Hank & Chloe

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  “Does it have hot showers and a flush toilet?”

  “Plus all those magic boulders.”

  “Say no more.”

  Hank pulled out his desk drawer, reached in, then threw Asa his extra keys. “Hey, no girls allowed, okay?”

  Asa looked up from the key. “She really got to you.”

  “I’ll reconsider next week. Right now I just want a few days’ peace.”

  “According to the Mahabharata, during the endtimes, what we now know as our horizon will transform into a fiery boundary. Picture that if you will—a dozen suns circling our own, boiling the sea down to dry rock. Nowhere on this planet will be life be sustainable. They have lovingly dubbed this phenomenon the ‘Samvarkata,’ and it’s believed it will continue until it has decimated the entire universe. Then, a little like our winter this year, we’ll have years of rains leading to floods, until the great watery drink swallows up the universe. Man as we’ve known him will be one small burp in that last cosmic meal. Meanwhile, Vishnu is oblivious, snoozing deeply in his yogic sleep atop Shesha, the snake, floating on the ghost of the sea. Then, my scholars, comes the time of Patience. For only when the snake awakens will life have a chance to begin again,” Hank read. “How about these Hindus? Do they know how to throw an earthquake party?”

  “You’d be able to get a rad suntan,” Larry Kolanoski said. “Mega UV.”

  “It’s depressing,” Kathryn Price said.

  Hank set the notes down on his podium. “Which part, Kathryn?”

  “All of it. Why does everything have to get destroyed? Why can’t mankind learn from its mistakes instead of wrecking the whole planet?”

  Hank threw the question to the class. “Anyone have a response to that?”

  Gentle Cora raised her hand, then turned to Kathryn. “But it’s actually a creation story, don’t you see? After the destruction, it all starts over, Vishnu’s there—remember—he’s the preserver. It’s a bit like a forest fire, the reseeding, if you will. On a larger scale, of course.”

  Kathryn took a hairbrush from her striped purse and ran it through her long hair so hard Hank expected to see sparks rise. “I don’t know, Cora. It sounds like none of these clowns ever makes a dime’s worth of progress. Just the same old shit, millennium after millennium.”

  Cora smiled. “Well, it’s not a true story.”

  “Oh, sure. Like it evolved out of nowhere!” Kathryn’s dander was up, big time. Hank watched her take a second to assemble her thoughts before she let Cora have it. “It reeks of the history books, don’t you think? Birmingham, Chicago, all this Reagan Star Wars shit. When is anyone going to stand up and say Enough?”

  Cora set her pencil down and turned to Hank, wanting him to smooth out this potential mess before it began to catch like brushfire. Usually he let these small disagreements blaze and burn out of their own accord. Today anything he said was likely to fall on the debate like dry tinder. “Maybe you’re both right,” he said. “It does seem hopeless. But it also heralds another chance for a perfect beginning. Wiping the slate clean. I find that kind of exciting, actually.”

  The class looked back at him blankly. Cora was disgusted with his waffling. He’d let pass a golden opportunity to hammer the Republicans. They may have been students of his subject, still innocents, but they recognized a teacher’s absence at fifty paces and were having none of the Indian doctrines today.

  “Go get yourself megatans,” he told them. “It’s a perfect day, and there isn’t a fire cloud in sight.”

  They exited the classroom a little suspiciously—it was a full thirty minutes until the hour—and he stood there after they had gone, shutting his eyes, feeling the room enclose him with its shabby carpeting and never-clean blackboards. Too many words and not enough actions had made their way through this space. Theory and history were fascinating, dense mountains to scale, but it was an ethereal journey made with an invisible pick, nothing ever conquered beyond a concept.

