“Beautiful girl,” said Joyce.
“Lucky she’s alive.”
“Was she sick?”
“Her stepfather used to beat her up. She was the most defeated little thing as a kid. Totally convinced she was stupid. And then in high school, she got involved with an abusive boy. I was really afraid for her.”
“She stayed in touch with you?”
“She used to come back every few months to see Helen Holden, her third-grade teacher. I tutored her a few times, but it was Helen who really stayed in touch.”
“I envy the way people know you around here.”
“Mostly it’s a good thing,” Kathleen said. “Though I do wish I could just walk into a store without someone asking me how my treatment is going.”
Instead of going directly back to the bridge, Joyce and Kathleen walked toward the receding sea through shallow water, already lukewarm from the sun. “It’s going to be a perfect day,” Kathleen said. “I wish I didn’t have to sleep through most of it. I didn’t fall asleep until three last night, and then I had to wake up before seven.” Joyce took her arm as they walked back to the bridge.
“So what’s happening with the Holy Mother at your house?”
Joyce hadn’t even looked at Mary when she’d arrived, but she promised, again, to call Father Sherry about “getting rid of Her Holiness.”
Kathleen laughed at the phrase. “Do you have time to walk tomorrow?”
“I have nothing but time this week. I’m staying up here until Nina comes back from Hyannis.”
When Kathleen got home, she found a breathless message on the answering machine. “Oh my God, Kathleen, someone painted Mary! She’s all white and shiny. High gloss! Jesus, I mean, oh, shit. And there are more flowers. Kathleen, I think I’ve got Lourdes going on in my front yard.”
KATHLEEN SAT UP in bed, her thin cotton nightgown soaked, the pillow damp, her heart pounding. The digital clock glowed in the dark: 3:10. Buddy let out a soft groan and turned over as she slipped out of the room.
Gripping the edge of the kitchen sink, she stared out into the dark yard, trying to calm down. It had been a long time since she’d had a nightmare about Pat, and this was a new one. In the old dream, her sister was lying in a metal casket, weeping softly. But tonight, it was Kathleen in the coffin, pounding a slatted wooden lid above her. Danny was with her. He was dead, but not a baby anymore, a boy with long legs and arms tight around her neck. She heard Pat’s soothing voice repeating the phrase “It’s all been taken care of.” Kathleen had woken up on the verge of a scream.
Pat had been so certain of life after death. She used to talk about Danny in heaven as if he were just in a room upstairs. Even when she was dying, she had that kind of faith. Rabbi Flacks had sat with Kathleen and Buddy and cried with them. But he had never said anything about seeing her son again.
She splashed cold water on her face and walked out to the deck. The wood felt cool and alive under her bare feet. If Buddy knew, he’d be after her about splinters. He had become such a mother hen since the boys left. Sometimes she liked being fussed over so tenderly, but sometimes it got on her nerves.
A clotted river of stars filled the moonless sky. “My goodness,” Kathleen whispered, lowering the back of the chaise. After a moment, she realized she had assumed the position she took every day under the machine — only it was the left arm bent above her head and there was no headrest or armrest to keep her from moving. She stretched her arm and twisted her torso, just because she could.
The techs were nice. That Rachel was pregnant didn’t seem to concern anyone but Kathleen. “I’m not even in the room when it’s on, Mrs. Levine,” she explained sweetly, but Kathleen worried about the baby.
Funny how quickly I’ve gotten caught up in their lives. They probably have to check my chart to remember my name, but I’ll always remember them. Terry’s hands are cool. Rachel’s are warm, probably due to the pregnancy, or maybe she just has that kind of metabolism. Terry’s boyfriend is a nurse. Rachel’s husband works for Wildlife and Fisheries. Terry loves chocolate. Rachel drinks Diet Coke, which can’t be good for the baby.
Kathleen let her hand seek out the scar, feeling the seam in her flesh through the nightgown. Terry said she was better off being small-breasted. Bigger women flopped around, which made it harder to line up the machine accurately.
Better and worse, lucky and unlucky. New definitions.
