Last Call

by Laura Pedersen

  Then one morning the field was empty, with only large patches of dead grass as evidence that such a grand and decadent moment had ever occurred. The carnival disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, and the villagers returned to their shopkeeping, lobster traps, churches, and hearths as if it had all been a dream. And it was a dream, at least in the sense there existed a collective conspiracy to overlook anything untoward that may have transpired during the five days of bedlam.

  Joey is mesmerized by the death-defying performances that include exploding cannons, angry lions, and audacious motorcycle jumps. And then there is the famous Shondra Family flying trapeze act—two muscular brothers hanging upside-down, soaring high above the audience as they swoop from one end of the tent to the other, sending their daring wives and sisters spinning between them. There’s even a boy no older than Joey who manages a double somersault while being tossed through the air like a giant watermelon. Why couldn’t Joey have been born into a circus family, with his mother smiling and applauding on the tiny platform from which they pushed off on their heroic missions, just like the happy Shondra mother, her trim figure outlined in an orange-and-gold-spangled costume, matching headband, and heavily made-up face.

  Hayden is secretly pleased that his two guests are so thoroughly amused, but finds that his own joy is to be had in continuing to play the pessimist. “People payin’ good money to watch other idiots tryin’ to kill themselves,” he grouses as they prepare to leave. “Who are the real fools now? Ask yourselves that.”

  “Oh, Grandpa,” says Joey.

  “Oh, Hayden,” says Rosamond.

  When they exit onto Columbus Avenue it’s raining again and the wet hissing sound of trucks and taxis roaring through puddles fills the city air with noisy dampness. There’s no sky now, just a ceiling of umbrellas overhead. Between the scaffolding, restaurant canopies, and umbrellas of others, they hardly get wet.

  Hayden leads Rosamond and Joey down to Fifty-ninth Street, past the enormous black glass skyscrapers that are headquarters for brokerage firms, media empires, and under the awnings of world-class hotels such as The Plaza across from Central Park. The eighteen-story cast-iron building with the green copper roof resembles a French chateau, only with flags flying out front as if it served as an international border crossing. Joey imagines that it’s a place where spies meet to exchange top-secret information and briefcases filled with millions of dollars.

  Passing the Pulitzer fountain in front of the grand old hotel they head toward the General Motors Building across the avenue and into the famous F.A.O. Schwarz toy store, where sensory overload strikes the second they pass through the revolving doors, as if they’ve entered a parallel universe. The massive space is crammed from floor to ceiling with luxury toy cars, enormous stuffed animals that talk and wave, and every movie tie-in known to Hollywood. From all directions come the sound of train whistles, rockets popping, dolls crying, light sabers dueling, and a lion roaring from somewhere within an artificial jungle suspended overhead.

  When they arrive at the top of the escalator a smiling employee with an old-fashioned leather aviator hat and goggles approaches Joey and shows him how to fly a balsa wood airplane so that it loops back to him like a boomerang.

  Meanwhile Hayden and Rosamond are fascinated by the living room–size Lego space station. Toys had certainly advanced from the marbles and blocks of their youth.

  The worker in charge of Legoland admires Rosamond’s nun’s habit and says, “Fabulous look!” Meanwhile he’s outfitted in a red-checked shirt, denim coveralls, and an engineer’s cap, obviously compliments of his employer. “Are you demonstrating the Sister Act 3 action figures?” he asks Rosamond.

  “Sing-Along Sound o’ Music,” interjects Hayden.

  “You should have been here when we had the Braveheart display,” the young man replies to Hayden, obviously picking up on his Scottish accent.

  Hayden smiles broadly and with a strong brogue states, “Indeed, I should o’, lad. I could ha’ played ‘Sons o’ Scotland’ on me pipes.”

  “Wow,” says Lego Man. “Has anyone ever told you that you sound just like Sean Connery?”

  “Never heard o’ him,” says Hayden as he takes Rosamond by the arm and leads her away.