  He picked up his briefcase and started toward the offices, then stopped and turned back toward the parking lot. So what if he skipped office hours, left campus early? A black mark next to his name was nothing now. He unlocked the Honda and threw the briefcase in the backseat, where a few wisps of white fur and the odor of unwashed dog remained. He got in and drove to the freeway through the afternoon traffic. To his right one of the last fields of undeveloped land sloped to gentle, rolling hills of green. Over the last few years the space had begun attracting migratory birds. In the winter, dun-colored geese foraged there, their awkward bodies moving in rows over the grasses. Today a small herd of goats clipped weeds. The developers had quit using cattle; there was too much controversy over manure and methane destroying native grasses and altering the food chain. His class had gone badly, and he suspected he’d lost something in there today, some shard of authority that a teacher needed as much to believe in himself as his students did. He envisioned his grandmother’s place, a cabin in the red rock—wouldn’t do to blow it up any larger than it was—and held it out in front of himself like a local point to get him through the next few weeks. His chest wall ached, felt as porous as sandstone; he knew the name of that disease: Chloe Morgan. He drove inland, past all five of Irvine’s exits, until the turnoff for the Laguna Hills, where the brass globe with the smiling faces turned, in front of World of Freedom.

  “Hank, sweetie, what a surprise. Your father’s out on the golf course. I wish you’d called.”

  “I didn’t know I was coming until I was hallway here.”

  Iris gave him a quick embrace, and he felt the fragility of his mother’s body. It gave off a slight heat—perhaps she’d been in for chemo again this week. If he asked, she wouldn’t say; she’d hedge and change the subject to something she found more pleasant.

  “Are you alone?”

  He sat down on the sofa. “Yes.”

  “Do you want a drink? How about a sandwich?”

  “Mother, I’m fine.” He patted the couch. “Come sit I want to talk to you.”

  She smiled, smoothed her skirt, and sat down, hugging a throw pillow to her breast, a doe-eyed lion stitched in ocher and rust threads. Really, she could use some new needlepoint patterns. He would have to look in the Metropolitan Museum catalog and order her a few patterns that weren’t so wounded.

  He placed his hand over hers, feeling the age-risen veins and thickened bone caused by arthritis. Iris still wore her diamond engagement ring in addition to the heavy band of stones that made up the matching wedding band. They appeared locked into her hand by the enlarged knuckle. She and Hank sat there for an awkward minute, the sound of the radio puffing out a long spiral of Mantovani, so much background noise trying to soothe any potential trouble before it began.

  “It was uncomfortable for you that night at the restaurant,” she said.

  “Well, I didn’t help any, drinking so much. It wasn’t anyone’s best night.”

  “Your father was up all night afterwards, pacing. He’s worried about your relationship with this girl.”

  “She’s a woman, Mother.”

  Iris smiled. “To Henry she’s a girl.”

  “And God knows Henry’s always right.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why did you marry my father?” he asked. “You’ve been together fifty years, but in all that time I’ve never seen you two kiss or hug. He was always bullying one or the other of us into doing things his way. Making sure his opinions became our opinions. That hasn’t changed.”

  She pulled back sharply. “He’s your father, Hank. I won’t hear you talk about him that way. What’s come over you?”

  “I just want to know.” He rubbed his temples. All wrong, he’d cut to the heart of it without apologizing to each layer of skin on the journey down. “It’s a lot of things. We’re all so cautious with each other—even after all these years.”

  “I’m sure you’re imagining that.”

  “No I’m not. That night at dinner—Chloe babbling on, trying to get u
s to talk to each other. We never talked. We ate our suppers on TV trays watching the ‘Huntley-Brinkley Report.’ She grew up alone, without a family, yet she’s the warmest thing I’ve ever met. The three of us—we’re always so reserved. Careful. Careful of what?”

  Iris set down her pillow and looked toward the window, where several lightcatchers hung on fishing line, spangled with colored glass in the shapes of hummingbirds and seagulls. “You forget what it was like for him—World War II—he was just a boy when he served. It changed him, made him crave security. Henry likes distinct boundaries. He likes to know where everything is going before he takes his first step.”

  “Is that because of Annie?”

  The mention of his dead sister’s name gave off its own kind of light, a new penny thrown up into an arc over a dark wishing well. Her picture hung on the wall in a Lalique frame, frosted glass ivy leaves that always made Hank think of her perpetually smiling, locked inside a coffin grown over with ghostly vines, like some princess under a spell.

