A Little Hope

by Ethan Joella

  “Yeah, in case you don’t like me,” he said. “Soup and a grilled cheese at the diner, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “I love diners,” she said.

  He remembers the jukebox playing “Tracks of My Tears,” the way he felt grown-up all of a sudden when the waitress offered him coffee and he accepted, and then Kay accepted, and he whispered to her, “I hate coffee, by the way,” and she giggled and said, “Me, too,” and he knew, he knew he loved her. Right away. This girlish woman with her high ponytail and white blouse. The light pink polish on her bitten fingernails. The woman his friend Lawrence said looked like she could be Audrey Hepburn’s little sister the first time he saw her at the college library.

  Now Alex looks at Kay, her hands resting on the shelf in front of the candles, and he wishes she would put her hair up in a ponytail again. She doesn’t look much different from that day at the diner—even with all that has happened. Lucky her. But he feels a hundred years older, even though he is healthy. Once in a while, he still thinks he gets a glance here and there from a hostess at the country club or one of the middle-aged females in his office. He tries to keep his weight down. He still does the treadmill four times a week, and golfing keeps color on his face.

  He notices the three rows of flickering candles. Only about half are lit. He doesn’t remember the price per candle—how petty, he thinks, but shakes his head—maybe he will put in a twenty just to be safe. He has never minded giving the church a bit extra.

  “How many are you doing?” Kay asks. She presses one button, and whispers something he can’t hear as the square flame snaps on. He wishes there were still the stick matches in their small glass jar. He loved holding the match briefly, watching the vigil candles come to life as he and Kay tried in their own tiny way to change things over the years.

  “Four.” He knows she can only mentally account for three of these, and that’s why she gives him the sideways confused glance as she lights her own. He doesn’t offer any clues about his mystery candle. He wants to tell her about Iris. His stomach flips and he gets that crackling feeling in his neck.

  The first he lights is for Lawrence, his good friend, the best man at their wedding. Alex can still see him in his tailcoat dancing with that bridesmaid, champagne in one hand, a cigarette in the other hand. Lawrence. Killed after only a week in Vietnam. Always with me, pal, he thinks. Kay will be lighting ones for their four dead parents, for her aunt Ginny who is ninety and in hospice now, and probably for their neighbor who just found out she has breast cancer. And then she will spend the most time on her last one.

  He is surprised Kay hasn’t bent down to take out her rosary. She believes so much in these candles, in her beads, in her words whispered to the stained glass above them. She has so much reason not to believe, but she still believes.

  He’d like to think that Lawrence is smiling down on him, that both their parents are nodding solemnly somewhere as they wait to greet him and Kay, that they’ll get to see who they want to see most when they die (What would that reunion look like? Is it really, really you? they’d say), but lately he wonders. He wonders about the reality of life and death. What if this is all there is?

  He looks over at Kay. Behind her is the scene of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus. Kay has been just as brave and noble, hasn’t she? The dark red carpet below their feet is so thick that it hushes his thoughts, and in the pews, he sees an old woman sit by herself and blot her face with a handkerchief. He wishes he could go to this woman, put his coat on her shoulders as some type of comfort, even though he’s sure she has her own coat, but he has to stop this business of wanting to save everyone. He smiles meekly at his wife.

  If he tells her right this moment about Iris, what will she do? Will she stare at him with that pitiful, crumbled face she can get and grab her purse and limp away from him? Will she wait by the car outside in the chilly November air and not talk to him? He breathes slowly and lights a candle for Greg Tyler, whom he can’t stop thinking about. Be good to this one, he thinks—if there’s someone who can hear him. He needs you.

  His heart stings for Greg. The last of the good boys. Okay with only four hours of sleep. Never, ever said no. Greg the American Dream. Greg whom he could send anywhere: Mexico, China, the Middle East. A younger, better version of himself. That sweet wife. That outspoken little girl Kay buys Christmas gifts for. The Tylers have had them over for dinner a few times, and their home was one of those places you don’t want to leave: the sun setting, golden on their hardwood floors, the cat in its bed, the old dog by the fireplace. “You did pretty well for yourself,” Alex said, squeezing the back of Greg’s neck. He had never done this to anyone, felt this fatherly to one of the company guys. Fatherly. That word makes him ache.

