Things to Do When It's Raining

by Marissa Stapley

  “She’s living in Watertown,” said Vivian, her voice listless. “She’s working at a factory, like a man. She said I should do it, too, join the war effort, and I thought about it, but”—she held out a pale manicured hand and smiled at him with broken eyes.

  Later, Vivian went inside to get him the address of the rooming house. “Do you want to come?” he asked her. She shook her head. He patted her shoulder, shook Everett’s father’s hand, hugged Catharine, and left.

  First, he went back home. He went to his father’s desk and took the ring that was once his mother’s. Then he drove to Watertown.

  At the rooming house door, the landlady regarded him suspiciously, but let him in and called for Lilly. They sat in the parlor because male guests were not allowed upstairs. The curtains were closed and the feeble light of a dark-shaded lamp lit up only one corner of the room.

  She didn’t say anything when he told her. She sat very still, staring at the tiny shaft of light the lamp was casting on the opposite wall as the darkness gathered in the rest of the room. George studied her, trying to put his finger on what was different. A slight fullness of face, and, yes, when he glanced down he could see that her midsection was thicker. How could Everett not have mentioned, during those cold, dark, rough nights belowdecks, that he and Lilly had . . .

  But maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe he was just imagining it. If she were pregnant, she would tell him. If she were pregnant, what would that mean?

  “How?” she asked him, her eyes now bright with unshed tears. “How, exactly?”

  He tried to explain it, but never managed to. “Everett is a hero. He saved so many of our men from drowning. Just not himself. He even went back for a dog, our ship’s mascot.” This felt disloyal, telling her this. He hadn’t mentioned it to Everett’s parents, and knew he never would tell them. He would also never tell anyone how he had screamed at his friend, how his last words to him were, Goddamn you! Come back here, goddamn you, don’t be a fool! “The dog lived. The survivors wanted to give it to Everett’s parents as a gift. I told them to keep it, give it to a kid who had lost his dad or something.”

  “A dog?” That was what did it. She covered her face and started to sob.

  All he could do was watch her cry. Eventually, she stopped and put her hands on that tiny swell of her stomach and he found himself mesmerized, fearful, intrigued. But it was just for a moment, and then her hands were gone and he thought he must have imagined it, the whole thing. She’d gained a little weight, was all.

  George took his mother’s ring from his pocket. He didn’t get down on one knee; it didn’t seem like the right thing to do. He said, “I’ll take care of you.”

  “I know you will.” She crossed her arms over her belly, hugging herself.

  “I love you.”

  “Thank you, George,” she said.

  * * *

  Gabe is tapping at George’s bedroom door and saying supper is ready.

  “I’ll be down in just a moment.” He’s unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. He stares out the window, down at his car. And an idea comes to him. He’s a free man, isn’t he? He can go where he wants.

  The dog is waiting just outside the bedroom door. As he shuffles downstairs, the infernal thing follows, his own personal albatross, at his heels.

  In the kitchen, Mae is sitting at the table and Gabe is pulling the lasagna out of the oven. The table has been set and a salad has been tossed; there are tumblers full of ice water; a checked napkin is folded beside each plate. Gabe has moved so effortlessly back into their lives. George watches him and wonders. Can he trust him to keep Mae safe?

  “I hope you’re hungry,” Gabe says, holding up a serving spoon.

  “I’m not, actually. Please just give me a very small serving.”

  “Me, too,” says Mae. She stands and pours food into the dog’s dish, refreshes his water.

  “No problem.” Gabe has cut a large slice, but he pushes that plate aside and cuts two smaller ones. “There’s bread and salad, too.”

  George can’t imagine eating anything. He notices Mae has pushed her lasagna aside and is picking at her salad.

  “You should eat,” George says to her, man of the house once more. A vain attempt. She puts down her fork. Virginia in her eyes again: quiet courage, a durability. And resentment. Now I’ve done it.

  “I should eat?” she says.

  George nods. He should have just stayed upstairs.

