“If you’re getting up, get me another brownie,” says Jacob from across the table.
“Not your waitress,” says Elise in a singsong voice, and Jacob’s exaggerated wounded face makes Sam laugh.
“Chicks usually dig it when I talk like that,” Jacob says in a serviceable gangster voice.
“If we’re chicks,” says Claire, “then what’re you, a Peep?”
“A gross Peep,” says Stacy. “Like one you find in the couch cushions way after Easter. Crusty and full of dog hair with all the sugar scraped off.”
“A crusty Peep?” says Jacob, splatting his hand across his chest. “Girls, that hurts.”
“Sorry you feel that way, boy,” says Claire.
A crusty Peep, thinks Sam. I’ve got to write that down.
Since Radical Hag Wednesday, it’s been Sam’s nightly or sometimes afternoon habit (why, he wonders are nightly and daily words but not morningly or afternoonly?) to write down his thoughts and observations, his “columns.” He seems to censor himself less when he writes by hand; words not easily erased by a click of a key seem more real to him, more permanent. Working at the Gazette, reading all those typewritten and handwritten words on all different kinds of stationery, has made him a fan of ink and paper, and he has started carrying a notebook in his back pocket. He already jotted down a few things when he was in the bathroom after the service, and when he gets home, he’ll write more.
He sees Elise chatting with Lois and Mrs. Garnet at the dessert table. Sam didn’t know that almost always there is a standard after-funeral menu of ham and turkey buns, potato salad, and coleslaw, followed by white and chocolate sheet cakes. Because of his mother’s request, the desserts offered today were all made from Haze’s recipes—almond crescent cookies, brownies, lemon bars, fudge, and toffee bars.
There are at least a dozen women, mostly gray or white haired, who skitter in and out of the swinging church kitchen doors. Previously, these devoted church ladies would have been invisible to Sam, mere figures to refill trays, to get everyone more of what they wanted, but now he’s looking at them as real people who were once his age (although he finds that almost too hard to believe).
One woman trots back to the kitchen carrying an empty bowl, her apron strings tied around a trim waist, and Sam notices her legs (despite the ugly crepe-soled shoes she wears) are shapely and imagines what she was like—fifty? sixty? sixty-five years ago?—when she was his own age.
Get a grip, he says to himself, with a slight shake of his head.
“We’re going back to school,” announces Claire, and as she and Stacy stand, Jacob bolts up and says, “I’ll go with you.”
Sam stares openmouthed at Jacob, who has never been eager to get back to school.
With a slight shrug of his shoulders, Jacob raises his eyebrows, and his eyes dart to Stacy, a signal to Sam that “wherever this one’s going, I’m going too.”
He watches his friends thread their way around the cluster of round tables, Jacob’s neck craned to give him more height because both girls are taller than he.
Sam’s goal is to be six feet three inches, and at five feet eight, he’s hoping for a growth spurt. His dad’s six feet, and his mom’s five feet seven (he knows that because they just measured themselves, Susan laughing and disbelieving that her youngest son had surpassed her in height and wanting definite proof).
“A lot of movie stars are shorter than you’d think,” Lois had told him during one of their mutual hospital visits. “I liked the tall ones: Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, Clint Eastwood.” Sam knew who the latter was but had to look up the other two, and after watching clips of them on YouTube, he rented a couple of their movies. And liked them.
“Here,” says Elise, setting a small frosted square in front of him. “That’s one of the last toffee bars, they’re going fast.” Sitting down she asks, “Where’d everybody go?”
“Back to school,” says Sam.
“Losers,” says Elise, “although I probably should do the same. I’ve got a test in biology, and the makeup tests are always harder than the regular ones.”
She wipes a smear of chocolate off her lip and adjusts her purse on her shoulder.
“See you back at school today or tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” says Sam, understanding how lips can be described as rosebuds.
With a nod, Elise says, “Cool” and “See you later then.” She rushes out but doesn’t get very far, turning around to tell Sam, “You look really handsome in that suit.”
