After she has turned her bedside lamp out, Lucille looks over at her glow-in-the-dark alarm clock. Lately, she draws comfort from watching the second hand go smoothly around and around. Isn’t it funny that she, so enamored of the past, is now consoled by seeing time move relentlessly forward? It’s as though she’s dying for something to finally come.
A few hours later, Lucille becomes aware of a figure next to her bed. She sits up rapidly, and the movement hurts her back. “Ouch!” she says, and then, “Frank?”
“No, ma’am, I’m not Frank.”
It’s that damned angel again.
“Lucille Rachel Howard—”
“Save yourself a speech,” Lucille says. “I’m not ready, I told you before.” Her anger rouses, she feels her heart begin to pound forcefully in her chest.
“Go away!” she says, and he does.
“For cripe’s sake,” Lucille says, and lies back down. “I want to dream of Frank!”
She closes her eyes, falls asleep again, and guess what. He is wearing a white shirt and khaki pants. His silver hair is shining. He’s chewing gum and leaning against his red Cadillac with his arms crossed, waiting. “Yoo-hoo!” she calls, but her voice is very soft and muffled; her jaw won’t unclench. She tries to run to him, but her legs won’t move. “Frank!” she calls again, and then her eyes open and it is morning and she is looking at the second hand of her clock going around and around. This is now, and she is still here.
And That’s for You!
TINY OPENS THE BACK DOOR of his truck for his diminutive customer, one Ollie Futters, who is in her nineties if she’s a day, but she makes a point of not revealing her age. “If I told you how old I was, you’d find me less attractive,” she once told Tiny, chuckling.
He waits patiently as Ollie gets ready to climb out of the truck. First her cane comes out; then, after a great deal of time, she’s ready for an arm to assist her. Tiny carries her groceries up to her front door. She buys the same thing every week: mostly frozen dinners, but also Special K, a jug of milk, a carton of half-and-half, a bunch of bananas, a bag of prunes, two rolls of Charmin. She also always has a bag from Sugarbutter with one blueberry muffin and one cheese Danish and one maple cruller in it. That’s because whenever Tiny gets a call from Ollie saying she needs to go to the grocery store, he heads over to the bakery before he picks her up; he knows what kind of pastry she really likes. Each time, she offers to pay him; each time, he refuses. And then Ollie will say, as she always does, “Well, I guess I am your best customer, aren’t I?”
She isn’t, not by a long shot. Each week, after Tiny has helped her out of the truck, carried her groceries in and put them away, she’ll pay the minuscule fare, then press a quarter firmly into his hand and say, “And that’s for you, cabbie!” That’s exactly what she does now, her hand trembling.
“Thanks, Ollie,” Tiny says, pocketing the coin.
“Think nothing of it,” she says. And then, “Would you like to stay for dinner?”
It’s not unusual for her to ask. Tiny has had dinner with her a few times, usually a Swanson fried chicken dinner, which Tiny finds delicious if insubstantial. They always watch sports while the food cooks, and Ollie is happiest when wrestling is on. But this is Wednesday, and Tiny and Dan are meeting at the Alarm Bell, and so he declines Ollie’s offer.
“I’m getting lucky tonight,” Dan had told him. “I can feel it. She’ll be a redhead, too. She’ll be sitting at the bar, drinking a cosmo, and when we come in, she’ll turn around and see me and that will be that. Boom.”
“Congratulations,” Tiny said, and Dan said, “Hey. Don’t jinx it.”
* * *
—
IT’S NEARLY EIGHT O’CLOCK before Dan is ready to throw in the towel at the Alarm Bell. “Slim pickings tonight,” he says. “And I was so sure.”
They have just laid down their money to pay the check when a tall redhead walks in, surveys the room, and takes the empty seat next to Tiny. She orders a cosmo. Tiny looks wide-eyed over at Dan, then hops off the stool and heads for the bathroom. He’ll give them a chance to talk; there’s no one else sitting at the bar, the place is dead tonight. But when he comes out, Dan is waiting at the door for him. Tiny looks over at the woman, then at Dan, questioningly. Dan scowls, shakes his head, and they walk outside.
