Beginning with Cannonballs

by Jill McCroskey Coupe

  When Hanna spoke again, her voice was stronger. “Mel thought I’d go down to Miami while I was in Florida. Visit some of the places PJ had been. I’m more curious about that Texaco station in Richmond. Was PJ buying gas for someone who’d given him a ride? Was he maybe heading back to Reston? What or who made him decide to fly to Miami? That’s what haunts me.”

  “We should go sometime,” Gail said. “Check it out.”

  “Or not. Gas pumps don’t say much.”

  “No,” Gail agreed. “They’re like the three monkeys. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”

  A faint smile from Hanna. “I’m glad you’re here. I didn’t mean those things I said before. Mama was your maid, but none of it was your fault.”

  “Is that why you’ve been so standoffish all these years?”

  “Standoffish?”

  “Keeping your distance. Being resentful.”

  Hanna blew her nose. “Have I?”

  “Don’t be so damn dense. You know you have.”

  Mel came in with chocolate chip cookies. He said he’d called Nick and told him Gail would be spending the night in Reston.

  “Thanks, Mel.” Hanna dried first one cheek, then the other, on an arm of her sweatshirt. “Thanks for everything. I can be such a shit sometimes. Gail thinks so, too.”

  “What did Nick say?” Gail asked.

  “Not much,” Mel said. “I think I woke him up.”

  “Let’s sleep here,” Gail said to Hanna, “on the sofa. We haven’t slept in the same room since we were infants.” Maybe they could start all over, get it right this time.

  “Dibs on the longer section,” Hanna said. “I’m taller.”

  “But I’m the guest.”

  “No one invited you. You just showed up.”

  “And then Mel invited me in.”

  “Good ol’ Mel. What would we ever do without him?”

  Later, after Mel had brought them blankets and pillows and turned out the lights, Gail said, “I wish you’d done it. Told my father, ‘Thank you, Charles.’”

  But Hanna was snoring.

  It was the final revelation of a long, heartbreaking night. Her dear friend Hanna, whom she’d known for going on forty-three years now, was a snorer.

  Flames Floating on a Lake

  Reston and Philadelphia, 1986

  HANNA WAS ABOVE THE CLOUDS, returning to the good ol’ US of A for the second time in her life. Her most prized souvenir? A round, green-and-purple sticker proclaiming: I’VE QUEUED AT WIMBLEDON!

  She’d loved London—so many different kinds of museums, theaters, restaurants. And once she’d learned how to use the tube, she’d been able to go anywhere. Plus, the BBC devoted two channels to Wimbledon. Watching the matches on TV in London had been almost (but not quite) as exciting as seeing them in person.

  On day two (Tuesday), her forty-third birthday, she’d joined the queue outside the All England Club at six in the morning. Standing right in front of her was a woman from South Africa, whose husband, Hanna soon learned, was attending the same math conference as Mel. In marveling at the statistical improbability of this coincidence, the two tennis fans from different continents became immediate chums.

  Although they weren’t able to get tickets for Centre Court, Hanna and Lila did see Lori McNeil play, and a bunch of others whom Hanna had watched on TV. Not Stefan Edberg, unfortunately, even though Hanna went back by herself on day three.

  Wimbledon was very white—the spectators, the players’ outfits, and most of the players. People gawked at Hanna and her new friend, but there were no ugly words.

  While they were feasting on strawberries and cream, Lila, who had three daughters back home in Johannesburg, asked if Hanna had children. Not wanting to upset this kind woman who’d befriended her, Hanna said no and quickly changed the subject.

  “No” was the truth. “Not any more” would have been the whole truth.

  Now, with Mel sitting next to her in the aisle seat, she turned to gaze out the plane’s oval window. Nothing but blue sky at thirty thousand feet. For astronauts, who went so much higher, the sky was gray-black.

  Her mother kept saying they should have some sort of memorial service for PJ. But the burning cargo boat had sunk, taking PJ with it. In a way, his ashes had been scattered at sea. Wasn’t that enough?