  Iris sighed.

  “Mom, I didn’t say her name to make you feel sad. It’s just that I have so many questions I’m afraid to ask you.”

  She pressed her hand to her eyes. “Why can’t you let the past stay in the past?”

  He moved closer. “Because it isn’t past. It’s right here. There isn’t one object in this room that doesn’t say her name when I pick it up. I can’t remember her. There are these huge gaps I can’t fill in. Would you like to know what I do remember? It’s not much. Her pink dress with a starched white bow, the feel of her brushing my hair. The doctor coming to visit. I was jealous because he always gave Annie a cherry lollipop. He gave me one, too, later, when he was finished seeing her, but it wasn’t cherry.”

  Iris fingered the pillow trim but wouldn’t look up. “She was usually too sick to eat them.”

  “How long was she ill?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “Why don’t I remember that?”

  “Because she was in the hospital so much. We shipped you off to Gran’s for several months. It wasn’t to get rid of you but to spare you the difficult time.”

  Hank felt the bristles rise. “But don’t you see you didn’t spare me? You sent me away. I just hurt in a kind of vacuum. That much I do remember.”

  Iris got up and went into the kitchen. Hank watched her go, the skirt and blouse perfectly ironed, always the matching earrings and bracelet, as if accessorizing her outfits properly would keep all the hard truths away. She had lost her daughter to cancer, nothing on earth could be more difficult, and she had battled her own cancer for more than a year without a single complaint or questioning comparison. After a few minutes, he followed her into the kitchen. Iris stood snipping dead blooms from her potted African violets on the windowsill. She used a pair of nail scissors and gathered the dead flowers into her palm.

  “I’d like the keys to Grandmother’s place,” he said. “I want to stay the summer there, maybe longer.”

  She stood in front of him, cupping the cuttings. “What about your job?”

  “Budget cuts have sort of given me a push to try this.”

  “Oh, Hank, no.”

  “Now, don’t look so alarmed. I can arrange a sabbatical at half pay. It’s due me. But I may as well tell you that I might be leaving there, regardless. Teaching’s just not what it used to be. It’s time for me to do something else.”

  “But all your schooling—you can’t just throw it away.”

  “Maybe I’ll teach myself to chop wood, train a dog to heel, teach a child how to read. I’ve lived thriftily, Mom. It’s not as if I’ll starve.”

  “But…”

  “What? Finish what you were going to say.”

  She stared down at the blossoms still in her hand. “Never mind.”

  He went to her and held her in his arms. Her smell was the same as it had always been, White Shoulders cologne—Now don’t go buying me perfume that’s too strong and much too expensive—and the simple smell of a woman’s hair, natural, not sunk underneath a layer of hair spray or dye, but beneath her smell was the creeping chemistry of mortal flesh fighting to stay alive.

  “I ought to have gone years ago,” he said over the top of her head. “When it was time for me to break away. I stayed close by all these years because I didn’t want my distance to hurt you. Wouldn’t you rather see me off now, than not at all?”

  “It’s because of that woman, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “She’s got you turning up this old earth, foolishly throwing your career out the window.”

  “Mother, it’s not Chloe.” He stopped and took a deep breath, let it out before he resumed talking. Just saying her name made a kind of wound. “Would that it were. She left me because I was too afraid to trust her with the truth. All my life I’ve been circling the truth of things, scared to ask questions or open doors. I couldn’t look it in the face, and it’s cost me dearly. I’ll go pump gas if it’s the only thing I can do honestly. I just have to get out of here. Can’t you see that?”

  “Oh, Hank.” She threw the flowers into the sink, eggplant-colored strings against the white porcelain. “I sent you away, and you tell me it was a mistake. Now you say you’re going—what exactly is the difference, will you tell me? You’re still young, you have time and options. I’m working with a fixed amount of time here, and I can’t change that, no matter how much I want to.”

  “We’ll talk on the phone, write letters.”

