“It’s okay, it’s minor.”
“How old is he?”
“Older than Dad.”
“At that age nothing’s minor,” Emily said. “Please let her know we’re thinking of her.”
“I will.”
“How’s Captain Jack?”
“Good.”
“Good.”
She beamed, overwhelmed by Ella’s presence. Emily had so much to tell her, yet her mind, so full just moments ago, was suddenly blank. As her imagination veered down the hall in the apartment she’d never see, in panic she reached out and took Ella in her arms again. “My Ella Bella.”
“Grammy, are you okay?”
“I’m just so glad you could come. It feels like I haven’t seen you in ages. Come, sit,” she said, patting the couch. “Tell me everything that’s going on with you.”
THE GROWN-UP TABLE
Perhaps it was nostalgia, or just the stubbornness of memory, but she could never separate the grown-up versions of the children from the children they’d been. Margaret had been turning heads for nearly forty years—sometimes with dire results—yet she would always be the chubby, sullen third-grader who hid candy in her room. Justin, the budding astrophysicist, would forever be the oversensitive boy who burst into tears because he put the wrong soap in the dishwasher. Not proud of her own earlier self, Emily understood that imposing these old roles on them was unfair, and did her best to follow their new pursuits and celebrate their latest triumphs.
In Sam’s case, this was difficult. He was the youngest of the grandchildren, and the most troubled. As a preteen he’d been banned from their local mall for shoplifting, and with a friend was responsible for setting fire to a neighbor’s toolshed. After he was suspended for breaking into the school store, Lisa had him tested, fishing, Arlene suspected, for a diagnosis of ADD, a condition she regarded, from a lifetime of teaching, as arbitrary and convenient, and which the doctors confirmed, prescribing drugs that supposedly would help him focus. Even with medication and a special diet, he’d been held back his sophomore year and was failing several classes before Kenneth and Lisa transferred him to the Milton Academy (at the Sanners’ expense), where he did well enough to get into Clark University, a nontraditional college, as if a lack of structure might help him. He lasted only half a semester there, moving back home and enrolling at Bay State College, which neither Emily nor Arlene had ever heard of.
Now, at the dinner table, when Emily chose her opening and casually asked, “And how is school?” she was prepared to be encouraging.
“Actually I’m taking a break right now.”
“Oh,” Emily said, trying to temper her surprise. She’d had two glasses of wine and this was news to her. “Are you working, then?”
“I am.”
“Doing what, if I may ask?”
“Working at Bob’s.”
“Forgive my ignorance. Who is Bob?”
“The store,” Ella said.
“They’re a chain,” Kenneth said. “They sell clothes.”
“What do you do there?”
Sam had taken a bite of cheesy potatoes, as if his part in the conversation were over. He nodded and swallowed. “Pretty much everything. Stock the shelves, do checkout, whatever they need.”
“His official title is sales associate,’” Kenneth said.
“How do you like it?” Arlene asked.
Sam shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“It’s just temporary,” Kenneth said.
“Of course,” Emily said. “I assume you’re going back to school in the fall?”
“I haven’t figured out what I’m doing yet.”
His answer, like his others, stumped her. He seemed unconcerned, or uninterested, as if he’d had enough of the subject, and though Emily sensed that pressing him further would serve no purpose, she couldn’t let such an alarming statement go unchallenged.
“I know your Aunt Margaret wishes she’d stayed in school.”
“It’s true,” Arlene seconded.
“We’ve already discussed it,” Kenneth said.
“It may not seem like it because you’re young, but you only have so many opportunities in life. You don’t want to wake up twenty years from now and find you’ve missed the boat.”
Sam had stopped eating and waited for her to finish with his hands in his lap, as if he were being punished. “I’ll try and remember that.”
“I’m not saying this to pick on you. I’d say the same thing to Ella.”
“Right.”
“I would.”
“Except you wouldn’t have to, because she’s Ella.”
“I’m staying out of this,” Ella said, holding both hands up.
“I’m just one person voicing her opinion,” Emily said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“It’s fine,” Kenneth said, as if he were the final arbiter.
“If it’s no trouble,” Arlene said, “I would love a tiny piece of ham.”
For the rest of dinner they stayed away from the topic, as if it were closed. It wasn’t until Arlene was gone and the children were upstairs watching TV that Kenneth sat down with Emily in the living room and told her the real story. Sam had actually been taking a full course load and holding his own until he’d come down with the flu the week before midterms. His teachers let him reschedule the tests. He studied extra, he claimed, but failed all four badly, and decided to withdraw while they could still get a partial refund.
“That’s why he was so upset.”
“It would have been nice to know that,” Emily said. “I don’t know why I bother calling you. You never tell me anything.”
“Mom.” He shook his head as if she were being unfair. “We didn’t think broadcasting it would help the situation.”
“That’s fine. I’m not going to offer my opinion when it’s obviously not wanted.”
She let this sit.
“It just happened a couple weeks ago,” Kenneth said. “We were hoping he’d stick it out, but he was already on academic probation and didn’t see a way he could bring them all up to B’s. The hope is that he can take a couple of them over the summer so he can really concentrate on them and bring his average up.”
