The Sweet By and By

by Todd Johnson

  He stretched his arms up over his head like he was stiff from sitting a long time and glanced in my direction. “Hey!” he hollered out in a different voice, not his serious lifeguard yell, but a “I’ll-be-damned” kind of voice, still loud enough to make a few women look up from their lounge chairs. Wade jumped down from the high lifeguard stand at the edge of the water, his chest and arms were all oiled up and his skin already dark brown even though the summer was only half over. He waved at me. I wished I hadn’t come. Why did I come? Two girls in bikinis wrenched their heads around to see where he was going, spotted me, and when they saw him walking over, huddled into each other whispering. I oughta have known better than to come down here to the Money Pile, I thought. That’s what Grandma called it, I can hear her. “You’re exactly like your mama, too big for your britches. You got somethin to learn about the world, girl, mainly that it’s theirs and not yours and never will be.”

  I waved back to him, really more of a half-assed wave, and started to leave on the little Yamaha cycle I had borrowed while my car was being fixed.

  “Hey! Hold up!” he said, wiping his face with a faded blue towel that looked like it had seen better days, or too many chlorine summers. I got a lot better towels than that, I thought, and I use peroxide every day of my life. Hair chemicals are strong, and if you don’t think so, look around you next time you’re strolling through Wal-Mart.

  A few adults, mostly older ones, were taking the pool away from a bunch of disappointed children who couldn’t understand why they had to get out so a handful of ladies with wiggly rubber flower caps could dog paddle back and forth without ever getting their heads wet. I figured the girls near Wade’s chair might go in the water too now that they were out of danger of being splashed or hit in the head with a beach ball, but I got real clear that getting wet was not in their plan, no matter how hot it got.

  Wade put his hands on the fence in front of me. “Hey,” he said again, “how you doin?” His face was inches from the chain links.

  “Don’t you have to stay up on your chair?” I asked. “What if somebody drowns?”

  “I’m not the only one.” Wade laughed and pointed back to a blond-haired heavyset guy over by the deep end with his nose covered in white. “I do the shallow, he does the deep, and with adult swim, the only one in the shallow is gonna be Mrs. Stockton doing her laps, steady as a heartbeat.”

  “What is that white stuff people put on their noses anyway? I’ve always wondered that,” I said, even though I had never wondered it and didn’t really care.

  “Zinc oxide! Haven’t you ever used zinc oxide? Mac’s nose always burns and peels all summer, and he says the girls don’t like it. I told him, ‘Son, your nose isn’t the reason you can’t get a date.’” He laughed and I did too, not because it was that funny; I didn’t even know who Max was. It just seemed like what you do when someone is being nice and laughs. You laugh back.

  In the shallow end, a wrinkled woman in a royal blue one-piece with a white stripe on the angle stepped down the stairs into the water like she was in Gone with the Wind.

  “She looks old to be swimming,” I said.

  “Shoot, Honey Stockton swims like a fish. She’s eighty if she’s a day, and she’s down here every afternoon. Reads books in the shade. And I don’t mean magazines either, she says she only reads the classics, all the books she didn’t find time for when she was young. She won’t go near that pool if there are children in it, but whenever I blow the whistle she’s off like a shot.”

  I watched the woman still trying to make her way down the steps. “I don’t know if I’d say ‘like a shot.’” I laughed; he didn’t. I felt stupid for being there, talking through a fence to a boy who wasn’t any more interested in me than the man in the moon. I could tell. Girls can always tell.

  “Do you want to come in?” he said, breaking the silence, thank God. “I can sign you in as my guest.”

  I guess it didn’t occur to him that I didn’t have on a bathing suit under my shorts.

  “No thanks.” I acted cool. “I gotta go, we’re real busy at the beauty shop. There’s a lot of weddings in summer. While the weather’s good. Everybody’s got to get their hair fixed, not just the bridal party.”

  “You do hair?” he asked, like he’d never laid eyes on a beautician before.

  I know I turned red, I was embarrassed, but then I thought, “What the hell did he think I was, a doctor or lawyer?” I didn’t answer him, which was a good thing because I was mad about being embarrassed, and I prob’ly woulda said something mean. Slow down, Rhonda, I told myself, the whole world ain’t against you. Sometimes I have to be reminded of that, it’s what comes with wanting to stand up for myself. Part of the territory, and it’s a good thing I know it or I’d make myself some enemies without ever meaning to.

  “I think that’s great,” Wade went on. “I always knew you had style, Rhonda, seeing you around school. Confident. You didn’t know I knew your name did you?”

  He must have seen I was shocked. We didn’t know each other except to say “hey” once in a while.

  “I just went and looked in an old yearbook at the class ahead of mine,” he said. “Right there you were. I remember under your picture, where it says, ‘Dreams.’ Yours said: Horse Trainer.”

  I softened. “It’s a dream that hasn’t come true yet. Maybe, I don’t know. I shoulda said ‘Hair Trainer.’”

  “It might be easier training horses,” he said, and finally, we both laughed together. I’d never known any guys like him. So nice, for no reason other than he wanted to be. He was like a foreign country to me.

