“I know what you mean,” Nola says.
“Do you?”
“Yeah. Like I see broccoli sometimes and I think it’s like trees.”
Link smiles. “Yeah, kind of like that. I look at trees in wintertime, and you know what they remind me of? Nerve cells. And then it makes me think there’s like this giant connection of everything to everything. Did you ever see a nerve cell?”
“Nope.”
“Next time you come over I’ll show you a picture of one,” Link says, and Nola grins.
The Way You Are
“It’s peaceful here, isn’t it?” Maddy asks Matthew. They are out at the cemetery, where Maddy was photographing headstones for a kind of collage she has in mind. Now they are resting against Arthur and Nola Moses’s headstones, having a picnic in Arthur’s honor.
“I still can’t get over the fact that we were married out here,” Matthew says, looking over at the tree beneath which they took their vows.
“It was the only place to do it, as far as I was concerned,” Maddy says. “If there was anyone I wanted to be at my wedding, it was Arthur. Getting married here meant that he kind of was there. I owe a lot to him.”
“I know you do,” Matthew says. “I wish I’d known him.”
“You would have loved him. Everybody loved him. I guess it was because he loved everyone. But bona-fide, you know? He just was love. And his loyalty to his wife, even after she died, was an inspiration.”
Matthew crinkles up the wax paper his peanut butter and jelly sandwich was in. “Good sandwich. Thanks.”
“Yeah, that was a real gourmet offering.”
“It was good!”
Maddy reaches over to wipe away a fleck of peanut butter at the corner of his mouth. “I guess everybody likes PB and J, but I’m going to have to learn to cook, now that Iris is moving out. Actually, I want to learn.”
“Me, too,” says Matthew. “I got tired of eating out so much the way we did in New York. It will be nice to have a real kitchen. I feel bad about displacing Iris, though. Do you think she’s going to be okay, living out there all alone?”
“I think so. At first, she was kind of quiet about it. I guess she was counting on living there with John. But now she seems excited. And she won’t be alone. She’s got those dogs and cats, and she says she’s getting llamas and goats and chickens, too.”
“How does she know how to take care of them?”
“She doesn’t. But she’ll learn. She put a sign up at the feed store for help and she’s already hired a couple of girls who are Four-H all-stars. She’ll figure it out. She’s one of those people who succeeds at every business she tries.” Maddy folds up her wax paper and puts it back in the bag. “Want the rest of my lemonade?” she asks, and he nods and drinks it.
“Kinda sour,” Maddy says. “I guess I didn’t put enough sugar in.”
“It was perfect!”
Maddy looks at her watch. “We should go,” she says.
Matthew gets up and grabs her hand. “Will you come somewhere with me, first?”
He points with his chin. “Just over to the tree we were married under.”
She laughs. “How come?”
He doesn’t answer. She goes with him to the tree, to the spot where they stood to commit themselves to each other, and she sees the headstone she was so close to: MARY ANN MAJORS, B. APRIL 12, 1907, D. APRIL 12, 2000. She remembers wondering if it might not be a good idea to die on your birthday.
Matthew takes her hands and looks into her eyes. “Maddy. You have a habit of doubting yourself.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Okay.” He straightens, looks up, then back down at her. “I will never leave you. I will always love you. I will marry you every day from now on for the rest of our lives if you want me to.”
“Don’t—”
“Maddy, I want you to know that I see you. I see your doubts and your fears. But I see your wondrous side, too. Your kind side. The incredible mother you are to Nola. The way your friends can count on you.
“Look, I’m guessing you haven’t told me half of all the terrible things that happened to you when you were growing up. You don’t have to tell me all of it, but I want you to know that you can, if you want to. You can’t do anything that will make me not want to be with you. I know who I am in love with. I know who I’ll stay in love with. You call yourself flighty. Well, good, because I’m Mr. Grounded. Not that I … I mean, I’m so glad you wanted to come back here, but if tomorrow you said you wanted to go back to New York City, I’d pack the car.”
