Iris, coming in the door: Oh, my goodness. Are you okay?
Lucille: What are you talking about?
Iris: Well, you look…Are you okay?
Lucille: Of course I’m okay, we have things to do.
Iris: I know, but maybe you should lie down a little bit first.
Lucille: Why?
Iris: I mean…you look tired.
Lucille: And you look anxious. And like a busybody. Maybe you want to lie down.
Iris: Okay, Lucille.
Lucille: If I wanted to lie down, I would lie down.
It has begun to occur to Iris that Lucille is a friend, Lucille and Tiny and Monica are all friends. Astonishing—and humiliating!—to see that she didn’t have friends in Boston. All those years, and not one person that she had truly opened up to, or kept up with. Probably she expected her husband to be everything to her when it wasn’t his place to do that, even if he wanted to or could. Another thing she regrets: having made him feel that he was failing her when she was the one failing herself.
She feels as though she has become a truer version of herself. She never used to believe that where you lived mattered that much. But maybe it does.
Lucille asks, “Did you say you got the butter? The Plugrá?”
“Yes. I got everything on the list. But before we get going, can I make you some soup? We have time.”
“Soup!”
“Yes. Tomato soup. All I need is an onion and some butter and a can of crushed tomatoes. It cooks up really fast and it’s just delicious.”
Lucille scowled. “Who said anything about soup? We’re going to make snowflake cookies and lace angel cookies. Now, what shall we do first?”
“You should sit down. I should start some soup. While it’s cooking, I want to see if I can assemble everything we need without your telling me. I would love to learn that. Will you let me do that—try to set things up—and then tell me what I missed?”
“Oh, for cripe’s sake. All right. But just let me empty the dish drainer, let me dry those few things.”
“I’ll do it. And you know, you could lie down until—”
“If you say that again, I might go after you with the rolling pin.”
Silence, as Iris peruses Lucille’s pantry, then takes down a can of crushed tomatoes. “You’ve got avocado, right? I could make tortilla soup, too.”
“Too spicy,” says Lucille. “Give me some good corn chowder over a spicy soup any day.”
“You want that? I’ll make—”
“Not now! Did you get the cake flour and superfine sugar?”
“Yup.”
“Double-strength vanilla?”
“I got everything, I told you.”
Lucille takes in a deep breath and looks out the window.
“You okay?” Iris asks.
“Stop asking me that! We have a lot to do. And there’s two men in the class today.”
“Great!”
“I know,” says Lucille. “Maybe we should do tuxedo cookies, too.” She holds on to the edge of the table to take in another deep breath and Iris says not one word. When she serves the soup, Lucille does not eat, but rather loads it up on the spoon and then dumps it back into the bowl in a way that she must think Iris doesn’t see. But she does.
* * *
—
AS THEY ARE CLEANING UP after class, Lucille says, “Maybe I’ll start teaching fewer classes and make more cakes for the restaurant.”
Iris speaks carefully. “Oh?”
“Can’t do both anymore.”
“The money would be about the same either way.”
“I don’t care about the money,” Lucille says. “I just want to reach people.”
“Ah,” Iris says.
“I thought I wanted to teach, but I don’t think most of my students go home and do what I tell them. They just come to socialize. It’s a different world. People don’t bake from scratch anymore.”
“Sure they do!”
“Not like they should. Not like they could. No, they want to look at those housewives on television and eat ready-made desserts.”
“Well, I’ve begun to bake from scratch because of you,” Iris says.
“Oh? What do you bake? What did you last make and when did you make it?”
Iris looks her right in the eye and tells her. “Two days ago, I made midnight cake and I ate two pieces and then I froze the rest to eat later. Tomorrow, I’m making butterscotch dreams. And I’m bringing most of them to the nursing home. Last week I brought them four dozen of your cream-cheese–lemon bars and they lasted about two seconds.”
“Really?” Lucille asks, her dishtowel pressed against her bosom.
“There was practically a riot. And I always bring the cookies over in one of our boxes, and last week one of the residents found it so pretty she asked if she could have it to keep her curlers in. Naturally, I said yes.”
“Huh,” Lucille says. “But you really ought to bring them the prune-whip bars.”
“I’ll do it next week,” Iris says.
It’s Only Words
WHEN SHE GETS HOME, IRIS stops by Tiny’s apartment to deliver some soup. She’d wanted to bring him cookies, but she knows not to. She knocks, but there’s no answer. Not home yet.
She goes into her own apartment and greets Homer, then picks him up, turns him belly side up, and scratches him. “Did you miss me?”
The cat closes his eyes.
“You did, didn’t you?”
She keeps the cat in her arms as she goes around turning lights on. They worked late tonight, she and Lucille, no matter Iris’s concerns for her. Lucille said she’d be a hundred percent better in the morning.
Iris opens her refrigerator and inspects the contents. Leftover turkey meatloaf and mashed potatoes. That sounds good, and she’ll sauté a little spinach with garlic.
She puts the meatloaf and potatoes in the oven and then goes to check her email.
When the screen comes up, she gasps. Ed Winters.