Sam watches her leave and pops the bar into his mouth. The pleasure receptors that have already lit up with Elise’s words light up again.
“Scare all your friends away?” a voice asks.
It takes Sam a moment to chew and swallow.
“Guess they saw you coming,” he says, looking up at his neighbor Harlan Dodd.
The old man laughs.
“I seem to have that effect on people. But only the ones I’m not interested in anyway.”
“Would you like to sit down?” asks Sam. “Could I get you a treat?”
“I already partook,” says Mr. Dodd. “I particularly enjoyed the fudge.”
Dodd continues to stand, his veiny hands gripped on the back of a chair. Sam can tell he wants to say something, so he waits. Finally, the old man coughs and says, “Has your mother told you . . . has she told you if they’ll be looking for a new columnist?”
Sam is surprised by the question, surprised that he hasn’t wondered that himself.
“No, she hasn’t.”
“Well, if she’s thinking about a replacement, tell her to get someone who’s not such a flaming liberal. Those last two columns reprinted were off the rails.”
“At least we didn’t reprint the letters you wrote complaining about them,” says Sam, a flush of anger rising in him. “They were really off the rails.”
“At least I’m going in the right direction,” says Mr. Dodd.
“Ever think your right direction might be wrong?”
That their words are equally huffy and petulant seem to surprise them both, and they almost, but don’t, laugh.
“Can’t believe you’d rile up an old man like that,” says Mr. Dodd, for whom having the last word is important. “Anyway, tell your mother that I hope that she finds a good replacement—someone who has a little more sense.”
“Haze had a lot of sense,” says Sam, wondering, Doesn’t this old asshole ever quit?
“I know she did,” says Mr. Dodd. He leans and raps once on the tabletop, which seems to Sam a sort of jab in the ribs. “Haze Evans was blessed with sense.”
Sam’s gape is about to turn into a smile when Dodd adds, “Notice I didn’t say what kind.”
He pivots as easily as a pro basketball player, and Sam watches him until he exits and is surprised by his own low chuckle, even as he thinks, what a jerk.
Most of the tables are empty, although knots of people stand around talking, arms folded across their chests (in one column, Haze had referred to this as the Minnesota State Pose). Sam sees his mother talking to Jens Selby’s mother in one such group and sees his dad coming out of the kitchen, bus tub in hand.
“Dad,” he says, joining him at a table covered with half-filled coffee cups and saucers dotted with crumbs. “How’d you get roped into this?”
Phil gestures to the white-haired and bald church men who are helping their female comrades in the kitchen by bussing tables.
“Thought they could use some help.”
“Okay, okay,” says Sam, getting the hint. He gathers up several water glasses and places them in the plastic tub. “It was nice, wasn’t it, Dad? I mean the funeral?”
Phil nods. “It was a beautiful funeral. The kind I’d like to have—good music, an officiant with an actual sense of humor, and eulogies that make you wish you knew the person being talked about a little better.”
“I feel like I knew her pretty well,” says Sam. The words surprise him, jumping out of his mouth like sheep
out of an open gate. Dishes clatter as he sets coffee cups in the tub. “I mean, because I’ve read so many of her words.”
Phil nods. “Your mother told me about how you discovered . . . well, about her grandfather and Haze.”
A man with a silver handlebar mustache passes by with a full bus tub.
“Hope you know,” he says, “that all helpers get their dibs on any leftovers.”
“Great,” says Phil. “Thanks.”
“Dad,” says Sam, “Dad, I would have told you too, but—”
“But I haven’t exactly been someone you’d like to talk to,” says Phil. “I mean really talk to.”
“Dad, I—”
Phil’s lower lip raises, pushing his whole mouth into an inverted smile.
“Just know,” he says, after a moment, “that I’m glad you can talk to your mom. But also know that if you want to talk to me—about anything—I’m available. No, not just available—happy to do so. Honored to do so.”
Sam clears his throat and says, “Dad, please. Get a hold of yourself.”
They both laugh, and then Phil tells his son to grab another bus tub—what, does he expect eighty-year-old men to do all the heavy lifting?
