracie to use the unfortunate incident of the ice on Jim Rose, Louis knew. Jim Rose probably looked very grim. Perhaps now he would strike back at Gracie through some little unkindness of his own. Do something, say, to Atlas, humiliate the corpse by burying him with no pants on or with his finger up his nose. But Gracie had not said it, Louis was sure, simply to put Jim Rose in his place. Gracie was a brand-new widow, and the power of her grief, of her missing of Atlas, may have moved her to this exchange with Jim Rose, so that the mentioning of Big Bill and the ice could become inevitable, so that then she could recall a specific moment that was Atlas, could recall him telling his story, and recall further the twenty or thirty times in twenty or thirty ways that Atlas had told the story, and in the specificity of all those moments Gracie would have him again. He would not have left her as he did beneath the horse chestnut tree.

  CHAPTER THREE

  UPSTAIRS, WATCHING the flow of bustling women from behind a curtain, Louis thought of trick-or-treaters. Yes, their faces bore that same look of dread and excitement, as on the faces of children in costume, that comes when dead things are in the air.

  Gracie let them in, the women who came in twos or threes, never alone, and endured again and again the awful awkward moment as they all stood there in the front hallway. She wished they’d leave their casseroles and cakes on the front doorstep like the UPS man—ring the bell, drop their goods, and disappear. This time it was Kitty Wilson and Bev Howard. Kitty lived next door to Gracie, in the house with the new aqua aluminum siding that Atlas said was capable of causing permanent eye damage in a man of his advancing years. Bev lived four houses down and had a yard full of topiary hedges, poor abused plants shaped to resemble elephants and bears. Atlas teased Bev and her husband, Bert, to no end about those hedges. Atlas never missed an opportunity to be simple and infuriating. He’d stand beside a bear hedge, knowing it was a bear hedge, and say, “My God, Bert. That’s more like an elephant than an elephant is like an elephant. Gracie and I were watching the Nature show on PBS last night, no, the night before, ‘Sunrise on the Serengeti,’ and the elephants on that show were nowhere near as majestic or, I’m telling you, Bert, as realistic as this one.” More than once over the years, Atlas would be walking by and spot Bev on her knees in the ivy, or Bert patching the walk, and he’d stop and stare at them with hard accusing eyes. When he got their attention and then held them with that look until they’d begun to fidget, he’d nod over at one of the bear hedges and say in a low even voice, “One of your bears got into my trash cans last night. See that it doesn’t happen again.” Then, without a flicker of a smile, he’d say, “Good day,” and march off down the block.

  Louis loved the elephants and bears, and once he slipped out at night to be with them. While Waverly slept, Louis moved among the animals, then stood very still and watched them move around him. It was in winter after a new snow. He thought it was wonderful to watch the bears and elephants playing in the snow.

  Bev scrunched up her face into what was
supposed to be, Gracie figured, a mask of neighborly commiseration. But it didn’t quite come together somehow, and poor Bev with her drooping mouth looked as if she had suffered a mild stroke. Kitty’s face was more composed, held in place by generous layers of makeup. She always coordinated her colors, the lips and eyes matching the stones on a necklace or picking up a hint of something in a sweater. This time her eyes were rimmed with an intense aqua. Could it be, Gracie wondered, that Kitty is coordinating herself with the new aluminum siding on her house?

  Kitty, herself five years a widow, blinked her aqua eyes several times—a display meant to demonstrate the effort it took to contain her tears. Kitty blinked and Bev snuffled, her drooping mouth going up and down. Gracie looked at her two neighbors twitching and grunting before her and thought, Grief is an ungainly dance.

  Kitty held her casserole out to Gracie. Unable to say, I am so sorry, Gracie, we’ll all miss Atlas, which is what in her own way she felt, Kitty said, “Oh Gracie, here. I whipped this up for you—sweet potatoes with a marshmallow glaze. Put that in the oven at three-fifty for twenty minutes, then take the lid off for ten minutes at the end to let it brown.” She placed the dish in Gracie’s hands as solemnly as if she were handing over an urn containing Atlas’s ashes. Then she stepped back, relieved, and it was Bev’s turn.