  By the time they leave the store the rain has stopped and so the three tourists walk across the street to Central Park. Sitting on a bench they eat ice cream cones from a street vendor while enjoying the endless parade of children, dogs, tourists, cops, skateboarders, and Rollerbladers.

  As they drive across the Williamsburg Bridge the Manhattan skyline once again glows in the distance, awash in silver, like a holy city in an ancient legend, proudly presenting a noble facade to the outside world, and yet careful to keep all its secrets just slightly out of reach. The city is like a human being, thinks Rosamond, with a familiar exterior and a complicated and perhaps truly unknowable interior.

  Despite having had a wonderful time at the circus and the toy store, Rosamond seems distressed when they finally arrive back at the convent.

  “What’s wrong?” Hayden asks. “Did you forget your keys?”

  “Hayden . . .” Rosamond begins haltingly. “I can’t stay here anymore.” Her voice contains the fretfulness of a front-row student suddenly assigned to detention.

  Placing his hands on her shoulders, which are shaking like muscles that have been held under strain for too long, he asks, “Are they giving you the heave-ho? Why, those rotten bastards!” Hayden has no idea how convents work but imagines it’s like the strict boarding school he’d attended in Aberdeen for a year, and that Rosamond is being expelled for breaking the rules.

  “Oh no, they’ve been wonderful about my illness. But I can no longer pledge myself to God,” she says, her voice as delicate as a sigh and her sorrow spilling out far beyond the borders of consolation. “But this is the only home I’ve known for the past twenty years. I have no other place to go. It’s so awful—I can’t stay, and yet I can’t leave.”

  Rosamond and Hayden stand in the driveway silently staring at each other in the gathering gloom, their shadows growing taller on the stone wall.

  Joey has never before seen his grandfather speechless. Nor has he ever before seen grown-ups acting so dumb. He pulls on Hayden’s sleeve so that his grandfather leans down and then Joey whispers, “Ask her to sleep over.”

  When Hayden straightens up he appears to have awakened from his trance. “Then you should sleep, I mean, you should consider yourself a guest of the MacBrides for as long as you like. Go and pack your things and we’ll wait for you right here.”

  “I don’t really have anything—just a nightgown and a few books.” She looks up at the towering dark gray building. “And I’d rather not go back . . .”

  “Right. Then hop in the car,” he says cavalierly, as if they’re off on a great adventure. He pulls out of the driveway spraying dust and gravel in his wake, as if they’re being chased.

  chapter sixteen

  When Diana pushes open the front screen door with two overflowing bags of groceries the first thing she sees is a boy about Joey’s age patiently explaining how to work the channel clicker to a nun. Could she be in the wrong house?

  “Hi, Mom,” says the boy.

  “Joey? Oh, my!” Diana turns toward the archway into the kitchen where Hayden is standing holding a cup of tea in one hand and a cocktail glass half-filled with bronze liquid in the other.

  “Rosamond, it is with great pride that I introduce you to Diana, The Duchess o’ the Sidelong Glance.”

  Only Diana is too startled to do anything but look from Hayden to Rosamond in disbelief. Sometimes hysteria overshadowed the social graces inherited from her mother.

  Rosamond rises and extends her hand, attempting to hide her surprise at Diana’s appearance. She has imagined Hayden’s daughter as a shy young woman in a gingham jumper carrying a basket of flowers on her arm. And yet standing before her is the raven-haired version of Marilyn Monroe, wearing a tailored midnight bl
ue pantsuit with matching high heels. And there is certainly nothing bashful about her—from her long strides and full red lips to her unrestrained figure and sharp glances.

  However, there is also none of her father’s sparkling conviviality. To Rosamond’s great surprise, her swift movements and darting eyes don’t communicate self-assuredness so much as doubt; doubt that anything good can last, doubt that anything that lasts can possibly be good, and doubt even that the sun will come up in the morning.

  Unaware that she’s being appraised, Diana sets down her bags on top of Hayden’s new large-screen TV and takes Rosamond’s hand, though not without giving her father a censorious look. “It’s nice to meet you, Sister.” Diana can only assume he’s started to interview private-duty nurses. But a nun?

