The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter

by Kia Corthron

  At 4:35 a soft rap at his door. His cousin Liddie, noticeably rounder since Christmas.

  “Hey Eliot.”

  “Hey Liddie.”

  “You got company.”

  He comes to the top of the steps, and when he sees her he dashes down. He takes both her hands, their faces beaming, eyes shining.

  “I didn’t expect you till tonight!”

  “Well. When we got off the phone I knew daybreak was coming in a couple hours, thought I may as well pack up and hit the road. I must’ve put as many gallons of coffee in me as gas in the tank. Speaking of which. The bathroom?”

  After Andi freshens up, he brings her to the guestroom. With the door closed, he reads aloud the first draft of the tribute for her feedback. He manages an impressive emotional detachment, simply presenting the words, so is surprised to look up at its conclusion and see her wiping tears. “I wish I could have met her.”

  Then she says, “Eliot. Can I have a drink of water or something?”

  “Oh. Oh, yeah. Are you hungry?” Only now does he remember that he hasn’t eaten since lunch back in Indianapolis yesterday.

  On the way, he gives her a glimpse of his parents’ bedroom, then they walk downstairs. In the living room, he introduces her to his father, who is surrounded by people. Despite his grief, Lon seems pleased to meet her, the first time since Eliot was in high school that the elder has ever been introduced to anyone from his younger son’s life. She offers her condolences, and Lon takes her hand, smiling through glassy eyes.

  Eliot leads her through the crowded TV room to the kitchen. He pulls a huge meat-and-cheese platter out of the refrigerator. They make sandwiches and talk. Aunt Beck and Claris’s oldest sister Carol chat quietly nearby.

  “How long yaw known each other?” Aunt Carol finally ventures.

  “We work together,” Eliot says flatly. He already knows where this line of questioning is going, and has decided it’s not.

  “Well,” Aunt Beck taking her turn, “I bet you been workin there a lot longer n he has. Right? Andi?”

  Andi starts to answer but Eliot stands. “I’m gonna show her the neighborhood before it gets dark.” He grasps her hand and they are both out the back door, leaving half-eaten sandwiches.

  The temperature is in the low fifties and sunny, fortunate since Eliot had not bothered to grab their coats. He shows her Miss Onnie’s house and Carl’s and Roof’s, Colored Street, and Jake’s Hill where the kids used to, and he imagines still do, fly down on their sleds in the winter. The space where D’Angelo’s Market once stood, now an empty lot. He takes her by his old school, and Miss Idie’s, the white lady his mother had worked for when he was growing up, and the railroad station where they used to meet his father when he was a porter. They stand on the bridge gazing at the crick, its banks recently fortified by cement levies to prevent the periodic floods he remembers from childhood.

  “You know they were asking about my age.” Andi’s smile is wry but sad.

  “They need to mind their own business.”

  “From what you said on the phone last night. Your Aunt Beck sounds like quite a character. Once you get to know her.”

  “She is. And she needs to mind her own business.”

  When they return, Dwight is waiting for them at the back door, holding an outfit of their mother’s. He is in a panic. “I been lookin all over for you! I have to give the funeral director Mom’s clothes.”

  “Dwight, this is Andi. Andi, this is my brother Dwight.”

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, nice to meet you. Eliot, he said he’d only wait till 6:30!” The clock on the wall reads 6:07. In his right hand Dwight holds a hanger, and draped over it a burgundy skirt-suit their mother often wore to church, complete with her faux pearl necklace. In his left hand Dwight holds a pair of her good brown loafers.

  “He said no shoes.”

  “I don’t like the idea of her barefoot!”

  Eliot takes a breath. “It’s fine,” and Dwight flies out the door.