  Bev looked scared, as though she thought widowhood might be catching. Bert, after all, was two years older than Atlas. Maybe there had been some sort of mix-up, maybe it was Bert who was supposed to have collapsed in his backyard. When she heard about Atlas, Bev had whisked Bert out of the yard where he’d been trimming the elephants and made him lie down on the sofa.

  “Gracie,” Bev began, then stopped. She gulped.

  Gracie said, “It’s all right, Bev.”

  “No, Gracie,” she said. “It’s just that… Here. I made these. The little sugar cookies Atlas liked so much. Remember, at our barbecue two years ago? He ate a full dozen, at least, and Bert, he was so busy at the grill and everything, he didn’t even get one, but I guess Atlas didn’t notice about Bert, or he just liked them so much he couldn’t help himself. Anyway he sure ate them.” She thrust the tin of cookies at Gracie.

  Gracie remembered things a little differently. The reason Atlas ate the sugar cookies as though they were the main course was because, in the end, that’s what they turned out to be. Bert always had a few beers before the annual picnic with Gracie and Atlas, because Atlas made him nervous. He could never quite tell when Atlas was joking and when he wasn’t—like with the hedges. Bert must have been extra nervous, because he’d had more than a few beers that day. During two and a half interminable hours, he managed to drop three steaks and most of the chicken breasts on the ground, and the food he was able to keep over the coals he burned beyond recognition. Atlas never looked at a sugar cookie again.

  And what do I have, thought Gracie, to comfort me in the hour of my greatest sorrow? Kitty and Bev, a batch of sweet potatoes with a ruinous marshmallow glaze and some sugar cookies. Atlas, save me.

  A sudden small sound pattered from above, tiptoes down the hallway, light and quick. Kitty and Bev looked up at the ceiling, then back at Gracie.

  Bev said, “Louis is taking it hard, I imagine, Gracie?”

  Gracie thought about that. Then she said, “You can’t be sure how Louis takes a thing. He carries his sorrow differently than the rest of us.”

  When she had finally released Atlas’s body there beneath the horse chestnut tree, Louis was beside her. He wore, as he always did indoors or out, a purple scarf wrapped high above his nose like a bandit, and a baseball cap, the rim pulled down low. She looked up into his hidden face and saw in his eyes that he understood, but she said it anyway, articulated it for herself. “Louis, your daddy’s dead.” She said it like that, used the word daddy, although it was not a word that belonged to Louis, who always called him Atlas. Gracie sat beside her husband, her hand resting on his still figure. Louis knelt down, touched Atlas, then suddenly pulled back and stared down the yard at the lengthening shadows, and pointed there, then there, raising his finger a little each time, until at last he pointed straight up in the air. His head was tilted back, and his scarf fell away. Gracie saw his eyes following a movement, his mouth open, his face bathed in the blue light of the sky.

  Kitty pursued what Bev had begun, presuming on the intimacy that seems to form between neighbors after a death. “Will you, Gracie, do you think you’ll be able to care for Louis now that Atlas is gone?” She stood too close and Gracie, as she often did, picked up the fermented scent of wine on Kitty’s breath.

  Upstairs, a toilet flushed.

  Gracie moved past Kitty to the front door and opened it. “You have it quite wrong, quite backward,” she said. “Now that Atlas is gone, it will be Louis who takes care of me.”

  When Gracie closed the door behind the two women, footsteps tiptoed down the hall again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GRACIE REMEMBERED what Atlas always told her, what he said right from the beginning. “Gracie, I hope to God I go before you do.” He even said it on their wedding night in 1946. She sat at the dressing table in the bedroom of the Tremont Hotel in Atlantic City, and he had come up behind her in his blue silk bathrobe, picked up her brush, and begun to brush her hair. They had kissed before, of course, and more, but nothing approached the intimacy of that moment. She let her head sink back as he stroked. Her hair was brown and long, and it seemed to take the brush forever to move through it. Finally, Atlas put the brush down, and whispered, “Oh, Gracie, I hope I go before you do.”

