by Nora Decter
A while later the door opens at the top of the stairs, and someone hesitates, listening.
“Baby?” Maggie calls up. She insisted I let her give me a pedicure. Said that there’s nothing like having pretty, pampered feet to make you feel better.
“I made cookies,” Louie says. “Would you like some?”
She looks at me. I nod.
Louie comes down and, to his credit, doesn’t look at all rattled by the state I’m in. I remember what Maggie said about how I passed out on the kitchen floor and he carried me into the living room. It’s too embarrassing to contemplate, so I shove it aside again.
“Thank you,” I say as he hands the plate to me. He stands over us for a moment and then pats me ever so briefly on the head before going back upstairs.
“Tilt your foot this way, babe,” Maggie says, maneuvering my foot into an impossible position. Otherwise it actually feels kind of nice. She rubbed lotion into my feet and pushed my cuticles back and cut away the extra skin around my nails with these sharp little pincers. Now she’s filing them down, rather violently.
“Have you been climbing mountains in your spare time or something? Your calluses are crazy.”
“Kind of,” I say, spewing cookie crumbs.
“So,” says Maggie. “You gonna read that thing or am I?”
I take another bite. The cookie is still warm, chocolate chip, and I feel the life force in me grow stronger as I chew and swallow. The letter is on my lap. We’ve been sitting here staring at it for, oh, a couple of hours. Howl comes over and puts her face on the bed, asking permission to jump up. I pat the space at my feet. “No, I’ll read it.”
“Louie baby?” Maggie hollers. “Can you make me a hot toddy for my throat?”
The envelope is addressed to me, postmarked Alabama. I try to tear it open carefully, to preserve its integrity for all time, but whoever licked it, this Tim Berland, did a thorough job, so in the end I just rip it open, take the pages out and read.
THIRTY-TWO
Dear Jolene,
I owe you so many apologies. The first is for the fact it’s taken me this long to get in touch with you. I left Victoria months ago and have been traveling ever since. When I finally landed at my new winter home in Alabama, your letter was waiting for me. I had my mail forwarded down here from Victoria, but I never imagined there would be something so pressing, or I would have made some other arrangement. I’m sorry to have left you hanging. I hope you didn’t lose faith.
The second apology is for buying the guitar in the first place. I’d been keeping an eye on pawnshops around Victoria for months, with the idea that I’d get myself a new ax to take on the road after I retired. I’m old now, you see, and my retirement present to myself was a motor home. Never in a million years would my twenty-year-old self have thought I’d go that way, but here I am. I had this fantasy that I’d drive around in my RV, parking by the Mississippi River and playing music while the water flowed by. Even old-timers can be romantic fools. When I saw your brother’s guitar it actually took my breath away. I knew I couldn’t walk out of that pawnshop and leave it there, where it so clearly didn’t belong. But I should have known that someone would come looking for a guitar that beautiful.
In your letter you say you just want to know who has it, where it is. You offer to buy it back at whatever price, if I’m willing. I’m going to send it back to you, though, trusting that the good people at UPS will deliver it safely. I’ll get it off to you in a week or so, to give the letter time to arrive. I think it would come as a shock for it to just show up on your doorstep, but I also don’t want you to feel like you have to respond, because it belongs to you and you should have it.
Which brings me to my final apology, and I warn you it’s a feeble one. I am so sorry about your brother. Matt. I’m so sorry about Matt.
My wife, Edith, died fifteen years ago this July. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer that spring, and by summer she was gone. It was so fast. That was what hurt the most. How fast it was. I can’t imagine how you must have felt when Matt died. How many ways it must have hurt. So please, allow me to return the guitar to you. And if you’ll lend an old dog an ear a little while longer, hear what I have to say next.
Edith’s been gone for fifteen years now. Fifteen years down the line, and I don’t think about it, but I think about it all the time. By which I mean I don’t think about the sad stuff anymore. I think about how she was obsessed, actually obsessed, with keeping squirrels out of the garden, and how I hated it because she set up these humane traps and when she’d catch one she’d call me at work, too scared to go out in the yard, and make me come home and drive the culprit out to the park to set it loose, and I’d be damned if it wasn’t the same exact squirrel digging up the garden again two days later. She said that was impossible, but I swore up and down it was true, that the beans and tomatoes she grew were so delicious, squirrels would walk for miles to get to them once they’d had a taste. I think about how beautiful she was first thing in the morning with creases from her pillow still on her cheek. I think about her laugh. How easy and often it came. I think about the ridiculous sayings she picked up from her farmer father, which came out at the oddest times, like when we visited the Grand Canyon together a couple of years before she died and she stood at the edge and looked out for a good long while and then said, “Makes you feel like a fart in a hurricane, doesn’t it?”
What I don’t think about is how or why she went. It’s the other stuff that stays with you. I hope having the guitar back brings you some peace, Jolene. If you hang in there long enough, I know you’ll find it.
