by Ian Woollen
Mary chided, “What’s wrong with jilting Geneva is that the Salters are old friends of ours and you shouldn’t string her along. It’s not fair.”
“You’re just worried about losing Clyde as our house caretaker,” Duncan said.
“That’s not it at all!” Mary said forcefully. Anthony tried to change the subject by asking about Loretta and Fred’s health.
“We finally got both of them to the doctor for their diabetes,” Mary said, “and I’ve been trying to play up how much Constance is enjoying her nursing home.”
“Which is a lie.”
“Not entirely. She likes the endless supply of powdered hot chocolate.”
Rob said, “Grandpa Fred is mellowing out a little. When we play hearts, he doesn’t try to shoot the moon anymore.”
At the dinner table Mary returned to the topic of Geneva. She lectured Rob on the evils of two-timing with such fervor that Rob finally had to say, “Whoa, mom, I’m not the one doing it. It’s Duncan. And don’t try to use this as an excuse to keep me at home next year either.”
Mary winced and said, “Men are swine.”
“I beg your pardon,” Ward countered.
More evidence for Rob that his parents were struggling with the advent of an empty nest. He feared they might do anything to deter his departure. Mary harped on Rob’s faulty life skills, such as table manners and hygiene. Ward dug out his early report cards, saved in a manila envelope in the front hallway chest, as if remedial math would be required before he could leave the house. Both parents also increasingly ignored their son’s buffering role and blurted out nonsense to each other in his presence that would previously have been suppressed.
Rob said, “Mom, since you’re the expert on this two-timing stuff, what would you suggest is the proper etiquette about me writing to Geneva?”
“About what?” Ward pried.
“Just wanting to stay in touch,” Rob said. “If I write to her, do I have to tell Duncan?”
“Yes, if it’s a letter. No, if it’s a postcard,” Mary ruled.
Rob sent off a stack of postcards. He numbered them on the top left corner. Together, they comprised an account of his recovery from chicken pox, his growing guitar chord repertoire, his admiration for the latest Grand Funk Railroad album, and his plans for installing black lights in the backyard bomb shelter. He shared personal reflections on the “island me” and the “Indy me” and the “psycho” divide of the winter months in Indiana, hinting that he considered his Great Tusk self to be his truer self. He credited the stars. He made no mention of Duncan.
All of which was either too confusing for Geneva or else she was fed up with the Wangert boys. Rob never received a reply.
* * *
PART VI
* * *
Chapter 43
Mary and Ward’s Nighttime Tale
Occasionally, as story ideas came to them throughout the day, Mary and Ward drafted notes for a new installment on scrap paper and placed the notes under each other’s pillows. Both of them wore reading glasses now:
Superstition runs rampant among sailors. Mikel was afraid of being hunted down by the owner of the steamer trunk. One night at the Happy Owl, Mikel served drinks and hard-boiled eggs to a sly stranger who asked too many questions. He was not the typical creditor. Despite the diplomat’s obvious pleasure in the acquisition of the steamer trunk, Mikel felt uneasy about it.
The diplomat ordered Mikel to pick the locks of the trunk’s inner chambers, and stood over him as they were opened, revealing layers of cravats and hosiery, and in a false compartment underneath, a bottle of silvery powder and a sheaf of diagrams for an apparatus that made the diplomat cheer.
Lubya’s spirits improved a little when, instead of being angry at her and Mikel for bringing home the steamer trunk from Yalta and hiding it in the hayloft, the diplomat showered them with praise and promised a trip to visit Peter in Moscow. Lubya scratched her head, perplexed by his response, though not unfamiliar with such odd behavior—displayed by him and other important personages. Lubya remembered only too well Father Vlod’s sudden reaction the other way, his coldness when informed of her pregnancy, after months of bestowing warm confessional embraces.
Chapter 44
Stark Deaths
Mary’s imminent empty-nest status was magnified by the deaths of her parents in a one-car accident on the Monday after Easter. Fred and Loretta Stark were driving home from a doctor’s appointment and apparently lost control of the vehicle. It plunged off an overpass.