  Commemorate. Honor. Praise. Celebrate.

  You could write both the lyrics and the music, Gail had said.

  With a British Airways pen, Hanna began scribbling on the jacket of her plane ticket, scratching words out, adding new ones, until Mel opened his briefcase and gave her a clean sheet of paper. She copied what was beginning to resemble a poem, making additional changes, and asked him for more paper.

  Beyond the stars

  Nothing but more stars

  Sorry, no pearly gate

  No one sealing our fate

  I know, reality is harsh

  Goodbye means God be with you

  We have this counterproductive need to

  Send them along

  Sing the sad song

  Do what others expect us to do

  But why not match the goodbye to the crime

  Reenact, in a ghostly mime,

  What actually happened

  On the night that ended

  His earthly time

  Fire and water, water and fire

  A tiny nocturnal pyre

  Lit birthday candles, but no cake

  Flames floating on a lake

  Until they expire

  The next morning, jet-lagged in Reston, she wrote another poem.

  Let me tell you ’bout the father

  Incandescent smile, ice-cold eyes

  Generous with his money

  Multilingual with his lies

  No, let’s not bother

  With the father

  Let’s talk about the son

  My only ever sunshine

  Wanted his real daddy

  Same way I’d wanted mine

  Two years my boy’s been gone

  Yeah, I know, I was blind

  It’s no fun

  Talking about the son

  And what about the ghost

  I saw at lunchtime on the Mall

  Didn’t even know his name

  Till he went and ruined it all

  One, two, three

  Trinity

  That woman talking to her guitar

  Craziest person in this bar

  Send her home where she belongs

  Tell her, NO MORE SONGS

  Four months later, on the evening of October 24, PJ’s eighteenth birthday, Hanna struck a match. She lit a small birthday-cake candle, then began dripping wax onto the gunwales of a blue plastic tugboat. Taking great care, she attached eighteen candles to the boat.

  Why had she saved her son’s favorite toy? Why does a mother save anything?

  She and Mel had already agreed: No words, no music. Respectful silence only.

  When it seemed dark enough and calm enough, Hanna lit the candles and set the tiny funeral barge afloat. Eighteen flames, reflected in the dark waters of Lake Anne, became thirty-six, but who was counting?

  She would find a way—a non-standoffish way—to tell Gail. Who’d encouraged her to write lyrics, never imagining that, while flying high above the clouds, Hanna would compose a dirge.

  The tugboat caught a slow current and was nearly all the way across the lake before the last candle went out.

  Mel took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.

  Hanna was crying, too, but only a little. She could feel PJ’s presence, knew that he knew she still loved him.

  The next time her mother asked about a memorial service, they were on the phone. Hanna described the tugboat, the lit birthday candles, the meandering path across the lake.

  Silence from Philly. Then, “Okay. Let’s do something like that here, at Christmas. With the whole family.”

  Hanna reluctantly agreed, knowing it wouldn’t be the same.


  And then they all got to arguing about the where and the how of it. Sophie thought the Delaware River wouldn’t be clean enough for PJ and that somewhere along the Schuylkill might be better. Jeremiah wanted to light candles on the Cooper River, not far from where he lived in New Jersey. A friend of his sailed a Sunfish there, and they might be able to use his boat. But then that didn’t work out.

  So, on Christmas Eve, with the whole family gathered ’round, Sophie lit a big red Christmas candle and set it on top of the piano. “This is in remembrance of our beloved PJ,” she said softly, as Del, using his right hand only, began playing “Silent Night.”

  Hanna’s heart wasn’t in it, but she sang along dutifully, until Jeremiah gave her one of his looks and she knew he was going to do it—sing “round John virgin,” the way the two of them had back in their Sunday-school days. But then, at that moment, little Newton threw up all over his mother’s dress.

  Del stopped playing. Sophie took Newton. Alicia went into the kitchen to clean off the puke.

  “It’s like we’re our very own sitcom,” Hanna said.