  “Actually, I suppose I’m not really a sister anymore,” the nun tells her. “I guess you should just call me Rosamond.”

  “Joey’s going to be a lion tamer!” Hayden announces in a concerted effort to add annoyance to aggravation.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Dad.” After all these years Diana still can’t always tell when Hayden is trying to get a reaction out of her solely for his own amusement.

  “To the first asthmatic lion tamer,” Hayden says and raises his glass in toast fashion. He hands the cup of tea to Rosamond. “Maybe they’ll even find some asthmatic lions for him to train.”

  “I want to be shot out of a cannon!” exclaims Joey. What could be more exciting than flying through the air with a thousand fans breathlessly waiting to see if you were going to live or die? Though that doesn’t mean he’s given up on becoming an astronaut. Because he’ll still do that part-time, when the circus is on vacation. But that’s only if he can’t be a baseball player.

  “You took him to the circus, didn’t you? You do things like this on purpose just to upset me—what about all the animal hair and his asthma?”

  Hayden ignores her. “Where’s Ant’ny-the-Sofa-Tester?”

  “He had to work.”

  “Hope it isn’t too much of a shock to his system. Though I imagine the couch can use the rest. Speaking of rest, I’m moving into the death chamber,” says Hayden and points toward the room at the back of the house on the first floor.

  “Oh, Dad!” Diana scolds him and nods toward Joey as if he shouldn’t say such things around a child.

  Rosamond, on the other hand, appears shocked at hearing such an unusual announcement. She hadn’t been into somebody’s home in over twenty years. Did people sleep in vaults now, with extra oxygen pumped in to help them rest?

  “Okay then, the sunroom. I’m giving my room to Rosamond. Tonight I’ll sleep on the couch in Linda’s old bedroom.”

  Diana is considerably more surprised to hear that the nurse is moving in with them that very night than about Hayden’s latest round of planning his demise. She peers at Hayden to see if there’s been a turn for the worse in his health and concludes that he looks much as he had the past few weeks, a bit pale and weary around the edges, but for the most part upbeat and energetic. And knowing how careful Hayden is with his money, she finds it astounding that he wouldn’t have waited until the last possible moment to hire outside help and pay rental on a bed.

  “Uh, Dad, isn’t full-time nursing a little bit premature?” She turns to Rosamond. “I mean, I’m sure you’re very competent and all but—”

  Hayden starts laughing and slaps his knee. “Rosie’s not a nurse!”

  Joey starts to explain, “We met her at the h—”

  “Shea Stadium,” Hayden quickly jumps on top of him and Joey bites his lower lip while Hayden finishes. “She’s a baseball fan who needs a place to stay for a while.”

  “It’s your house,” Diana replies tersely. She glares at him as if he’s lying through his teeth or else gone senile from The Cancer. But she knows better than to grill Hayden, especially in front of an audience. If instead she quietly observed him and watched for clues, the truth eventually emerged. With Hayden anything is possible. Perhaps the nun has a gambling problem or is an alcoholic.

  She takes another look at the fully habited Rosamond, now seated on the couch with her back perfectly straight and hands folded neatly in her lap. Diana guesses the nun is older than she by only six or seven years, making her about forty-one or forty-two. Rosamond’s skin is smooth and free from wrinkles, apparently untouched by the damaging rays of the sun and worrying about baby-sitters. In fact, the only sign of internal tumult in her placid countenance lies in her eyes, which are cat blue and bright but wary—and there is something odd about the way she hardly takes them off Hayden.

  Diana very much doubts the baseball story. But why would he lie? And where else would Hayden have encountered a nun? Has he suddenly started attending church? Did he make up the stadium story because he’s embarrassed by the fact that he’s turned to religion in his hour of need? She decides to interrogate Joey later. It’s obvious he knows more than his grandfather is letting him tell. He always bites his lower lip like that when something is afoot that he doesn’t want her to know about. But as it turns out, waiting won’t be necessary.

  “Rosamond is dying, too,” Hayden cheerfully continues. “And she’s enlisted me to help her to work out the details.”

