by Joanna Scott
Clarisse was everything to him. And yet he’d never been able to bring himself to tell her exactly this because he was afraid he’d scare her away. What if he wasn’t everything to her? What if she was biding time, waiting for a better opportunity, and Raymond Johnson was just a trial run?
Or else she was biding time waiting for Raymond Johnson to make his move. What you waiting for, Raymond? Suppose he wrote, Clarisse, will you marry me? Suppose she was waiting at the other end to say yes?
The enigma that is an eighteen-year-old girl. What did Raymond know for sure? He knew what he felt about Clarisse. He wanted to believe that she felt the same for him.
Anythings believable, he typed, almost without volition. One thing leads to another, he typed, then paused, resting his fingers on the keyboard, and took a deep breath. One day I met you and the same day I fell in love with you. Clarisse Clarisse Clarisse I love you.
He didn’t hesitate—he sent the message on its way then quickly shut down the computer since he didn’t want to stare at the screen waiting for a reply.
He rose from his chair and stretched his arms. His murky potential seemed to come into focus all at once. He’d always known he was capable. Now he felt that he was more than capable. He understood what he had to do to be happy. Don’t underestimate me, he wanted to tell someone, even at the risk of sounding like a conceited fool. But he was convinced that he had only to spend his life loving Clarisse and the impression would alter. You’ll see. We’ll see. Raymond Johnson knew with the certainty of observation that he was right. Loving Clarisse, he would be somebody—not a somebody scrambling to get ahead, but a somebody with vision who could see into the future and know that he and Clarisse belonged together.
He felt a sudden urge to notice whatever he’d overlooked. To see for the first time the variation in the particleboard of his walls, the black casing of his telephone, the shine of his fancy H & K, which his uncle had bought him for bull’s eye shooting and he carried for protection. He was someone who deserved to be protected. He was meant to live a long, long time.
Here I come, world.
After slipping his feet into his oversize sneakers and his H & K into the inside pocket of his jacket, he headed down the steps to the ground floor and out onto the porch behind Sal’s. His uncle Sal didn’t like it when he entered the store through the back door, but Sal didn’t like a lot of things. Sal wouldn’t like to hear that Raymond had decided to move in with Clarisse and become a great man. Sal, along with most everyone else, would need proof before he considered Raymond great.
Raymond used his key to let himself into the storage room. As he made his way along the narrow corridor between the stacks of cans, he felt an urge to dance. He’d been lit on fire by a bad television movie and was hot with the good luck of being Raymond who loved Clarisse. The future of the family they would make was directly ahead, clear as the towers of six-packs around him. The future of Clarisse loving him and the good work he would do for her sake. Their happiness together. As he stepped from the storage room into the stale fluorescence of the store, he imagined that it was forty years later, and he, a great man, the happiest man in the world, was returning for a visit.
TWO AND A HALF LONG YEARS before Raymond Johnson was sentenced to twenty years to life for using his pocket pistol to put a bullet in the shoulder of a cop—the cop who Raymond mistakenly thought was trying to kill his uncle—Abe sat on a stool in Jeremiah’s sipping the foam off his beer. It was a dreary February afternoon, and the tavern was empty except for Abe, two bikers playing pool, and the bartender, who was watching the TV above the bar.
What was worth saying aloud? Abe wondered as he slid his hands along the tapered glass. He’d already asked the bartender, “How are you today, young fellow?” and the bartender had shrugged, clearly finding the question too dull to answer. Abe would have liked to stir his interest. There were a lot of interesting subjects he would have proposed for discussion—barbecue sauces, gardening, politics, his stamp collection, his nephews, John Wayne. But the bartender was more interested in the two women on TV, a mother and her grown daughter, who were in love with the same man. Apparently the man, a high school principal, was waiting off camera for a turn to tell his side of the story.
Another gray winter day in the gray city that had been his home for more than half a century, and Abe had nothing better to look forward to than the evening’s bingo. The truth was, he’d been playing bingo regularly for twenty years and had never won. Everyone agreed that victory for Abe was long overdue. It was terrible to think that time was running out and he might never win.