  Dinnertime, and there is a lull in the crowd, the house quiet. Eliot notices that Andi’s eyes are now heavy from driving all night. He tells her to go up and take a nap on the guest bed and she nods gratefully, dragging herself up the stairs. He walks into the living room to study the photos on the wall, pictures he’s seen a thousand times but never really looked at. Shots of him and Dwight from babies on up. His father in his porter uniform, his father with another man at his defense job. Eliot at the lectern giving his high school valedictory speech, Eliot and his parents and brother when he received his law degree. Dwight at fourteen with Rex the dog, Dwight in his postman’s uniform in front of his house in Lewis with elderly Rex. It occurs to Eliot that because mothers are often the ones taking the pictures, they are the most absent from them. He does find one image of her alone, Lon having caught her in action throwing icicles on the Christmas tree.

  Eliot walks up the stairs and eases open the door of the guestroom. Andi had always had the habit of disappearing under the blankets, her head eventually popping out while she dreamed. Turtle. He waits for this to happen but before it does, he hears a faint restless cry from his parents’ bedroom. His father’s bedroom. Eliot gently taps on the door, and when there’s no answer he discreetly peeks in. Lon lying fully clothed on the made bed, eyes closed and breathing evenly. He wears a suit to receive visitors over these three days. Eliot starts to gingerly close the door and leave.

  “I’m awake.”

  His father’s eyes are now open. Eliot steps inside, shutting the door and leaning against it.

  “You okay, Dad?”

  “Mm hm.” Lon stares at the ceiling. A rumble of thunder. Usually such an incident would be answered by his commentary on the weather, but this evening he doesn’t seem to notice. Gradually he lowers his eyes to Eliot. “That Andi seems nice.”

  “She is.” Did he introduce her to his father? Eliot can’t remember.

  Lon looks at the ceiling again. “Dwight’s tryin to figure out the music. ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ Guess that’s pretty standard. And ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee.’ That sound good?”

  “Yeah, that’s great, Dad.”

  “Oh. While you boys were lookin over the caskets, the grave marker people called. I jus told em ‘Claris Louise Campbell, 1906–1960, Loving Wife and Mother.’ That okay?”

  “That’s fine.”

  Lon’s chest rises high and falls, a soundless sigh.

  “Think I might go ahead an take my vacation this week. Ernie down there can inventory the jars an bottles for a few days.”

  “You want me to call them?”

  “No, I know what to say to em.” Eliot follows his father’s gaze at the ceiling. He wonders if they are staring at the same crack, or if Lon is seeing any cracks at all.

  “‘Sweet Bye and Bye.’ She liked that one.”

  “Oh yes! Thank you, son.”

  He watches his father, who continues to look at the ceiling. A sudden downpour, the sound filling the room. Eliot slides his back down the door so that he is stooping, staring at nothing for twenty minutes, thirty minutes. When he stands again Lon’s eyes are closed. Eliot steps out, quietly shutting the door behind him.

  The guestroom door is open, the bed remade. Eliot walks downstairs. He finds her sitting out on the porch in the sliding chair, gazing at the pouring rain.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey.” She smiles, nap-refreshed. She wears her coat, unbuttoned.

  He sits beside her and stares at the evening cloudburst. Eventually he cautiously reaches for her hand, holding it, and she squeezes back, neither of them ever taking their eyes off the shower.

  “Look, Eliot,” she says. “All the people dancing in the street.”

  When the rain stops, they walk back inside. It’s nearly eight and Andi is famished after their interrupte
d lunch, but when she sees Eliot has lost his appetite again she keeps her meal lean. They sit at the kitchen table, and a new worry nags him as he watches her chew her boiled egg and dry toast. When he invited her, he never considered sleeping arrangements. What he would really like is for Andi to sleep with him in the guestroom, but he has no idea if by asking her to share his bed he would offend her, or if by not asking he would hurt her. Another complication: though all he really wants is for them to hold each other this night, he believes the implication of more with a woman who is not his wife would be disrespectful to his father. He supposes the logical solution would be to give her the guestroom and go back to his old twin, sharing the room with Dwight.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He is startled to see her looking at him.

  “Oh! Nothing.”

  She takes a drink of water.

  “So am I sleeping on the guest bed? Or the couch? Or I can check into a hotel if you’re full up with family.”

  He remembers she didn’t know he had slept in the guestroom last night, that she obviously expects to sleep without him, and he is relieved that the decision has been made with no injured feelings.