“What happened?” Tiny asks, once they’re in the truck.
“Nothing happened.” A sulky moment, and then Dan says, “Why do they always sit by you?”
Tiny shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“They always sit by you. They always talk to you. Never me.”
“Sometimes you.”
“Yeah. That redhead, she talked to me.”
“Why didn’t you stay, then?”
“ ’Cause here’s how she talked to me. She said, ‘What’s your friend’s name? He’s cute.’ ” Dan looks over at him. “You ain’t any cuter than I am.”
“Neither one of us is any prize,” Tiny says.
“You always do something to take their attention off me,” Dan says.
“I don’t do anything!”
“I think you’re jealous of me and so you try to sabotage me with the ladies.”
“I’m not jealous of you, Dan. And I’m not interested in any of your ladies.”
“Yeah, you are.”
Tiny sighs.
They sit in silence for a while. Then Tiny says, “Want to try another place?”
“Let’s just call it a night.”
Tiny starts his truck. “Good idea.”
A Little Dinner Party
IRIS KNOCKS ON TINY’S DOOR, hoping for three things. One is that he’s home. Another is that he doesn’t mind unscheduled visits. The third is that he’s glad the visitor is Iris.
He flings open the door. Then his face lights up and he says, “Iris!” A sweep.
“C’mon in,” he says. “Excuse the smell. I’m cooking onions.”
“Smells good. What are you making?”
“Onions.”
“For…”
“For eating!” He goes over to the stove to push around the onions with a fork. He has a dishtowel stuck into his britches, another flung over his shoulder. Onion peels are all over the counter. He has the radio on, tuned to a country station, some she-done-me-wrong song playing that he sings along with.
Tiny looks over his shoulder. “You like country music?”
Iris nods. “I do. I like every kind of music.”
“I used to love this one song that goes, ‘You just sorta stomped on my aorta.’ You ever hear that one?”
She smiles. “Nope.”
“Take your coat off! Stay for supper! I’m making hamburgers. Do you like hamburgers? With onions?”
“Absolutely.” Iris takes off her coat and lays it neatly over the back of a tan Naugahyde sofa, though calling it a sofa is like calling a skyscraper a yurt. It’s one of the ugliest pieces of furniture Iris has ever seen and also the type that she has lusted after for years. It has recliners built in at either end and it has a little tabletop built into the middle section to put food and drinks on, and you can lift the tabletop up to reveal a storage place. She knows all this because she and Ed once looked at one of these sofas. It was at a gigantic furniture warehouse, one of those places where you would be hard-pressed to find a piece of tasteful furniture, but you couldn’t beat the prices—and they gave away free popcorn in little striped boxes with scalloped edges. She and Ed went there for the popcorn, truth be told—they’d been to a clothing store nearby. So they were strolling around, eating popcorn, and they came upon that sofa and mirthfully locked eyes. They sat at either end, and they couldn’t stop grinning. It was so comfortable! It was so much fun! It was like going on a ride that didn’t move! And, bonus: who cared if nacho grease or chocolate or hair balls from the cat got on it? The
n a saleswoman came over, blouse halfway untucked from a too-tight skirt, a pencil stuck behind her ear, asking if they were interested in adding this to their collection.
They leaped up together, shame-faced. Iris said, “Oh, no thank you, we’re just looking,” at the same time that Ed said, “How much would you charge to deliver this thing?” In the end, they didn’t buy it; neither of them really wanted it, but Ed had for a moment almost succumbed to the absolute ingeniousness of the thing. Now, sinking down onto the end of Tiny’s sofa, pulling the lever to make the recliner pop out, and settling her head against the rise that served as a pillow, she thinks they should have.
“Pretty comfortable, huh?” Tiny says, coming out of the kitchen.
