Requiem, Mass.

by John Dufresne

  Dad said, “You’ve made your point.”

  Stevie said, “Is that when you were sick?”

  I said, “Sick?”

  “His cancer,” Stevie said.

  “You never had cancer, Dad.”

  “It’s not something I wanted to worry you kids with.”

  “You’ve never even been to a doctor.”

  “That’s enough!”

  Stevie said, “Let’s play Clue after supper.”

  Drake’s next words were, “Lead pipe.”

  WHILE WE busied and entertained ourselves, Deluxe befriended the lovely Orbison, an elegant and vainglorious red and blue Siamese fighting fish who lived on the coffee table in a heated ten-gallon tank with a porcelain sponge diver. Deluxe was fascinated with this exquisite creature who seemed to defy gravity. And Orbison seemed quite taken with Deluxe and his attention. Whenever Deluxe hopped up onto the coffee table, Orbison swam in enthusiastic circles, rippled his long and flowing fins, and then nosed up to the glass and primped himself for Deluxe. He might blow a bubble, execute a graceful turn, or fan his pectorals. Deluxe spoke to Orbison in muted, sweet meows and chirrs. When Deluxe left the table, Orbison retreated behind the frond of plastic kelp. He seemed to deflate. He’d sink to the bottom of the tank and lie there listlessly by the treasure chest. There were times I saw him slam his head against the glass. If Deluxe was gone too long, Orbison punished him by swimming to the opposite side of the tank and keeping as far from the circling and apologetic cat as he could until he felt that Deluxe had been punished enough.

  I HAD always harbored decidedly mixed feelings about Christmas, equal parts breathless anticipation and suffocating dread. School was closed, and that, of course, was liberating. But everything else was closed as well, and that disruption in the social routine I found depressing. Now we were all prisoners in our homes. What if I needed double-A batteries for my new transistor radio? Alka-Seltzer for the imminent indigestion? I could go for a walk and listen to the crunch and squeak of my boots on the packed snow and imagine I was the only survivor of a nuclear holocaust, but I’d look up and see all the flickering blue TV lights in the apartment windows and realize I was not welcomed in any of their lives, was not privy to any of their secrets.

  You got toys and games for Christmas, and you distracted yourself for hours by playing with them until even you grew bored. You spoiled your dinner with ribbon candy that looked like spun glass, didn’t so much taste as tickle, and stained your fingers red and green. And then the delicious meal itself with the turkey and the mashed potatoes and the cranberry sauce and the pies, the pies! But then you’d look outside and see that it was getting dark already, shit!, and you’d realize that this day of extravagant indulgence was ending and wouldn’t return for another year, and when it did, it wouldn’t produce quite the thrill it once did, and you’d get that awful it’s-Sunday-night-and-Ed-Sullivan’s-on-and-I-haven’t-done-my-homework-and-it’s-too-late-to-start-now-solet’s-face-it-my-ass-is-grass-at-school-in-the-morning feeling.

  After my grandmother Grace died, Christmas in Requiem didn’t amount to much. Audrey and I would be up at the crack of dawn. Rainy and Frances, hung over, would sleep until the afternoon, by which time Audrey and I would have opened every gift, played with and broken all the new toys, and would have watched Suzy Snowflake for the umpteenth time and fallen asleep in front of the TV. We’d wander outside to play, maybe go sledding down the hill by the schoolyard, eat a late dinner of leftovers, and go to bed.

  That Christmas in Monroe, Dad bought me a Daisy Lever-Matic BB gun, made to look like a Model 94 Winchester, the rifle that won the West. It came with a box of BBs, a tube of gun oil, and a paper target that had a baseball game on it. Hit the bull’s eye—home run. Audrey liked it. She offered her diary in trade. I asked Dad why he bought it for me.

  “I thought it would make a good starter rifle.”

  “Why a rifle, I mean?”

  “It’s what boys do.”

  The only boy I knew back in Requiem who had a rifle was Philip Cooke, and Philip was a nasty fool, a juvenile delinquent who used his rifle to shoot birds off wires and squirrels out of trees. Every once in a while he’d point the rifle at your face and threaten to shoot your eyes out.

  “I don’t really want to kill anything.”