After the first day, the radiation machine itself didn’t bother her. Some patient’s child once said it looked like a dragon, and ever since, the techs had taken to calling it Puff. They joked about painting a face on the movable head, putting arms on the trunk, and a tail at the base. Kathleen whistled the tune to “Puff the Magic Dragon” while she got on the table and waited. Terry and Rachel sang along and kept it up from the control room. They talked to her over the intercom, filling every moment she was alone in the treatment room, stopping only when Puff turned his head to zap her from another angle. Rachel asked, “You all set, Mrs. Levine?” before they let the next dose fly.
“Mrs. Levine is all set,” she answered meekly or brightly, depending on how little sleep she’d had the night before or on the amount of roadkill she’d seen on the way in. Kathleen didn’t understand where her moods came from anymore.
The wind shifted and the scent of beach roses reached her. It was such a sweet aroma, though it always made her feel wistful. She closed her eyes to concentrate on the smell, which faded in and out on the breeze. Starlight and roses. Lucky me.
She woke up with Buddy sitting beside her, frowning. A cotton blanket was tucked around her toes and neatly folded below her chin.
“What time is it?” she asked, confused by the dim light.
“Five-thirty. You should have woken me up.”
“Oh, Buddy. What’s the point? Why should you be exhausted all day?”
“I just want to do something for you, Kath.”
“Well then, get me a cup of coffee,” she said, yawning.
The clouds were low, and it smelled like rain. No walk today, she thought. Buddy brought out two cups. “How about if I drive you to your appointment today? Miguel can open. We could get some breakfast after?”
Kathleen looked at him. He was asking her for something. “What is it, Buddy? What’s the matter?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I want to help you. Something. But there’s nothing to do. You’re so quiet. I miss you.”
“I have been kind of preoccupied.”
“Of course,” Buddy said, quickly apologetic. “I don’t know what I mean.”
“Sure, why don’t you drive me in today. And then we can go over to the Spar for breakfast. It’s been a long time since I had those blueberry waffles.”
Buddy took her hand and kissed it. She held on, swung her legs around, and pulled herself to standing.
“I don’t want to die, Buddy.” She put her head on his chest. “I know this cancer probably won’t kill me. But I think about dying all the time. I dream about it. What do you think? Do I get to see Pat on the other side, or do I just lie there in the dirt forever?”
Buddy took the cup out of her hand and put it down gently. It was so much a gesture out of a movie, Kathleen almost laughed. Buddy wrapped his arms around her and drew her close. “I think dead is dead,” he said softly, near her ear. “But that’s not so bad. I think of it as following. Following the rest of them.”
“The rest of them?” She leaned back and looked up into his eyes.
“Yeah. My mother and father. Your sister, your mom. But not just them. All of them. All of us. People.” He dropped his voice and she wasn’t quite sure if he said, “Danny.”
“I don’t know,” he continued. “Maybe it’s just a way to feel less lonesome about the whole thing, but I think of dying as a path we all go down separately at first, but eventually, together.”
Kathleen looked up at her husband. “That’s so beautiful. Where did that come from?”
He smiled. “Y
ou’re not the only deep one around here.”
Kathleen shook her head. “Buddy, you’re a fucking well.”
“Kathleen Mary Elizabeth! Such language.”
“We cancer patients can say whatever the hell we want,” she said, defiant.
“Says who?”
“Says Joyce.”
“Oh, well, if the wise and wonderful Dr. Joyce says so.”
Kathleen sneezed.
“Time to go inside,” Buddy said.
“No,” she protested, holding him. But the moment had passed.
“Time to go,” he insisted, and picking up the cups, led her into the house and the rest of the day.
IT RAINED HARD THE rest of the week. Joyce spent the mornings stripping wallpaper. Afternoons she sat at the computer and made a dutiful stab at her novel, a story about three sisters, serially married to the same man. Stab seemed like the right word, since all she did was slice at the opening paragraphs over and over.
