A Little Hope

by Ethan Joella

  Hovering there beside Mary Jane, Ginger has the oddest feeling. Looking at the girl feels as though she is looking at herself. She feels exactly as the girl looks: confused, helpless, frantic. They are the same person, she feels for that second. Both of them in love with someone they could never really have.

  “Can someone tell me about Luke Crowley?” the girl calls, and her words linger in the air like the sound of glass breaking.

  * * *

  A few days later, Ginger walks Thunder, her parents’ dog, around the block. He is old and takes his time, and she feels selfish because the walk is more for her. He looks up at her every so often, his eyes earnest with the cloud of cataracts, as if he’s asking, Can we finish up now? Christmas is in three days, and the houses have lights wrapped around posts and lit trees in the windows. The neighborhood is quiet, almost lifeless. She then hears the sound of hammering in the distance, at a house being built a block away. It is cool but not cold, and there is no wind. She wants wind. She wants the wind to blow her face hard enough to bring tears.

  There was always a part to Luke she couldn’t touch, and now he is at Lucatelli’s Funeral Home in a closed casket. Viewing tonight, funeral tomorrow. “Couldn’t they wait until after the holiday?” her mother said. “Jesus, what’s the rush?”

  At the hospital, his dying face was bloodied and broken. She remembers looking down at his fingers, and his right hand was still so perfect. Untouched by what had happened. The right hand he had used to scramble eggs for her. The right hand that touched her face. The hand that slid the ring on her finger. She wanted to kiss his fingertips the way she’d always done, but she stayed in the background while Mrs. Crowley and Mary Jane said goodbye and then the girl named Hannah placed her head on his chest and sobbed. “I love you,” she said. Ginger wondered how long they had known each other, and if Luke loved her back.

  Ginger had stayed behind, her eyes red, hand over her heart. Their group was led away before she could have any time with him. Did she imagine someone would leave her alone with Luke? She had no role, and she didn’t want to ask for one. True, the Crowleys had called her to come, but someone had also called Hannah. Why hadn’t she run to him earlier that night?

  He wouldn’t have been home anyway.

  But she had run to him in a different way. She ran to the hospital as fast as she could, leaving poor Ahmed behind in the car. Ahmed who nodded solemnly and waved goodbye.

  * * *

  The funeral home smells like carnations and floral ferns. Ginger hears music playing dimly in the background and realizes it’s old tapes of Luke and his band. Mary Jane’s idea, no doubt. She will have to ask Mary Jane for a copy. In the lobby there are poster boards with pictures of Luke as a baby, a boy, a teenager, and a man. Luke in a high chair looking at a piece of birthday cake, his hair so light and sandy; Luke young and in his karate outfit; teenage Luke in his basketball uniform shooting a basket; the four Crowleys at the Jersey Shore posing in front of a roller coaster. A recent one of Luke holding his niece in a backyard. She realizes she is looking for a picture of her with Luke. She doesn’t see herself anywhere in his story.

  Mrs. Crowley’s grip is strong when Ginger approaches her. “Oh, Ginger,” she says, and pulls her down to sit. Mary Jane and her husband are on the other side talking to a group of kids Luke went to college with. Mrs. Crowley slides an arm around Ginger’s back and it feels good to be next to her. “Ginger, Ginger. What are we going to do?” Now Ginger stares straight ahead at the dark coffin. A spray of yellow roses and snapdragons on top. Yellow. His favorite color. Ginger remembers a faded yellow sweater he had: a rip in the sleeve, a bleach stain near the bottom. How good of his mother and sister to remember yellow.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ginger whispers to Mrs. Crowley.

  “You’re a dear girl.” Mrs. Crowley’s face is washed out. Still so pale even under the makeup. She wears a starched dark jacket and skirt. A ruby brooch. Ginger thinks she should stand, more people are coming. A husband and wife in black wool coats, the wife clutching a folded handkerchief. She looks at them and starts to rise. “Stay, please,” Mrs. Crowley whispers. Ginger stays next to the woman who was never her mother-in-law. The woman who shook her head at Luke so many times. But Luke could lighten any dark mood of hers. He could poke holes in her seriousness. Mom, you look like Annie Oakley. And no matter how stony-faced she was, she would start laughing.