“Is he going to want to go over the summer?”
“That’s what we’re discussing. He’s pretty discouraged.”
“Naturally,” Emily said, thinking it wasn’t an isolated case of bad luck, just an extension of his usual troubles. “Having Ella for an older sister can’t make it any easier.”
“You really touched a nerve with that one.”
“Should I apologize, or would that just make things worse?”
“That’s entirely your call.”
“I should say something to him.”
Kenneth agreed, but left her to figure out what that might be. The whole sibling issue was a minefield. She couldn’t blame Sam for being jealous of Ella. Emily could honestly say she hadn’t known of his situation and that, like it or not, she would always worry about him. It was neither an apology nor a reprimand, which she thought fitting, since they’d both been at fault, but when she called him out of the den for a quick word and delivered her brief speech in the hall, it was received with the same indifference he’d shown at the table, and though they embraced as if they’d made up, she felt no closer to him.
She fretted over it in bed. Her concerns weren’t personal. Hurt feelings were the least of it. His quitting worried her, and his prospects, as she cast ahead to the future. Unlike Ella or Sarah, he had no particular skill, no unique talent or personality beyond his mother’s sullenness and a penchant for getting into trouble. She could see him working at this Bob’s and living at home indefinitely, never finishing his degree, like Margaret. She imagined Kenneth was disappointed in him, and that was sad. But he was young, it was possible he might change. Or not. That would be awful. While part of her protested that she was being melodramatic, she saw the larger issue as practical, and far-reaching. If he kept on this way, wh
at would become of him?
POWER OF ATTORNEY
She’d instructed Kenneth to bring his copy of the will so they could go over it together. They didn’t have to be at the airport until five-thirty, and after they came back from church and changed out of their good clothes and made sandwiches from last night’s ham, she led him into Henry’s office and shut the door behind them.
“Have a seat.”
He did without a word, setting his backpack on the floor between his feet.
Even if his silence was meant to be respectful, she wished he weren’t so solemn. Why did people treat death like an embarrassing family secret? She was braced for a replay of her meeting with Margaret, but also eager to be done with it once and for all, thankful that this was the last time she’d have to explain herself.
She slid open the file drawer and lifted out the thick manila envelope with both hands. Since Christmas she’d revisited the will and its appendices many times, with an eye toward what Kenneth would need to know, since he’d most likely shoulder the bulk of the executor’s duties, and the pages were fringed with pink Post-it notes.
“That’s very funny,” he said.
“What?”
He reached into his backpack and withdrew his copy, setting it on the desk beside hers. It was layered just as thickly with yellow Post-its.
“That is funny.”
What was funnier was that their queries were perfectly matched.
While she spoke, he took copious notes on a legal pad, flipping the pages, stopping her every so often to ask for clarification. In contrast to Margaret, he’d always been a good student, a spelling bee finalist, conscientious to a fault about homework, excited by the possibility of extra credit. She attributed his eagerness to please to Henry, but she’d been the one with straight A’s, the one whose report cards were celebrated and saved. If Margaret was cursed with her temper, Kenneth had inherited her diligence.
As they went over each point in detail, she was gratified that he’d taken the time to understand her, and relieved. Why had she been worried? She should have known she could count on him.
392
A week later, floundering, as was her habit in the wake of their leaving, she took Rufus out for his constitutional one bright, chilly morning only to discover, on the slate square of sidewalk directly in front of their steps, like a hex or a warning, a pair of black spray-painted arrows pointing downhill, bracketing the number 392.
She peered around at the empty lawns and driveways and porches, as if whoever was responsible were watching. Rufus looked up at her, wondering why they’d stopped.
She would have suspected gang graffiti, which had been a problem in the alley behind Sheridan, except it was small and artlessly done. Its sloppiness looked official, the harbinger of some public works project, a new sewer line or fiber-optic cable that might intrude on her summer. Besides marring her front walk, the inscrutable numerals promised a chaos she was powerless to stop, and sent her off up Grafton, frowning at her bad luck.
As they wended along, Rufus pausing to nose the budding hedges for a proper spot, she searched the sidewalk for similar hieroglyphics, and the street, hoping to divine the path of the coming disruption, but found none. Instead of their usual route, she didn’t turn left at Sheridan but continued uphill to Heberton, crossed and came down the far side of Grafton past the Millers’, interrogating the pavement, which itself seemed, except for a few minor fissures, in decent enough shape.
Last fall the gas company had dug up the corner of Farragut at the foot of the hill, right by Henry’s old bus stop. The patches were still visible, grafts of lighter-colored asphalt. Farragut had been red brick when they’d moved in, and remained so well into the eighties—lumpy and frost-heaved, the bricks cracked and chipped, slippery in wet weather, but beautiful too, especially in the fall, the overhanging limbs forming a tunnel—when the city resurfaced it a smooth uniform gray. Emily wondered who had made that decision, what bloodless committee. Certainly no one who’d ever lived there.