SNOW FLURRIES AREN’T UNCOMMON in early November, but they’re still a surprise, and the group walking in them grumbles about winter’s early arrival.
“We live on a corner,” says Caroline, her arm tucked through Tina’s. “Which means we’ve got twice as much sidewalk to shovel.”
“I’ve got a snowblower,” says the man Mercedes introduced to Sam as “my friend, James.” “I’ll come by anytime and help you out.”
“No, I like the exercise,” says Tina.
“I don’t,” says Caroline. “So come by anytime, James, and use the snowblower on my half of the sidewalk.”
“If he doesn’t, I will,” says Lois. “I already plow out my whole block. I love using my snowblower.”
“Oh my goodness,” says Sarah, Caroline’s mother. “I don’t even know how to turn on ours, but thankfully, my husband does!”
Part of the small group piles into one of the few cars left in the church parking lot and extends an invitation to the others to come by that evening to Caroline and Tina’s house to finalize their plans to say goodbye to Haze.
“There’ll be Mexican hot chocolate,” says Caroline.
“And I’m bringing churros!” says Mercedes.
Sam walks with his parents to their cars, parked near one another, and before Phil leaves, he reminds Sam of their billiards date tomorrow night (there’s a pool table in the game room of Mac’s condo, and they’ve been giving it a good workout). With a bow, Sam opens his mother’s car door, and they laugh at his gallantry, but instead of getting in on the passenger side, he says, “I’m thinking maybe I’ll head back to school. I’ll walk there.”
“Okay,” says Susan. “See you later at home then.”
After his parents drive off, the wind kicks itself up a notch, flicking a snowy gust at Sam, and he thinks he might have been a bit hasty in choosing his two feet over four wheels for transport.
But as he begins walking, the icy wind is less of an intrusion than an occasional wintry accompaniment. His mother has nagged at him all his life to dress for the weather, and for a change, he has. He wears his winter coat over his suit, and jammed in its pockets are gloves and a scarf, which he ties around his head, over his ears, and under his chin. He is not the least concerned about the dork factor; anyone whose opinion he cares about isn’t around, and why not be warm?
He walks in the direction of his school and is only a block away when he gets another idea.
The snow flurries gradually peter out, which is a slight disappointment to Sam, who thought there was something not just atmospheric but romantic about walking, face tucked into hunched shoulders, in a swirling snow. Plus he liked the feel of it, of the air filled with motion and matter, of snow battering his face with streaks and dots of cold. It almost seemed miraculous, if you thought about it, how the skies could be sunny, be rainy, be windy, be foggy, be snowy, be whatever they wanted to be.
The sky, he thinks, the sky is a quick-change artist / with a whoosh of its cloak it’s something that it just wasn’t . . .
Take that, Walt Whitman, he says to himself, thinking of one of the American poets they’ve begun studying in English, and takes the scarf off his head and ties it around his neck.
It’s a long walk, but not one that would cause blisters or frostbite, back to where he’s going. He has turned on his phone after having silenced it at the funeral, and it has already chirped three times since he left the church. Maybe it was Elise, checking up on him? Or Jack? He couldn’t believe how much he and his brother were texting each other lately; Jack never had time for him before, but travel definitely seems broadening . . . and maybe Sam’s job at the paper is too? Whatever the reason, the Carroll brothers were communicating in a way they never had before.
Maybe it was Jacob, wondering what was up, or maybe it was Claire, or Stacy, or Kurt, or any of the people who last year were his schoolmates and this year are his friends. He’ll check later.
The iron gate is open, and Sam walks into the cemetery.
The snow flurries have added only a tinge of white to the ground, not enough to change the prevailing grayness of the skies and tombstones. He’s not sure why he’s there—Haze isn’t. She was cremated, and Lois, who is her executor, is in possession of her remains.
“She scattered Royal’s into Lake Superior,” she had told the group when they had assembled in Haze’s hospital room the night she died. “In her will she asks that the same be done with hers.”