“Yes!”
“Ugly as hell, though.”
“Well…”
“It is! But man, you can cozy down in that thing. You get yourself some snacks and sit down and you don’t ever have to get up.”
“I almost bought one once, years ago.”
“Is that right?”
Back to Ed. She doesn’t want to go back to Ed. So she says, “Hey, remember those interviews I told you I was going for? I got one of the jobs.”
“Hold on a minute, let me stir the onions.”
When he returns to the living room, he says, “Which one?”
“It’s to be an assistant for a woman who teaches baking classes.”
“Who, Lucille Howard?”
“Yes! Do you know her?”
“Sure, I know almost everybody in this town. She’s a good baker, I’ve had her stuff. One night, I gave her a ride home from the supermarket, she doesn’t like to drive at night. I carried her bags in for her and she gave me some muffins, lemon-blueberry ones, and man, they were good. So you’re going to help her teach?”
“Well, I got the impression that she doesn’t need any help teaching. I got that impression because she told me not to get any ideas about interacting directly with the students.”
Tiny shakes his head. “Yeah, old Lucille. But you know, she’s—”
“Oh, I like her!” Iris says. “I’m going to do some things on the computer for her. She doesn’t have a website. Or a computer, for that matter.”
“I can’t believe Lucille Howard is getting a website!”
“Neither can she. Just as I was about to go out the door, she said, ‘I wonder if you could do that thing where you put pictures on it.’ It was as though she were saying, ‘I wonder if you could do that thing where you split the atom.’ I told her it was no problem, we could even put videos of her teaching on there, and she thought that was just wonderful. Though, ‘No shots of me from behind!’ she said.”
“When do you start?”
“Tomorrow.”
Iris sniffs at the air. “I think your onions are burning.
“Yeah, we’ll let ’em burn a little more and then we’ll pile ’em up on the burgers. I’ll start the burgers now. I make Juicy Lucys, stuffed with cheese and jalapeños—you like jalapeños?”
“I do.”
“I’m sorry to say I don’t have any chips.”
“I’ve got chips,” Iris says, putting her recliner in the upright position. “I’ll go and get them.”
“They ain’t those light ones, are they?”
“Forty-percent reduced fat?”
“Uh…”
“Okay, tell you what. I’ll bring some ice cream over instead, for dessert. Full-fat.”
“Now you’re talking. And just so you know, this is my last big meal for a while. Tomorrow: Lean Cuisine, all the way. Thirty days and then I’m going to ask Monica out. I got it all figured out. I’ll take her to a play with live actors. That’ll surprise her! She’ll never see that one coming! And then we’ll go out for a late-night dinner. Real romantic.”
“Oh, that’s great. Which play?”
“I don’t know. One a woman would like. Maybe you can help me pick one out.”
“I’d be glad to.”
“Maybe you could weigh in on the restaurant, too.”
“Okay.”
“And…I don’t think my clothes will fit too well if my plan works, so…”
“We’ll go to a department store. I need some clothes, too.”
“Iris?”
“Yes?”
“I’m real happy you moved in.”
“I am, too.”
“Go and get the ice cream.”
“Okay.”
She nearly skips going down the hall, and what she is remembering is a friend of hers who suffered from depression. That friend told Iris that there were times when she was feeling desperate and she’d go out to the mall and buy a lipstick and feel better. And she would wonder how serious her depression could be if a lipstick could lift her spirits in that way. Iris asked what kind of lipstick her friend bought and her friend said Chanel. And Iris said, “Well, no wonder.” Tiny is offering only a hamburger, but it is Chanel. And so is he.
She pulls a quart of chocolate-cherry-walnut ice cream from the freezer. It’s from Willigan’s, the town’s little ice cream parlor, and it’s the best ice cream she’s ever tasted. She spies a bag of curly fries, and grabs them, too. Also she’ll bring a couple of bananas and some chocolate syrup and some nuts and a can of whipped cream. See that? she thinks. You take one step of pure and good intention and the universe accommodates.
