Above The Thunder

by Renee Manfredi

  “Well, isn’t everybody on their way somewhere?” She took a bite of the hot dog. “I’ve been Christmas shopping like a madwoman, since we’re leaving for Maine in the morning, that is, Flynn and I. Marvin will come later.”

  “Oh? Did you finally sell the townhouse?” Jack had seen the listing in the Sunday classifieds last week. He tried to match strides with her, panting to keep up; she was the fastest walker he’d ever known, bar none.

  She shook her head. “Marvin is going to live there till it sells. He’ll come up to Maine on the weekends to visit.”

  “Good, that sounds good.”

  “I hope so.” She stopped in front of a classy-looking bar with polished brass railings and suited businessmen within. “Want a brandy?”

  He nodded, followed her into a booth by the window.

  “I’m so glad I ran into you. It’s been so hectic I haven’t had time to call anyone,” Anna said.

  “It’s all right. I haven’t called anyone either.”

  She raised her glass to his. “Cent anno. To the next hundred years, as the Italians say.” She sipped. “I drink Grand Marnier only at the holidays. I love Christmas, don’t you?”

  He nodded, felt his throat get tight.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Oh, hey, you know. Heartbreak, AIDS, joblessness, angry Indian neighbors, the usual.”

  He drank his brandy down, signaled to the waiter. He looked back to Anna and saw that she was watching him with the intensity Jack had seen in Flynn’s expression. He thought of Flynn frequently, which surprised him because he didn’t like children as a rule. But something about the girl and her worried look, her intelligent strangeness, reminded him of himself as a child, of feeling like he was guarding a secret without knowing what it was.

  Anna lit a cigarette, looked at him through the coils of smoke. “I know you’re probably as overextended as the rest of us, but I would love it if you would come to Maine for part of the holiday. My husband and I used to have an annual Christmas Eve party at our house in Maine, and I’ve decided to start it up again, though scaled way, way back. It’ll be pretty sedate, but I’m getting caterers from Boston. Greta and her daughter will be there. Marvin, too.”

  “Really?” Jack said. “You’re inviting me?”

  “Will you come?”

  “I would love to.” He could have wept with gratitude.

  “Great. You can get as drunk as you want. The house is huge and the guest bedrooms are ready and waiting for the heavy revelers.”

  “How Gatsby-ish.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, right. Anyway, we’re leaving tomorrow, Flynn and I. I’ll give you directions and you can come anytime and stay as long as you want.” She took a long sip of her drink, looked him in the eye. “I mean that.”

  When they parted, Jack watched Anna until she rounded the corner. Something about the way she turned her head from side to side, looking at this and that, made him think of Thanksgiving night when he and Stuart were leaving Anna’s. Flynn was in the backyard making snow angels, her puppy balanced on her chest. “What do you know of heavenly bodies?” she said to Jack. “How many do you know?”

  “Not enough, and too many at once,” he’d said.

  At home, he packed a suitcase, then another. Before he knew it, he had gathered together all that he’d brought. Nobody should be expected to live here. He would find a new place after the holidays. Maybe Anna wouldn’t mind if he spent a week or two, long enough for him to find a decent apartment that didn’t speak so loudly of punishment.

  That night, he slept peacefully for the first time in months. Anna was so gracious, even the thought of her like a warm shelter. He had never put much stock in kindness, never felt, until now, how small gestures of good will could bring such happiness. Things suddenly seemed bearable. He would call Stuart in the morning to wish him well.

  PART TWO

  THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

  TEN

  THE THIRD SUZANNE

  It felt to her like all she’d done for the past few days was soothe somebody. First Flynn with her nightmares, then Jack with his pneumonia, and now Marvin, on the phone, for the third time today. Ostensibly, the calls were about real estate—her townhouse was still on the market after sixteen months, and the realtor was urging Anna to lower her price, which she didn’t want to do. Why should she? She was in no hurry to sell. Marvin was still living there, coming to Maine on weekends—though his visits had become more infrequent over the past month or two. She and Jack and Flynn were humming along up here quite nicely. Most of the time.

