by Julia Glass
To hell with the mannerly make-believe world of Matlock. To hell with my resolve, my respect for others’ “boundaries” and “feelings.”
I picked up the phone and dialed Sarah. When I heard the beep, I said, “Sarah, if you don’t call me today, I promise you that I will handcuff myself to Rico the next time he leaves the bloody preschool in my backyard, if that’s the only way I get to see you. Enough of this duck-and-cover. Enough of—”
“Percy.”
“Sarah.” I nearly wept at the sound of her voice, my name in her voice.
I heard her sigh (and not romantically). “Oh Percy.”
Old heart hammering, I waited.
“Percy, here’s the thing. I know you feel you’ve done what’s best for me, and I know objectively that you’re right. But I had been hoping …”
I waited again.
“Hoping for my situation to change with this commission. I know it’s naïve, but I thought it might put me in line for a job, somehow, with benefits or … Because of Rico, I … Jesus. The more I say, the stupider I’ll sound.”
“Talk, Sarah. Talk. Tell me the time of day. Tell me about the weather. The mud on your shoes. Sound stupid. Just try.”
She told me that she had heard from Dr. Wang the previous afternoon. The pathology of the tumor was complicated. There would be more surgery, but it might come later, after other treatments, with each treatment another doctor. All of them—procedures, doctors—would cost the moon.
“That’s not important now.”
“Of course it is. Of course it’s important.” She paused. “Or are you richer than I think you are? Is money a footnote to you? Are you the tweedy professor with a closet full of Krugerrands? A well-aged trustafarian?”
“I wish I were. But I can certainly lend you money until we straighten out this business about your insurance.” Oddly, her anger couldn’t touch me. I liked that word, trustafarian, and was mildly tempted to ask where she’d heard it.
“Percy, we are talking thousands and thousands of dollars. Add a few more thousands. I’m already up a creek for not having insurance in the only state that punishes you if you don’t.”
“You will. I’ll see to that.”
“My situation is complicated—”
“Oh, Sarah, whose isn’t?”
“There are reasons I might not be eligible for that state insurance everybody talks about.”
I’d heard rumors about our newfangled state insurance system, but I’d paid no attention, skipped all the articles in the paper. What if Sarah couldn’t be insured? I thought about my retirement account, the second mortgage (half of Trudy’s medical training) on which I still had a few years to go. I began to wish that, like my father, I had fussed over rare books and put away a cache to sell at a moment like this.
“Percy, I have an appointment to see your daughter next week.”
Trudy, I thought. Trudy would solve this conundrum. “I’m very glad to hear that,” I said. “What day?”
“I’m going to this one alone. I’m driving myself in. Don’t even begin to protest.”
I was standing in the kitchen, barefoot. I realized that my feet were freezing. I looked down. Lord but they were ugly, too.
“All right,” I said. “But let’s see each other this weekend. Take Rico to … Did you know there’s a museum dedicated to knights and armor, in Worcester? I’ll drive us there on Saturday.”
“Knights and armor? Oh Percy.”
“That’s what you need. Armaments. Chivalry! What do you say?”
In the following silence, I could hear her striving to push me away. I could also hear myself winning. I clenched the fist that wasn’t holding the phone.
“I can’t seem to figure out what I need,” she said. “Except, okay, you.”
Right after Poppy’s death, at least for a year or two, my habits changed. I locked the doors at night. I stopped drinking. In town, I limited myself to one cheeseburger a week. I played a lunchtime game of squash, on Mondays and Wednesdays, with Earl, my colleague in reference who covered physical science. All I could think about was how much my daughters now needed me. Needed me. If necessary, I would live forever.
For the last few weeks of that summer, none of us went near the pond. Helena devoted herself to getting the girls out of Matlock as often as possible. She took them to museums, to Crane’s Beach on the distant North Shore, to the mall for clothing safaris. The sound of my daughters’ laughter returned to the house, in small rare bursts, by the time they were back at school, back in the buffering, benevolently selfish company of their friends.