  Ginger can see the cost of love on her tired face, and something about this brings her relief and joy. Did Luke know?

  When people pass through, Mrs. Crowley says, “And you remember our Ginger, don’t you?” and no one says no even though many probably have no idea who she is.

  Ginger keeps her hands in her lap. “I thought about him so many times. I saw him at the toy shop before your granddaughter’s birthday.”

  Mrs. Crowley nods. “He said he was going to take a ride over to your house to visit the dog.”

  “Really?”

  “But he chickened out. I said, Go. Go. I kind of wanted to drag him over there. He never felt worthy, of so many things.” She shakes her head.

  Ginger imagines Luke pulling up to her parents’ house, and she feels warm and relaxed all of a sudden. Thunder barking his familiar bark, wagging his thick tail and running toward Luke, smelling his hand. He would remember Luke. What would Luke say? “Hey, buddy. Been a while.” She would stand on the porch. Maybe the late fall sun would be glowing through the trees. She would invite him inside. Why couldn’t they fix what they lost? What does she do with all this now?

  She holds Mrs. Crowley’s hand. “Can I visit you when I’m home again?”

  “I would adore that, darling.” More mourners are walking up to the casket. Their hands leave fingerprints on the dark wood as they touch it respectfully. One woman bends down to smell the yellow flowers, and Ginger imagines Luke’s expression. The way he would lift his eyebrows. The way he’d shake his head.

  She stays next to Mrs. Crowley and keeps thinking of him coming over to her house that day in October. What if he had? What if he hadn’t chickened out, what if she hadn’t? What if she watched him from their porch, and he walked across the grass and smiled at her, and she smiled back, and right in that second, in that second that never happened, they would fix all this.

  Wouldn’t she have been able to help him? Wouldn’t she give anything to have that day? She can picture the scene so easily: the bare trees, the excited dog. Her mother and father inside watching the news. Luke’s ripped jeans and ragged sweater. His easy smile, his carefree laugh. His straight teeth, occasional freckle, the mole on his neck.

  Right now, next to this woman with her perfect posture, her carefully worded responses to every person who bends down, Ginger is glad she came. Her parents sit in the back talking to a retired teacher her mother knows. There is a line out the door. Customers of the dry cleaning place, friends of the family, that seamstress lady, musicians Luke knew: Murph, Chucky, Jimmy—their faces shocked and frowning, all sweetly wearing their old Luke and the Killers shirts. Neighbors, aunts and uncles. She wonders about his last concert. What was the last song he sang?

  Mrs. Crowley holds her hand, and Ginger’s mind keeps slipping back to that imaginary day, Luke pulling up to her house. It seems so simple now. Why didn’t he?

  Why didn’t she call him earlier from the wedding? Before he got into the car, before he took whatever route he took and swerved along the long, black road, those patches of ice, those oncoming cars. Poor Betsy never stood a chance, did she? Why didn’t he know better? She wonders when the autopsy report will come out. She already knows what it will say: alcohol and probably more. She wonders if this information will destroy Mrs. Crowley and Mary Jane, but they must already imagine the worst.

  Her mother asked her when it happened if Ginger thought Luke had wanted to die, but Ginger shook her head. She knew he’d never do that—she would bet her life on it. At his lowest point, Luke always had hope. He must have been in over his head with
some bad stuff, trying to seem normal under the fierce grip of something terrible. Did he know he could have told her anything? Did he know she would have done anything to help him?

  I should. That was what he said to her that day in the toy store when she said he should come by. Almost two months ago. His hand holding the white shopping bag with the gifts for his niece inside. His hopeful stare as she made her way to the back of the store. Did she wave to him?

  Ginger smiles politely while Darcy talks to the seamstress, Freddie Tyler. Both women cry a little together, Freddie touching Darcy’s shoulder, patting her hand. “Call me even if you just want someone to watch television with,” Freddie says, and Darcy nods.

