And then, "We're lucky, Meena!" he exclaimed. "We'll never have to work again!"
He put away his white apron for the occasion and spent over fifty dollars on a rented black tuxedo with a crisp white shirt and a peacock blue vest.
"Put on your best dress," he told his daughter, grinning. "We're going out tonight!"
If she was worried at first that they'd be mobbed, by the time it was dark at eight o'clock she was more concerned that no one was going to bother to show up at all. The band was playing and Meena was sitting on the back steps, in the orange chiffon that she'd bought to wear to a dance she went to once when she still did that sort of thing. It was a bit too tight in the waist now for comfort, and much too full in the sleeves to be in fashion anymore, but it was the best she had and the color did flatter her face, she'd been told. Her father was pacing, his polished leather shoes shining in the twinkle lights, and she didn't think she could stand to see him disappointed that night.
But then she didn't have to, because sure enough one by one some people finally did begin to straggle in. First, an old woman pulling a wagon. Then, a young couple pushing a toddler in a stroller. A family with six children and an old dog crouched down low in the bed of a battered pickup truck. And finally, this bum in a big wool overcoat.
Meena saw him coming up the line, feet shuffling in a pair of two-toned leather wing-tip golf shoes that looked at least one size too big for him. His face was half-hidden behind his briary beard and the long matted tangles of his hair, but his eyes were clearly visible, and there was something about them, a look of amusement it seemed. Or recognition, maybe? When she handed him his bag of groceries, he smiled and bowed and thanked her, then turned away, and she kept thinking: "Don't I know that man? Isn't he someone...?"
The band was playing a rousing song—"Oomp-ah-pah, oomp-ah-pah, oomp-ah-pah-pah!"—and from that in Meena's mind there was a melody; it came rising up out of the bog of old memory, unbidden.
"Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket. Save it for a rainy day."
At that moment she looked down to see her father's hand on her arm—his pale skin shining against the bright orange of her sleeve, his face turned and peering down at her, pursed lips, niggling little frown, his voice a heavy rumble that seemed to be coming from somewhere far away, so deep and powerful and reassuring: "Meena? Are you all right?"
And then something happened, there was a shift in things—a baby was crying, a mother had bent to slap out at a child's grasping hand, there was a ruckus in the line, and everybody turned to look.
Deep Eddie.
This was so many years later and of course it wasn't him, it couldn't have been him. Could it? Meena was panting at the possibility of this, feeling her chest lock up and her breath come short, while this mother continued to slap and shout at her child and Joe Krejci had turned to lift another bag of groceries to give away. The polka band was striking up another tune, something slower and more solemn this time. And that baby kept on wailing, a high and rising frantic scream.
But when Meena craned forward, when she stood on tiptoe and tried to look out over what seemed to her then to be a sea of bobbing heads and grateful open faces, the man was gone.
Meena's father was pushing another sack of food into her hands. The teenage girl with the red-faced hitching baby on her hip was reaching out and grinning up at him. Chewing gum. Saying, "Hey, thanks man."
Probably, Meena thinks, Mimi Hanrahan was mad when she didn't show up for work this morning, when she didn't even bother to call to let her know that she was sick or whatever the reason she had for not coming in, and so she tried to call Meena a couple of times this morning, to chew her out, and when there wasn't any answer at lunchtime she got worried, or even more pissed off, so maybe she decided to go over and find out what was wrong. First thing she'd notice would be the mail in the box and the newspapers on the porch. Next thing, no car in the driveway.
She'd be mad, then she'd be worried, then puzzled and finally afraid. She'd try the doors, but they were all locked. She'd peek into the windows and see the empty rooms, clean and still, spotless the way Meena left them. She'd knock and ring the bell, but nobody would answer. She'd go back to work and keep trying to call Meena, and then finally she'd decide to call the police.
Everybody on the block will be watching when the squad car pulls up, Meena thinks. She's seen this on TV a hundred times. The neighbors come out and stand on their porches, or they peek out between the curtains in their windows, or they gather in little groups on the sidewalk at the edge of the yard. Breaking news.