The event triggered additional guilt-ridden flashbacks to the poisoning of her dog in Moscow, all churned up and confused even more by Rusalka’s insistence that the Russians were not responsible: “Oh, no, darling. KGB is ruthless, yes, but Russians never poison French poodle.”
Rob was the last one to see Fred and Loretta alive. After the Easter meal at the Wangert’s, Grandpa Fred asked Rob to help with some gutter-cleaning, a task easily hired out. Fred insisted on doing the job, despite the infirmities of old age.
Anthony and Duncan flew home together for the funeral. Anthony wanted to take the train, out of respect for Grandpa Fred’s favorite form of travel, but trains no longer ran to Indianapolis.
During the flight, Duncan watched Anthony intently compose a eulogy. He cited Loretta’s familiar adages: “In every marriage there is a flower and a gardener.” He tried to soften Grandpa Fred’s reputation as a tight-fisted curmudgeon with the story of his annual twenty dollar donation to the Retired Brakemen’s Foundation.
Ward and Rob picked them up at the airport. It was unseasonably warm. Duncan immediately noted Mary’s absence. “Where’s Mom?” he asked. “She always comes to the airport.”
“Working on funeral arrangements,” Ward said, “She’s not doing well.”
Rob added, “It’s not that she’s all crying and devastated, but something’s wrong. It’s like she’s in a daze.”
Ward said, “Let’s try to make this weekend as smooth as possible for her.”
The ride together from the airport afforded the boys’ club some time for a powwow. Ward pretended to be stuck in left lane traffic and missed the 38th Street exit, forcing a longer route home.
“What do you mean, Mom’s in a daze?” Duncan asked.
Rob explained, “She goes over to Grandpa’s house to organize things, and I’ll show up a couple hours later and find her just sitting at the kitchen table, doing nothing.”
“Mom never does just nothing,” Anthony said.
“That’s his point,” Duncan said.
Trying to think long term, Anthony suggested, “Maybe it would be good for Mom to have Rob home for another year.”
“Easy for you to say,” Rob spouted. “Shit, I knew something like this would happen.”
“Careful now,” Ward admonished. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”
Anthony said, “Maybe I should think about not going to Yale next year. I could live at home and go to Butler.”
“Mary would be glad to know there’s such a level of concern for her,” Ward said. “This is just what they call a ‘shock phase.’ ”
Duncan jumped in with, “What about Grandpa Fred’s car accident? Was it raining or was there ice or what?”
“Nobody knows,” Ward answered. “I mean, no, it was not raining and there was no ice. They were driving Loretta’s pickup. Fred’s Dart was in the shop.”
“That means Loretta was driving.”
“Not necessarily.”
Rob groaned and added, “One of the policeman thought he, or she, might have done it intentionally.”
Now it was Anthony’s turn to spout reactively, “What an idiot! Why would he say something like that?”
“Flying off the overpass, it sort of recreated Robert’s plane crash,” Duncan observed.
“You know how Fred hated getting old,” Rob said. “And they’d just come from a doctor’s appointment where Grandma got some bad news about her diabetes.”
“The doct
or brought up the possibility of a leg amputation,” Ward said. “She wouldn’t have been able to work in her garden.”
Duncan speculated, “She didn’t like getting old either. Who knows, maybe Grandma grabbed the wheel.”
“SHUT UP!” Anthony yelled. “Just shut the hell up!”
Father Tyler officiated at the funeral, and borrowing some of Anthony’s anecdotes, made Fred and Loretta Stark seem like pioneers of yore.
Rusalka provided Mary with Valium. It was not a large event. Some of Fred’s co-workers from the city transportation department showed up, and a few of the neighbors from Hickory Street. Anthony delivered his eulogy, which brought everyone to tears. Mary went through the motions. She felt grateful for her sons and husband, who took turns grasping her elbow and holding her hymnal and offering her tissue. She maintained control for most of the reception. Until a tall, black woman in a cape appeared in the receiving line.
