Terminal House

by Sean Costello

  Roxanne dried her eyes and gazed out at the morning sky. She was already homesick. But what was upsetting her most was the thought of Gram alone in that house. Every time she blinked she saw the old woman tumbling down the basement steps or slipping in the shower or lying dead from a stroke on the kitchen floor. Now more than ever she wished she’d pushed Gram harder to sell the house and move into the Center. Ben had done his best to convince her too, taking her on an hour-long tour of the complex, then treating her to lunch in the cafeteria while extolling the many virtues of assisted living.

  But Gram could be so pigheaded. Once her mind was made up, there was seldom any changing it. And the harder you pushed, the more firmly she hunkered down. Which made Roxanne think of something else that concerned her almost as much.

  Ben still had his heart set on getting back with Gram. But barring divine intervention—or maybe a small stroke in the stubborn part of Gram’s brain—Roxanne was convinced now that it was never going to happen. In spite of Ben’s best efforts, Gram had remained cool toward him all summer. Slinging her arm around him at the airport was the warmest thing she’d done since that very first hug on the porch. And Ben had been knocking himself out trying to woo her: flowers coming out of the blue, lavish dinners, shiny gifts in tiny packages, movie dates in the theater they’d favored in their teens. All to little avail.

  Roxanne still loved the idea, though, and a part of her clung to the frail hope Gram was only playing hard to get. Either way, she’d continue trying to soften the old girl up. They deserved to be together. Even Russ thought it was the most romantic thing he’d ever heard, first lovers reuniting after sixty years, sharing the balance of their lives in a quaint riverside home.

  Maybe even having sex.

  Roxanne giggled at this forbidden thought, peeking through her hair now to see a surly woman eyeballing her from across the aisle.

  She faced the window again—a quiltwork of fields beneath her now, dotted with the occasional homestead—and recalled the mid-August afternoon she’d spent with Ben at his winterized cottage in Constance Bay. They’d borrowed Gram’s car that day, and Ben told her he hadn’t visited the property in ages, but paid a local fellow a monthly stipend to maintain it.

  The ‘cottage’ turned out to be a gorgeous two-bedroom cedar chalet perched high on a wooded rise, with a breezy deck overlooking the Ottawa River and a railed flagstone staircase zigzagging down to a sandy beach. Roxanne had spent the afternoon helping Ben spruce the place up, cracking a few windows to flush out the stale air, running a vacuum through the rooms, Swiffer-dusting the antique furniture. Afterward, they’d dined on the deck, munching fish and chips from a nearby chip wagon, then watched the sun sizzle into the bay in a spectacular blush of fuchsia and furnace red.

  And it was here that Ben told her of his plan to propose to Gram with the ring he’d purchased back in 1972. Roxanne told him outright what a bad idea she thought that was, almost blurting it, telling him Gram was nowhere near ready for anything as radical as marriage, and probably never would be.

  But Ben was adamant.

  “I think she’s ready,” he told her, sipping the dregs of the Pepsi he’d had with dinner.

  Not wanting to hurt his feelings more than she already had, Roxanne said, “What makes you so sure?”

  “I can just tell.”

  “Have you discussed it with her yet?”

  He laughed, and not for the first time Roxanne wondered if the isomer was still doing its job. He’d been rock solid for the past few weeks, but now….

  He said, “Are you crazy? You know what she’s like.”

  “So what, you’re just going to spring it on her?”

  “Exactly. I mean, that’s why we’re here today, to get the place ready. I’m going to invite her up for dinner—I was thinking a week or so after you leave, give her time to realize how crappy living alone can be. We’ll dine by candlelight, chat about the good times we had. And when the time is right, I’ll pop the question.” He smiled. “What do you think?”

  “Gram doesn’t like surprises. Even good ones.”