  “The guestroom. Aunt Beck’s the only one staying here, and she sleeps on the couch.”

  “I can trade with her if she’d rather.”

  “Thanks. We always ask her and she always says no. She likes the couch. Pulls out to a bed.”

  “Can I see your old room?” She means his and Dwight’s, and he realizes he has shown her every space in the house save that one. They climb the stairs. He points out that his was the twin next to the inside wall, Dwight’s against the outside wall and back window. Andi asks, Is this your pogo stick? Who carved that face with the tongue into the dresser? This photo of the toddler boy smiling with your mother, you or Dwight? Eliot answers all her questions, even as sleep is overtaking him and he lies on his bed. Then Andi is gone and Claris walks in wearing her burgundy suit. She seems distracted, going through drawers, looking for something.

  “Mom!” Eliot sits up. “I thought you died!” He’s so happy to see her!

  “Oh that was a mistake,” she says absently, never turning to him, finding a small box on top of the bureau and scrutinizing its every corner.

  He is abruptly awake. Looks at the clock: quarter to midnight. The lights in the room still bright on. Dwight sits on his bed, going through notes. His face is strained, calculating logistics, probably figuring out the funeral procession car assignments.

  “Andi’s in the guestroom.” Eliot’s voice startles Dwight. The older brother frowns, as if trying to understand some deeper meaning in the information just conveyed to him, then nods and returns to his task. Eliot sits up and takes off his shoes, letting them drop to the floor. He is too exhausted to do anything else in the way of undressing, so he lies back down and finishes his thought. “So I’m sleeping here tonight. And tomorrow night. If it’s alright with you.”

  “It’s alright with me if it’s alright with you.”

  “It’s alright with me,” says Eliot, and turns to face the wall.

  “I might be gone in the mornin,” Dwight says. “I’ll leave a number. Where I can be reached.”

  No answer.

  “You hear?”

  “I hear.”

  Dwight writes a few more notes, then looks up at his brother’s back. “It’s Keith’s number.” He allows a few moments for this to sink in. “I’m going to see Keith. Remember Keith? From the pickup truck? He lives out at the trailer park, I’ll be with him.”

  Eliot is so still Dwight wonders if he is already back asleep. Dwight continues regardless, his eyes stinging and determined, the pen in his hand trembling. “I’ll be with Keith, at the trailer park. I’ll leave a number, if you need me, I’ll be at Keith’s.” Silence. “Okay?”

  “Gotcha,” replies Eliot, and no more words pass between the brothers that night.

  **

  It’s close to nine when Andi wakes Sunday morning, ravenous. She knocks on the door of the brothers’ room.

  “Come in.”

  Both beds are made. Eliot sits on his, editing the tribute. He glances up just long enough to identify Andi, then, his mind far away, looks back down at his page. Dwight is gone.

  “Shall we have some breakfast?”

  “You go ahead.” He doesn’t look up. “I’ll be down in a little while.”

  Andi’s impulse is to insist that he eat, to tell him he needs his strength, but she’s conflicted, not certain if her own growling stomach is her real priority. She could go on downstairs and grab a bite as he suggests but she hears voices, extended family and friends already and of course Aunt Beck, and all she needs is for those biddies to see Eliot’s mature girlfriend, or whatever they think her relationship to him is, stuffing her face while poor Eliot is left alone to struggle with the memories of his mother.

  “Alrighty then, maybe I’ll go for a walk.”

  “Okay.” Eliot rises, and Andi is hopeful that he will come along, that they will go downstairs together and she can convince him to eat even a little food with her, but he retrieves a thesaurus off a nearby shelf and sits back down to his work.

  “Okay. I’ll be back.” She descends the steps, hearing the crowd talking around the smorgasbord in the kitchen, and walks out the front door. She remembers passing a corner market in her stroll with Eliot yesterday. (“That wasn’t here when I was coming up.”) She finds the place, buys three six-packs of orange-colored cheese crackers with peanut butter, takes them out to the small parking lot, and greedily gobbles them all.