She gets up and walks around the room, her arms tightly crossed. And then she sits before her computer and opens the email:
Iris,
Quite a surprise to hear from you. I’m glad you wrote, because I have something to say to you.
It may be true that you owe me an apology—you were pretty harsh. But maybe I deserved it.
Iris, I really hope it doesn’t hurt you for me to say this, but I dismissed your longing for a baby as cruelly as you ever treated me. The truth is, I need your forgiveness as much as you need mine. Every time I look at my child, I know I was wrong.
So how about this. Let’s forgive each other. And then we’ll have said the proper and loving goodbye to which we both were entitled.
Be well, Iris.
Ed
Iris goes into the kitchen, where the timer is going off. She shuts it off, takes out the meatloaf and the potatoes, spills some oil in a pan to heat up so that she can prepare the spinach. Then she turns off the flame and goes to her bed and lies down and grabs a pillow and sobs. She’ll cry for a long time, she can tell. But after she’s done crying, she’ll have such a good dinner.
A Declaration
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK, TINY IS standing on Monica’s doorstep. It’s a few days after she cooked for him, and now he’s taking her to a restaurant Iris told him about where there are candles on the tables. He got his hair cut. He’s wearing a new pair of khaki-colored pants he got at Costco and they are a bit tight in the waist but they fit. He ironed a white shirt, which required no small effort. He put on a small amount of aftershave. Now he rings the doorbell and when she opens the door, she smiles. She’s wearing a pink dress and Lord have mercy.
He draws himself up. “Monica? I am tired of messing around. I love you, and that’s all the
re is to it. I have for a long time.”
Monica’s eyes fill with tears. “I love you, too, you big dope. I only was with someone else because I thought you didn’t care for me. Well, that and I thought he was my destiny.”
“Really?”
She laughs. “I went to see a fortune-teller when Polly and I went to New Orleans, and she said I would marry a man whose name started with a P. And so when I met Phil Porter, I thought, Well, this is it!”
Tiny says nothing, and she says, “I know. I know that’s so dumb.”
“Monica?”
“Yes?”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Of course!”
“But you can never tell anyone else. This will be our first thing that is only between you and me. One of those couple things. A secret that only the two of us share.”
“What is it?”
“Well, first you have to promise me you’ll never tell.”
“I promise, I sincerely do.”
“You want to know my name?”
She frowns. “I know your name!”
“Tiny is a nickname. My real name…Okay, my real name is Percival.” He feels a deep heat rise up in his face.
“Ohhhh,” Monica says softly. She stands there looking up at him.
He starts to speak but she interrupts him. “Okay, first of all? I love that name.” When he starts to protest, she says, “I do! I used to play princess with my best friend Terry Thompson and she would be Princess Lucivia and I would be Princess Eleanora. And we had prince boyfriends. Hers was Prince Charles, which I thought was awfully unoriginal. But mine? Mine was Prince Percival.”
“You’re kidding. Are you kidding?”
“I swear it’s true. I might even have proof. We used to make these drawings, and I put Prince Percival in a purple mantle with ermine trim and I wrote his name all around his head like an aura. Prince Percival! I really might have proof. My mom saved almost all my drawings and I have them in a big steamer trunk. I could find them. I’m pretty sure I could.”
“Monica?”
“Yes?”
“I believe you.”
“Well, okay then.”
They stand there grinning at each other, and then Monica shivers and says, “Well, for Pete’s sake, come in while I get my coat, and then let’s get going.”
Negotiations
LUCILLE CANNOT GET OUT OF the bathtub. She has tried and tried, and she cannot get out. What to do. She leans back in the cooling water and closes her eyes.
“Lucille Rachel Howard,” she hears.
She gasps and sits up, tries to cover herself with her washcloth. It doesn’t go far.
“What is the matter with you?” she says. “I am bare naked.”
“You are as you were when you came into this world.”
“Well, I am not going out this way, I can tell you that.”
“It’s time, Lucille.”
“But I’m naked!”
“Even so.”
“I just want to make Maddy’s wedding cake. Can’t I just do that one thing, make Maddy’s cake? Chocolate and vanilla checkerboard, she’ll be so surprised.”
“I’m sorry, no.”
“You’re killing me!”
A one-shouldered shrug. “Effectively, I suppose.”
“Please,” she says. “Please just let me do one more thing, all I’m asking for is to do one more thing.”
“Yes,” the angel says, “everyone asks for one more thing. But I’m afraid we’re out of time.” His voice is not without compassion.
“But what about my miracle? I wanted a miracle and you said I could have one.”
“I didn’t say that. But in fact, you can. You can have a miracle before you go.”
Oh, what relief washes over her. “Okay. Good. So what I want is for Lincoln’s mother to live. Okay? That’s what I want, let Abby live. And now I’m ready for Frank.” She closes her eyes. So this will be the last thing she ever saw: Tub water. A bar of Lifebuoy. A pink washrag, and an angel.
“That would be two miracles, Lucille.”
She opens her eyes. “What? What do you mean?”
“It would be two miracles, if Frank came for you and if Abby lived. You have to choose.”
“But I…”
“Choose one, Lucille. Look into your heart for the answer.”