They went all the way down to the stop sign at Highland and came back up their side, past Louise’s. Rufus lagged behind, his head drooping. He panted as if he’d run for miles, and she slowed to let him catch his breath. There was nothing by either manhole, or the storm drain in front of the Conroys’. She was baffled by the absence of any other markings, as if, once she established a pattern, she’d be able to solve the mystery.
As she was mulling this, Marcia Cole emerged from her house, wearing a warm-up suit, her hair tucked under a Penguins cap. She’d taken up running to lose weight, and though so far she showed no visible results, every morning Emily saw her chug past, red-faced and sweaty. Marcia hefted one leg, propped a sneakered heel on the porch rail and began stretching as if she were training for the Olympics. Buster, who’d followed her out, sat imperiously at the top of their stairs, swishing his tail. Emily tightened her grip on the leash, but Rufus failed to see either of them until Emily hailed Marcia—“Morning”—at which point Buster scooted across the lawn and up the driveway, headed for the garage.
“Do you know anything about this ‘three-ninety-two’?” Emily pointed, though it was impossible for Marcia to see anything from there.
Together they walked over to the square in question and studied it as if it were a clue.
“That’s weird,” Marcia said.
“It must have just happened. I’ve been around all week and haven’t seen or heard a thing. Have you?”
Marcia stooped and tested the paint with a finger. “It’s been here a little while at least.”
“Since yesterday, do you think?”
“Probably. I guess. I don’t know. You say you haven’t seen any others?”
“We just did the entire block.”
“Hunh.” Marcia raised one knee high and hugged it against her chest, then the other. She went back and forth a few times, an impressive display of flexibility. “You might try calling the city and asking if anyone there knows what’s going on.”
“I was planning on it.”
“I’ve got to run—literally—but let me know what they say.”
“I will,” Emily said, and watched her jog off, her bottom wobbling, and thought she wouldn’t have the courage to do that in public.
Inside, she refilled Rufus’s water dish and gave him a treat, then fetched the phone book and sat at the breakfast table with an orange and a cup of tea and the directory open to the blue pages, going down the rows of numbers with a finger, pressing 1 for English and then waiting on hold, watching Buster crisscross the backyard with impunity. She gave her name and address and described the markings repeatedly, only to be told, again and again, that they had no information on any upcoming project involving Grafton Street. Worse, the people she spoke to weren’t interested, as if she were wasting their time—when the converse was true. She kept a list of all the departments she contacted, and though she spent a good chunk of her morning on it, in the end no one could tell her who the number belonged to.
If no one cared, she thought vindictively, then no one would object if she went out now with a wire brush and an acid bath and scrubbed it off, or took Henry’s power sander to it. What was stopping her? It was her property. But while she protested that she was within her rights as a homeowner, she also feared the repercussions of such a rash act, which could easily be mistaken for vandalism. She could just see the mark from her front window. Like the scratch on her car, it quickly became irresistible, a goad, an insult. From then on, ten, twenty times a day, she would crane over the radiator and part the curtains to make sure it was still there, as if, on its own, it might magically disappear.
THE CRUELEST MONTH
She knew these dismal gray days too well, the dregs of another Pittsburgh winter, the sky like soot above the rooftops. Spring was so close—the wait was excruciating. All she wanted to do was go outside and scratch around in her flower beds, take a peek under the blanket of mulch to see what had come up—her reward for all
her hard work in the fall—but the weather wasn’t cooperating. It snowed on her crocuses, burying them completely, Buster’s tracks a dotted line across the yard. She fought back with tea and oranges, melba toast dabbed with unsalted butter. The radio was calling for freezing rain, a wintry mix that could tie up the school buses. The breakfast nook was drafty, and she retreated to the living room, reading Middlemarch with an afghan over her lap, the lulling trumpets of Gabrieli on the stereo, the shifting polyphony putting her to sleep.
She woke to the grandfather clock marking ten-thirty. Sleet tapped at the windows. Rufus sat staring at her, asking to be let out.
“You can’t be serious,” she said, and then, at the back door, “Quickquick.”
Watching him pick his way over the crust, she thought if she could just hold on a few weeks longer, she’d be all right. The sun would resuscitate her, burn away this feeling of uselessness. She’d throw open the windows and walk Rufus around the reservoir, wipe down the chaise longue and bask in the yard.
The phone broke through her reverie. It was almost with relief that she moved to answer it. She hoped it might be Kenneth, though they’d just talked on Sunday. More likely it was Arlene, or Betty, asking if there was anything she could bring on Wednesday.
“Hello?” Emily said, but the woman on the other end was already talking:
“—and thank you for your time. The committee to elect John McCain would like to remind you that the presidential primary will take place on Tuesday, April twenty-second—”
“This is not the way to win my vote,” Emily said, as if someone listening in might register her displeasure.
Outside, Rufus was barking. As Emily hung up to tend to him, the doorbell rang.
“What now?” she said, because suddenly the place was a madhouse.
It was Marcia in her Penguins cap, down jacket and sweatpants. Instead of her usual sneakers, she wore snow boots, the Velcro tabs flapping loose. Emily was pretty sure she was no longer working. For days her little hybrid didn’t move.
“I just heard,” Marcia said. “I’m so sorry.”
Emily, Alone Page 19