“I think Nola would have something to say about that,” Maddy says.
“No doubt,” Matthew says, smiling. “But anywhere you are? To me, that’s home.”
“Matthew?”
“What?”
She sighs. Scratches her head. Stares off into the distance, then looks back at him. “I just don’t know how you can promise such things. There is such uncertainty in all our lives; so much can happen that we never anticipated. And people can have grown in a certain direction that they might never be able to … I just don’t see how someone can make a commitment like you just did and feel certain that it will last.”
“I do,” Matthew says. “Love. Trust. Faith. I have enough of all that for both of us. We’ll make it. Day by day.”
She nods, looks out toward the graves of Arthur and Nola and feels a kind of gentle urging. “Okay,” she says finally. She looks up at Matthew. “I’m in.”
He laughs.
“I know, that was … What I mean to say is … What I mean to say is that I love you so much, Matthew. I love you so much! And I don’t deserve you, but I’m going to try to. Day by day.”
He embraces her, and above them a crow lands in the tree, caws, and takes off again.
“That’s good luck, that crow doing that,” Matthew says.
“Is it?”
“Has to be. Do you want to go home now and we can try our hand at spaghetti and meatballs?”
She pulls away and looks up at him. “I do.”
“Okay,” he says, gently. “Let’s go.”
Leave Well Enough Alone
Just before noon, John is let out in Cleveland from the last ride he got (a good guy, driving a Krispy Kreme truck, and for fifty miles, all they talked about was jazz). He gets a shave and a haircut at a barbershop. At Goodwill, he buys a pair of pants, a shirt, new underwear, and, for five dollars, a pair of sneakers barely-used. He brushes his teeth in their men’s room, changes into his new clothes, and tosses his old clothes in the trash. The only thing in his backpack now, besides a comb, a toothbrush, and a third of a tube of toothpaste, is his journal, his pen, and his dead phone. In his pocket is the little cash he has left, and the directions to Laura’s house that he printed out at the Mason library before he left.
Here and there on the streets of the city he sees homeless men and some women, too. He hands out dollar bills to them whenever they ask. In many of their eyes is a rock-bottomness that John recognizes and remembers. In a small park, he sits on a bench with the hamburger and fries he bought with the last of his cash. He came up short by fifteen cents, and the woman behind him covered him. She reminded him of Iris, not the way she looked, but the way she exuded a kind of calm and kindness. It made his stomach ache, thinking of Iris, and he went to sit on a stool by the window so that he could look at something and be distracted. It’s not like him to hold on to things this way; it scares him. And God knows he did Iris a favor to leave; he’d only have messed up her life. That’s what he does—he messes things up.
For now, he wants to eat and to think about how he might get to where Laura lives—he can’t risk taking the time to hitch there. Even though he is cleaned up, a ride can be pretty hard to come by.
A disheveled man rolls an overloaded shopping cart over to
him and sits beside him.
“Excuse me for bothering you,” the guy says. “But could you help me out? Just a few dollars, that’s all I’m asking. I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten for three days. I been on a real losing streak.”
“I’m sorry,” John says. “I just spent the last of my money. I don’t have any more.”
The man raises his chin and studies John from under hooded eyes. “Man, one thing I hate is when people lie like that. I know you got money.”
“Is that so,” John says. “And how is it that you know that?”
The man leans closer to him. His breath smells like liquor; his body odor is in a class by itself. His eyes are bloodshot, his lower lip cracked and caked with old blood. “You got that air about you,” he says. “You got that air of never suffered, never worried. You set.”
John gets up and hands the man his uneaten food. “Take care,” he says, and walks out of the park toward the bus stop. He’ll ask whatever driver stops first how to get to where he’s going—someone at the barbershop said something about senior citizens riding the bus for free. So close now, and this is the hardest part.