Susan said she’d like to accompany Lois, and everyone in the room volunteered they would too, and it was decided that they’d drive up to Lake Superior that Tuesday, after everyone voted.
“Haze couldn’t wait for Election Day,” said Lois, “This way, she’ll still be part of the celebration!”
“Can I still go?” Sam asked his mother later. “Even though I’ll miss school?”
“If you’re caught up on your homework.”
Sam nods. “I could even try to get some extra credit. Yeah—maybe I could write a column for Radical Hag Wednesday. A column about saying goodbye to Haze.”
“Goodbye to Haze,” says Susan, her smile mischievous, “And hello to Hillary!”
WALKING DOWN THE MAIN ROAD, Sam steps to the side when he hears a car behind him, and when he turns around, he’s surprised—and he isn’t—to see his mother. She pulls her car over onto the gravel shoulder and gets out.
They greet each other with the same question: “What are you doing here?”
“I just thought I should spend some time with my grandparents,” says Susan, and as she takes Sam’s arm, he says, “I guess that’s why I’m here too.”
WITH LINKED ARMS, they stand in front of William and Eleanor McGrath’s monument.
“Grandma was one of the lucky ones,” says Susan. “She outlived her cancer prognosis by about”—she looks at the date carved into the granite—“oh, twenty-five years.”
“Do you think,” says Sam, “that they know? That where they are—if they’re anywhere—they know Haze died?”
“Well, there are those ‘near death’ stories,” says Susan after a moment. “The ones told by people who’ve come back after supposedly dying? About the white light and the feeling of being enveloped in love? And some people have said how their loved ones were there ready to welcome them in.”
“Ha,” says Sam. “I wonder what your grandma would think about welcoming Haze in.”
“I don’t know, I’d bet she wouldn’t feel any jealousy or betrayal . . .” Susan shrugs at her son, who stares at her. “I think—or maybe it’s that I hope—that where we, or our souls go, is to a place, or realm, or existence that’s far bigger and understanding and forgiving than we can ever imagine. A place where . . . where love, complete love, presides.”
After a while, Sam says
softly, “That wouldn’t be a bad place to wind up,” and his words are nearly carried away by a wintry wind that’s aimed its blast directly at their faces.
A bird swoops down from the bare branches of a nearby oak tree and into the branches of another.
“A raven,” Sam says melodramatically.
Susan looks up at the tree.
“Uh, that’d be a sparrow.”
They laugh, and like longtime dance partners, they turn at the same time, without words, and walk toward the car.
“Mom, do you think I could ask Elise to come tonight?”
“To Caroline’s? Sure. Tell her I can pick her up.”
“Won’t you love it when I get my license?”
“When you get your license, Sam, I’m sure I will feel many emotions.”
In the car, Susan turns on the ignition and the heat, and in the idling, warming car, they both reach for their phones, Sam to read his texts and send Elise an invitation, Susan to see if there are any work emergencies that need tending to.
Scrolling through her e-mails, Susan stops to read one.
“What?” says Sam, noticing her smile.
“It’s from Jack.”
“What’s it say?”
“Copenhagen. I might just have to move here. The women are beautiful, especially Ella, who’s from a farm in the Jutland and is staying at the same hostel (a hostel with a bar!—what do they think we kids are—responsible or something?). She and I played chess in the lounge, and she beat me. Really beat me, but she’s so SMUK (weird word for ‘beautiful,’ but that’s how the Danes say it) I didn’t mind at all. I was going to head to Sweden tomorrow, but the reason for the changed plans is easy, and it’s spelled E-l-l-a.”
Susan looks up. “Aw, I was kind of rooting for the Italian astronaut.”
“He sent me a picture,” says Sam and holds his phone out.
“Oh,” says Susan, “she is smuk.”
The snow has picked up again on the drive home, and the windshield wipers make a rhythmic whomp-whomp sound. Sam unbuttons the top button of his coat and loosens his tie—did Elise really say he looked handsome in his suit? The heater blows a soft current of warmth at him, and he tips his seat back and shuts his eyes.
Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes) Page 28