Grief has a way of seizing on random triggers for expression. The woman said, “Hello, Mary Stark.” And Mary promptly collapsed onto her shoulder. Rusalka and the boys hurried to her side.
Across the room, Father Tyler grabbed Ward’s sleeve to hold him back. Paul whispered, “Let this happen. That’s Ruby Ashberry, a childhood friend of Mary’s. Ruby and I have been meeting on other matters, and she mentioned growing up with Mary, so I urged her to come today.”
“This is my crossing-guard captain.” Mary blubbered, by way of explanation. “I almost didn’t recognize you, Ruby,” she said, “especially with those hoop earrings.”
“You and I go back—way before earrings,” Ruby said.
The crossing-guard captain introduced herself to the family. For such a tall person, she had a small, delicate voice. “Ruby Ashberry. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“How did you know about it?” Mary sobbed.
Ruby answered, “Oh, we all read the obituaries now, don’t we? I used to stop in on your parents occasionally to say hello and get news of you.”
“I should have stayed in touch,” Mary said. “You’re even more beautiful, if that’s possible, with your hair cut short.”
“Thank you, baby,” Ruby replied. She smiled and her upper lip rose to reveal a perfect crest of plum-colored gums.
Rusalka noticed the absence of a wedding ring.
“What you doing now? What you doing with life these days?” Rusalka asked.
Ruby replied, “I am what I said I would always be.”
“Very glad somebody is that,” Rusalka said.
“A Sunday school teacher. I head the program at All Saints. And I’m studying with Father Tyler to be ordained as a priest.”
“The Episcopal Church doesn’t ordain women,” Anthony pointed out.
“Not yet,” Ruby said, “but as the song goes, ‘the times they are a-changin’.’ ”
Mary stifled another sob. “I’ve missed you. I should have called. It’s my fault.”
“I figured you were too busy being Mrs. Ward Wangert,” Ruby said.
Mary nodded solemnly, “I was.”
Despite all the well-meaning predictions that she would soon get through her “shock phase,” Mary grew ever more dazed. Days floated by with close examination of the changing dust patterns in her parents’ kitchen. She slowly wrote replies to condolence notes. She could dimly tolerate longer stretches of Rob’s lacrosse ball thumping against her garage door.
The numbness at least helped her ignore Rob’s eventual departure for boarding school.
Ward, Rusalka, and Ruby compared notes on their daily interactions with the bereaved. Rusalka observed, “I think she talk most to Ruby, who knew her best as little girl. I think Mary in big regression.”
Rusalka did not appear in the least threatened by Mary’s reconnection with Ruby. If anything, she seemed intrigued with this tall, alluring Negress. At the office, she inquired privately of Ward, “You think maybe this old friend is—how you Americans say—‘playing for the other team’?”
“Lesbian, you mean? Yes, it’s fairly obvious,” Ward stated.
“That not bother you?”
Ward shrugged indifferently. He was just glad that Mary was talking to someone.
Mary continued opening up to Ruby more than anyone else, which supported Rusalka and Ward’s working hypothesis that her parents’ sudden deaths had thrown her back to childhood. Ruby proposed taking her on an old-haunts tour. “We can reenact our old crossing guard routine,” she suggested.
Mary and Ruby retraced the steps of their after-school paper route through Hickory Place, a front-porch, working-class neighborhood miraculously immune to the fate of the deteriorating city. Ruby reminded Mary of their hide-and-seek afternoons inside the grounds of Crown Hill Cemetery, but Mary didn’t want to go near the cemetery. They stood on their respective traffic patrol corners near School #43.
Ruby was the captain, Mary the co-captain. They saluted and performed the hand gestures, signaling to the students that it was safe now to cross the street. They found the shack in the alley behind Gleason’s Variety where the grizzled Indianapolis News district manager was brave enough to allow a little white girl and a little black girl to share a paper route in 1939. He hunkered beside a coal-fired stove, collecting weekly dues from the newsies and doling out their cuts, which Mary and Ruby saved together in a coffee can hidden in a heat register at Mary’s house.