  “Flynn is outside with the dog,” Anna said. “Do you want me to get her, or do you want me to have her call you later?”

  “She doesn’t want to come to visit me anymore. She barely acknowledges me when I’m there. Did I do something to make her mad? What did I do wrong?”

  “It has nothing to do with you, Marvin. She’s at that age.” Anna cringed, hearing her mother’s voice in her own. “She’s just twelve and weird. All girls go through these stages. They start to develop their adult characteristics, but haven’t yet worked them into the weave.”

  “The what?”

  “She’s changing, is all. It’s not that she doesn’t want to see you. She’s just strange and solitary these days. Come up this weekend. Take her to the movies. She’ll be all right.” The truth was, Anna was a little concerned. To say Flynn was solitary was an understatement; whole days went by with Anna barely seeing her. She’d grown taller in the past year, and was beginning to develop, which Anna saw as a hopeful sign—Flynn’s moodiness was mostly due to surging hormones and not mental imbalance. Anna couldn’t remember much about Poppy’s adolescence, except that it was unbearable.

  “I thought girls were supposed to adore their fathers. Shouldn’t she being going through some Ophelia complex?”

  “Oh,” Anna said. “I can’t remember what that is.”

  “It means I can do no wrong. That I’m a kind of demigod in her eyes.”

  Anna sighed into the phone.

  “I’ll try to make it up Friday.” He paused. “I heard from Poppy last week,” Marvin said.

  “Oh? Where is she? How is she?”

  “She’s in England. Trying to get into some interior design school. She’s dating someone.” Marvin made a wounded noise. “I might have to go over there and kill him.”

  “Well, you’re dating, too. You started seeing someone almost immediately.”

  “That’s different. Poppy is my home, Christine is my home away from home.”

  “Something tells me Christine doesn’t know that. Anyway, I have to go. I’ll have Flynn call you soon.”

  Anna hung up and went into the sunroom where Jack had been for four straight hours, listening to every recorded version of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.” He had lucid days, and not-so-lucid days, but this one was a mysterious blend of both. He debated with Anna, with Flynn, and on the phone with Stuart, about which version of the song was the best. She didn’t know what to do with him today. His emotions were all over the place, which was partly a result of his medication. His physician had recombined the AZT cocktail when the original meds seemed to be failing. For a stretch of a few weeks he seemed so sick that Anna was afraid he was going to die. His white count was now slowly on the rise. His fortieth birthday was in three weeks. Assuming he remained stabilized, Anna planned to throw a party, the size and style of which to be determined later.

  Joan Baez’s rendition of the song was back on. “Anna!” Jack called, with the urgency of someone having a stroke.

  “What?” She wheeled around. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted you to hear that Baez has varied the song in key places.” He stopped the CD then started the track anew. “Listen. The original line as Cohen wrote it was ‘and she’s touched your perfect body with her mind.’ Here comes Baez.” Anna stopped to listen, dust rag in hand.

  “Do you hear how she changed the line? Baez replac
ed ‘perfect body’ and ‘mind’ with ‘being kind.’” Did Anna think the song was diminished in any way? She didn’t, she said. She dusted the end tables, ran a damp cloth over the wicker chairs. The cushions needed to be washed.

  “But which is better?” Jack said.

  “Which do you like better?” The windows, too, were filthy. Flynn’s dog had pressed its nose all along the glass.

  “That’s not what I mean. Is Baez’s version better than Cohen’s and Judy Collins’s? Is kindness better than perfection and beauty?”

  “Yes,” she said, “it is always preferable. Perfection can be achieved through gentle kindness. Unkind beauty can only go so far.”

  She said it off-handedly, but he started to weep. “Oh, Anna, you are such a reproach to me.”

  “Jack,” she said, and turned off the CD player. “I think it might be time for something else. How about something classical? It’s getting a little tragic around here.”

  He blew his nose, agreed she was right, said that after one more time through the Judy Collins’s he would find something else to listen to.