All my best,
Tim Berland
THIRTY-THREE
I look up from the pages. Maggie is bent over my toes, which are painted a hot, glittering pink. “Pretty gorgeous. Am I right?”
“I think I did something really stupid.”
She sits up straight and gives me this withering side-eye. “What?”
I tell her and she stands up, sending all her nail supplies scattering. “Jesus, Jo, I thought you were pregnant or something, but this is way worse.”
She whirls around and crosses the basement, shaking her head. “Louie! We’re going out! Go warm up the car!”
“Maggie, wait. Where are you going?”
But she’s up the stairs already. I pull out the dumb foam things she shoved between my toes and follow. Howl and Louie are in the front hall, looking confused, and Maggie is putting on her coat, a fake-fur one that makes her look like she’s dressed up as a sexy cavewoman for Halloween. I grab my jacket and am about to put my bare feet into my boots when Maggie shouts, “Stop!”
“What?”
“You’ll ruin the polish! Here.” She digs around in the shoe pile and finds a grimy pair of flip-flops. “Put these on.”
“Seriously?”
“I didn’t just spend two hours squinting at your feet, probably giving myself a few new wrinkles, just so you could smear my handiwork all over the insides of your old-man boots.”
“Okay, okay.” I slip on the flip-flops and follow her out the door. Howl whines loudly to come along. She never does that.
“Bring her,” says Maggie. “We might need backup.”
“Come on then.” Howl bounds out the door and jumps into the backseat. I climb in after her, brushing the snow off my bare feet. Louie is behind the wheel, and he cranks the heat for my sake. Maggie has trouble navigating the narrow space between the car and the snowbank in her high heels, but eventually she gets one leg in the car and then drops the rest of her body in. “All right,” she says to Louie. “King’s pawnshop. Over on Main. I’m gonna kill that bastard.” She cranes her neck to look back at me. “You got the cash?”
I do. Louie pulls the car out, and it lumbers down the street, which is rocky with accumulated ice and snow, not to mention potholes. I move closer to the warmth of Howl.
Don’t worry, she says.
“Why not?” I ask. When I have so many reasons to.
“What was that?” Maggie says over her shoulder.
“Nothing.”
Maggie unbuckles her seat belt before the car has come to a full stop. The shop is dark behind all the junk in the front window.
“He’s closed, Maggie. Let’s come back tomorrow.”
“Not a chance.” She gets out of the car and sticks her head back in to look me in the eye. “Give me the money.”
I reach into my pocket, pull out my wad and count off what Earl gave me for the guitar.
“Jesus, that’s all you got for it? What a fucking criminal. Stay here—I don’t want you catching cold. Louie?”
He gets out of the car and leaves it running so I don’t freeze or perhaps in case we need to make a quick getaway.
“Earl!” Maggie shouts, pounding her fist against the door. “Earl! Get out here right now! I know you run a card game in the back on Saturdays. Earl!”
Louie stands by, and I realize for the first time how he’d be sort of intimidating if you didn’t know him. One of those barrel-chested men, sturdy as a piece of furniture. A good guy to have around if you need to shake down a pawnbroker for a guitar.
Deep inside the shop a light goes on, and Maggie gets louder. “I swear to God, Earl, you think I’m gonna get tired and go home? Not fucking likely. You messed with my kid, old man. Get your ass out here. Earl! Eaaarrrrl!”
The man himself appears, makes a show of looking through the glass to see who’s knocking, as if she hasn’t made herself abundantly known. He turns various locks and opens the door a few inches. I can’t hear what he says—no one is as loud as Maggie—but he’s shaking his head, looking over at me inside the car. I raise a hand to say, Sorry I sold you my brother’s guitar and then changed my mind; it’s just that I was too sad to do anything else. It’s a lot to convey in one hand gesture. I’m not sure it comes across, because Maggie’s yelling again.
“Go on! Go inside and get it then.”
Earl disappears into the shop and Maggie turns to Louie, who steps closer and puts his hand to her cheek. It’s a motion that stops me, takes me out of the moment, out of my hangover, which is raging on, and makes me realize something I think I’ve been trying not to realize. Maggie is in love. Actually. With someone who loves her back.
I’m still absorbing this when Earl returns and hands Maggie a slip of paper. She takes it and gets back in the car. Without the guitar.
“What happened?” I ask as Louie circles around to the other side of the car.
“So the thing to remember is, it’s gonna be okay. We’re not going home until we find it, okay, hon?”
I sink into the seat. “What did he do with it?”
“He sold it.”
“Already?” Howl crawls farther onto my lap.
“Apparently when something good comes into the shop, he has certain buyers he takes it to direct. Louie, baby, do you wanna bring Cory with us, or do you think we’ll manage on our own?”
“We’ll be fine,” Louie says, smiling at my mother. “You’re much more intimidating than Cory.”
This is true, but no comfort to me.
The address Earl gave us is in River Heights. Louie pulls back out onto Main and drives us to the fancy side of town.