At least he could still appreciate the simplest of impressions—the smoothness of the glass between his hands, for instance, or the relief of a belch. He always belched politely, muting the sound with his closed fist, an effort he’d perfected at the behest of Edna, his long-ago wife.
Long-ago lovers, you and me, he mused. Young rascals. Edna and Abe, Abe and Edna. Forget about the disappointments. We had each other. Year after year. Remember when. Of course you remember when. You’re in heaven now. You remember everything, even the eternity before you were born. Such is the expansive consciousness of angels.
Abe believed that at his age he had a right to believe whatever he pleased. He’d spent most of his life believing in nothing more than possibility, but after he lost Edna he couldn’t help it—when he imagined his wife, he imagined her alive, floating comfortably above in a heaven that couldn’t be less than heavenly.
Down here, human effort would continue to be riven by bitter disputes. Isn’t there always someone ready to take what someone else has? The bartender, for instance, was ready to take Abe’s five dollars. Each of the bikers was planning to claim the pack of cigarettes they’d bet on this game of pool. One man’s loss was necessarily the other’s gain in this world of never-ending competition, where only the fittest are expected to survive.
Gray daylight hung like cardboard against the glass of the front door. Inside, the strongest illumination came from the television, which lit the bottles stacked behind the bar with a faint white glow. Stale smells of beer and cigarettes thickened the air, along with the sharp pine fragrance of Lysol. The bartender wore a plaid fleece vest over a T shirt. The coaster beneath Abe’s glass advertised Budweiser. The mirror hanging on the door to the kitchen had been painted over with red, white, and blue stripes.
Nothing makes complete sense, Abe thought, and yet in theory everything has a logical explanation. Reason assumes a cause for every consequence, birth marking the beginning of the end, the child becoming the widower who is left behind to do the work of remembering.
At least an old man can reward himself with a tepid beer after enduring a long morning alone in his apartment. He can hope that tonight he’ll win at bingo. He can think about his wife in heaven.
Hearing a sharp yapping, he looked around for the dog. But it turned out that the dog was a terrier yapping gratefully for his gourmet food on the television. Abe considered how easily he’d been fooled. The trick of false reality. Where does the truth begin? he wanted to ask. He found himself imagining that the interior of Jeremiah’s was a stage set and the play was his own life story. The problem was, he hadn’t read the script. He could only fumble along, trying to guess the best next line. Actually, he had a knack for improvisation. He remembered how Edna used to watch his antics with her hand clapped over her mouth to keep herself from laughing too loudly. Just the thought of his wife holding back her laughter brightened the gloom. But when he heard the ringing of a telephone on the TV, he was reminded of his loneliness. And when he noticed that the clock on the wall in front of him had no hands, he decided it was time to leave.
“I owe you” Abe began but stopped short when the bartender held up his open palm in a gesture suggesting refusal. Or was he simply expressing his contempt?
“Excuse me,” said Abe, perplexed.
“Merry Christmas,” offered the bartender in a defeated voice.
“It’
s February,” Abe pointed out. “Anyway, I don’t celebrate Christmas.”
“Then happy birthday.”
“Is this a joke?”
“The thing is, I’ve been thinking.”
“You were watching the TV.”
“I was watching the TV and thinking. And I thought to myself, If I stay in this dump another day I’ll die. But I don’t wanna die. I wanna quit. So I’m gonna quit.”
“What are you saying?” Abe asked.
“It’s on the house is what I’m saying. Hey, you idiots,” the bartender called to the bikers, “I’m telling you it’s on the house.”
One of the bikers thrust his cue into the center of the dartboard hanging on the wall and broke the stick in half. “Hallelujah!” he shouted as the bartender reached for the tap to a keg.