  Again, she could feel PJ watching. He was loving it.

  Seeing Ghosts

  Baltimore, Maryland, 1993

  WHEN THE PHONE RANG, GAIL was afraid it might be Hanna, calling to cancel their dinner plans. It had been seven years since the Challenger disaster, since the night she and Hanna had had it out, cleared the air, rescued their friendship. They saw each other more frequently now, sometimes meeting on a weekend at an art museum in DC. What Gail enjoyed even more was Hanna’s chatty emails. Their fifty-year-old friendship had tiptoed into cyberspace; Hanna, as usual, had taken the lead.

  Tonight, for the first time since childhood, they would celebrate a birthday together. Hanna’s fiftieth. Gail had made reservations at a Spanish restaurant, weeks ago.

  With trepidation, she lifted the receiver, said hello.

  “Nick there?” a male voice rasped.

  He wasn’t. She offered to take a message.

  “This Mrs. Ranier?”

  Gail admitted that it was. She’d learned not to get involved in conversations with Nick’s real estate clients.

  “George here. Your brother-in-law.”

  The chair beside the telephone table was, as Nick often joked, on its last legs. Forgetting this, Gail sat down.

  The brothers hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since Nick was ten. Their parents had tried, several times, to locate George, but the only George Ranier his age in the entire United States and Canada was a Baptist minister in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Not their George.

  “I’m in prison,” George said. “Don’t have long to live.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I need to speak to Nick.”

  “He’s at work,” Gail said. “Would you like to leave a phone number?”

  George obliged. “I’m in the infirmary. I can only take phone calls at certain times.”

  “Nick will find a way to get through to you,” Gail said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Hell, I don’t worry about nothing no more.” And George hung up.

  Marla, a secretary in Nick’s office, said he was showing several houses that afternoon but that she’d try to track him down. “He should call you at home?”

  “Immediately, yes. Thanks, Marla.”

  About thirty minutes later, the phone rang.

  “Hello, sweetie,” a woman’s voice said.

  Gail asked who was calling.

  “Who the hell do you think? It’s your mother.” Who had never, ever, not once in her life, called Gail “sweetie.”

  “Sorry, Mother. I was expecting another call. How are you?”

  “It’s your father. He had a heart attack.”

  Again Gail sat down in the rickety chair. “Where? When?”

  “On his way to the mailbox, about an hour ago. I’m calling from the hospital. He’s in intensive care.”

  “Should I fly down?”

  “Entirely up to you, darling. He’s going to be okay. I just thought you should know.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Gail located the phone book, which had migrated to the kitchen, called USAir, and was put on hold. Realizing Nick wouldn’t be able to reach her, she slammed the phone down. Ate several squares of dark chocolate. Gulped some wine from the stoppered bottle in the refrigerator. Took some deep breaths. Calmed herself down.

  Intensive care would live up to its name. She could fly to Knoxville tomorrow. Hanna’s birthday celebration would happen as planned.

  “No birthday cake,” Hanna’s most recent email had admonished. Meaning, Gail understood, “No candles.”

  When Nick called, she burst into tears.

  “Just tell me what’s wrong,” he said.

  She began with the heart attack, adding that USAir had had the audacity to put her on hold.

  “Then call Delta. But don’t we have dinner plans?”

  “There’s more,” she said. “Your brother called.”

  “George?”

  “How many brothers do you have?”

  “George called?” Nick said. “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “He’s in prison. Said he was dying.”

  “Yeah, well. Okay, I’ll be home soon. Call Delta. You can leave tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want to go out to dinner if my father might die while we’re there.”

  “Then call Hanna and cancel. She’ll understand.”

  “But I haven’t celebrated Hanna’s birthday with her since we were twelve.”

  “Honey,” Nick said, “you’re sounding like you’re twelve now.”

  As soon as they’d hung up, the phone rang. “Yes?” Gail said.

  “Gail? This is Charlotte. Your mother’s friend?”