  “That’s what the target’s all about. You shoot bottles, cans. Like that.” He handed me the instruction booklet and told me I could read it on the way to Stevie’s mom’s house, which was where we were having Christmas dinner. This was north of town, up in Sterlington.

  “Rule number one,” he said. “No shooting the gun in the house.”

  Stevie’s mom, Dorsey Ann, lived in a tiny old house about a half mile up a gravel road off 165. Stevie leaned out the window of the car and hollered, “Hello, the house!” In a deuce, Dorsey Ann was outside waiting for us where the road became yard, and she gave us each a hug as we climbed out of Stevie’s Buick. Dorsey Ann smelled like vanilla. She introduced us to her friend Eldrid Gomil-lion, her sweetheart, I figured. And I was right. Eldrid’s hair was cut short on the sides, longer up top, and a wave of his dark hair fell over his forehead. He had on a black knit tie and a starched blue work shirt. Eldrid nodded and smiled at each of us.

  Four rough-hewn columns held up the extended roof over the front porch. The white paint on the house itself had faded and chipped, came off like dust on your fingers. There were a rocking chair, an extra refrigerator, and a glider on the porch. There was also a framed photo by the door of a man in a dark suit and a fedora standing at a microphone. Gave the porch a living room kind of feel. Dorsey Ann told me the man was Uncle Earl. Governor Earl Long. Drake and Audrey made for the johnboat at the side of the house and climbed in. They played pirates until dinner was ready. Drake’s new words were grog and arrgh. Me, I walked through the house while the adults parked themselves at the kitchen table and opened a bottle of what they were calling Christmas cheer. You walked in the front door to a hall with a hat rack, a telephone on a table, and a fabric wall hanging featuring an American flag that said I’M HAPPY TO BE AN EXTENSION HOME MAKER. The kitchen was to the left, the parlor to the right, and the bedroom to the back.

  I sat on a loungey, overstuffed fabric chair with pleated, pillowy arms and put my feet up on the matching ottoman. There was a wall of autographed celebrity photographs: Ferlin Husky, Perry Como, George Jones, Edd “Kookie” Burns, Allen Funt (“Smile, Dorsey Ann, you’re on Candid Camera!”), Paul Anka, and Don Rickles. There was a baby food jar on the chair-side table with thirteen of Stevie’s baby teeth, like so many flakes of vermiculite. Next to the jar, Stevie’s bronzed baby shoes, bowed laces and all. Next to the shoes, Stevie’s first-place Ouachita Parish Spelling Bee trophy. I had never been in a spelling bee. The trophy was a golden bowl, and folded inside the bowl was Stevie’s parish fair blue ribbon for her Flemish Giant rabbit. I imagined what my life would have been like if I had grown up here in Louisiana. I’d know boys with rifles, apparently. And girls who won blue ribbons. My backyard would go on forever. I’d be alone more often. If you were crazy and you lived out in the country in Louisiana, would anyone even notice?

  We had baked ham for dinner with sweet potatoes and spicy cheese grits. Banana cream pie and vanilla ice cream for dessert. After dinner, Dad loosened his belt, drifted to the parlor, and fell asleep on the couch. Audrey and Drake headed outside to play. Eldrid excused himself and walked to the shed. He got a bucket of white paint and a brush and painted the tree trunks. I watched him through the window. I looked at Stevie. I said, What’s Eldrid up to? Dorsey Ann said, Southeast trunk disease. Stevie said that the early winter sun can warm the bark so it cracks, and the delicate tissue beneath gets injured, and the tree dies. Trees need a new coat about every winter. Yes, I said, sure, I’d like coffee. I tasted it. With cream. Tasted again. And sugar. More sugar. Thanks.

  Dorsey Ann pursed her lips and shook her head. Then she told Stevie and me how she went to visit her baby sister,
Stevie’s aunt Ginger Rae, last Thursday. For my sake Dorsey Ann prefaced her story with some family history. “Ginger Rae married the youngest, plumpest, and laziest of the six no-account Futch brothers and moved with him to Farmerville. Boy’s name is Talmadge Sims Futch, but it should be Fatso Futch. When he’s not sacking groceries at the Piggly Wiggly, he’s parked on his pooched-out bohunkus on that reinforced BarcaLounger in that sorry-ass double-wide they call a home. Pardon my French.”