  “Don’t you think you could have worried about Grandma a little, maybe, instead of me? Don’t you think that instead of leaving her over some fight you two had, you could have stayed, and maybe noticed she wasn’t doing well, and if you had, maybe she wouldn’t have—”

  George pushes his chair back. His fork clatters to the floor.

  “No! Don’t you dare go upstairs and hide again. I’ll go.” These are commands, and George accepts them. He doesn’t move until Mae disappears through the swinging door. The dog follows her, thank God.

  “I’m sorry,” Gabe says. “I’m trying to make this normal, like a regular family dinner, but obviously I don’t know what that is, and it’s probably too soon.”

  “It’s not you,” George says. “It’s me. Everything is because of me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t. I can’t tell anyone.”

  “Can’t tell anyone what? Can’t tell anyone why?”

  He considers Gabe’s words. “When Lilly was alive, I was keeping the secret because I was waiting until I’d calmed down enough to talk to her about it myself. Too late for that now.”

  Gabe looks alarmed. “Sit down. Please. It’s all right, it doesn’t matter—”

  “You have to promise me you won’t tell Mae.”

  Gabe frowns. “I think she knows.”

  Chest pain. “She does? She knows that Virginia was not my daughter?”

  Now it’s Gabe who sits. “What?”

  George beckons for him to lean in. When Gabe is close enough, he speaks in a low voice.

  “Virginia was not my daughter. Lilly hid this fact from me.” These words hang in the room between them as if they’ve been written on a spiderweb. George wants to reach up his hands and bat them away, erase their existence. If only.

  “What do you . . .” Then Gabe goes mute. George sees the boy in him again, the boy who would always retreat from them. It makes him nervous, but he’s made his decision.

  “Virginia wasn’t mine,” George repeats. The firm emphasis does not suture the wound. Only a fool could have believed it would.

  “Then, who . . . ?” Gabe begins, trails off. He doesn’t want to know, George realizes. He doesn’t want this burden.

  “My friend Everett. We were in the navy together. We were best friends. Our ship went down. He drowned. He was Vivian’s brother, and he was Lilly’s first love. She wasn’t mine, she was his first, and should have been his always. This place, too, it was supposed to be his. But his parents gave it to me because Viv didn’t want it, she wanted to run off to Hollywood, and they couldn’t bear to stay here. When Lilly and I were married and moved in here, she was already pregnant with his child, with Virginia, but she didn’t mention it to me. Let us live our entire lives in a lie, until she let it slip one night. She never loved me, Lilly didn’t. That’s why I left. It wasn’t some stupid fight, it wasn’t what Mae thinks. That’s why I was living at The Ship. Because she broke my heart.” George opens and closes his mouth. He wants to say more, but he feels aphasic, like those poor people Lilly used to volunteer to sit with at the hospital. “Can you imagine that?” he finally does manage. “Not knowing the person you’ve lived with for sixty-seven years, and known your whole life before that?”

  Gabe’s expression changes, for just a second. But then it’s gone, whatever it was.

  “I think Mae needs to know this. She should know. If she understood why you and Lilly were apart—”

  “Me over Lilly, is that what you’re suggesting? I take back my dig
nity, I win back my granddaughter, by admitting to her that she isn’t really mine, but I disgrace Lilly by revealing her deception? No. Don’t let me down, Gabe. Don’t tell her.”

  Gabe flinches, and George realizes what he’s done—he’s putting this between two people who should be left alone, free to fall in love again. And he’s placing another burden on Gabe’s shoulders. It’s a cruelty the boy doesn’t deserve, no matter what mistakes he made in the past. George wants to say he’s sorry as soon as the words are out. He sighs and reaches up but doesn’t allow himself to touch Gabe. “You’ve been taking good care of us, and I want you to keep doing that. For Mae. But not for me. I need to leave here.” He lets his hand fall back down to his lap.

  “You don’t—”

  “Don’t argue with me!” George’s voice is harsh again. He stands, and it is revealed: he is small, he is fading away. But he cranes his neck and draws himself up to his full height, such as it is. Aching bones, aching heart. “Just take care of Mae. Promise me. Promise me now.”