  “Inoperable lung cancer,” adds Rosamond. She surprises even herself with this public declamation. It sounds ominous to hear the words spoken aloud. For while they were at the circus she was able to put aside thoughts of the death sentence hanging over her head like a storm cloud, threatening to cast down its lightning at any moment.

  “Oh no!” Diana’s hand shoots up to her fluttering heart. Every day she imagines contracting a deadly disease and now here is a woman just a half dozen years older who’s done exactly that. Which only goes to serve as additional proof for Diana that one can never truly worry enough.

  After Diana recovers from the initial shock of hearing that such a healthy-looking woman is deathly ill she nods toward her father and says soothingly, “Well, you couldn’t be in more capable hands. Dad has made quite a study of the process.”

  Rosamond begins to nervously finger her habit and Hayden turns the conversation in a less prickly direction.

  “Di-Di, is there a chance you could lend Rosamond something to wear until she can go shopping?”

  “Yes, of course.” Diana attempts to get a sense of Rosamond’s measurements despite all the dark billowy covering. “In fact, I think we’re about the same size.”

  “Good, because she’s getting out o’ the nun business.”

  Diana refuses to fall into another of Hayden’s traps by asking why, since it’s hardly likely he’ll tell the truth, especially now that he’s obviously had a few drinks. For the time being Diana can only speculate. Has he converted Rosamond to his breezy atheism? Or is the reason more sinister, does she need a disguise because she’s in hiding as the result of a scandal, something Hayden might know about or even be involved in, such as an insurance scam? She knows he’s always lived honestly, but lately he keeps referring to the fact that he’d planned on leaving a more sizable inheritance, and had counted on working at least another ten years.

  “It will feel strange to go shopping after two decades of wearing the same thing every day,” muses Rosamond. “Actually, I don’t even know where to begin.” And it’s true, she has only the vaguest notion of what people wear these days. From what she’d seen in the hospital, people dressed much more casually than they used to, even for work.

  Rosamond recalls that as a young girl she’d adored pretty clothes, sewing outfits for her dolls and making suits from construction paper for pictures of people that she would cut out of magazines. Only the latest fashions had been the last thing on her father’s mind, especially after her mother passed away. He was a fisherman through and through, more concerned with practicality—keeping dry and washing the sea salt off your boots so that the soles didn’t rot. So until she entered the convent, most of her days had been spent in a plaid school jumper, blue church dress, or el
se coveralls and oilskins for helping out on the boat.

  Upon hearing that a gullible consumer is headed directly into the commission books of potentially insincere salesclerks, Diana’s maternal instincts go into high gear. “I have tomorrow morning off. I’ll take you shopping.”

  “And in the afternoon I’ll show her around the hospital supply store,” adds Hayden. “I already called to have my bed delivered.”

  “Oh Dad, we’re not really going to have a hospital bed in the sunroom.”

  “Diana, you said I could die here with you. Now are you sure you wouldn’t rather I go to your sister Linda’s house in Nouveau Jersey?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just that . . .”

  Hayden and Rosamond and Joey all stare at Diana as if she might suggest a magic potion that has the power to ward off death.

  “It’s just that . . . why do you have to sound so excited about it?” Diana finally manages to articulate her difference in philosophy. It’s not normal to view dying as an adventure. “And why must you always discuss these things in front of Joey?”

  “What? Would you rather tell Joey that I’ve moved to Brigadoon until one day he stumbles across my ashes in an urn under the kitchen sink?”

  “Oh, Dad,” moans Diana.

  chapter seventeen

  At ten minutes after nine the next morning two burly deliverymen arrive with the hospital bed and Hayden directs them to the sunroom in the back of the house. It’s a modest but cheerful space with a bay window looking out onto the small square of lawn that passes for a backyard.

  “Joe-Joe, isn’t it a grave-nudger’s dream?” Hayden bounces up and down on the mattress. “Why don’t you man the controls and take it on its maiden voyage?”

  Joey sullenly shakes his head “no” and stalks out of the room.