  She tucked the blankets around his legs, kissed him on the forehead, and went to answer the phone, which was ringing again. This time it was Violet, the neighbor down the road, a widow who grew more eccentric by the year. She’d lived in the same house for decades. Anna and Hugh used to invite Violet and her husband, Floyd, to their annual Christmas party. Anna saw Violet in the grocery store last week wearing what looked like three pairs of pants.

  “Anna?” she said.

  “Hi, Violet, how are you?”

  “Have you been by Thibbidoux’s drugstore lately?” No small talk with Violet. She was the heart-of-the-matter kind of woman. “I ask because I was in there last week for Flonase and there were condoms in full display, not too far from the Almond Joys.” Anna stifled a laugh. “I thought you’d want to know, with the girl there and all.” Anna let her go on for a while about neighborhood transgressions major and minor, grateful for this distraction. She half-listened to Violet, but her attention was drawn to Jack. He was singing now in such a way that made her freeze, hold her breath. He had Joan Baez’s “Suzanne” on yet again and something about the singer’s honeyed alto and slow, measured lyrics made Jack’s baritone shine forth. The acoustics in the sunroom were grand, thanks to Hugh, who had hired the best architect in the East so Anna could have a place to practice her cello. The stereo was a good one, too. A Bang & Olufsen system that was, to her ears, the auditory equivalent of pointillism: each note a bridesmaid coming forth, dressed alike but distinct, part of the music’s unified pageantry. Jack’s voice fit alongside Baez’s so perfectly it was almost as if they were in the same space.

  “Anna?” Violet said.

  “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “Does the man not know that candy and prophylactics aren’t first cousins? I’ve written a letter to the editor I want to read to you. It’s titled ‘Looking for Mr. Goodbar in a Trojan War.’”

  Anna laughed. “Clever.” She picked up the ammonia spray and began cleaning the big bowl of glass doorknobs on the hall table. Her mother-in-law had changed them all back in the ’60s or ’70s when tacky ruled. A thrifty New Englander, who used wrapping paper three times, Anna knew her mother-in-law wouldn’t have thrown out the doorknobs. Anna had searched on and off for twenty-five years, and finally found them in a storage closet under the hall steps.

  Jack was going at it with gusto now. Anna had never cared for that maudlin song, but Jack’s phrasing and tone were lovely. She listened. Something about Jesus being lonely, watching sailors from a wooden tower. It was lovely. Over two decades since Hugh had built that room for her. Who could have imagined she’d end up like this, completely estranged from the daughter she never wanted, sharing the house with a gay man she inexplicably loved, and a granddaughter whom she loved with an intensity that sometimes bordered on anguish. The soul selects its own society. Who was that? Dickinson? One of those reclusive female poets at any rate. The strange thing was, she was happier than she’d been for years, even despite leaving her teaching position, which she thought she would miss, but didn’t, not even a little. Her days had a rhythm and urgency, things that fell to her to do: keep the household running, keep Flynn on track, and keep Jack healthy. Money was plentiful—Hugh had left her well off, Jack’s contribution was abundant—but nonetheless Anna worked four hours every day for the town’s sole internist. It got her out of the house long enough to be away from all the worry for a while, but not so long that it made her anxious about what might be happening in her absence.

  The changes in the past year had taken their toll on Flynn, though she seemed, overall, to be healthier here than in Boston. Flynn still had trouble making friends and refused to take part in after-school activities, but Anna thought that would come in time. Flynn walked for hours every day with that giant dog—the vet weighed him in at one-seventy-eight—who never left her side. Like Jack, Flynn had good days and bad, days when she focused on her schoolwork and wanted to go to the mall, and days when she insisted she talked to the dead. Yesterday, Flynn had refused to go to school on the grounds that she didn’t need earthly knowledge, that the wisdom of heaven was enough. “Oh yeah?” Anna said. “You have ten minutes to get your heavenly wisdom onto the school bus, missy.”