  There are two viewings, 2 to 4 and 7 to 9. Stan the funeral director had suggested the immediate family be there by one to “have time alone with her.” Andi comes with them, Dwight driving his father’s car (rather than his own two-seater truck), but without being asked by them for privacy, she stays in the lobby while the three men, all wearing black suits, walk into the large parlor. She looks around at the red furniture, too comfortable, too formal, at the guest book ready for signatures. She glances out the window, the sky heavy gray. It had been drizzling on and off all day. At one point she walks over to glance in at the family. Lon stands next to the casket looking down at his wife, Dwight sits far to the right in the front pew looking down at the floor, Eliot stands far to the left, hands in pockets, staring at his mother. All three seeming lost, and utterly alone.

  A few people come right at two, and the place is crowded from 2:30 on. Both brothers are gracious and stoic. After a while Eliot wanders around, gazing at the plentiful flower arrangements, reading the cards, most with a printed note, “In Sympathy,” followed by a handwritten name. A generous autumn bouquet is signed

  Winston Douglas and Associates

  Winston, Andi, Will, Beau

  Eliot smiles, knowing that Andi would have been the one to put in the order and thus the sequence of names her decision. A smaller arrangement is signed “Affectionately, Andi.” And another, a dozen long-stem roses, simply “Didi (Wilcox).”

  Andi tries to be with Eliot when he wishes, to leave him alone when he would desire that. His cues are not so clear, and finally she whispers: “Would you rather I sit down? Or do you prefer I stand with you?”

  “Uh-huh,” he replies, smiling at his mother’s cousin Delores, just in from Ohio.

  Eliot goes to the bathroom, and when he returns he stops short. He is looking at their backs: Dwight standing at the casket with Keith beside him. Keith wears a respectful black suit. Dwight is talking quietly, evidently telling Keith about their mother. Eliot looks around to see if others are also stunned, but either no one else seems to take note or they are all pretending well. After a few minutes, Dwight walks Keith to the door. Keith pats Dwight’s arm, the same way their cousin Monroe had done to Eliot when they first saw each other yesterday, and Keith leaves.

  Lon sits quietly in th
e front middle pew, as close as possible to Claris, letting people come to him. At five minutes to four, almost all visitors now gone, he breaks into uncontrollable sobs. Dwight runs to kneel before his father and talk to him softly. Eliot stares at them, the nearest he has come to weeping himself since arriving home.

  Outside the building, a handful of family members waits. Dwight emerges through the door, now using a clipboard for his notes, making him appear like a children’s football coach. He announces that the prayer service will commence at “the house” at five, immediately followed by a meeting of the pallbearers. Monroe is driving Aunt Beck and Lon home, and just before the new widower gets into the passenger side he turns to Eliot, Dwight, and Andi, the only ones remaining on the sidewalk. “Would you like to ride with us, Andi?”

  It is a gesture of kindness, revealing that Lon has noted the petty gossip regarding Eliot’s guest and he isn’t having it. Andi looks at Eliot, unsure. Eliot smiles. “Go ahead.”

  After they pull off, Eliot turns to Dwight, the latter’s eyes still on the clipboard. “Prayer service?”

  “We told you about it last night when you got in, guess you were too tired. Reverend Fairbanks.” Dwight sighs. “It’ll be in the living room, he said it shouldn’t take longer n twenty minutes.”

  Eliot has had experience with what Reverend Fairbanks calls a “short” service. He nods. “Bunch of baloney, I’m not going.”

  Dwight snaps. “Can’t you do it for Dad?”

  Eliot stares at his brother, then swerves away to walk the two miles home alone. He cannot believe Dwight of all people still buys into that conservative hypocritical bunk. He hears his brother starting the car behind him and doesn’t turn around.

  People are already gathered in the living room when Eliot gets home. Andi stands next to Lon. She exchanges glances with Eliot as he enters, and it is clear in her face that it is clear in his face that he had just had another confrontation with Dwight. He goes up the stairs, shutting himself inside his room until Andi taps on the brothers’ door. “Eliot. The pastor’s here.”