  “What’s not to like? And there’ll be no pressure to, you know… There’re two bedrooms upstairs. She can have the big one. I’ll do all the cooking. There’s a grocery store within walking distance, a hospital ten minutes’ drive away, and I’ve already found a cleaning lady willing to come in a couple times a week. There’s cell and Internet access, and all the movies and TV shows a person could want. And she can read her Tolkien right out here on the deck.” He indicated the rocker Roxanne was sitting in. “Recognize the chair?” It was an exact duplicate of Gram’s. “I had it shipped to the caretaker last week. And I’ve decided to write a memoir in that little office out back, so I won’t be in her hair much at all.

  “I love her, Roxanne. I never stopped loving her. I just kind of…tucked it away for safekeeping. No one’s more surprised than I am at how quickly the years flew by. But one of the last things Ray said to me before he died was that I should go for it. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

  He’d gotten quiet then, giving her that feeling of absence, and Roxanne wondered again if his meds were still working.

  But it was out of her hands now, all of it, and she felt a certain lightness because of it. Brushing the hair out of her eyes, she glanced back along the jet’s plush interior, thinking, I’m really doing it.

  And as the miles stacked up behind her, she felt herself on the cusp of adulthood, of womanhood, and sensed a dormant spirit of adventure stirring inside her.

  She settled back in her seat with a sigh, eyes aimed straight ahead.

  * * *

  Ben waited three full days before calling. It was torture.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Melanie.”

  “I’m sorry. Who is this?”

  “It’s Ben.”

  “I know that, silly boy. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m feeling like a walk in the park, and I thought you might like to join me.”

  A sigh. “It’s almost lunchtime, Ben, and I’ve got chores to do. I’m not sure I want to drive all the way out there right now.”

  “Not the park here. The park there.”

  “Here? You mean Brown’s Inlet?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You don’t have a car.”

  “I’ll take the bus.”

  “Benjamin Hunter, MD, take the bus?”

  “Sure. Why not? It’ll be fun. And it’ll give you time to have lunch and put on something nice.”

  She giggled and Ben felt lightheaded.

  She said, “I know what you’re up to.”

  “Oh, you do, do you.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “So meet me and try to stop me.”

  She huffed. “I’m not making any promises. What time were you thinking?”

  “There’s a bus leaving here in twelve minutes.” He glanced at his watch. “An hour from now at the weeping willow?”

  She chuckled. “Now I really know what you’re up to. God, I haven’t thought of that place in ages.”

  “I’ll see you there, then?”

  “That old tree was ready to fall in the pond when we were kids. What if it’s gone?”

  “Then I’ll meet you where it used to be.”

  “I’m not promising anything.”

  “There’ll be ice cream.”

  “Ben Hunter, you dirty old man.”

  He hung up on their laughter, then hurried out to the bus stop at the curb.

  * * *

  The bus was packed and reeked of b.o. Myriad other odors assaulted Ben as he stumbled along the aisle, lurching from handhold to handhold as the driver tramped on the gas: curry; garlic; stale booze; a fart so nasty he could feel the heat of it on his face; cotton candy; cheap perfume; the lingering stench of spent cigarettes.

  There wasn’t a seat to be had, so he grabbed a chrome stanchion and held on for dear life, doing his best to avoid colliding with the other straphang
ers. The jerky motion was already playing hell with his joints.

  He thought, Should’ve called a cab, and tried to calm himself with thoughts of the day ahead.

  A seat came up a few stops later, but just as Ben moved to claim it, a pair of pierced, tattooed, rail-thin teenagers dove in, lapsing immediately into a tangle of roaming hands and flickering tongues. Ben had to turn his back to avoid laughing out loud.

  I guess I don’t get out enough.

  He was facing a young man in a suit now, and when the bus lurched again the man said, “Can I offer you my seat, sir?”

  Ben thought, ‘Sir’, I get it, I’m old, although the truth of it still sometimes caught him unawares. He said, “No thanks, I’ll manage,” and stumbled again.

  The young man stood now, blocking another couple of hard-looking kids with his body. He said, “It would be my honor, Doctor Hunter.”

  “You know who I am?”