Lucille draws in a huge breath, clasps her hands together, and squeezes her eyes shut. She will choose Abby, she will, she will; let her last act be an unselfish one. But then she begins to wail, and she says, “I looked into my heart, and what my heart wants is Frank!”
“Then you must choose him. And now, finally: Lucille Rachel Howard, I am the angel of death and I have come to take you home.”
“But can I just ask, what did you want, before you died?” Maybe he was selfish, too, and he still got into heaven.
The angel smiles. “What did I want?” He looks around her bathroom as though it is the Louvre.
“Oh,” Lucille says. “I see.” She hears a door opening. She hears water running. The song of a finch. She tastes vanilla. Bread and butter. She feels a breeze. She sees swiftly moving cirrus clouds against deep blue, a kind of ocean in the sky, she hears the beckoning voice of her one true love, and now he is here before her. Frank Pearson.
Something in Lucille’s chest bears down hard, harder, oh, it’s astonishing, she didn’t know anything could be this painful. And then it stops. It stops, and a deep silence descends.
She rises up as easily as she did as a girl, and she reaches for Frank’s hand.
She is wearing a necklace of stars.
Hungry
JASON HAS FALLEN ASLEEP IN his chair next to Abby’s bed when he is awakened by Lincoln, tapping his arm. He squints at his watch: 11:50 P.M.
They set up a cot for Link in the corner of the room and piled on blankets and pillows. “Cool, a nest,” he said, trying to be enthusiastic about something in this strange place. But he hasn’t slept; nothing on the cot has been disturbed.
Jason quickly checks Abby. Nothing different, she’s lying on her back, her mouth slighty open, and she’s breathing quietly, none of the gurgling sounds that she makes when she needs to be suctioned. It’s terrible when they do that, Jason won’t let Link be in the room when they do that. He’s relieved to leave the room himself when they do that. The notions we have! he has often thought, being here. The way we seem to believe our deaths will be simple and neat: like falling asleep. Here, then gone. Poof! None of the indignities that have been visited upon Abby, and she’s not even the worst case.
He puts an arm around Lincoln. “What’s up, buddy?”
“Can we go and get something to eat?”
Jason isn’t sure what to do. He doesn’t want to send Link off alone, and he doesn’t want to leave his wife’s side. He’s heard often enough that people wait to be alone to die. He doesn’t want her to die. She can’t die.
“Please, Dad? Just quickly? I’m so hungry. We can just get something from the vending machine.”
Jason stands, offers his hand to Link.
They go out into the hall and Jason tells the night nurse behind the desk where they’re headed. “We’ll only be gone a minute; we’ll be right back. I have my cell. You have my number.”
The nurse—a sweet-looking woman named Laurie who told Jason and Lincoln that she’d been a nurse for thirty-five years—says, “Take your time. I’ll sit with her.”
“Can we get anything for you?” Jason asks.
“Aren’t you sweet. No, I’m fine.” She closes out of whatever she’s doing on the computer, dons the sweater she has hanging on the back of her chair, and goes into Abby’s room. One thing Jason is grateful for is how close Abby is to the nurses’ station: he could practically whisper for help and be heard
.
In the main lobby, Lincoln gets a Kind bar and a cheese sandwich. On the way back to the elevator, they pass the gift shop, closed now, and Lincoln stops abruptly. He points to a stuffed animal in the window. “Dad! That looks exactly like Hope. Can we get it for Mom tomorrow?”
“Sure. If it’s still there.”
Lincoln looks quickly up at him. “Why wouldn’t it be? It’s not even open now, and I can come down as soon as…” He looks at the sign on the door. “I’ll come down tomorrow morning at ten, right when they open.”
“That’ll be fine.” He wants to slap himself for saying what he did. Not hard to figure out what’s lurking in his mind.
In the elevator, Link opens the Kind bar and offers his father a bite.
“No thanks, Lincoln. You have it.”
“You aren’t hungry?”
Jason has no idea if he’s hungry or not. But he shakes his head no.
“Dad? Did you know it was that nurse, Laurie, who gave Mom the lucky handkerchief?”
Jason smiles. “Yeah, I did know that. She asked if she could tape it there on the wall over Mom’s head. I figured it couldn’t hurt, right?”
“Right. It has four-leaf clovers on it.”
“I saw.”
“Laurie said when she brings it to the casino, she always wins.”
“Well, there you go.”
Jason feels a kind of irrational burst of anger: the casino! But you can’t custom-order people’s kindnesses. People do what they can, they give what they have. He has no right to be angry with someone who is just trying to help. He’s not thinking the way he usually does: he has become someone unconsciously—or not so unconsciously—searching for something to be mad at, from cold coffee to the infuriating vagueness expressed every day by the medical community. Hard to say. Can’t be sure. Just have to wait and see.
After they get to their floor, Jason tells Lincoln to go ahead, he’ll be right there, he just wants to stop in the men’s room. He doesn’t like using Abby’s bathroom, with all its weird medical equipment: something to clean out bedpans, something to measure urine, something to check for blood. A normal men’s room seems like a luxury.
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