For a time, they seemed to really like, even treasure, each other. Rarer than the sound of their laughter was the sound of sibling strife. They spent more time together in their rooms. They did homework together, both at home and at the library. Silver lining, that filigreed cliché, ran like a tremor through my head. In the pleasure of their harmony, I found a new source of guilt.
One night that September, I came out of my bathroom to hear them talking, in earnest tones, through Clover’s open door. I stood in the shadow of the hallway and listened.
“If we were religious,” said Clover, “we would believe that Mom’s spirit was still alive. That she was around us, maybe hovering over the pond or something like that. That we’d meet her in heaven.”
“But we’re not,” said Trudy. “We don’t believe in God.”
“Well maybe I’m not so sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think Mom and Dad just don’t get the spiritual thing. It’s like a kind of blindness.”
“Didn’t,” said Trudy.
“Didn’t what?”
“You mean, Mom didn’t get the spiritual thing. She’s not around to get anything now.”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Clover. “I get these vibes sometimes, at night. Like, if I’m out by the pond. I go down there, sometimes, if I can’t go to sleep.”
Dear God, I thought—and caught the irony at once. But would I have forbidden Clover from trying to commune with her lost mother? I had noticed that her recent reading included Hermann Hesse and C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. I’d held my tongue until I saw her carrying a paperback copy of Waiting for God, by Simone Weil. She told me that one of her teachers had recommended the book. She seemed defensive, so I asked nothing more.
“You don’t, like, go in, do you?” asked Trudy.
“That would be too creepy.”
“Is it scary?” asked Trudy. “Like, do you think she’s a ghost?”
“I think she’s a presence. A presence specific to here. Like, I don’t know, a warmth. Is that a ghost? Define ghost.”
“Well, whatever they are, I don’t believe in ghosts any more than God. Science would have proved their existence by now.” But after a pause, she said, “Though I almost wish I did. I’m kind of jealous that you do.”
This pierced me to the core (a pain I deserved for eavesdropping on my children). Even losing Poppy would not tempt me toward some warm and fuzzy notion of afterlife reunions or the wishful nonsense of ghostly apparitions. But if Clover saw her as “a presence specific to here,” then I must do all I could to remain here. I could see that Trudy, despite her defiantly practical nature, her faith in the empirical above all else, would also feel bereft if—as so many people had suggested by now—I moved my precious little family closer to the city.
Matlock, back then, was not the hothouse of affluence it has since become, yet Poppy and I together were barely able to afford our mortgage, taxes, and the never-ending maintenance of our Methusalean home. Poppy’s income from her dance lessons had been smaller than mine, but it had mattered.
From that moment on, I watched every penny, kept a budget, and tried not to let the girls notice (though I’m sure they did) that I steered them toward less expensive hobbies and summer activities. They never went to sleepaway camps, and we took our vacations at the summer homes of friends. (Helena, bless her, took Clover and then T
rudy for two weeks in Paris after each girl graduated from high school.) I swore that nothing would budge us from our house with a barn by the water.
For all my economies, however, I’d stubbornly hoarded that barn. What would have happened, I wondered now, if I had shared it long before Evelyn’s call—if it had evolved, comfortably, perhaps shabbily, into a local dance school run by someone else, into the office of an architecture firm, a law practice, a dental clinic? What else, other than posses of noisy toddlers, jungle gyms, tree houses, and Sarah, would be different now about the life I led? What else would I have missed?
12
Snowbirds, Loud called them, the people who left their homes every winter to go somewhere warm: not Guatemala, nowhere so unpredictable or wild, but Florida, or the tamer islands in the Caribbean. They would leave their big, elegant houses in Matlock empty for months on end. (After dark, timers turned lights on and off, to give the illusion that bodies moved upstairs and down. Anyone who had criminal intentions would hardly be fooled by this.) After Celestino took care of Mrs. Bullard’s plants while she went away for November, Loud got the idea that he would offer plant-sitting over the winter, maybe even tie it in with a “plowing package.”