She met Kathleen for cappuccino at the café on Main Street one gray afternoon and told her about how walking through Charleston, morning, noon, and night, had helped conjure up the world of Magnolia’s Heart: the fine ironwork fences made by slave labor, the paving stones laid by slave labor, the mahogany faces of impassive black women, sitting on blankets in the touristy marketplace, selling baskets woven in ancestral patterns.
“I don’t think I ever enjoyed writing as much as when I was working on Magnolia,” she said. “I actually couldn’t wait to get to the computer to find out what she would do next.”
“You sound happy when you talk about it,” Kathleen said.
“Yeah, but I’m not having much luck on my current project.”
“Why don’t you bring Magnolia and Jordan up here? Doesn’t Jordan have an abolitionist aunt in Boston? They could settle in Gloucester. Think of all the research you could do on Yankee underwear!”
That made Joyce laugh, but she remained unconvinced. “I want to do something one hundred and eighty degrees different. And the truth is, I want my own name on the cover. I want to be invited to talk at the local bookstores and at the Belmont library. Magnolia would call me a dog-faced coward. And she would be right.”
“I understand, but Magnolia is very alive to me. I want to know what happens to her next.”
“Thanks,” said Joyce, who wanted to know, too.
Apart from the checkout girls at the supermarket, Kathleen was virtually the only person Joyce saw all week. Frank called every morning, promising he’d try to come up that night, but by the afternoon there would be a crisis he didn’t want to leave with “the kids,” which is how he referred to Tran and Harlan, the twenty-two-year-old MIT entrepreneurs who had started the company. Their new search engine was to be launched at the end of the summer, and Frank, who had already been down several of these yellow-brick start-up roads, was their key adviser on several fronts. Frank thought their product had great potential, and he was betting on it taking them all, finally, to the Emerald City. Besides, he liked the kids a lot.
Frank would have enjoyed sons, Joyce thought.
“I’ll be there tomorrow night for sure,” Frank said.
“You said that last night.”
“I promise.”
“Sure,” she said, annoyed. “G’night.”
“Good night, Joyce. Love you.”
She drove in and out of Belmont one morning after rush hour, just to check the mail and pick up a sweatshirt and an extra pair of jeans. Mario had left two more messages asking for news of Magnolia. Joyce called him back late at night, when he was sure to be out of the office, telling his machine, “Magnolia is on vacation. She will return when she’s totally rested.”
She left Frank a note on his pillow: “Come up and see me sometime.”
But she wasn’t entirely sure she did want him in Gloucester. Lonely as the evenings could be, she liked knowing the sink wouldn’t generate dirty dishes whenever she turned her back. She liked the peace of going to bed alone.
They almost never had sex. Either Frank was tired, or she was. Or she was angry with him, or he was preoccupied. Or she went to bed hours after he did, or his back hurt. On the rare occasion they lay down together, there was always a moment’s tension. Would one of them make a move? Would one of them turn away?
Maybe this was what happened to people after so many years of sharing a bed, Joyce thought. Maybe we’re normal. Or maybe I’m kidding myself.
She poured a glass of wine and walked into the living room to admire her handiwork; her spackling was improving so much, she decided to go back and replaster one of the first cracks she’d fixed. The phone rang.
“Mrs. Tabachnik?” said a voice too mellifluous to belong to a telemarketer. “This is Father Sherry at St. Rita’s.”
Joyce put down her glass and stood up straight to speak to the priest.
He apologized for not calling sooner; he had been away on a family emergency — then asked, “How may I be of assistance?”
Haltingly, using the word respectfully at least three times, Joyce explained that she and her family were new to the neighborhood, Jewish, and wanted to remove the statue of Mary from their yard.
“Are you the folks who bought the Loquasto house?”
This town is amazing, Joyce thought. “That’s us,” she said brightly.
“I know that statue.” He chuckled. “You’re going to have a heck of a time getting her out of there. Joe poured enough cement to anchor the Washington Monument.”
“Wow,” said Joyce, watching the rain trickle down Mary’s concrete veil and drip prettily onto the ground.
“Why don’t I drop by and have a look tomorrow?” he offered. “Six o’clock okay with you?”