  “You’re a gem,” Darcy says. “And the carrot cake was lovely.” Ginger turns to the side and sees Hannah a few rows back. Her thin face is drained, and her friends sit beside her, trying to make her smile. Hannah stares straight ahead, her eyes swollen. She wears a skirt that’s too big, and a white silk blouse. Ginger can see what Luke saw in her. She’s a pretty girl. She has kindness to her—Ginger can feel it. Then Hannah turns her way, and they are caught in a stare. Hannah’s expression doesn’t change, and Ginger doesn’t look away. She wants to say she knows what this girl knows, she fought for him the same way. She wants to go talk with her, to say he was wonderful, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he as good as they come? Wasn’t he just a tragic soul, stumbling around in an ill-fitting costume?

  Hannah turns away then. Ginger thinks of Luke, of holding his young-forever face one last time. She hears someone say, “All our sympathies,” and she feels so sorry, especially for Luke. Sorry that he couldn’t make his way. Sorry that he couldn’t live this out. Living is fixing, living is working on everything that’s wrong—or at least trying your hardest to. And she feels free in that second with the line of people waiting for the Crowleys, with the priest getting ready to say a few words. She looks at the twenty or thirty arrangements of flowers, green and yellow and white and pink, at the mass cards placed on the side table, and Ginger Lord decides then she will fix all this for Luke. She will live for him.

  12. A Single Question

  A Saturday in mid-February, Damon Savio freezes his ass off on the front porch waiting for his friend’s truck to come down the driveway.

  He sits on one of the green Adirondack chairs that his wife, Suzette, ordered from L.L.Bean two weeks ago. They came in these massive boxes—all slabs and bolts and packing foam. “Three-hundred-dollar chairs, you’d think they’d come assembled,” he said. But she looked at him hopefully with those sparkling gray-blue eyes, wavy hair pulled up in a ponytail, and there he was minutes later with his drill while she held the chair parts in place. In a few hours, they had four green chairs on the big porch of their white clapboard house. The honeymoon cottage, as Suzette’s mother, Marie, calls it.

  He imagines how grown up he’ll seem when his buddy turns onto their private road, the bare birch trees, the sturdy pine and holly, the long driveway twisting from St. John’s Street to their secluded property with the old barn in the back. He has nothing to put in the barn, so it only holds a lawnmower, two bikes, and a rake. He blows warmth into his hands. His ears sting from the cold. He sits on the Adirondack chair and feels something that seems like embarrassment. What right does he have to this wife, this honey-I’m-home house, all this land, when his friend he’s known since he was four is still a bachelor? Ahmed would make a great husband, a great dad. Damon grips the sides of the chair and waits. He notices the smell of woodsmoke in the air, and hears the sound of a twig snapping in the distance.

  After a few minutes, he sees Ahmed rambling toward him in the truck he’s borrowed: a four-wheeler in the pickup bed and another four-wheeler hitched to a small trailer on the back. When he sees Ahmed’s expression, always excited, he starts to feel better. Ahmed gives him the finger, a loving gesture they use to greet each other. It seems to take a long time for him to reach the end of the driveway, and Damon wonders what Ahmed thinks of him sitting there on his damn preppy chair, the house with its new brass mailbox and topiaries on either side of the door. The sign above the window that says Pine Place because Suzette always wanted to name a house.

  The wide front yard is faded green, and somewhere in the distance, a neighbor’s dog barks. Ahmed kills the engine, and it’s quiet again.

  “Hey, Romeo,” Ahmed says. “What are you daydreaming about?”

  Damon stands. “Just waiting for your sorry ass. Since when does noon become twelve twenty-five?”

  Ahmed smiles and shakes his head as he walks toward the porch. “Since I had to haul these heavy beasts. I couldn’t drive more than thirty. When I went around the circle, I thought the one on the back was going to snap off. Tell Suzie I don’t have a third, so we’ll have to take turns.” Ahmed holds a pair of gloves and reaches for Damon’s hand, then pulls him into a hug. At some point during their friendship, they moved from handshakes to hugs. Damon can’t remember when that started. Ahmed looks around. The wind blows the chimes they got as a housewarming gift from Mr. and Mrs. Lionel, friends of Suzette’s parents.

  “Suzette’s not here.” The sun is high above the trees, hidden by clouds. The air has a heaviness to it, a damp chill like snow might be coming. “She took her mom to a matinee.”

  “Shit, who’s gonna call the ambulance then?” Ahmed grins.