This certainly wasn’t how old Abe had expected to end the day—celebrating at a party with a man who had decided to quit his job. And what a party it turned out to be! It was a party thrown in honor of spontaneity and renewal and courage, a party as uncontainable as a riot, with the guests multiplying when the waitress arrived for the dinner shift along with two college friends, two girls who’d just finished taking a chemistry exam and were ready to unwind, and then the Chi-Wah Tigers men’s softball team and various others off the street who’d heard that the house grog at Jeremiah’s was free for the night and came to drink and trade stories about bad dates, flat tires, local bands, body piercing, novelty drugs, probations, rock climbing, and miraculous escapes. It was a deafening, joyous party, and Abraham Groslik sat contentedly on a bar stool in the center of the crowd, understanding almost nothing that was said to him yet having the time of his life.
THE DAY BEFORE Abe’s Lucite cane was found in the lilac grove by the tennis courts, more than four years after the party at Jeremiah’s, the bartender, whose name was Sam, returned to Rochester and walked right into the bar and ordered a beer. He guessed that the owner still had better things to do than hang around to manage his business. Unfortunately, his guess was wrong. The owner had lost two employees to better jobs the week before, and now he had to wait tables himself. After a few minutes the owner spotted his former bartender in the crowd, and he marched up and demanded the restitution that had been ordered by a judge at the conclusion of a small-claims hearing three years earlier. But Sam had left for Florida without paying the owner a penny. From Florida he’d moved to Chicago with his new girlfriend. In Chicago the girl had left him for another girl, and after a few months of travel out west he’d sold his car and come home.
Sam still believed that he hadn’t done anything wrong. “Since when is generosity wrong?” he asked the owner. “Since when is generosity at someone else’s expense right?” the owner retorted. They continued to argue, though they kept their voices low to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Finally Sam gave up and pulled two crisp fifty-dollar bills from his wallet—a fraction of the prescribed sum but enough to mollify the owner, who demonstrated forgiveness by offering his popular former bartender his job back.
Sam accepted and promptly took his place behind the counter, sharing the busy night’s work with a girl named Clarisse, who had been working at Jeremiah’s for nearly two years, ever since she’d moved into her boyfriend’s apartment above Sal’s Mini-Mart. It took an hour of casual conversation snatched when drink orders drew them together before Sam learned from Clarisse that her boyfriend, Raymond Johnson, was in jail. Sam couldn’t believe it. He’d met Raymond Johnson years ago at the Laundromat next to Chen’s Noodle House, and though they never became good friends, they’d shared a couple of pitchers. Raymond Johnson was in jail? Yes, Raymond Johnson was in jail for shooting a cop. And Clarisse had moved into Raymond Johnson’s apartment in order to devote herself to keeping the memory of their love alive.
Though Clarisse was attached to a man who might never be released from prison, she had a fresh-as-the-morning kind of beauty, with brown curls that still looked damp, her skin scrubbed and shining, her perfume a mix of soapy lavender and cinnamon. Sam just wanted to be near her. They were kept busy through the night, which happened to be a Fish-Fry Friday, but whenever he could he’d shimmy in her direction and lean toward her to whisper in her ear. Did she live alone? he asked. Did she have family in town? Had she ever seen the Amerks play?
Yes was her reply to all his questions. But she looked overfilled with mixed emotions, and Sam thought that if he pushed hard enough she would burst with all the things she’d been wanting to say.
The crowd at Jeremiah’s was as raucous as ever, and many of the customers, regulars for years, recognized Sam and remembered his going-away party. They wanted him to throw another going-away party, but he assured them that he wasn’t going anywhere. Why not a welcome-home party, then?
Sam was in too ambitious a mood to throw a party. He wanted to drum up tips for Clarisse, and with his swift service encouraged everyone at the bar to drink more than they’d planned. As the night wore on, the crowd grew fuzzier, louder, more harmlessly belligerent while Clarisse seemed to sharpen in focus. At one point Sam slipped behind her and eased his hand into the back pocket of her jeans. For a few delicious seconds she pretended not to notice. And though he couldn’t see her face, he was sure that when she gently tugged at his wrist to lift his hand up, she was smiling.