As soon as she hung up, Joyce called Frank and told him he had to come up the next day. “No way I’m talking to this priest by myself.”
The following evening, Frank arrived a few minutes before six, with a good steak, a bag of salad, and a bottle of red wine. He’d had his hair cut and he was wearing the blue shirt she had given him.
Joyce felt a rush of attraction for her husband and wished they didn’t have an appointment with a priest at just that moment. She wished that she felt this way about Frank more often — and closer to bedtime.
She kissed him on the mouth and he held her close for a moment. “I guess you missed me,” he said.
“I guess so.”
They sat on the front stoop and exchanged news: Harlan had a meeting with some California venture-capital guys, who were gung ho last week but now seemed a bit wary. Joyce complained that her writing was going so slowly that she’d begun reading the help wanted ads. Frank reminded her, kindly, that she always felt discouraged in June, but that by summer’s end she was inevitably writing up a storm.
“Yeah, yeah,” Joyce admitted as a rusty yellow Pacer pulled up. Watching Father Sherry get out of the hatchback was a little like watching clowns pile out of a toy car at the circus. He was a tall man in a black wet suit; a pair of red suspenders framed a sizable paunch.
Frank and Joyce walked to the sidewalk to meet him.
He shook hands and said, “Pardon my appearance. I have a couple of free hours and couldn’t resist. The season is so short, you know.”
Barely taking a breath, the priest led them over to the statue. “So here’s Our Lady, freshly whitewashed. And you say you’ve found flowers near her, eh? Probably Mrs. Lupo up the street. Have you met Theresa?”
Father Sherry didn’t give Joyce a chance to answer. “She must really be slowing down if she hasn’t come over to check you out. She used to be good for a covered dish while she gave you the once-over.
“The Loquastos put the Madonna here, oh, ten years ago as a kind of thanks offering.” He crossed his arms over his midsection and shook his head. “One of their kids, Ricky, I think, got caught in the undertow over at Good Harbor and was nearly swept out to sea. The lifeguard got to him in time, thank God, and they wanted to express their gratitude.”
/> He crouched to poke at the pedestal, and Frank hunched down beside him. “Joe was in construction. He had some of his guys come over to do the foundation.
“That was just a few months after I came to St. Rita’s. They asked me over to do a blessing. Hoo, boy, did I ever get the hairy eyeball from the neighborhood ladies. I had to eat everything they offered, just to be polite. And I never stopped, as you can see.” The priest laughed, standing and patting his stomach.
“Theresa Lupo was there that day, and she told me a long story about her mother, who was sick with breast cancer.” Father Sherry’s hand was resting on the statue’s shoulder. “Theresa was heartsick and just frantic about it. The day after the Loquastos put up their statue, she swore she saw a tear on the Virgin’s face. Joe said it was raining, but you couldn’t tell Theresa that. She was sure the Virgin was weeping with her.
“So she started bringing flowers. Mary Loquasto was sweet about it; she’d invite her in for coffee. The mother held on for another six months, long enough to see Theresa’s youngest’s first communion, which Theresa took as a gift from the Virgin of Forest Street. I’ll bet she’s been bringing flowers ever since.
“And that’s the story of your statue.”
Joyce suddenly felt like an anthropologist, or an ugly American, or maybe just a tourist.
Frank whistled softly and shook his head. “What should we do?”
Father Sherry rubbed his chin. “I say we wait until the end of the month, till after the Saint Peter’s fiesta. It’s a madhouse now getting ready, and then there’s that whole week. I’ll call Joe Loquasto, and I should visit Theresa anyway. She’ll like being consulted.”
The priest checked his watch, and Joyce and Frank walked him to his car. “I’ll be back in touch in July, first thing. I appreciate your sensitivity. And once we get it taken care of, you’ll have a great story to tell.”
Tossing off their thanks, the priest folded himself back into his car.
Frank went inside to start dinner, but Joyce returned to the statue for a moment. The mild smile suddenly seemed secretive and wise. “Mary, honey,” she whispered, “can you do anything for my friend Kathleen?”
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