“You figure,” said Loud, “that if they’ve got the greenhouse of orchids, or even the scrappy collection of geraniums and spider plants, they can’t get someone to come in if the house is inaccessible due to snow. Right? And some of these people have somebody check the joint for frozen pipes, sudden leaks.… So if I’m plowing for the caretaker, why not be the friggin’ caretaker, right? Mother, what do we think?”
“I’d say we have a new service to offer,” said Mrs. Loud. “I’ll have the flyers printed out this afternoon. How about that? Or how about an e-blast? I’m getting good at that.” She winked at Celestino.
Celestino had grown to like Mrs. Loud, perhaps because she never addressed him as hombre or asked him anything about his personal life. He had shown up at the office every few days to fetch Mrs. Bullard’s keys, then returned them on his way to the train. They would talk about the weather or stories in the news unconnected to politics or war (or ICE deportations, which were suddenly very much in the news). Still, he could not bring himself to call her Happy.
Celestino had just returned Mrs. Bullard’s keys for the last time. Loud had accompanied him that day, to make sure everything was in its proper place for the woman’s return. He had gone in with Celestino twice during her absence. “Just to make sure you’re not hijacking the silver. No offense, hombre,” he’d said. “I know I’d be tempted!”
Celestino’s contempt for Loud had increased, along with his dependence on the man. Why did it feel somehow wrong, immoral, this relationship? If the man wanted to give him greater responsibility, wasn’t that a good thing? As he stood awkwardly beside the mother’s desk, Celestino wondered if he could dare hope that Loud’s “new service” might mean he could avoid the foot-numbing, face-freezing days spent entirely outdoors clearing the endless snow from the long drives, the patios, the rooftops and gutters, the paths to hot tubs and garden sheds. Loud had added firewood delivery, too, this fall. After one too many splinters, Celestino had broken down and bought a pair of thick leather gloves.
Finally, Loud looked at him. “So are you up for this, hombre? Indoor gardening? How’s that for a softer mode of employment, hey?”
“I am certainly willing,” Celestino said stiffly. If he seemed too eager, would Loud refuse to give him more money? Did he dare ask for more money?
“You hear that, Mother?” Loud laughed. “He’s ‘willing,’ our compadre here. But in the meantime, the Pellinis are having a conniption about their leaves. That monster oak does it every year: drops a buttload of leaves all at once, right after Thanksgiving. Biological clockwork. Just like a woman.”
The word woman pulled Celestino back to Isabelle. Not that his mind or his dreams had let go of her since Arturo had reported that he’d seen her.
After the meal at the Big Oven, the day Celestino had let himself be interviewed by Robert, Arturo had walked him home. Celestino had told him about Isabelle. He had told him too much, he knew, but this young man, Arturo, whom he would have despised in another version of his own life, had a way of making people talk. (Perhaps that’s why Robert had invited him along to the interview, not just because of the language they shared.)
One evening two weeks later, Arturo had dropped by Mrs. Karp’s house. He’d startled the woman, since Celestino never had visitors, but she, too, had been charmed.
He’d invited Celestino for a late dinner at a nearby bar. Arturo chattered confidently yet aimlessly in Spanish, skipping from one thing to another: the neighborhoods of Lothian, the Democratic political race, the climate. (Chicago had never quite hardened him to northern weather; was it the same for Celestino?)
Silently, Celestino wondered why Arturo wanted his company. They’d found a table and ordered beers when Arturo confessed that he was homesick for a home he no longer had. He talked about his half siblings, who had taken over his father’s coffee business. “I could show up down there and they wouldn’t sic the dogs on me—and there are dogs, literal dogs, believe me! But it would be weird,” he said. “Which is too bad. They still resent my mother. Not the money, I think, but that my father loved her more than their mother. I’m the reminder. The love child.”