  Gabe lowers his head, chastened. Time falls away. “I promise you.”

  * * *

  “For heaven’s sake, get out of the car!” But the dog doesn’t move. “Fine, come along, you won’t be happy.”

  George drives the few miles outside of town it takes to get to the Alexandria Bay Cemetery. When he gets there, he lets the dog out and Bud starts to run up and down the rows of graves. He walks through the silent rows, carrying the urn. In the trunk, a small suitcase and Lilly’s cedar box. He’s taken nothing else. What else is there?

  He pauses at Virginia’s grave first. “Hello, girl,” he says, as he always does, his voice breaking, as it always does. He wishes that instead of his sad offering he had flowers to leave in front of the stone that says “Gone Fishing”—little Mae’s suggestion, all those years ago. “Maybe she’ll come back.” The hope in her eyes; George had never seen anything sadder. And sadder still was the fact that there was no monument there for her father, that Chase’s cold and imperious family had arrived shortly after learning of their son’s death and stayed only long enough to arrange for his body to be shipped back to Toronto and buried in the family plot there. Somewhere called Mount Pleasant—George had learned this and told Mae once. She had not had a perfect father, and Lilly never liked to speak of him, but George hadn’t thought it was fair that Mae had never been given the chance to say good-bye, that there was nowhere she could go to try to make peace.

  He opens the top of the urn and lifts out a handful of Lilly’s ashes. He sprinkles them on Virginia’s grave and they stain the snow an ugly gray-black. You were always so easy on her, on both of them. Lilly said that once. It was the night Gabe left, when George tried to stop her from going to the boy’s apartment to confront him. And she was right—he had been. He had always treated Virginia, and Mae, too, as if they were favorite nieces of his. Maybe he had always known, in his heart. And what does it matter? Any tie to them has been wrenched away from him. He has nothing.

  He walks toward the military section of the graveyard. His feet are cold and damp. Perhaps he’ll catch pneumonia and die. A futile hope. There, his flashlight lands on it: Everett Patrick Green. November 29, 1917–September 20, 1941. Died in the service of God and country. Beloved son, brother and friend. He brushes snow away from the letters and numbers. “I was not a friend,” he says to Everett. “I was your enemy, trying to steal the woman you loved. We both know I never would have succeeded, though, had you lived. If you had lived, everyone would have been better off. None of the bad things that happened would have ever happened. You would have made sure of it, you would have saved everyone.”

  He opens the lid of the urn again, and turns it upside down. The wind blows some of the ashes over to other graves, and some of them hit Everett’s gravestone, and some of them land where he wanted them to. It’s not how he imagined it would be, but is anything?

  “There. She’s yours.” He puts the urn down on the grave. He calls for the dog, and returns to the car.

  But when he opens the car door, the dog barks and hangs back. “Come on,” he says. “You can’t stay here.” He whimpers but climbs in. George gets in and closes the door, then turns to put his gloves on the front seat. But he can’t put them down. Because Lilly is sitting there.

  “What have you done, George? Why on earth did you do that? And where do you think you’re going?”

  Watch a movie-maybe something creepy that goes with the mood of the rainy gloom.

  Where did he say he was going?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Why did you let him go?”

  “I’m sorry.” Gabe looks down, and his shoulders hunch for a moment before he straightens them. “I didn’t know what he was going to do if I didn’t let him.”

  “Damn it, Gabe! You needed to stop him! You needed to keep him here with us.” She leaves the kitchen and storms down the hall, each footfall a tiny earthquake. She doesn’t feel like an adult; she feels like the teenage girl she was the last time Gabe was in this house, and it’s been happening more and more. She slams the front door and heads down the little hill toward the boathouse. Inside, it’s dusty and damp. She walks to the far end of the boathouse and sits in the chair that is there. I’m scared and I’m sad, she should have said to Gabe. I do need to be taken care of, just for now, until I can breathe again. I’m sorry I yelled at you, you don’t deserve that. Instead, she shoved him away. Lilly. George. And now Gabe. All the people she loves. But Gabe, he never stays. She knows this and needs to protect herself from it.