“Remind me: why did we hide it in the heat register?” Mary asked.
“To protect it from the Nazis,” Ruby said.
“Did we ever divvy up the money?
“I don’t remember.”
“Let’s check.”
This was a step in the right direction, because for weeks after the funeral, Mary would not allow anyone else inside her parents’ house. They found a Folgers’ can suspended by a length of twine in the back hall register. It contained seven dollars and forty three cents. Mary and Ruby promptly spent it at another stop on the old haunts tour, the Lindner’s Ice Cream Parlor.
“Your favorite used to be Rocky Road,” Ruby said, after Mary ordered a butterscotch sundae.
“I’ve had enough of that,” Mary sighed.
“Come on now, girl. A rocky road? You’ve had a charmed life,” Ruby countered.
Mary nodded, “Yes, you’re right. It’s just … I should have taken away his license. I should have gotten them into a nursing home.” She jabbed at her sundae.
Ruby said bluntly, “I know everyone is dancing around the possibility of your parents’ accident not being an accident. Don’t talk about it in front of Mary, they say, as if that hadn’t occurred to you.”
“Yes, but not for the reasons you think,” Mary winced and pushed her ice cream away. “It’s the violence of it, accident or not. Everyone in my family has died a violent death. I can’t help but wonder, who’s next? And what is it about me? Am I carrying some kind of curse? We were crossing guards. We took pride in getting people safely across the street. It feels like I’ve failed as a crossing guard.”
The longer Mary stayed depressed, the harder Ward found it to function normally. He felt both guilty and angry. He recovered from his father’s death in due order, why couldn’t she? He consulted with Father Tyler. As a chief vestryman, Ward was also concerned about Paul Tyler’s plans for ordaining Ruby.
“I’ve gone to bat for you on the overnight shelter and the expanded summer camp,” Ward said, “but I won’t be able to protect you on this one. And by the way, do you even have the authority? I thought only a bishop could ordain a priest.”
Paul said, “Normally, yes, but there is a precedent for rectors being able to ordain people to the deaconate.”
“Not women,” Ward said.
“Up until now.”
“And especially not lesbians,” Ward countered.
“She’s not an open lesbian,” Paul Tyler said.
“They’ll fire you and I won’t be able to stop it. This parish does not want to be put on the map by such a radical act.”
“It’s not radical in my eyes,” Paul said. “It’s long overdue.”
“That may be, but not here. Here, it’s a stunt,” Ward said.
Paul asked, “You don’t think Ruby is qualified?”
Ward stared at his minister. “Of course, she’s qualified. Even I can recognize that she’s a wonderful candidate …. Okay, now I understand why you urged her to come to the funeral, so I would meet her and come around to supporting the cause.”
“Fiendish, eh?” Paul Tyler smiled.
“The thing is, it doesn’t matter if I support the cause. I won’t be able to protect you from all those in this congregation who don’t,” Ward said.
Ward could be fiendish too. He didn’t want to lose one of his few male friends. As the spring progressed, Ruby became a frequent visitor to Rusalka’s office at Wangert Public Relations. The discussions about Mary began to occur without Ward present, or rather, with Ward seated in his office across the hall, occasionally lobbing in comments. He overheard laughter and whispered stories. They’d both caused minor car accidents, by swerving to avoid a Woolly Worm inching across the street! They both loved hot mustard.
As summer approached, Ward noticed a new tone in the conversations between Ruby and Rusalka. They focused on matters other than Mary’s condition. He overheard Ruby say, “You always hold your hands together, with thumbs and forefingers touching, so it makes a heart shape,” and Rusalka say, “I want us get dizzy again soon.”
They discussed encounter groups and membership in the local chapter of NOW. Hugs were exchanged, upon arrival and departure. They complimented each other on scarves and earrings. When Ruby snagged her blouse on a desk corner, Rusalka instantly produced a sewing kit from her purse and they retired to the ladies’ room for Rusalka to sew the button back on, which took quite a while.