  Stevie said, “Momma, he’s not lazy; he’s got that illness.”

  Dorsey Ann said, “He’s a four-hundred-pound narcoleptic grocery clerk who hasn’t satisfied his poor wife in a coon’s age, hasn’t seen his own little mister in who knows how long.”

  “He has his good points.”

  “He don’t beat his wife no more.”

  Dorsey Ann poured herself more coffee. Freshened Stevie’s cup. “That wasn’t very Christian of me speaking ill of a person like that, no matter how regrettable he is. I apologize.” She put her face in her hands. “The man can’t even lie down, you know that? Doctor said Talmadge’s own fat would crush his cold little overworked heart.” And then she mumbled something, sounded like “We can only hope,” but Stevie cut a look at me, smiled, and we let it pass.

  All this talk about lardaceous Talmadge had me thinking about my friend Jumbo McPhee, who at eleven, when we joined the Boys’ Club together, weighed three hundred and some pounds, and he was shorter than I was. And I weighed 115. The rule at the Ionic Avenue Boys’ Club was you swam naked in the pool. (We what? It’s for sanitary reasons. How’s that work? Get in the pool, pussies!) The other kids were unmerciful in their mocking and derision of Jumbo. These were the same kids who held your head underwater for sport, who cheated at Snaps, and extorted your snack money. Jumbo seemed able to ignore it. He was hippopotamusly obese, but miraculously graceful. He could dive from the board and enter the water without a splash. Jumbo (née Alistair) wanted to be a doctor and went off to McGill University in Montreal. And that was the last I heard from or about him.

  Dorsey Ann said, “So Ginger Rae’s at the kitchen table writing this letter. I get myself an iced tea and break off a piece of praline. I sit down. Ginger Rae says, ‘Sister, tell me what you think,’ and she reads the letter.

  “She goes, ‘Dear Theda—’ I says to her, ‘Who’s Theda?’ She says, ‘Bob-next-door’s wife.’ Then she clears her throat and continues reading. ‘I know I have been a burden on you and our children. I have failed at being a loving daddy and a dutiful husband.’ And then she crosses out dutiful, and says, ‘Worthwhile husband.’ She nods her head, puts the pencil back on her ear. ‘Please don’t blame yourself for my untimely passing.’

  “‘What’s going on here, Ginger Rae?’

  “‘I’m doing Bob a favor.’

  “‘Writing his suicide note?’

  “‘Bob doesn’t even own a pencil. He can barely spell his own name. Bob Cobb. I’m being neighborly is all. This letter is too important to let him screw it up.’

  “I tell her you can’t help a person kill hisself, though I’m thinking to my own self I might could try in Talmadge’s case. Then she explains to me how it was all a ruse: the letter, the vacuum cleaner hose, the closed garage door, the idling Ford station wagon. What she was writing was a fiction story, not a real suicide note.

  “Bob is trying to win back the love and devotion of his wife Theda. The zing has gone out of their marriage. She takes him for granted, he thinks, and Ginger Rae figures he’s right, and she should know because she gabs all morning, every morning, with Theda right there in Theda’s kitchen.

  “Ginger Rae and Bob had come up with a plan because his suicide attempt has to appear real and not just some melodramatic stunt, which would only make Theda pity Bob, and pity, as we know, is just a baby step away from contempt. Ginger Rae tells Bob that Theda gets home every afternoon at four-ten after dropping the kids off at choir practice. She gets the supper into the oven, picks the kids up, and is home again by five-twenty when Bob gets back from his job with LP&L.

  “They decide that at three fifty-five, Bob will attach the hose to the exhaust and run the hose through the back window. Then he’ll shut the garage door. At four he’ll start the engine—they want the smell of exhaust to be overpowering when Theda opens that door.”

  Stevie said, “This isn’t going to end well, is it?”