  What Iris was not saying was what that she might be dead when he returned, if he returned. He knew that, his heart beat the truth of it against his chest wall, and it scared him so he leaned against the counter for support.

  Clear lines of tears ran down her cheeks silently, scoring the powder. He wished she would howl out loud, swear at him, order him not to go. She pressed a fingertip to the corners of each eye, willing the tears back. Softly, she added, “Maybe you don’t know, but that’s where we scattered Annie’s ashes. Out on the prairie, when it was ablaze with those yellow flowers. It’s never been easy for me to go back there. I feel that somehow we abandoned her.”

  “You set her free.”

  “If you had children of your own, you’d know what I mean. Say hello to her for me, will you? Tell her I still remember her.”

  “I will.”

  She forced a smile. “Then I’ll just go and get you the keys.”

  She left the room and he looked around at the striped wallpaper, the perky recipe holder fashioned like a parrot, an index card bearing a low-calorie casserole gripped firmly in its beak. They were good people, but losing Annie had damaged them in some irreparable way. It surprised him how much he missed her, the small pink ghost he never got to see grow up. She was present somewhere in all those myths he’d studied down to the bones, in one heaven or another, dancing. It was time for him to stop trying to make up for the random fact of her death. She might have been his close friend at forty-five. He would have been an uncle to her children. Even if she had hated Chloe, she would have been able to convince her to give her flawed brother another chance.

  “Here,” Iris said, handing over a brass ring of keys. “And take this, too,” she added, handing him a shoebox. “Some of Annie’s things—pictures. They’re yours now. I guess I’ve been selfish. I’m sorry I kept her from you all those years.”

  Hank fingered the keys and felt their cold metal chill against his skin. “What will you tell Dad?”

  She smiled and gave him a wink. “Don’t fret. Nothing until you’re safely on your way.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I know you do.”

  “I’ll probably be back before Christmas.”

  Iris paused, then took his elbow, leading him toward the door. “Well, if you’re not, you’ll send me a card. About Chloe—I’ll confess I didn’t much like her at first, standing there half naked in your kitchen. I looked at her and thought, Oh, my God, that little tart, what’s she done to my b
oy? Well, she’s a sexy thing, there’s no denying it. But she’s brought something alive in you. You’re smiling again. I think you’re in love for the first time in your life.”

  “I wish I could say she felt the same way about me.”

  She reached up a finger and chucked it under his chin. Her eyes were damp but resigned. “Keep after her. She may yet.”

  When he was halfway out the door, she called to him. “Because I was pregnant,” she said, her smile nearly elfin. “I married him because Annie was on the way. Believe it or not, I was the one who couldn’t wait.”

  Asa’s idea of pitching in came to life every Thursday. He surprised Hank with dinner—usually bachelor’s chili—two cans of Stagg’s mesquite-fired beans splashed in Anchor Steam beer and a loaf of not-quite-stale French bread, chopped onions on the side, grated cheese optional. “Is this the good life or what?” he said as they flipped through the television channels, finally settling as they usually did, on the news.

  “Asa, we’re starting to develop a routine here. It worries me. Good thing I’m leaving next week.”

  “Well, I’ll miss having someone to talk to. Claire’s asked me to see a counselor with her,” Asa said. “Wants six months worth of phony-baloney shrink yammer under our collective belts before she’ll even consider sleeping with me.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  “No sex for six months?”

  Hank gave him a half smile. “If you’re desperate, there’s a lady in the mailroom I can introduce you to.”

  “Not the one with the strange earrings? You?”

  “She’s really a nice woman. Just a little anxious. Keep her away from the telephone, and she’ll be all right.” He set down his bowl of chili. “I don’t know where it is you got this idea that I’m such a monk. I get around, occasionally.”

  “Heard from your Valkyrie?”

  “She begrudgingly gives me riding lessons on Saturdays. I’m progressing nicely—as far as the horse goes. She sets me a task, and I do my best to excel. I’ve come to rather appreciate the plight of the student. It’s gotten me in good with the horses, but not that far with my teacher. I’ll miss her when I go.”