Mimi will show the cops where the key to the back door is kept hidden under a fake rock in the dirt beside the steps, so they won't have to knock the door down. When they go inside, they'll smell him first, and then they'll find him, dead the way Meena left him. In the beginning they are going to wonder what happened to him. Then they'll wonder what happened to Meena. They'll guess that she's been kidnapped, and then the machinery will start to turn and they'll try to find her. Meena thinks: Everyone who knows me must be worried sick.
Outside the Wal-Mart, in the parking lot, Meena sits in her car and fiddles with the radio to try to find some news and maybe learn something about herself that way. But out here in the middle of nowhere, there isn't much reception. And besides, she realizes, her disappearance—if it even gets noticed at all—isn't likely to be a big enough deal to anybody that it would make the national news. Not like some car bomb in the Middle East or a volcano in the Philippines or an execution in Oklahoma.
Finally she gives up and goes back inside to the pay phone, but when she calls home there's no answer. The phone just rings and rings, thin and weak on her end, but slamming into the silence of those dead and empty rooms on the other, she knows. That no one picks up doesn't really mean anything, she reasons. Either they have found him by now, or they haven't yet. Either there is no one there but Meena's dead father, lying in his bed in the heat of that house, rotting down into the mattress, stinking up the place. . . and who is going to clean it? Meena? But how could anyone be expected to want to come home to something like that?
After a while the sound of the phone ringing in her ear has started to sound like a person who is screaming, somebody small and far away and afraid, and she thinks for a split second that it might be her, but of course it isn't. She hasn't panicked yet. Not yet. She replaces the receiver slowly and carefully, with firm deliberateness, shutting it up like mother putting her hand over a child's mouth to make it stop crying.
Or else he isn't there anymore and they've taken him away. That's just as likely a possibility, isn't it?
She dials Mimi Hanrahan's number next, and Mimi picks up right away, so fast it scares Meena into silence.
Mimi says, "Hello?" three times before she loses patience. Then, "Fuck you!," and she slams down the phone.
Good old Mimi, Meena thinks. She tries again. "Mimi?"
"Meena! Jesus, Meena, where the hell are you?"
Meena's heart is pounding so hard she can hardly hear over the roaring in her ears, and she is thinking: So, Mimi knows. They have found him, then. And they've been looking for me. This comes as a relief in a way. Meena doesn't know what to say. Her throat fills, and in spite of herself and in spite of her resolve, she sobs.
"I'm sorry."
But Mimi doesn't hear, because she's still talking. "We had a whole pile of boxes by the back door when I came in this morning, you wouldn't believe it, I think I'm going to have to put a fence up around the place or something. A fucking iron curtain. Everybody's cleaning out their attics at the same time, and it's hot as all fuck, and where the hell are you?"
"My father..."
Mimi waits.
"He..." Meena can't bring herself to say it.
She can hear Mimi light a cigarette. Then exhale, a sigh. "Meena?" Her voice is quiet and soft now. "Are you okay?"
Meena nods.
"Meena?" Mimi knows how it is with Meena and her father, that his needs ha
ve to come first, and it makes her impatient sometimes. Meena hears a rattle of ice. Mimi is making herself a drink.
"Have you heard any news about Ralph Wendell?" Meena asks.
"What? Ralph who?"
"Wendell. The car dealer. That guy who disappeared."
"What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"
"Nothing, I guess. I was just wondering, that's all. Do you have to say 'fuck'?"
"Yes. FUCK, Meena. Fuck fuck. FUCK."
She must know that Meena is wincing. "I should have called you this morning," Meena says.
"Shoulda woulda coulda. You need some time off, is that it?"
"He fell down Friday night. Outside the movie theater. He hit his head."
"Oh. Shit. I'm sorry. Did you take him to the hospital?"
"He wouldn't let me."
"Stubborn old bohunk. He's okay then?"
Meena can hear the sound of a car revving, which means that Mimi has gone outside and is sitting in one of the white wicker chairs on her porch. In a big flowered dress, bare legs, rubber sandals on her feet.
"I didn't want to leave him alone," Meena says.