He was confident that at the end of the night they would leave together. And yet when the time came, he didn’t know where to go with her. He couldn’t take her home to his mother’s house, and he guessed that she didn’t want to take him home to Raymond Johnson’s apartment. Neither of them had a car. He couldn’t think of anything else to do but say good-bye to her on the sidewalk as the door to Jeremiah’s closed behind them. She said good-bye in return, but as she spoke her hand reached out and hung in the emptiness between them for an uncertain moment, until Sam extended his hand and folded his fingers around hers. He’d already reminded her that they’d see each other back at work on Tuesday night. They were going to shake hands like business colleagues and go their separate ways. But now that he held a part of her, he couldn’t let her go.
Hand in hand, they set out walking. Since the reservoir was the destination for much aimless wandering, they headed there. It was a cool spring night, with a half-moon slipping in and out between clouds. Against the backdrop of darkness the faded lilac blossoms looked like straw caps hanging on the racks of bushes. It was too early in the year for the locusts to be buzzing, and the city streets were deserted. The only sound was the occasional whir of a truck traveling on the highway that skirted the opposite end of the park.
Clarisse and Sam walked up the hill in silence. They stood for a moment on the steps of the maintenance building beside the reservoir, and then they pressed together. She started to shake with what Sam would later learn was the pent-up grief from two years of trying to love a man who was too full of rage at the injustice of his fate to keep loving her back. Sam and Clarisse kissed through her crying. They moved up the steps into the small arcade and kissed again. Eventually Clarisse stopped crying, and they settled into each other’s arms on the stone bench. Sam brushed his lips against Clarisse’s neck and slid his hand inside her blouse. Clarisse rubbed her cheek against the bristle of Sam’s three-day beard—a decisive action suggesting that she was ready to love someone new, even if she wasn’t ready to give up loving Raymond Johnson. They kissed and stroked and explored each other until the sky was tinged with pre-dawn silver, the rising light bringing with it a sweet, heavy calm. They should head home, they agreed. They didn’t say that in this new life they had no home, but neither did they make a move to go. Helpless to fatigue, they fell asleep.
They couldn’t have been asleep for long when old Abraham Groslik came tapping up the reservoir road on his early morning walk, huffing at the effort, his huffing worsening incrementally with each step. As he approached the arcade he paused to catch his breath, then he cleared his throat to warn the lovers of his presence. When they didn’t stir he inched closer to
take a long look, studying, with eyes made keen by a new pair of bifocals, what he understood as the image of pure happiness.
Lovers in love. Sure, Abe knew what that was like. He knew it in the way he knew the warmth of the rising sun. He hoped that these two would be allowed to grow old with each other and to have the luxury of remembering, fifty years from now, the night they fell asleep in each other’s arms on a stone bench up at the reservoir.
Their heads were tipped in sleep, their faces hidden from Abe’s prying eyes. But he didn’t need to see their faces to enjoy a small surge of pride. Just by discovering them on the bench in the arcade, he had earned the right to take credit for their happiness.
Sunlight had replaced the shadows over the flat suburbs to the east by the time Abe decided to get on with his walk and head home. He chose to take the path rather than the paved road down the hill—this was his first mistake. His second mistake was to let gravity speed his descent. For the first few steps he moved at a spirited pace without huffing much at all. But soon he found it difficult to keep up with the momentum as the slope steepened. At the same time, the earth tilted forward, and the sky that had always been above old Abe fell across the space in front of him. He felt himself plunging into it, running straight on, as though toward a closed glass door.
His Lucite cane saved him. He managed to lift the cane in front of him, barely keeping himself upright as he thrust the stick against the air, pushing the sky away. An observer might have thought Abe was lifting his cane in a gesture of freedom or joy, but in reality Abe was using his cane to open the door so he could pass through.
The forceful action caused him to loosen his grip on the handle, and as he stumbled, the cane flew from his hand and disappeared into the bushes. Amazingly, Abe remained on his feet. Monroe Avenue was ahead of him. Across Monroe Avenue was the small apartment complex where he’d lived for thirty years. Next to the apartment complex was the synagogue his wife had attended regularly and where he always lost at bingo.