  She looks around. Being in here reminds her of the day her parents died. She can remember it still, the way the day started, being awakened just before dawn by her parents arguing in the next room. The volume of the muffled voices had increased and Mae had stood and pressed her ear against the wall of her room, even though she’d been taught it wasn’t polite to eavesdrop, that you could never listen against walls and doors when you lived at an inn.

  “How could you?” she had heard her mother say.

  “Virginia, come on. It was just a few beers with some of the guys. You can’t expect me to not drink ever, can you?”

  “Yes! Yes, I can. It’s never just a few beers with you, Chase. It’s never that, and you know it, and it’s almost dawn, and you come stumbling in here! And you said you’d finally work on the cabin. But how can you do that now? You’ll be sick, you’ll be sleeping it off, the cabin’s not going to be finished before the freeze, like you promised, we won’t be able to spend the winter inside the cabin, finishing it off. You don’t care about our plans, you don’t care about our life, you only care about yourself!”

  Their voices lowered. Eventually, there was silence. Mae went back to her bed and lay down and waited to see if they would start up again. They didn’t. It took her a long time to fall asleep, but she finally did.

  She woke again when it was light, and everything seemed just as it usually was. Her mother gave her an egg and toast for breakfast and told her she was going out to run errands and would be back later in the day. But Mae had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach from the fighting. She threw the food away when her mother left the kitchen, threw away the last thing her mother ever gave her to eat. Gabe was supposed to come over that day, so Mae went outside to catch a glimpse of him crossing the river in the cutter, the one Jonah used to get back and forth from his forsaken island when the ice started to come in, or go out.

  The river was empty, but she could see her father in the boathouse, moving around. She climbed down the bank. It was slippery. The early snow they’d had was almost gone.

  “Daddy?” she called, but he mustn’t have heard her. He was sitting at the back of the boathouse on a chair now. He lifted something to his mouth and drank. A brown bottle. Beer.

  “Daddy!” she shouted. She startled him. He dropped the bottle and it smashed on the ground. The smell hit her nostrils and she shouted again. “Mama said you weren’t supposed to drink that.”

/>   “It’s none of your business,” her father snapped. Tears sprang to her eyes. He saw and came toward her. “Listen, Mae-flower, Daddy’s really sorry. You’re right, I shouldn’t be drinking that, you’re right, Mama said I shouldn’t. Don’t cry, baby. I’m really sorry.” And he lifted her up and wrapped her in his arms. She was thinking that maybe if she got angry the way her mother did, he would actually stop, finally, and then there would be no more fighting. But she couldn’t. She buried her face in his chest instead.

  He put her down. “It’ll be better. I promise. Why don’t you run along now and let Daddy get some work done? It’ll be okay.”

  She went inside, but she stopped at the window and watched him go off in the hovercraft. She had known it wasn’t right, hadn’t she? Even as a child, she had to have known that when someone had been drinking as heavily as he had been, all night and in the morning, too, you didn’t let that person operate a boat. But she did nothing to stop him.

  * * *

  The door creaks open. Gabe. Mae can’t decipher the look on his face. His expression is intense; he’s got to be angry. She stands. She wants to be the one to say what he came to say to her first.

  “We can’t do this. Not now, not ever. The guy I was supposed to marry, he was a really bad guy. He did some horrible things, and I did them, too. Not on purpose—but still. I’m not who you remember. I’m not the person you think I am. I’m not that girl anymore. When you find that out, you’re not going to want to know me.”

  “You haven’t changed as much as you think. And whatever this guy made you do”—Gabe closes his eyes for a moment— “Jesus, is it wrong that I have the sudden desire to murder this guy? But, listen, whatever he made you do, it wasn’t your fault. You’re still a good person.”

  She shakes her head. “The person you knew never would have let any of these things happen. Lilly, George—I was supposed to take care of them. Now she’s dead, he’s run away, and I did all that.”

  “You can’t hold yourself responsible for things like this. You of all people should know that. You’re the one who taught me that. Think about what you said, that night at the bus depot.”