  “Well I don’t have to look in the yearbook to know you.” I perked up. “Everybody knows you. The golden boy of all time, Wade Stokes.”

  “That’s what you think?” His voice changed.

  “That’s what everybody says.” I was trying to keep it light.

  “But do you think that?”

  “I know you’re smart and goin to college on a scholarship and your family’s got money, and you’re probably gonna make a helluva lot more of it one day before long. And even if you don’t you’ll prob’ly have everything you ever want. Doesn’t that about sum you up?”

  “Maybe not,” he said, looking down at his bare brown feet, and it’s funny, right that second I knew we weren’t flirting. Not that I ever really had thought we were but why else was I there except hoping he might be interested in me, in spite of believing, cause I’d been told to, that nobody like him would ever be interested in someone like me. He raked his hand through his wavy hair, curlier in the heat and humidity. It was longer than I remembered ever seeing it before.

  Damn, Rhonda, I thought, can’t you for once use a feather instead of a sledgehammer to make your point? “That sounded mean,” I said. “I didn’t mean for it to be mean. I’m sorry. I don’t even know you.”

  I looked at the girls waiting near his chair, whispering less but still staring at us. He didn’t belong to them any more than he did to me, and he never would. But I knew he liked me anyway. Not like a girlfriend. Just liking somebody because you like em.

  “Why’d you tell me to come down here and see you that day at the post office?” I tried to change the subject.

  “I wanted you to.”

  “Well I’m here.”

  He fiddled with the blue towel, finally wrapping it around his neck like a collar or a necklace. “I’m leaving, you know that. I probably won’t come back, you figured that out too I think.”

  He snickered, not a funny laugh this time, but the way somebody does when he’s about to say something that he’s never thought of before, sort of like “the joke’s on me.” That kind of laugh. “Do you know I never broke a rule in my life?” he asked. “I mean I did stuff, but usually I’m busy doing everything exactly right. You’re not like that, are you?”

  “If you’re sayin I’m not perfect, you’re damn right about that.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You don’t try so hard. You don�
��t care so much about everything.”

  “God almighty, you make it sound like something brave. Listen. Whatever I do, it’s cause that’s the only way I know to do. I ain’t tryin to prove nothing to anybody, and I don’t need a medal. I just keep goin.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I need the straight As and the prizes and all that. I don’t even know when it happened, I’ve always been that way.”

  “Well you might oughta be thankful for that, you know? You get noticed. The only thing my grandma ever paid any attention to was my paycheck. I say there’s a shitload of people to tell you what you can and can’t do. I just gotta make sure the loudest voice I’m listenin to is Yours Truly.”

  He grinned. “I like that…Rhonda.”

  Mac blew the whistle from the other side of the pool. “All swim!” he screamed, and most of the old people came outta that pool like somebody had yelled, “Turd in the water!”

  “I have to go back to my perch,” Wade said. “I may have to save somebody anytime now.”

  “Hey Rhonda, come on in!” one of the girls squealed from an oversized nest of towels. I recognized her, older than Wade and me both, her name was Gwen something, a brunette with frizzy wild hair, while the girl beside her laughed with a loud snort and tied the straps of her friend’s top to make it a little bit tighter and push her tits out against the fabric. I could help her with that hair, I thought and surprised myself by thinking something nice when they were enjoying the fact that I wasn’t one of them.

  Wade ignored it. “Come again, Rhonda,” he said. “Bring your bathing suit next time.” He raked his hands through his hair again and shook it out, it was still a little bit wet. I could see the old Wade was back now, whatever thick mud he had stepped in for those few minutes was gone now, dried up or washed off.

  “Maybe I will,” I answered, grabbing the fence and going up on my tiptoes. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to save me.”

  “You never know!” he yelled back, trotting away. With the sun in my eyes now, he faded out into a blur of blue pool water and lounge chairs and girls and towels and plastic bottles of lotion.

  I brushed the damp hair off my forehead. I was burning up on that asphalt, they should have left it gravel, but then that fat lady in the red car woulda really had a kick-ass good time parking. A self-made tornado. I waited ’til Wade had climbed back up into his high chair, looking out over the world. He had to look out for all of em, that was his job. I wished I had asked him what he put down for his one big dream, and I didn’t have a yearbook so I would never know. I wondered what somebody put down as a dream when they could do anything in the world. Did they even call it a dream anymore? I held onto the metal diamonds in the fence, still watching, until I noticed my hands, red from too many shampoos without gloves. Them and the fence were all I could see.

  I didn’t go back. I knew I wouldn’t. It wasn’t for me, not because I couldn’t stand up to the beach towel girls. Hell, I’ve stood up to a lot worse than them. I got busy at the shop, summer ended. The pool people went back to whatever it was they did the rest of the year. I saw who I came to see, that’s all. I guess I wanted proof. Wade Stokes was who I imagined he would be.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MARGARET

  It’s too hot for a picnic. I’m positive that this must violate the Health Department’s standards for what you can make old people do in rest homes. Just because it’s the Fourth of July, some people may want to go sit out there and be eaten alive by flies while they’re trying to gnaw on a hamburger bun, but not I. Lorraine said, “Don’t worry, we’ll be in the shade.” Ordinarily I trust her about anything in the world, so why she is telling such a lie I have no idea because there is no shade at this time of day. When I look out the window, even the birds look hot to me; their back feathers shine like mirrors in the sun. All their movements are so fast and jerky, it’s a wonder they don’t have miniature heart attacks. Their hearts must be bigger than their brains or else they’d hide up in a cool longleaf pine.