  “Will you say something for Gregory?” he whispers to Kay, and she nods. He always feels Kay has a better line to the holy network.

  Can Greg beat this? Of course he can, can’t he? The guy can run a six-minute mile. People aren’t dying the way they used to, but Alex knows better than anyone about tragedy. We are guaranteed nothing. Lawrence’s words in the only letter he would write home.

  Alex thinks of Benny then and the blue bicycle, how twisted and mangled it looked. He always tries not to think of that bike. His first instinct was to bend down and start untwisting with all his might. He wondered if they could loan him a pump for the deflated tires when they showed it to him in the back of the police car.

  He closes his eyes and tries to cast that image away. Greg. Think about Greg. Greg who’s still among the living.

  Greg’s eyes, his quietness: he knows it’s bad. Will Greg be able to know what he knows and shake this? Alex hopes so. To stop working and do the treatments and listen when the doctors say to rest? He can’t imagine Greg Tyler in a hospital bed. He can’t imagine Greg in pajamas, lying still. He watches the candle he’s lit for Greg, and can’t help but feel powerless as the small lightbulb flickers its best. You can do this, he thinks. We are rooting for you.

  Kay whispers a few more things, rosary beads now in hand. The heavy artillery. Good. He turns around and notices they are alone in the church. The long aisle, the gleaming wood of the pews. In the back is a framed corkboard with announcements and a box where people take the weekly news bulletin. Alex thinks of his third candle. He and Kay each always light their own for Benny.

  Could Benny really be dead twenty-four years? He thinks of their son, their only child, the child they didn’t have until their early thirties because “God was taking his time,” Kay said. The kid who turned fourteen so fast, who only ate Kraft macaroni and cheese and Honey Smacks most of the time; the kid who made a sculpture out of old egg cartons that won an award in the junior high art show. Benny with his ribs always showing, with his cowlick. Benny trying to learn Spanish at the kitchen table, his accent so Connecticut.

  Alex tries to imagine him in his late thirties now and can’t. He can only see that bike, and for the millionth time, he tries to remember the last moment he had with him that Saturday, and has no idea. Benny was going to Ryan’s, Alex knows. He was wearing that Vermont sweatshirt he loved. Alex only knew from seeing it on the floor in the hospital. So much blood. Can Kay get the stains out? he wondered as he stood there, hand over his mouth. What was the last thing he said to his son that day? What did Benny’s voice sound like? Did he look up from his newspaper or whatever he was doing when Benny said goodbye? Please, please, he thinks. Tell me I did.

  In the days that followed, how quiet their house was. He couldn’t say anything to Kay because there was nothing, not one thing, to say. Do you want him back, too? Do you hate the sound of our house, too? Do you wish you had died instead? Do you keep thinking we can’t have dinner because we’re waiting for Benny to come through the back door, head sweaty, clothes smelling like outside the way they always did when he played football? He can see Benny’s fine hair, his clear blue eyes. That scar on his hand from carving the pumpkin when he was seven.

  He can
go back to that time so easily, because he can pinpoint that it was his worst year. Kay mostly ignored him those days. He remembers how she’d make herself a piece of toast with honey for dinner and stare out the window. He remembers how she just left the loaf of bread on the counter, as if a vague gesture to him. This is what we need to eat to stay alive, even though we have no reason to stay alive. He remembers wanting visitors on those quiet days, but their friends avoided the house.

  How did people survive these things? He wondered that all the time. He would go to work, and everyone would nod politely and look down. He would close his office door and put on the AM news station and listen to the traffic report and the weather and sob in his hands.

  Some days at lunch, he’d leave his briefcase below his desk and drive and drive. He would let the cold air of late autumn hit his face and pretend Benny was out biking on the road beside him. Alex would keep driving until he escorted him everywhere safely. When a big truck would come by, Alex would give it the middle finger, a gesture he rarely used. He’d pretend to watch his boy cycle beside his car, beside the stretches of field. “Ride in the field,” Alex would say. “Ride where no one can get you.”