After two bus rides and a long walk, John arrives at Laura’s address. It’s in a gated suburb just outside the city, though an unattended booth by the gate makes you wonder just how secure the place is. John is a little surprised that Laura lives here. He never thought of her as the type who would make a point of keeping people out. But then he never thought of himself as the type who would be homeless, either. By choice. For despite the hardships, it offers something he is loath to give up, part of which is a sense of being plugged into something real. It’s kind of like the way so many guys volunteered to go back for more tours to Vietnam: it was awful there, but it was real. Vital.
The lots in Laura’s subdivision are all generous sizes, with wooded areas on either side of the houses. He stands behind a tree and watches Laura’s house. After a while, he sees a woman walk quickly past a window, and it’s her. He’s certain. His mouth grows dry; he thinks for a second about leaving. But no.
Just as he’s coming out of the woods and headed for her door, he sees a car pull into Laura’s drive. A late-model Audi, a nice-looking car, if red. The man knocks on the door and immediately goes in; then he and Laura come outside.
She looks the same. He knows she’s aged, but to him she looks the same. The woman who wore braids and long dresses, who eschewed any kind of makeup. The woman whose expression was always one of great peace. A Madonna. Until he nearly killed her. Then she didn’t look so peaceful. Then she was full of anguish until the day she got a restraining order, and he imagines that even after that she had some awful days.
Her hair is cut to shoulder length, a blunt and simple style, and it appears that she still doesn’t wear makeup. She has on tan slacks and a red blouse, a few gold bracelets on one arm. And look now, the ease with which the man takes her hand, just for the short walk out to the car. Look at how, when the sun gets in her eyes, she only smiles up at him—still that radiant smile. She takes sunglasses out from her purse and puts them on, then says something to the man, a tall, slim guy wearing an Izod shirt and khaki pants, expensive sneakers. Good-looking fellow, if bald. The man says something back, and kisses her.
He can’t do it. After all these years, he can’t walk up and announce himself to Laura for the purpose of apology. His entire life since he lost her has been an extended apology. She’s fine, he sees that, and he sees as well that that’s all he really needed to do, was to see that she is fine. Suddenly, like a door banged open by the wind, startling and declarative, he also knows that he’s going to stop walking on his knees in penance now. He’s free.
The Audi goes by him, Laura’s arm hanging out the window, and for one second he is nearly undone by the desire to touch that arm, browned by the sun, to feel the flesh that he must have caressed thousands of times. He knows the delicacy of the bones in her wrist; he knows the length of each of her fingers. He put a ring on one of those fingers years ago, his heart breaking with joy.
Well. Goodbye, then, Laura. He is without her now and forever. Goodbye.
And so what now? An internal compass recalibrates. He goes out to the road and sticks out his thumb. In California, you don’t have to deal with the winter.
The Seventh Commandment
“Biscuit rage, I call it,” Gretchen says. “It’s that sudden rising up of irrational and completely outsize anger you can experience when you least expect it. You know what I mean: someone takes that last biscuit that you were just going to take, and you just want to bite their ear off. It’s like road rage, only domestic.”
Karen says, “That’s so funny—my husband just gave a sermon on road rage, and I think it’s the first time I saw everyone paying attention. But if everyone’s ready, I’d like to start.”
The women quiet down, and Karen clears her throat. “First, I need to tell you some things about my past. But please remember that it’s my past, not who I am now.
“So, as a teenager, maybe fifteen, sixteen, I stole things. And I got away with it. I got away with it every single time, and that just fueled my confidence for doing it the next time. I stole a lot of things. A lot. Maybe for a whole year. Candy, magazines, makeup—”
“I stole some makeup once,” Joanie interrupts to say. “It was a sample lipstick so it didn’t even come with a top, but I just loved that lipstick. I wore it every single day until it was gone. Caramel Kiss, it was called. And I don’t think if I’d have bought it, I would have liked it so much.”