Mimi lives in the same old house in Rompot, where she grew up. Wouldn't think of living anyplace else.
"You should take him to the doctor, Meena."
"But..."
"Just put him in the car and drive him over there. Don't take no for an answer. Boss him around a little. He's an old man. Make him do it."
"I can't."
"You want me to come over and help you?"
"No!"
Mimi's sigh is resigned. She and Meena have had this same conversation so many times already. It's an old argument, Mimi wanting Meena to tell Josef what to do, Meena knowing that she can't.
"Meena, you're a stubborn old bohunk yourself, you know." Mimi grunts as she stands up. Meena can hear the screen squeak open, and the neighborhood noise is hushed, so Mimi must have gone back inside again.
"Don't worry about me," she's saying, as if Meena had somehow indicated that she might. "Go ahead and take tomorrow off too if you have to," she goes on. Good old Mimi.
Hell, take the whole week off, if that's what you need."
"I..."
The clink of ice again. "He's not going to live forever Meena, you know that, right? I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but you just gotta start facing reality."
Meena doesn't know what to say. But it doesn't matter, because Mimi is still going on anyway, she isn't waiting for a response.
"And you need to start looking after yourself some, too." She waits. "Okay?"
"Okay."
"All right then. Call if you want me to come over there and give him some of the old what-for."
For all her faults, Meena thinks, Mimi really does seem to care. And she really does try to be kind, too, in her way. If Meena has one friend in the world, Mimi's it. She's sorry she didn't tell the truth. She thinks she could have, maybe. She thinks it's possible that she still might. Maybe in a while she'll call Mimi back and tell her everything. Mimi will know what to do. Meena only hopes she'll forgive her, when she finds out about the lie. She hopes Mimi will understand. Because if she doesn't, then who in this world will?
Meena is on her way back to her car when she looks up to see Holly Gidding approaching, waving wildly. Calling out, "Libbie! Libbie! You're still here!"
What Remains
1964
Two boys are out walking through the thick woods of Hollow Hill in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday in early December. The air is sharp with the cold of coming winter; the sky is so bright and white it seems to crackle in the sunshine. As yet, there's been no snow. These boys are brothers, Ralph and James Wendell, ages twelve and eight, friendly, outgoing children from a good family, with a devoted mother and a jovial father. Dad owns the Ford dealership on Second Avenue and Mom's a Fielding, as in the hotel.
Tomorrow is Monday, and with that the freedom of the weekend will be over as school starts up again in the morning, and Christmas vacation is still a couple of weeks away. Ralph dreads going back, he hates the long dull hours in the classroom, the clamor and confusion in the lunch room, the crashing echo of slammed lockers, push and shove in the stairwells, reckless jostle in the hall. This happens to be his first year at Ben Franklin Junior High, and he's not quite used to it yet: the crowds, the noise, the way he's never sure of where he's supposed to be and always afraid of making a mistake, looking foolish, missing a class, going to the wrong room, bringing the wrong books, or being caught out in the hall alone, after the last bell has rung.
He wishes he were bigger, wishes he were older. Or younger, smaller. Anything but this middling thing that he has recently become: man-child, boy-man, neither this nor that, neither here nor there. Two days ago the girl who sits in front of him in Study Hall—whose shapely ass he has been secretly admiring for some time—turned around and flashed a goofy smile, and he didn't know what to do. He thinks her name is Ginny. Jenny? Jean?
James has scrambled up through the brush to the ridge above the railroad tracks. Ralph fishes in his shirt pocket for the cigarette that he swiped that morning from the pack his mother left out on the kitchen table. Lights it, squints through the smoke. A door has closed, he has crossed over, and he will never be just a stupid careless kid again. He understands that the only thing he can do now is go forward and grow up. Say hello to that girl, whatever her name is. Smile back.
James is slapping at the brush with a stick that he's picked up. He's next to what looks like a pile of rocks, hidden in the underbrush. He stoops to look closer, pokes his stick, stands back.