She can hear Ed now, saying something like he always used to say when she mentioned “the universe” in that way. He would say something that was the verbal equivalent of holding your nose.
So, right, she doesn’t miss everything.
When they are eating dinner, Iris says, “If you could do what seems like an impossible thing, what would it be?”
“Lose weight,” Tiny says. “Lose about fifty, sixty pounds and then ask Monica Mayhew to marry me.”
Iris’s eyes widen. “Really?”
“Might be a tad soon.”
“Especially since you’ve never even asked her out.”
Tiny’s brow wrinkles. “Right. Zero times. Too scared she’ll say no. I’m pretty sure she’ll say no. And then that would be the end of…Well, it would be the end of everything. I wouldn’t even be able to go to the Henhouse anymore.”
“Tiny! Don’t you know she has a big crush on you? It’s written all over her! And she asked you out! Remember? She asked if you’d like to go to a movie sometime. And you told her no!”
“Yeah, I know. I panicked. I thought I should do the hard-to-get thing, like my friend Dan suggested. It was stupid. And then later that day I thought, I know, I’ll call her back and say…Well, that’s the problem. I didn’t know what to say. Seems like when things are too important, you don’t know what to say.”
“Tiny, I think I can help you with Monica, if you’d like.”
“You’d make better suggestions than Dan, being a girl and all.”
A girl. What a lovely notion.
“Maybe it would be easier to double-date, the first time. Maybe with Dan?”
“Dan and I are on the outs.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“He told me I get in the way of him and women. So, you know…He’s kind of disappeared from my life for a while.”
“Well, I’m here,” Iris says. “And I think you’d look great in a blue shirt that matches your eyes.”
Tiny looks down at his plate. “Yeah?”
Abby
ON THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 4, Abby wakes up and lies still for a moment. It has become her habit to try to think of something she’s grateful for before getting up to face another day of chemo. It’s a good practice; it helps.
Today, she thinks of how glad she is for this house, and for Mason, this funny little town. She’s particularly grateful for the friendliness of the people who live here, t
he manageability of the place, the slower pace. She fits right in with a slower pace these days. No more five-mile jogs with Jason every morning. “In a year, we’ll get it up to seven miles,” Jason said last night, as they lay in bed holding hands. And although a dark voice in Abby’s brain said, I’ll be dead in a year, she told Jason, “Ten.”
She takes in a deep breath and sits up. It is her habit to make the bed as soon as she’s out of it, or even before, as she does now, turning to fluff the pillows before standing. But she sees a dark clump on her pillow and gasps. At first she thinks it’s some kind of animal. But then she sees what it is, and puts her hand to her head, and more hair comes off. A pale-blue pamphlet, offering information about what to expect with chemotherapy and affecting a position somewhere between cheer and solemnity: You may lose the hair on your head, as well as your eyelashes, eyebrows, and pubic hair.
For a moment, she sits still as a statue at the edge of the bed. Then tears spring to her eyes and she crosses her arms tightly and begins to rock back and forth. She puts the fallen-out hair in her lap and strokes it, it is thick, shiny dark-auburn hair, and now it looks like a bird’s wing. She looks out the window as the light suddenly pushes through, and she finds that so beautiful, and part of the beauty is that it has nothing to do with her. The sun has been rising and setting for so long and will continue to rise and set long after she is gone, whatever the cause of her death. Long after everyone on the earth today is gone, here will come the sun, there will run the rivers, and the songs of birds will fill the air. She will not think of the entropy that everyone predicts, not now, because these days nature is her religion. And Black Elk Speaks is her Bible, she has always loved that book, and its theme of a spiritual journey has special meaning to her now. She likes the way the book teaches that you are only one part of a greater whole. That idea gives her strength, she told Jason, and he said, Good, I’m glad it does. And then he pinched the bridge of his nose, which is something he does when he feels he is near tears.
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