  Dorsey Ann said, “Bob took a comic book for mature readers into the car with him. Blood of the Innocent. He sat there reading. This was on Friday. He must have heard Theda’s car pull up to the house, checked his watch, and smiled. She was home at four-ten on the dot. He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. But Theda wasn’t alone. She stumbled into the kitchen in the arms of Warren Hart-line, who is Talmadge’s boss at the Piggly Wiggly.” Dorsey Ann shook her head. “Sometimes the world is so damn small you just want to spit nickels. The next time Bob checks his watch he probably can’t make out the time, but it must feel like he’s been there for hours or days or weeks or he hasn’t been there at all. Meanwhile, Warren and Theda do their rutting right there on the kitchen floor, and when they come to, Theda thinks she hears a distant humming, and then Warren hears it, too, and he thinks it might could be a flying saucer landing—he’s heard that hum before—and they run out to investigate, and when the trees aren’t all lit up golden and the sky is empty of aircraft and the grass is not burned in a perfect circle, they follow the noise to the garage.

  “The car door was opened like maybe Bob had realized that something had gone wrong, but he realized it a smidge too late. His body was slumped. His ass was in the seat, and his head was on the garage floor. I imagine he thought, Why am I sitting like this? And Theda knows it’s Ginger Rae wrote the note. Matches the handwriting on the Christmas card. Ginger Rae figures they’ll work though the uncomfortableness at the funeral. Meanwhile, Ginger Rae’s babysitting the twins while Warren, when he isn’t working or dealing with his own wife and kids, helps Theda work through her grief or her loss or whatever.”

  Dorsey Ann and Eldrid were leaving at six to drive over to Jackson to see her sister Kizzie. Kizzie was blind, I found out, and so was her seeing-eye dog, Jake. Jake was seventeen and probably didn’t hear very well, either. And he had those arthritic hips, but Kizzie wouldn’t put him down and get herself a new seeing-eye dog. She told Dorsey Ann that you don’t toss out a person when they can’t work. He’s a dog, Kizzie. So Kizzie and Jake rode cabs around Jackson. She took him to the vet’s about every other day.

  Before we all left, Dorsey Ann called us into the parlor and gave us our presents. We were her adopted grandkids, she said. Drake got a Slinky, Audrey an I Love Lucy paper doll book. She gave Dorsey Ann and Eldrid big hugs. Eldrid blushed. I got a Kentucky Derby racing game, which I still have, although Whirlaway is now lame. It was dusk now and when you looked out at the painted trees it seemed like they were all unattached, all hovering three feet over the land. A few darker minutes later, the trees had vanished and been replaced by glowing three-foot fountains of limestone. Stalagmites in the bayou.

  On the drive back to Monroe, Drake and Audrey slept beside me in the backseat, Drake’s head on Audrey’s arm, Audrey’s head against the door’s armrest, both their little mouths open. I sat behind Stevie, my head against the cold, vibrating window. Stevie and Dad spoke quietly to each other, their subdued conversation a slow dance to the radio music. Marvin Gaye bet you wondered how he knew. Dad smiled, lifted his eyebrows. I couldn’t see it, but I suspected he and Stevie were holding hands up there. I looked out the window at the chaos of stars and understood that this was the happiest Christmas I’d ever had. No one had screamed in anger; no one had fumed in a corner; no one had behaved spitefully, and no one had lost his patience. Nobody had gotten sick from overeating; nobody had kicked a toy across a room, and nobody had stormed off leaving a trail of threats and epithets. Nobody had gotten drunk and passed out. I sat in the backseat smiling to myself without even trying. I liked it here, lik
ed the possums and the roadrunners, the stubby cotton fields, the swirling river, the still, black bayous, the Spanish moss dripping from the live oaks. I liked the music and cadence of the speech. I liked not being frozen. I refused to admit then that this was not my bona fide life, that this was not my home, these not my people, the road ahead not my future. The present, I convinced myself, was the only important time because the present is what you will remember, and where you feel emotion. And now, writing, remembering that drive that night, the hum of the tires on tarmac, the sweet wheeze of Drake’s breathing, the massage of soft music and whispered voices, I feel tranquil and fortunate more than I feel sad. When I think of that drive I see the black Buick as from above, the two beams of yellow light leading us on, the car sliding into the future through the dark. And I see my head on the window as I drift to sleep, not thinking about her.