Nearby, an insulated wire. James picks this up, gives it a tug. Above him in the weeds a metal stake shudders in response. He pulls himself up the incline. Puts a hand on the stake, wobbles it back and forth, tries to work it free. And now his eye is caught by a glint of light in the dried grass. The sunshine is bright, he squints against it, then stoops closer to see what he's been seeing all along, without knowing yet exactly what it is: the faint outline of the figure of a girl, a shadow in the shape of a body, ribs and fingers, legs, toes, leathery flesh, and the bare bright dome of a skull.
He screams his brother's name, and Ralph turns to see him standing in the brush, white hair flashing in the sunshine, face pink around the darker hole of his opened mouth.
Ralph drops the cigarette, steps on it. His heart is pounding, and yet he tells himself, it's nothing. He's sure it is nothing. His little brother is a crybaby, always has been. Probably stubbed his toe or got stung by a bee, something dumb. That's the way it's always been, it's the difference between them—Ralph older, the tough guy gritting his teeth, and James the baby, screaming.
You didn't know them, the Wendell boys. They were just two kids who lived on the far side of Hollow Hill, in the big house that had once belonged to Senator Elwood, and they were younger than you, and they went to another school.
But that doesn't mean you don't know how it happened. It was in all the papers, and on the television news, too. Ralph and James Wendell had gone out walking in the woods of Hollow Hill on that Sunday in December. They had followed the path toward Dowland, and James found a steel stake, and next to the stake, a skeleton. He called out to his brother and Ralph thought at first it had to be an animal, a dog, maybe, too big for a cat.
But what about what about the rope, what about her hands? The paper only said that Ralph used a stick to poke at the skull, and as it rolled away down the slope, that was when he saw her face, and that was when he knew that the body they had found was human.
The police didn't contact the Bells until after dinnertime, not until they were sure that what the Wendell boys had found out there in Hollow Hill was what they thought it was—Julia Bell's remains. There would be a news report on the TV that night at ten. It wasn't much of a report, just a snippet with no names mentioned and no speculations offered, only a wide shot of the woods, taped off, with a group of people, mostly men, standing around
on the road with their collars turned up and their hands in their pockets. And there were the Wendell boys, too, posed beside a squad car, blinking in the lights.
The newspaper said that what was left of her wasn't much more than a skeleton, with all of the flesh from the torso area of the body gone. The hands had been tied at the wrists, and the feet at the ankles. Curtain cord, it looked like. Or window blind. Clothesline, maybe. And the glint that had caught James Wendell's eye that sunny Sunday morning in December? It was the St. Christopher medal that Libbie had lost, the one that John Grandon had always worn around his neck.
Two weeks later, when school was out for Christmas break, you and Libbie went up to Hollow Hill together to take a look at the place where Julia's body had been found. It was Libbie's idea to do this, and you were surprised—and pleased—when she crossed the driveways, just like old times, to knock on the door and invite you to come along. Libbie just wanted to see it, she said, and why not? She was thinking you might look for evidence, maybe you would notice something that everybody else had missed, maybe you would recognize a trace of Deep Eddie there that the police had overlooked. Because, in your way, she said, you had known him.
Your boots crunched across the thin snow. Frozen fingers. Collars turned up. Chins tipped, faces lifted, eyes raised toward a sky that was hanging low and leaden overhead. Clouds snagged by bare treetops that groped blindly toward the dim nickel of late afternoon sun.
So Julia Bell was not at the bottom of the deep eddy after all. So she had not been carried down into its murk, as you had imagined, and she had not found another kind of life there in the watery embrace of a River King.
And she was not, as John had insisted, trapped beyond the skin of an alternate universe either. Not lost and found in a new family, on some other street, in a different town. Not wandering around in a haze of dimwit forgetfulness, faint memories of some other lifetime nagging at the vivid hems of her dreams. No, she was still right there with you, and she had been there all along, for three years, the flesh withering over her bones and her bones sinking down into the dirt, nestled in the grasses that grew up through and around and over her. May apples in spring, flying Dutchmen, bluebells, forget-me-nots. Rampant weeds, thistles, nettles, thorns in summer. A sea of dropped leaves in the fall. And now, snow.
The Minor Apocalypse of Meena Krejci Page 17