  I push the nurse button. I want to change my blouse if I’ve got to go out there and sit in Hades in honor of our country’s freedom. Lorraine appears wearing an apron with bunches of grapes painted all over it. It says in cursive writing, Le Bon Vin! Vive La France! “What are you wearing that ridiculous thing for? Have you taken up gourmet cooking in addition to all manner of torture you inflict on your helpless victims?”

  “I’m tryin to help get ready for the picnic. It’s too much for the kitchen people by themselves.”

  “Are you really going to drag me out there in the middle of the day?”

  “Yes I am because it’ll do you good. You stay in here too much.”

  “Is that right? Well, while you’re at it, why don’t you go ahead and make reservations to Paris for the weekend?”

  “You have got one smart mouth on you, woman. And you better be glad Jesus loves you and so do I, because if I didn’t I’d put a pillow over your face and sit on it.”

  “I am not interested in your threats. I called you because I want to change my blouse. I will roast in this tight thing.”

  Lorraine pulls open the dresser drawer. She has to yank it because it’s made out of particleboard with some kind of fake mahogany veneer on it. They will not let us have our own furniture in here, with the exception of one chair, so we are left with this kind of cheap mess that you couldn’t even sell at a flea market.

  “You usually freeze, all the time freezin,” Lorraine says quietly while rummaging through the contents.

  “If I were twenty years younger I’d sit out there naked if I thought I’d be more comfortable.”

  “That I’d just as soon not see.” She hands me a light beige linen blouse. “Is this all right? I like it on you.”

  “When do we have to go?”

  “The fire department’s comin to set up chairs, so it’s not gon be for another hour at least.”

  “Hey ho, how’re y’all?” Bernice’s head peers around the door frame. She steps inside on tiptoe like she’s trying to prance but could topple over at any given moment. She is carrying a basket over her arm and points to it. “Mister Benny’s taking a nap. Shhh.”

  “We’ll keep our voices down, won’t we, Lorraine?” I whisper.

  “He’s in a basket,” Bernice whispers back. “Like Moses in a basket. It’s not bulrushes though, that’s in Egypt, and we are a long ways away from Egypt, I’ll tell you that right now.”

  “Well good, he’s in a safe place. We’ll wake him up directly.” I motion to her to bring the basket over to me. She sits on the edge of the bed, takes Mister Benny out, and places him beside my head. He smells like maple syrup. “Bernice, has Mister Benny been eating pancakes again?”

  “He loves sweet things, both of us do. He fell in my plate but it was an accident. He loves the taste of syrup. I can always tell real from fake.”

  “Well I can’t,” Lorraine interjects. “April brought home some that somebody gave her from Vermont or somewhere up there. It all tastes the same to me.”

  There are two fire trucks, small ones, pulling into the field behind the building. My window looks out onto it and I’m tempted to try one more time to talk Lorraine into letting me watch the goings-on from here. My husband was a volunteer fireman for a few years, but he never got to ride in a truck as nice as these. Two men are setting up chairs. At least they’re not the folding white ones like you see at a graveside. I would hate that. First of all, they’re too little to be comfortable, and second, well put it this way, the second reason is such that when it comes to pass I won’t have to worry about the first.

  Bernice shoots up like a bottle rocket and is about to leave. “Let’s go to the party now. It’s a hamburger party. I used to throw parties in Raleigh. We’re going to save us some seats out there. Mister Benny’s little, you can sit with him.”

  Lorraine helps me lift up my arms, one at a time, to get them into the sleeves of the blouse.
It hurts but I don’t say anything. I know she knows it hurts, and she’s trying not to raise them too far over my head. She knows that kind of arthritis pain can be too much. Some people don’t know. Some folks here won’t take a bath because the people that give them are too rough. It’s not because they’re senile and don’t want to be clean; it’s because it hurts, goddamn it. Just moving a body can hurt, which is something that no person can understand until it’s too late for them to be sympathetic about it because they’ve left the ranks of the ignorant and joined the ranks of the suffering. I don’t complain, except to Lorraine. She can take it. She wants me to tell her how I feel. Once the sleeves are on, the buttons down the front are easy. She starts to do it, but I push her hand away gently. I have to try it myself. And if it takes too long, Lorraine doesn’t huff and puff, she waits, not smiling like “oh isn’t that sweet.” She doesn’t saying anything at all, giving me time.

  After she finishes up in the kitchen, she comes back for me. On her arm, I travel to the party outside. Everyone that’s not bedridden approaches from all directions in various states of dress or lack thereof. One woman has on the same pajamas she wears every day, covered with penguins and white fur around the cuffs, sweltering though the day may be. Taken in all at once, it looks like a string of ghosts, ambling along so slowly that they appear to be floating.