“Right,” Karen says. “Exactly. Getting away with stealing something makes it better. You use whatever you stole, and each time it’s a thrill.”
Dodie says, “When I was a teenager and lived in St. Louis, I used to go to the lunch counter at Woolworth’s, and one time when the check came, I stuffed it in my purse. But I left a very generous tip. One of the Sydowski sisters taught me that. They were the wild girls in our school, these two girls, Lena and Julie Sydowski, they were called the Sin Sisters, and they were always doing bad stuff. Once I was at the lunch counter when they were there, and I saw them do that and I wanted to try it, too. But it made me feel so awful I never did it again.”
“I stole a girdle,” Gretchen says. “I put it on and then I just walked right out of the store with it. I was too embarrassed to pay for it because the cashier was my archenemy, and I knew she would tell the whole school that I wore a girdle. And the thing is, I didn’t even need one! Not then!”
“My word,” says Rosemary, all sniffy and righteous.
“You never stole anything?” Joanie asks.
“I did not.”
“Nothing?” asks Maddy.
Rosemary sits still, thinking. Then she tightens her mouth and says, “All right, a Heath bar. Which the checkout girl at the grocery store forgot to ring up and I did not tell her. And, oh! Once I took a roll of toilet paper out of a gas station bathroom. And you know what? I didn’t even need it. It was just so temping. They had so many rolls out, like they were boasting, saying, ‘Help yourself—there’s lots more where that came from!’ And I guess you girls are right—that toilet paper did seem special to me. I put it in the guest washroom, and I felt a little bad when it was gone.”
“But, you guys, here’s the thing,” Karen says. “I was at Gemology yesterday and I stole a bracelet.” She lifts the sleeve of her blouse. “This is it.” She shows the group a gold bangle festooned with tiny diamonds.
Dodie, who is sitting next to her, gasps. Then she says, “Wow, that’s pretty. Can I try it on?” Karen hands her the bracelet, and Dodie says, “How much was it?”
“Four hundred and fifty dollars,” Karen says.
Dodie frowns, turning the bracelet around and around. “Not bad. I would have guessed—”
“What is the matter with you?” Rosemary says. “This is not a trunk show! This is grand larcen
y! Isn’t it grand larceny, Toots?”
“I guess it is. It’s grand larceny, Karen.”
“But I stole it by accident! Or maybe by habit, I guess, because I used to steal jewelry, too—only that was just costume jewelry. Anyway, I was at Gemology the other day picking up a repair, Charlie had fixed Tom’s watch. I had to wait because Charlie was showing some guy bracelets, and he was taking forever. After the guy finally picked one out and paid for it, Charlie scooped up the other bracelets and locked them back in the case. When he went in the back to find Tom’s watch, I saw something shining on the floor. One of the bracelets had fallen. I picked it up and put it on while I was waiting for Charlie to come back, and then I … well, I guess I just forgot or something because I walked out with it.”
“Why didn’t you just give it back?” Joanie asks.
“Do you know Charlie Zoster?”
“Of course I do. We all do.”
“Well, then you know how he is. He mistrusts his own mother. He wouldn’t believe that it was a mistake. And that man is a huge gossip. My husband could lose his congregation!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’ll bring it back,” Toots says.
“But what will you tell him about how you got it?” Karen asks.
“I’ll tell him an admirer gave it to me and that something about it seemed suspicious. That’s all I’ll have to say. He’s afraid of me. And besides, he’ll just be thrilled to get it back. I might buy it—I sure like it.”
“I saw it first,” Dodie says.
“Well, then you can buy it,” Toots says. “After, you know, it gets returned.”
Silence, and then Karen starts to cry. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“Have you taken anything else?” Rosemary asks.
“No! Not since high school.”
“Then I’d say you’re forgiven,” Rosemary says. “Now, let’s just forget about it and … let’s just forget about it.”
“Forget about what?” Dodie says.
The Confession Club (ARC) Page 17