They’d been in the bar for an hour, finished their burgers, when Arturo mentioned Isabelle. He had gone to that seminar at Harvard, the psychology seminar that showed up on his fancy phone. He’d invited Celestino to go—but of course he’d been working, as he did nearly every day of every week save Sundays. It shocked him to find out that Arturo had gone on his own.
“I was curious, you know?” he said. “About what kind of a woman holds a guy’s fascination for years on end. Was she a siren, was she a vixen, was she an angel?”
Celestino’s sudden, fearful jealousy must have shown on his face.
“Wow, man, don’t chop my balls off. I said I was curious,” said Arturo. “That is all. I am an inquiring kind of guy, Celestino. A student, not a schemer.” No soy un maquinador.
Celestino tried to relax. “You spoke with her.”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I just checked her out—she had to be the one you remembered. The name, the context … You can’t turn your back on a coincidence like that. And sure thing, she talked about having had this famous archaeologist as a father, how it influenced who she is now, more than if he’d been an ordinary guy. She talked about what it’s like seeing people react when they find out who your dad was. How you’re tempted to flee to the opposite side of the world, just because no one there would know his name, but that’s still letting him steer your life.” Arturo paused. He stared at Celestino for a moment. “You’re the silent one, man. Aren’t you burning with questions?”
Celestino could not imagine what to ask. But there was so much he had to know!
“She’s very stylish, your Isabelle.”
“Yes. In that way, she was like her mother.”
“That French thing.”
Celestino felt miserable when he should have felt elated. Shouldn’t he? He had dreamed of finding her, intended to find her—had he actually thought he would?—but on his own. A private search, at the right time. When the time is ripe, as he’d heard Loud say about this or that enterprise. He had not meant to involve someone else. He was no maquinador, either.
Arturo played with his empty beer bottle, printing rings of moisture on the table, the links of a chain. “So I have to confess, I followed her. After the symposium broke up, she went off alone. I know where she lives.” He looked gleeful in a way that made Celestino feel ill. “Don’t you want to know where?”
Celestino wished he had not eaten the burger. It was too large, obscenely large, more than he generally ate for any meal. “Why do you tell me all this?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Arturo shot back. “I thought … Oh. You think I’ve condescended to help you. Is
that it? Robert does this, too. Accuses me of acting like I’m some kind of benefactor.” He made a noise of disgust.
Couldn’t the boy’s efforts be sincere? He was obviously a romantic. And what was Celestino if not a romantic? His mother told him so again and again. In her mouth, it was an accusation.
“I want to see her,” he said. “But I thought it would come at a time when I was … ready.”
“Ready how? Who’s ever ready for anything this important? I mean sure, it’s totally risky. But next week she could up and move to California. Right? Or meet some guy. I’ll tell you this, too, for what it’s worth.” Arturo leaned toward Celestino and grinned. He raised his left hand and spread his fingers. “No wedding ring, man. And only her name on the buzzer at her building.”
Aware that he was blushing, Celestino thought about the girl he’d known: old for her age, yes, but still a girl; not a full-grown woman with style and money and … advantages that were matched by nothing he had to show. Celestino laughed.
“What?” said Arturo. “What’s so funny?”
“I am thinking of how my mother believes in destiny. Destiny over choices that you make. As if it doesn’t matter what you plan for. In the end, it’s all written. It always was.”
“Excuse me, but that is crap,” said Arturo. “All that Catholic, God’s-will stuff? I outgrew that by age five.” He looked at his watch. “Sorry, but I have to make the last train in. So here.” He handed Celestino a piece of paper, folded. “Her address. Also, my phone number in case you lost it.”
When the radio news carried stories about the raids and the deportations, they were almost always somewhere distant—Illinois or Oklahoma, maybe California. They were in communities where poor white people, “legal” people, hated Latinos for having jobs when they had none. Not that they would have wanted those other jobs, the jobs killing pigs or cleaning sewers or climbing trees to pick fruit. Though sometimes the people who were deported had businesses, modest businesses like tailor shops or souvenir stands. But always, these things went on in distant parts of the country.