  Then he’d sit at that family restaurant drinking black coffee and maybe have a cup of soup: pepper pot, beef barley, New England clam chowder. The waitress Melinda was always working, and she started saying, “There’s my guy,” when he walked in. Sometimes she’d touch his shoulder when she brought him the check. Sometimes she would put the coffeepot down and tell him about her day. About her mother who owned the antiques shop in Ohio, about the stray cat she fed. She was in her thirties, and when she smiled, her eyes were almost purple. Like Liz Taylor’s.

  One day he said, “Your eyes settle me,” and when she gave him the bill, she drew a small heart by the total.

  Driving to her house that first afternoon when her shift ended, following her old Chevy in his polished black Lincoln, he tried to talk himself out of it, but it was exciting. It was the first time he drove that he didn’t imagine Benny biking beside him.

  “You sure you want to?” she said, and he nodded.

  He went there at least seven times, and she would take off her work clothes as soon as they walked in the door. Once, she convinced him to get in the shower with her, which he and Kay had never done. On his last day there, she poured them each a glass of cranberry juice and put out a plate with Triscuits and cheese. “You know I can’t continue this,” he said.

  She sipped her juice and shrugged. “I figured—sooner or later.”

  “I shouldn’t have.” He looked down at his glass but couldn’t drink. It was as though he was coming back to life and realizing what was happening. There was no room for her. Because of her, he was saved, and now he had to save Kay. He had to. I got to the shore—some shore. I’m no longer drowning. He had to get Kay there, too. The midwinter sun was reflecting brightly off the February snow outside Melinda’s window, the icicles dripped with a hint of promise, and he wondered for a second why he never saw dishes outside for the stray cat. “Thank you for helping me,” he said. He knew she would know what he meant.

  “Don’t mention it.” She crossed her legs and looked up at the ceiling. “I’ll see you around,” she said.

  He didn’t hear anything from her until Iris was four. When the lawyer came to his office with a file folder and the picture of his child, who looked curly haired and serious in the Kmart portrait with the blue background. “What’s this?” he said, and the lawyer had humorless eyes, as though he were some sick deadbeat pervert. “The mother of your child would like support for the day-to-day care of your child.”

  Every time she said your child, he thought she meant Benny, and the dizziness he was feeling from this unexpected news was replaced with a tug of sadness. “Tell her I would have liked to have known about this earlier, but I will meet these support requests.”

  “Does that mean you want to keep it quiet so your wife doesn’t know?” the lawyer asked. Her eyes were so dark and stern.

  “She knows already about my time with that woman.” He lied. “So you may leave the paperwork here and remove yourself from my office.” He made a shooing motion, which felt good. Which helped to relieve the rush of worry and sickness that was coming over him.

  * * *

  He told Kay that afternoon. She didn’t shriek. She didn’t say anything. She nodded as though she really did already know. Her cheeks looked so smooth and polished, and she sipped her tea.

  “Well?” he finally said.

  She pointed to the door. It was two o’clock, and the sun was steady and bold. The cuckoo clock ticked in the kitchen. “Please get out,” she said quietly. He didn’t know where to go. He almost went back to work. He felt shame and guilt and fear about what would happen between him and Kay (he could not lose her—he would fail Benny if he did), but he also felt a faint new possibility. Maybe Kay would come around. Maybe Iris was a solution, not a problem. He went and saw two movies and fell asleep in the middle of the second one.

  That night when he returned home, she ignored him. She put on her nightgown and rubbed lotion on her hands. She clicked off the bathroom light as he stood by their bed, not sure if she wanted him there, not sure if she’d tell him to leave again. “I don’t want to ever hear a word about this child,” she said.

  “I’m so—”

  She put up her hand. They were fifty then. Why did he do what he’d done? How could he have hurt the only woman he loved? “Pay the bill they send from your office, but never, ever mention this girl.”

  He nodded. She shook her head and went to her side of the bed. “Is this where you want to be, Alex?”

  He nodded again. “Of course.”

  “Then that’s that,” she said, and turned off her light.