  The man nodded. “I’m a resident in internal medicine. I’ve read all your papers.” He touched Ben’s elbow, guiding him into the seat. “I’ve even read one of your thrillers. Code Blue. Loved it. I’ve had your novels on my reader for ages, just haven’t had time to enjoy them all yet.”

  Ben felt proud as a peacock. He wanted to ask the young man if he’d rotated through the Geriatric Center yet, maybe offer to buy him lunch next time he was there. But the bus came to a chuffing stop and the young man said, “This is me.”

  Ben thanked him for the seat and watched him disembark, the four teens plowing through the narrow exit ahead of him.

  Then the bus was rolling again, heading north on Bronson at a lively clip, the big wheels humming a soporific note. Lulled by it, Ben went away for a while.

  * * *

  He disembarked at the corner of Ralph and Woodlawn and walked the short city block to Brown’s Inlet, a long, kidney-shaped pond teeming with catfish and toads. Ralph Street bisected the pond in half, and it was to the most easterly of these fragrant lagoons that Ben made his way now, leaving the sidewalk to follow a paved path to the ancient willow. The tortured tree still clung to the undercut bank, and still looked ready to teeter over into the pond. The trunk jutted out from the bank at a steep angle for a good six feet, then leveled off into a flattened bench just wide enough for two before angling upward again to its full height of perhaps thirty feet.

  In his childhood, Ben had spent many a summer day here with Ray, netting tadpoles or fishing for mudpout, balanced high on their secret perch, secure within the screening canopy. They’d rarely caught anything—and when they did, they’d always tossed it back in the pond—but they’d shared their dreams here, sketching futures neither of them ever saw, whiling away the summer days before school gobbled them up again for another year.

  There weren’t many leaves left on the old weeper now, but the whippy branches formed enough of a curtain to conceal Ben inside.

  In his day, an ambitious boy had to straddle the trunk and shimmy up those first precarious six feet, pressing his skin against the coarse bark, always risking a dip in the cold green water if he lost his grip. But somewhere along the line, a much smarter kid had nailed a series of wooden slats to the trunk, neatly spacing them into ladder rungs spanning all the way up to the bench.

  A voice in Ben’s head said, Put it out of your mind.

  And he slipped off his loafers and started climbing. Near the top, his big toe curled into a painful cramp and he damn near went ass-over-teakettle into the drink—but he caught himself in time, hunkering down to clutch the trunk as he had as a boy. When the cramp let up, he finished the climb, getting his legs angled around so his stocking feet dangled over the pond. He felt lightheaded looking down into that dark soup—the surface of which seemed a lot closer now than it had when he was a boy—and he closed his eyes until the feeling passed. When he looked down again, he saw the striped head of a painted turtle breaking the surface—

  “Benjamin Hunter, have you lost your mind?”

  Ben turned to the familiar voice and saw another head, this one poking through the willow branches, Melanie looking up at him goggle-eyed now, one slender hand extended as if to catch him should he fall.

  He smiled, thinking, She cares, and said, “Why don’t you kick off those sensible shoes and join me?”

  She said, “You really have lost your mind,” and stepped into the dappled pocket of shade. “At my age.” But she was slipping out of her Hush Puppies now, gazing up at him with those vexingly playful eyes, showing him the smile that had slain him so many years ago and drenched him in longing now.

  She set her shoes next to his on the bald ground and started climbing. Halfway up, she shot him a scolding glance, saying, “These are my favorite dress pants, Ben Hunter. If I get one speck of dirt on them, I’ll be sending you the dry-cleaning bill.”

  “Fair enough,” Ben said, impressed by her agility as she settled in next to him on the natural bench, the warmth of her hip sending a current of excitement through his body. She wiggled a bit now, trying to find the best spot, saying her old backside was bony and she wasn’t sure how long she could sit up here. Ben told her to quit whining and Melanie gave him a companionable swat.

  Facing her now, he said, “I’m so glad you came. Have you been talking to Roxanne?”

  “Yes, just this morning. She’s settling in nicely. She sounds excited, but I can tell she’s homesick.”