  The granddaughter holding a one-sided conversation in her bedroom this morning with the ghost of Anna’s mother-in-law, and the man who played the same song about a crazy woman and Jesus a hundred times in a row. That’s what had been on her docket since the start of the weekend. And now the highly verbal three-trousered widow in her ear. Anna thanked Violet for calling, and hung up.

  She walked back into the sunroom, flipped off the stereo, and picked up all three discs. “Jack, I’m sorry sweetheart. I love you, but if I have to listen to this song one more minute, I’m going to commit a violence.”

  “Fair enough.” He leaned back in the rocking chair, tipped his head up to the path of the late November sun.

  “What else can I put on?” Anna flipped through the stack of CDs, named fifteen or sixteen none of which elicited any interest.

  “Nothing. I relish the silence,” he said, exasperated, as though it hadn’t been he who chose the music in the first place.

  “Okay. I’m going to start dinner. Can I get you anything?”

  He shook his head.

  She was chopping carrots for soup when she heard version number four of “Suzanne,” Jack’s a cappella rendition. She sighed, flipped on the radio above the sink to get the evening news. It wasn’t until she heard Noah Adams identify the program as “Weekend All Things Considered” that she remembered this was Saturday and she hadn’t seen Flynn since the morning. She dumped the carrots in the soup pot and went upstairs to check the rooms. “Flynn?” Anna called. Not anywhere on the first floor, either.

  Jack interrupted his song long enough to tell her that he hadn’t seen Flynn all day. This wasn’t entirely unusual, though she often stayed close by on weekends. On school days, Flynn almost never came straight home. Anna might not have noticed, busy as she was, getting home after six each evening—she agreed to help out the local pediatrician with sports physicals this semester—if not for the observant Violet.

  A week or so ago, Violet called just after seven one morning. “Is everything all right?” she’d asked.

  Anna said that it was. “Well, I just saw your girl not get on the school bus. The bus stopped, but she did not.” Anna pieced together from Violet and Flynn’s teacher that Flynn sometimes got to school late—between ten and twenty minutes—and back to the house, according to Violet or Jack, about five or five-thirty. Anna confronted her granddaughter gently, without accusation. After all, how many of her classmates had mothers who just disappeared at a pancake house and never called? There would be an adjustment period, Anna knew, so as long as she was safe Anna wasn’t going to punish her for cutting classes. School could always be repeated.

  “Where do you
go?” Anna asked, when Flynn had finally gotten home that day Violet called her.

  Flynn shrugged. “Nowhere. Just walking around.”

  “Violet said she saw you down by the train.”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes I like to walk along the tracks.”

  The next day at work, vacutainer and patient’s arm in her hand, Anna had a flash that something was wrong, a panicked certainty that Flynn was in danger. It was what Anna had felt, years ago, the afternoon she’d found Poppy in the neighbor’s swimming pool.

  She left Dr. Naylor and the patient alone in the examination room and went out to call home. Jack answered, said, No, Flynnie isn’t back yet. A quick call to school confirmed her half-day absence. Anna left, got in her car and raced down to the railroad tracks. She was just about to chastise herself for overreacting—something she’d been doing a lot of in the past year, it seemed—when she saw her. Anna couldn’t believe her eyes. Flynn was standing on the tracks; right in the path of the 5:35 whose mournful whistle was already audible in the distance. All at once the train thundered into sight, and still Flynn didn’t move. Anna ran as fast she could, yelling as loud as she could, but the thundering engine drowned her calls before they could reach even her own ears. The whistle sounded again, louder and drawn-out. Flynn jumped off the track just as Anna reached her, the train at about a hundred yards. Anna grabbed Flynn and slapped her hard across the face in the sheer shock of terror.

  “Why were you doing that? What’s the matter with you? You are all I have left.” She folded Flynn into her arms and waited for her pounding heart to quiet.

  Flynn rubbed her cheek. “Please do not strike me ever again.”

  “You scared me to death,” Anna said. “I’m sorry. What were you doing standing there like that? Didn’t you hear the train coming?”

  “Of course I saw it. I was just watching, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with watching a train closely. I know what I’m doing.”