  The words did not seem at all inappropriate or morbid.

  Gracie laughed, pulled him to her, and kissed him. They were young, they were just married—he would brush her hair, and they would stay young and married forever.

  “Atlas,” she said. “Neither of us is going to go. They make special allowances for people like us.” She kissed him again.

  But Atlas had been to war. “Well, just in case they don’t, I hope I go first.”

  She touched a finger to his lips. “Listen to you,” she said. “Listen to you.”

  He said it many times over the years. But at some point there came a turning for Gracie, and the words took on a measure of menace. The ordinary accumulation of vulnerabilities was the menace, and so were the small shocks that come one after another over the course of a life. The menace was in the slow hollowing of her bones and in the fragile ticking of the clock. They would not always be young or forever married, and the hair Atlas still liked to brush for her was going white.

  Two years before he died, they were at the farm, the hundred acres of overgrown land and small farmhouse that Gracie had inherited from her mother, when Atlas said those words for the last time. “I hope I go before you do.” He floated in the middle of the pond, a seventy-year-old man draped on a black inner tube. She leaned against a piling at the end of the dock, watching a red-winged blackbird on the top branch of a dead willow. It had not moved in five minutes. But when Atlas called across the pond to her, it abruptly took flight. Gracie was sure it was more Atlas’s words than the suddenness of his voice that scared the bird. Now she heard the words, too, and they didn’t declare love, as they always had, but the loss of love, of Atlas. She felt something rush up out of her chest, felt the frightened beating of wings, and the escape of the blackbird.

  Atlas would go before her, he would get his wish. Maybe it would happen now, right now. As he floated in smiling ease, maybe the pond would open up and draw him down. Or his heart would stop, and he would slide through the middle of his inner tube and away. Or something in his brain, something tiny and thin, would engorge and burst, and Atlas would see a brief dim light, one candle lit for one instant, enough to see where he was going, before a slight wind or the breath from an unseen mouth cut the flame and left all in darkness.

  “Damn you, Atlas!” she called fiercely across the water.

  Atlas’s head was turned, and he didn’t seem to hear her. Gracie f
ollowed his gaze to the side of the hill that rose beyond the weedy pasture, where a figure moved. Even on this hot day, Louis wore his baseball hat and scarf, though the scarf hung loose and open around his neck—he felt safe at the farm. He sat picking wild strawberries. Gracie saw him find a spot, then his hand going back and forth from the ground to his mouth.

  Atlas turned away from Louis and began paddling back to the dock. He pulled himself out of the water, graceful still in his movements. He said, “Well, he sure finds those strawberries, all right. I can hardly see them anymore, but Louis sure finds them, even the ones no bigger than your baby toenail. Boy, I bet—”

  Gracie stopped him. “Atlas, don’t say that anymore.”

  He looked at her.

  “Don’t say you hope you go before I do.”

  He moved close but didn’t touch her. “I’m sorry, Gracie.”

  “You think you couldn’t do it without me. Well, I couldn’t do it without you. It works both ways.”

  Now he touched her lightly on the arm. “You’re stronger than me.”

  She pulled away. “You always say that. How do you know? Everything that’s happened we’ve borne together.”

  Louis called to them from the hillside. “Atlas. Gracie. I found a big one.” Gracie knew from his voice that he was smiling. The line of his mouth would be straight, because his injured lips could no longer define a smile. It was all in his voice now.

  Atlas waved to Louis. Then he began to speak, looking at Gracie sometimes, or way off at Louis, or down into the murky water of the pond. Atlas spoke, and Gracie listened, her eyes closing first in the slow heat of the day. She tried to see the world as Atlas described it. She listened, then opened her eyes and watched him intently, as if she hoped to see each word in the tumble of words that rose out of him.