“Maybe it is a better place,” she said to Evie, her voice so low and soft that Evie had to lean forward to hear the words. “When we die, I mean. Maybe it really is a happier place than here.” She looked back down at the face of her only daughter, Annie Gail Jenkins, who woke up one morning before Christmas vacation feeling too sick to go to school. And so she never went again, going instead to the doctor who took the tests and delivered the news.
Evie put the sketch pad down.
“Come on,” she said. “That little café on the corner of Frederick Street has ice cream. Why we don’t we go for a walk, you and me?”
Margie Jenkins rolled the sketch up neatly. She reached for her purse and held it in her arms. When she stood, Evie saw that the back of her blouse had grown wet with sweat, as if Margie’s body had become dead weight in just the past month. Margie Jenkins could feel Annie there in the room, Evie was certain of it. She could tell by looking at the woman’s face. The ties were still so strong between mother and daughter. Sometimes, Evie had a client tell her what it was like to feel their own child nearby, just beyond human reach, the pure energy of your firstborn, or second born. It’s like being on a roller coaster and you’ve just crested the very top, and then the car rolls over and down you come, your stomach riding so high inside you that you know you’re going to pass out just from the pull of it.
“I wonder if they have chocolate,” said Margie. The ice cream had done the trick. It was a way of surviving, is what it was. A way of grabbing up a simple notion, a nice idea, and hanging on to it like it’s a piece of driftwood. “Chocolate was Annie’s favorite,” she added, as Evie opened the front door. The diamond-shaped crystals hanging from the lamp shade in the parlor rattled as the door closed behind them.
9
His mother was back. Larry heard the soft squeak, that same board beneath the carpet at the top of the stairs, the step that had been talking ever since he could remember. All those high school nights that he and Henry had crept into the house just ahead of dawn, they had been careful of that step, not wanting its painful sound to rouse their mother. But it was as if she and the step had an agreement: Wake me when the boys sneak in so I can scold them in the morning. Now the step had turned on her. For the past three mornings Larry had heard it, and then the soft movement of a body lurking just outside his door. Or maybe he felt her there, in his gut, she being his mother and all. Maybe nature gives humans that ability. But this was the third morning, and Larry couldn’t bear it anymore. He knew what she was doing, eavesdropping, her small white ear pressed like a seashell to his door, hoping to catch the ebb and flow of his life, to hear some clue as to what he was up to.
Larry rose from the chair at his desk where he had been writing a letter to Jonathan. Dear son, Aunt Jeanie got your letter and we’re all very happy that you’re coming home for Thanksgiving. He walked to his side of the door and stood there, waiting quietly, wondering if perhaps this was the morning she’d come up with a screwdriver in her hand, determined to flush him out. When she arrived like this, midmorning, the time of day that his father was just seeing the last mailman out of the post office, Larry knew she was alone. And that was a good thing. When the old man was with her, she seemed to draw some kind of energy from him, rising up higher on the heels of her feet, straightening her back, turning now and then to catch her husband’s eye, to see if he was listening to this. The old man was like some kind of ammunition truck that follows the tanks. But soon, Larry knew, they would come for the mail pouch, and when they did, his father would need to be at the vanguard, if for no other purpose than the symbolic. And they would come with a battering ram. But for now, his mother was alone again in the hallway. Larry could almost feel the warmth of her coming through the door, as if her pain were something liquid that could be poured out of her body if she let it. What could he do? What should he do? Larry remembered the skink Jonathan had tried to catch the summer before their lives went all to hell. Before Larry had a chance to warn him, the boy had grabbed the bright blue tail of the lizard, hoping to pick the thing up. Instead, he was left with the wiggling tail in his hand, the rest of the skink long gone. That’s its protection, son, Larry had explained. The tail is bright blue so that predators will grab it, and not the soft body. Its tail will grow back in time. Thinking back on this now, Larry wished the same worked for him. Perhaps if he could toss an arm or a leg out into the hallway, something for his mother to hold in her hand, maybe it would buy him some more time. He could slam the door, lock it soundly, and then sit in the dark with the mail pouch on his lap as he waited for the arm to grow back.
More time for what? It was a question he still couldn’t answer.
On an impulse, Larry unlocked the door and opened it slowly. His mother was standing in the hallway, looking down over the banister at the living room below. He could tell by the way she glanced up at him, the confusion in her eyes, that she had forgotten why she’d come upstairs in the first place. Larry knew this because it often happened to him. Many times, on his way back from the bathroom, he’d stop and look down at the living room as if it were a stage set waiting for a family to enter and do their parts, the two sons rushing in to fight over TV Guide, the parents following, the father smiling at his sons, the mother frowning and telling them to take off those muddy shoes now and go wash up for supper. It’s when no one rushes onto the stage, and you’re still standing there looking down, that’s when you get confused. That’s when you wonder where the actors are, the director, the audience. And then you realize that the play is long over. He often wondered if this is what the faces of the dead tell Evie Cooper with their eyes. Is this what they feel, too, as they peer back at the stage where they once lived out their lives? Maybe the dead are just confused. Maybe all they really want to know is where the hell is everybody? But Larry didn’t believe in the dead. And as far as he could tell, he no longer believed in the living either.