  “I got that feeling, too. Quinn and Wilder were over last night when she called and we got her on speaker phone. Quinn was trying out some of his new jokes on her, but they were so rude I had to kick the bum out.”

  “Did she laugh?”

  “Like a lunatic.”

  “Tell me one.”

  “Jeez, Mel, I don’t know. Off-color doesn’t even begin to describe them.”

  She swatted him again. “You’ve seen me naked. Now tell me.”

  Ben grinned, his mind serving up a luminous image of them as teenagers, naked as the day they were born, propped sideways across Melanie’s bed in front of the mirror, taut bodies at the peak of youthful perfection, Melanie’s breasts shock-white against the tan of her skin. They’d just had sex, and—

  Another swat.

  Ben said, “You expect me to concentrate now?”

  “Focus.”

  Exhilarated by Melanie’s lively mood, Ben skimmed through Quinn’s gags in his mind, trying to decide which was the least offensive. Then he said, “I’m not a great joke-teller, but here goes…”

  She smiled in anticipation, cornflower eyes locked on his.

  “Okay, so this guy’s been married to the same woman for fifteen years, and after work one night he’s talking about his sex life with his buddies at the bar. So he says, ‘I finally got up the nerve to ask her how she’d rate my performance, and you know what she says? I make too much noise when I come. So I ask her what she means, and she tells me it wakes her up.’”

  At first Ben thought he’d ruined the mood. The gleam in Melanie’s eyes had dimmed, and that expectant smile had puckered into a thoughtful rosebud.

  Then her shoulders began to shake and Ben realized she was laughing, laughing so hard he thought she was going to topple over backward into the pond. Galvanized, he threw an arm around her shoulders, startling her, and then she really was falling. By reflex, she grabbed his shirt, and now they were both caught in gravity’s merciless sway—

  Ben’s left hand swung out blindly, seized the stump of a sawed-off branch—and they were saved. Because she’d lost her balance first, Melanie ended up angled beneath him, and when he drew her upright they were face to face, noses almost touching. Surprising him, Melanie wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and drew him in until their lips touched.

  Now she breathed his name and wet her lips, and Ben kissed her, his questing mouth joining hers, their tongues stirring like tiny, starved animals awakened from a prolonged hibernation. She kept moaning his name—“Oh, Ben, oh, Ben,”—and he felt himself becoming aroused, the depth of her pass
ion in this somehow hallowed place propelling him back across time again, to their first kiss in this very spot a lifetime ago, and his startlement even then that such a sweet, reserved girl could be capable of such unhinged intensity.

  But then, as quickly as it began, it was over. She pulled away, pressed a warm hand over his mouth, and fixed him with tear-filmed eyes, the fire in them replaced by what looked like pity.

  She said, “I’m so sorry, Ben. I just wanted to…I needed to see if I could feel that way again, and I do, I really do.”

  She was moving away from him now, starting down the ladder with that damnable agility, and he knew he couldn’t keep up. She was on the ground with her shoes on before he got his leg swung around to straddle the seat, looking at him now with those sad, somehow pitying eyes.

  “I can’t do this, Ben. Not again. Not at my age.”

  It was that day at Le Château all over again, and he felt pathetic, ready to beg for another chance. He said, “But Mel—”

  “Ben, please. Just let it go.”

  She was heading for the curtain of branches now, about to leave him again, and he said, “Mel, wait.” She stopped but didn’t turn around. “Where’s the harm in this? I still love you. I always have. And judging by what we just shared, you must feel the same way.”

  Now she did turn, her melancholy expression amplified by a rueful smile. “That’s always been your problem, Ben. Mistaking sex for love.”

  The statement threw him and he only stared at her.

  She said, “I’m leaving now. I can’t see you anymore, Ben. I don’t want you to call me, and I don’t want you dropping by. This in no way reflects on your relationship with Roxanne. She loves you very much and I would never interfere with that.”

  She paused, seemed to have more to say…then she was gone, the willow branches closing behind her like a funeral shroud.