  He lay awake that night listening to the clock over the white fireplace in their bedroom. He looked at her every so often to see if she was still awake. He wanted to tell her they should meet this girl. That it wasn’t her fault. That maybe, maybe she could bring something to their lives. But he knew better.

  So every other month or so, he met Iris in secret. She was beautiful. Always smiling. She had Benny’s nose, he thought. Sometimes certain words she said (hug, button) reminded him of Benny’s voice. It made him teary but also made him sing inside. He’d take her to the zoo like divorced dads did. He’d buy her new shoes and give her a fifty-dollar bill. “Hang on to this in case you need anything,” he’d say. Her eyes would be so big holding the money.

  His life seemed to be divided into Iris time and non–Iris time, and he counted the moments until he saw her again. Once in a while, he’d cut out of work a couple of hours early and call Melinda (they were always cordial—not warm but cordial) to tell her to cancel the babysitter, that he could meet the school bus, that he could take her somewhere for dinner. God, how thrilled he was by this girl. He loved to look in his rearview mirror and see her buckled in his back seat as he took her to the park, the miniature golf course, the café. How did the universe know she was just what his empty world needed? Why couldn’t Kay give this a chance? He hated sneaking around, but to be honest, Iris was worth it. And he thought he brought something to Iris that benefited her, too: a lightheartedness as a parent, a patience her mother sometimes lacked, a sense of financial security most young parents could only wish for.

  What a gift this lovely girl was, what medicine, for lack of a better word. She had a good vocabulary even at six or seven, and she had an earnest quality not many kids had. He watched her become a teenager, and he couldn’t believe she still wanted to meet him regularly. “Sure,” she’d say. “I could eat pizza.”

  Never, ever mention this girl. So he didn’t.

  He wondered if Kay had any clue. When he said he worked late and went to her chorus concert, sitting in the very back row but clapping the same as any parent. When he bought her those skis for Christmas or told Melinda he’d pay for her class trip to Disney. And then college came, and his money went
to tuition, to textbooks (when the hell did they get so expensive?), to a meal plan. But he was happy to do it. That’s my girl, he thought once when she made dean’s list.

  He felt so selfish delighting in this young person when Kay had nothing else. Over the years, she joined the garden club, a book club at the library, the country club holiday committee, but she still seemed to be languishing. He would find her lying on the sofa with her pots of violets behind her in the window. In her nightstand drawer he found a journal in which she regularly wrote letters to Benny. He couldn’t bring himself to read them.

  He thought about Iris (his daughter, his daughter) at night when he couldn’t sleep. He whispered prayers to watch over her as Kay slept beside him, once in a while reaching over to hold his hand. “You’re missing out,” he wanted to say. “You’d love her,” he wanted to say. Kay had always wanted a daughter. God, how she would have loved to pick out prom dresses or go to the cosmetics counter at a department store with Iris or listen to her talk about boys. Kay was still so girlish at heart, Iris would rejuvenate her.

  A few times he tried to mention her, but he stopped when Kay scrunched her eyebrows in that angry way. “Never mind,” he’d say.

  Now twenty-three and in graduate school for occupational therapy, Iris told him about the baby yesterday. “You’re going to be a grandpa,” she said. She hardly ever called him Dad—maybe she sensed how complicated that word was for him.

  Of course it’s too soon, he thinks. Of course she should have waited longer. Of course she barely knows this guy in her program—who she says stays over at her apartment most nights. Maybe, he thinks, she should have considered other options here, but Iris has a good head on her shoulders. A baby. Grandpa. He can’t help but feel ecstatic.

  Now in the church, he watches Kay put her rosary away. He wants her to be a part of this. He thinks of Benny and what they missed out on. He wants to hold her hand, tell her he’s sorry for the thing with Melinda, for the shame he brought with Iris, his child that no one knows about. But on the other hand, they could gain something. They could be grandparents. Wouldn’t Kay love that? Wouldn’t she be as good as she is with the Tyler girl? Couldn’t she forget where this baby came from? He wants to say: She renewed me. She almost, almost fixed me. Let Iris help you, too.