“Mom?” He said it in a soft and caring way, so that his intention could not be mistaken for confrontation. He wanted no argument on that morning. He needed his energy to finish the letter to Jonathan. We’re all very happy that you’re coming home.
“I came up to talk to you,” she said, her eyes still on that small world below, the light blue sofa, the tan-shaded lamps, the vase of dried flowers, the heavy oak coffee table her sons had made for her in shop. Larry could tell that the fight had gone out of her. He left the safety of his bedroom and walked over to the banister, wanting to be closer to her, fearing she might even pass out. The truth about life does that to people. Sometimes, it punches them so hard they can’t breathe anymore.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and was relieved when she nodded. Not that he believed her. But she was back in some measure of control again.
“Did I tell you that I called Katherine?” No, she hadn’t told him. This was his ex-wife. It would have been nice to know about it. “I left a message on her machine. I asked if Jonathan could come for the memorial. We’re his family, after all.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Larry said. Otherwise, he was afraid he would say what he was thinking. How dare you call my ex-wife, about my son, without telling me first?
“Do you ever get tired of that same hardwood floor, day after day, year after year?” she asked. She was staring down at the living room floor now, talking more to herself than to him.
“Not really,” Larry said, wanting to put her at ease, to let her know that he was close by. In the end, after all was said and done, he was the older son, and the one who felt most protective of his mother, more so than Henry.
“Remember that teal-colored rug I put in the summer my mother died?” she asked then. “Remember how hard you boys were on it all through your growing-up years? Spilled colas, spilled Kool-Aid, spilled God-knows-what. Still, when you put in a hardwood floor, you’re stuck with it for life.” She turned to look at Larry’s face.
“Mom, are you all right?” he asked.
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br /> “I came up here for something,” she said softly, “but now I just can’t remember what it was.”
“That’s okay,” said Larry. “That’s been happening to me a lot too. You came to tell me you invited Jonathan.”
He stood there beside her as they both looked down on the sofa, the lamps, the heavy coffee table. He had read once that the living room started being referred to as such to set it apart from the parlor, which was where the dead were waked in years past. Except for the hardwood floor, not much had changed since he and Henry had made that room their own, the place they often did their homework as they watched television, one lying on his back on the sofa, the other sprawled on his belly on the teal-colored rug, their books or bowls of popcorn and cans of soda covering the oak coffee table. The truth was that he had done all of the work on the table, with Henry using shop time to practice his foul shots for basketball. Mr. Harris, the shop teacher, was also the basketball coach and so no one ever knew. Henry’s foul shots were so important to winning their games that this seemed like a great idea at the time. It was only years later, when Larry had become a teacher himself, that he saw the folly in this notion. It was as if the whole damn town had been aiding and abetting Henry’s whims. But when it came time to present the coffee table to their mother, her gift for Mother’s Day, it wasn’t Larry who handed her the card. It was Henry: This table is made of white oak which can grow as tall as a hundred feet. The bark is gray and the leaves turn purple-red each autumn. This table was made by your sons, Henry and Larry Munroe, in Mr. Harris’s Woodworking Shop, 1975. Happy Mother’s Day. Larry didn’t have a hard time remembering what was written on the card for it was still lying inside the thin drawer that slid out of the table’s belly. That drawer alone had taken him a month of classes to make, the groove requiring many hours of painstaking work. He’d read the card several times over the years, especially on Sundays when he’d come to watch the Super Bowl with Henry and the old man. Or those Saturday afternoons when he was there to mow the lawn for his mother. Larry would come in from his workout with the lawn mower to pour a glass of lemonade and then sit on the light blue sofa to drink it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t help himself. He always slid open the drawer and found the card in the plastic sheath his mother had bought to protect it. And he would open it and read again. This table was made by your sons. Well, Henry did turn up that last week to help with the varnishing. And the Bixley Bandits did win the basketball championship that year.
Larry’s mother turned away from him now and walked back to the top of the stairs. The step squeaked, and she was on her way down. Halfway, she stopped and peered up at Larry, who was still standing at the banister, looking down.
“Do you believe in God, son?” she asked.
This caught Larry by surprise. It was supposed to be all about the mail, and the mail pouch, and did he have any letters hidden in his room? Where was this “God” shit coming come? And what to tell her? The best answer, of course, but how to word it? God didn’t give him any trouble when he was talking to his fellow teachers, especially the ones in the science wing. “If there was a God, I’d fire him,” Larry liked to say. It was true. You’d fire the CEO of any company who had done such a piss-poor job with overall production and employee morale. A God who allowed wars. And then, a good part of the world was starving to death, while another part was overweight. Obesity had become a disease, while children died in Africa with flies swarming their malnourished bodies. As Larry saw it, you should fire the bastard behind a company that allowed any of this to happen. Or you should certainly sue him. And you should fire the bastard who allowed lives to be shattered and broken, such as Larry’s had been in losing Jonathan, the bastard who turned a cold shoulder to the world he supposedly created out of love. Fire the son of a bitch and then bring in some new blood to replace him.