  “Is my father . . . ?” She couldn’t even say the word.

  “No, dear. In fact, he’s doing much better. I’m keeping Bessie company at the hospital. Things are looking up.”

  “Then the heart attack was a mild one?” Gail said.

  “Heart attack? Oh, no, dear. He lost his balance and fell, that’s all.”

  “A stroke, maybe?”

  “I don’t think so,” Charlotte said. “But then, I’m not a doctor. A medical doctor, I mean. He may have broken some bones in his hand.”

  May have? “Tell Mother I’ll try to fly down tomorrow.”

  “Your parents would love to see you, of course, but I really don’t think this is the emergency it seemed at first. How’s my girl Sandy?”

  Gail’s spinning mind came to rest on the recollection that her daughter and Charlotte had spent a lot of time together in Knoxville. Eight years ago, that had been, the year Sandy was in tenth grade.

  “Sandy’s in Uganda,” Gail said. “Saving the giraffes.”

  “Uganda? My, my. For how long?”

  “Not sure. She loves it there.”

  “And your other daughter?” Charlotte said.

  “Allison’s waiting tables in Maine this summer.”

  “So you and your husband are empty-nesters.”

  Gail agreed that this was true. “How long will Daddy be in the hospital?”

  “I don’t think anyone knows at this point.”

  “Then I’ll call the airlines as soon as we hang up.”

  “But wouldn’t you have to take time off from your job?”

  “I work with the city schools. We’re on summer break now.” Did Charlotte not want her to come?

  “You’re no longer a social worker? Bessie didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m still a social worker, but with the school system.” Gail tried to hide her impatience.

  “I see. Well, give me a call when you have an arrival time. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

  Gail wrote down Charlotte’s number under the one for George and was on hold with Delta when Nick came in the back door. So as to wrap her arms around him, she set the receiver down.

  “They’re not sure what�
�s wrong with Daddy,” she said to Nick’s shirt pocket. “But something sure as hell is wrong with the airlines.”

  “Why don’t you wait, then? If need be, we can fly down together.” Nick leaned forward, hung up on Delta.

  She pointed to George’s phone number, explained that he was in a prison infirmary, and went upstairs to get dressed.

  Fifty years of friendship called for a touch of elegance. Gail was not an elegant dresser, never had been. Remembering the gray skirt and orange blouse she’d worn to DC, to Casey’s Irish Pub, she decided on a royal-blue dress. Tonight, in Baltimore, she would be a bluebird, not a robin. A royal bluebird. She added the coral necklace her father had given her one Christmas.

  Nick came into their bedroom and began pacing back and forth, complaining that the phone number was for a motel in Detroit. No one named Ranier was registered there. They didn’t even have any guests named George.

  “Maybe I wrote it down wrong,” Gail said.

  “Don’t you see? My brother hasn’t used his real name since he left reform school. I bet he isn’t even in Detroit.” Nick removed a clean shirt from its hanger. “I don’t want to alarm you, but let’s leave right away.”

  Nick took a circuitous route downtown, checking the rearview mirror at nearly every turn. He parked near the restaurant, and they walked up Charles Street to Baltimore’s own Washington Monument, built even before the one in DC.

  The traffic circle surrounding the monument was flanked by a small park. Gail led Nick to an empty bench, sat down, and removed her shoes, an elegant pair of high heels she’d hurriedly grabbed from the closet, having forgotten how excruciatingly uncomfortable they were.

  Beneath dark storm clouds, the Victorian Gothic spires of the United Methodist church glowed in a narrow shaft of sunlight. A gray-haired man scowled at them as he ambled past.

  “Would you recognize George if you saw him?” Gail asked.

  Nick gazed up at the monument honoring another George. “Good question.” He took her hand. “I was just a kid. I didn’t even know what a swastika was.”

  Gail knew the story. From the living room window of his childhood home, in a small town near Flint, Nick had seen George painting something on the garage door across the street. Then the getaway car, a black Plymouth, had pulled up and spirited George away.