  They started four-wheeling in high school. Ahmed’s uncle had a fleet of four-wheelers he always let them ride at his farm a half hour from Wharton. When Damon told Ahmed that they had bought this place, Ahmed said, “Dude, what I need to know is, how much land?”

  “Five acres.”

  “You know what that means.”

  “I do.”

  “Poppin’ wheelies left and right on Red and Blue.” Now Red and Blue wait in the back like two Transformers, dried mud on their wheels. Damon cannot wait to hear the noise of the engines, see the rush of trees and grass, that reckless trajectory of every bump as the cold air blasts his face and he breathes through the ski mask he will wear under his helmet.

  “You’re a prince to bring these out here,” Damon says.

  “Dude, stop kissing my ass.” Ahmed stands on the porch steps and seems to stare at the welcome mat by the front door. It is outlined in black with their monogram on it. Damon wants him to look away. He wants to tell him something he can’t say. About Suzette. About this house. Something ticks inside him.

  “But before Red and Blue…” Damon takes two cigars from his coat pocket and holds them like a game show model would. “Tradition.”

  Ahmed takes a flask from the inside pocket of his coat. “Cheers, buddy.”

  “I’ll go get some glasses,” Damon says. He wipes his feet on the doormat out of habit, enters the house, and closes the door without thinking. Why did he leave Ahmed outside? He doesn’t know. But he sees the table in the foyer with a small lamp and framed black-and-white picture from their wedding day. The white couches across from one another, the brick fireplace. The throw pillows everywhere. He shakes his head. She stayed up so late, so many nights getting this house ready. The week before the wedding, she had the floors refinished, and now they are glossy. Damon can still smell the varnish. He can still smell the factory scent of the new furniture, the paint (Dew or Mist or some name like that), the fresh carpet up in the bedrooms. He stands there in the middle of the kitchen, looks at this museum of hers, and the room echoes.

  He opens the cupboard, and the glasses are crystal—from somewhere like Nordstrom, with small anchors etched in them—and he imagines knocking one over as he’s smoking his cigar with Ahmed on the porch and Suzette’s disappointed face. She is wonderful, but he just found this out about her: she’s the type to frown over a broken glass. Neither of his parents were like this. Most of his previous girlfriends weren’t fussy, drinking beer from bottles, letting him smear their lipstick when they kissed. Suzette is different.

  But he loves her. He does.

  He loves the way she holds a book and sket
ches sometimes, that strand of hair by her eye. He loves at night when her contact lenses are out and she has her glasses on, sweet-smelling lotion on her face. Yes yes yes. He loves the worn pair of slippers she keeps by the bed and the glass of water she sets on the bathroom sink every night. He likes her body, her hand on his chest. He likes lying under the paisley sheets with her. He likes the texts she sends him: the winky face, the “C u soon i hope.” He likes her work. The kids she cares so much about. She would do anything for them. She works with battered women, too, getting them new clothes, new apartments. She is a good human, and he loves that. She is tough, scrappy in a way you don’t expect a rich girl to be.

  He hears the furnace kick on. The heat crackles through the baseboards. On the kitchen table is the section of white scarf she was knitting. Through the front window, he sees Ahmed pacing back and forth.

  He reaches to the back of the cupboard and finds two small glasses from his old apartment. They have a red and blue Phillies design, chipped and faded. He runs his finger over the small Liberty Bell in the center. They were his, before Suzette. Before Amanda even. He holds these glasses, his glasses that he picked out, and walks to the door, passing a porcelain umbrella stand with two new navy blue golf umbrellas standing at attention.

  Outside, Ahmed has his back to Damon, hands in his pockets. Damon can see his breath in the air, and it makes him feel lonely. “Pour whatever you got in here.”

  “Nothing but the finest Scotch, Romeo.” Ahmed has called him this since fifth grade, when Mrs. Waverly, their language arts teacher, made Damon read the part of Romeo. He can’t remember who played Juliet, but he remembers her standing on the teacher’s desk as a makeshift balcony, a sheet of cardboard around her like a railing. Did she have glasses? He thinks she did. He can remember the glare of them as he spoke to her. Damon was so embarrassed that he mumbled his lines, and the kids laughed. Ahmed should have been Romeo. He would have loved every second.