“Of course I believe in God,” Larry said. “You always told us we had to, Mom.”
Frances was still standing on her step, halfway down the stairs, one white hand holding on to the railing, the other resting against her throat.
“Did I say that?” she asked. Then, “I honestly don’t know what to believe anymore.”
As Larry watched, she descended the rest of the stairs, her feet hitting the hardwood floor of the living room, her dress brushing against the oak coffee table as she floated by, a ghost of the woman she used to be, the woman she was before Henry died. This table was made by your sons…white oak can grow as tall as a hundred feet.
And then Frances Munroe was gone.
...
Evie slept until noon, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She had nixed the idea of a quick vacation, just she and the little Mazda cruising along Route One to visit the ocean, and the fishing boats, and the rocky shoreline. It all seemed like too much work, especially after her meeting with Margie Jenkins. Evie hadn’t intended to do a session. But the little girl, Annie, had pulled so much energy out in just those few minutes she appeared that Evie had slept for hours, all night long, and then all morning, in a stupor of broken dreams and noises filtering in from the street. The cotton top sheet was wrapped about her ankles when she kicked it free and finally sat up in bed. That’s when she saw the clock. Almost noon. Why had she let Margie do this? She had only intended to talk to her, drink some iced tea, offer a kind of aloof comfort. But the pain in the woman’s eyes had seduced Evie again. She was a sucker for a mother’s grief, had always been so. And little Annie Jenkins, dead just a month, was still learning the ropes, still finding her way around in that new dimension that was now her home. There was still too much connection to the old world at that point, too much confusion. When this happens, it’s as if both worlds are pulling on the newly departed at once. A tug of war. Coming through as Annie did, with Evie channeling for her mother, took just too much energy. It reminded Evie of what used to happen to the lights in those houses built next to prisons that had electric chairs. It takes a lot of current to kill someone, and so all those lightbulbs over dinner tables, and on bedside stands where Bibles are kept, or on desks where kids did their homework, those bulbs in attics and basements, they had to grow dim just to allow it. The same is true of bringing the dead back. If they aren’t standing at the veil peering through on their own, ready to look back at the world again, then you need to draw them, like a nail to a magnet. But in six months, maybe, Annie Jenkins would not only be ready, she’d be a good contender. She had high energy, this kid, and the connection between mother and daughter was sharp and strong. When the time was right, Annie Jenkins would be back.
In the kitchen Evie ground some coffee beans and then found a filter. While the coffee was perking, she rolled a joint, taking a few strong tokes before she snuffed it out again. She left it in the cigarette notch of the ashtray, a treat for later in the day. With a cup of coffee in her hand, she stepped out onto her front porch and opened the lid to the small wrought iron mailbox that hung near her door. Two bills and a flyer ad for some new shop out at the mall. Gil Taylor was the one who delivered mail in Evie’s part of town. Evie had planned to be wide awake by the time Gil came whistling up her walk. She would pretend to be taking a morning swing, there in the shade of the porch, just a coincidence. And she would ask Gil, in the most offhand way she could muster, if he’d seen Larry Munroe around work lately.
It was the ringing telephone that brought Evie away from snapping more dead leaves from her porch plants. She put her coffee cup down on the table, near the glass lamp with the lead crystal diamonds hanging from its shade. The crystals chimed their sweet chime as she reached under the shade and grabbed the phone.
“Evie speaking,” she said. It was how she liked to answer the phone. Cut to the chase, that was Evie’s motto about most things in life. There it was again, the sound that comes when a telephone line is alive, not dead, that sense of a person hovering at the other end but saying nothing. “Hello? This is Evie Cooper. May I help you?”
/> There was no reply, but Evie knew the sensation that came over her. She was aware of space, and time, and the gut feeling that you are connected to someone, someone you can’t see or touch, but someone you know is there, hanging on to you for dear life. Evie waited. Nothing.
“I see your car,” Evie said then. “I know it’s you. And I know it’s you calling me like this and hanging up.”
Now, she heard breathing at the other end of the line, as if speaking those words had caught the caller unawares. There was a static noise as the phone on the other end moved about, maybe from one ear to the other. Then, that soft sense again of being joined, person to person, connected by an electrical wire. The telephone had always struck Evie as a kind of channeler itself, bringing together two people who cannot see or touch each other. It had taken scientists a long time to discover how sound works, how signals change in volume and pitch over great distances. One day, she was sure, the skeptics would understand that the dead work like telephones, from their own great distance, to contact the living.
And then, Evie said something that made her feel proud for the first time in a long time when it came to Henry’s wife. She didn’t say what she really wanted to; she didn’t shout, “How dare you telephone me and just hang up? Talk to me, damn it, or leave me alone!” Instead, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
“If I live to be a hundred,” she said, “I’ll never be able to apologize enough. I didn’t know, didn’t know the color of your hair, your face, the way you dress, the children you have, the way you push your cart at the IGA. I’m sorry. I wish I could take it all back. I’m here if you ever want to talk, even if it’s to shout at me. So please remember that.”
Year After Henry Page 12