“I’m coming,” I say, unbuckling as we slow to a halt in front of a two-story house on a dark, unpopulated street. It’s a nice house but by no means palatial, though the snow blanketing the roof and the evergreen bushes in the front yard do make it look pretty fucking picturesque.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “You can’t go out in flip-flops in this weather.”
Right, I’m the ridiculous one. But I resist the urge to fight. This matters too much. “Do you at least have a plan?” I ask as she checks her lipstick in the side-view mirror.
“The plan is to be persuasive,” she says. “Gimme the rest of your cash.”
I hand her what remains of my dishwashing wad.
“Jesus, Jo. You’ve been holding out on me.” She gives me an appraising look, more impressed than pissed off. “We’ll talk about this later. Let’s go, Louie.”
The first floor is dark, but upstairs the lights are still on. I see her press the doorbell, and a few seconds later press it again. Lights go on downstairs, curtains rustle in the windows that flank either side of the entrance, and then a man in a bathrobe answers the door. He’s in his fifties, I’d say, but I can’t make out much more than that from here. Seconds tick by. Louie stands to the side, appears to let Maggie do the talking. At least I think she’s talking—her back is to me, and she seems to be using her hands for emphasis. The man had crossed his arms after answering, but they come uncrossed as he steps back and opens the door wide, and Maggie and Louie disappear inside.
Shit.
No, I think it’s a good sign, Howl says. Don’t worry.
But I am worried.
You’re holding your breath again, Howl says, nudging my chin with her nose. Don’t do that.
What if Louie is a violent criminal and he’s putting the screws to this nice, normal man who just thought he was acquiring a quality instrument to keep in his living room and bust out for occasional Woody Guthrie jams?
Louie isn’t a violent criminal, Howl says, tilting her head at me.
How do you know? I wail.
Because I know Louie. He’s a building inspector for the city, and he’s a hell of a cook, and he’s in Maggie’s support group.
There’s some movement inside the house, shapes passing in front of downstairs windows and then upstairs ones too.
Wait, what? What support group?
The group grief counselling Maggie goes to every Monday.
I didn’t know that.
Yeah, ya did, Howl says. It’s one of the things you forgot on purpose.
Oh. I frown, puzzled. My head’s not working right. I think I might have killed some important brain cells last night. Why is Louie in grief counselling?
Howl’s eyes catch the streetlight shining across from us. They’re the brightest thing in the car by far. His daughter passed away from cancer five years ago. She was nine. Then his marriage fell apart. He’s been going to the group for years. That’s how they met.
How do you know all that?
Because, she says, I pay attention to my family. It’s my job.
Before I can respond we’re both distracted by action at the front door of the house. Louie emerges, turns around and shakes the hand of the man, who steps back to make way for Maggie. She walks out carrying a guitar case in one hand, waves and makes her way carefully down the path in her heels. I hear the trunk pop open, then slam shut.
“Well,” she says, sliding into the car. “We got it back.”
“You did?” I ask. My voice is desperate, pleading. Louie climbs in and starts the engine. “How?”
“Easy,” she says, handing me my wad of cash. It’s surprisingly thick still.
“You didn’t do anything bad, did you? Did you have to threaten him?”
She laughs. So does Louie. “Not even,” she says. “We had a friendly, grown-up conversation, and he agreed to be reasonable. Just asked that I give him what he paid Earl for it.”
“Are you serious?” I thought for sure it would take all my money to buy it back, if we were lucky. “Really, tell me. What did you say to him?”
Louie steers the car down the street, and Maggie reaches over to take his hand. “I told him the guitar belonged to my son who died, and that my daughter sold it as part of her grieving process, but then regretted her decision and wanted it back.”
“Oh.”
“Sometimes the truth is more effective than a lie, kiddo. Or a threat.”
“Should we go out to celebrate?” Louie asks.
“Should we?” Maggie asks over her shoulder.
“No. I just want to go home.”
THIRTY-FOUR
I sleep deeply for what feels like days, but really it’s only most of one. When I’m finally able to rouse myself, I find
the guitar case leaned up against the desk in my upstairs room. Downstairs I can hear the TV, hear Maggie and Louie talking in the kitchen. He says something in a low voice, and she explodes in laughter.
I take the guitar out and sit back down on the bed. I don’t play. I just hold it. The guitar blogs I’ve been reading to educate myself say that when you buy a new guitar it’s important to break it in by playing it daily and in different styles. As sound moves through the guitar the wood absorbs it, is altered, so you have to play quiet and loud, hard and soft, pluck and strum. The vibrations course through the molecules of the wood and change it.
I’m too scared to play it yet, because it might sound like the things he went through, the places he’d been. But it feels good being close to it. I climb back under the covers and place it down by my feet. Howl noses the door open and comes in. She climbs up on the bed too, careful not to disturb the guitar, and we stay that way, quiet, for a while.
Six months earlier I’d started looking into the question of the guitar. I knew that if he’d sold it before he left, he would have sold it to Earl, who denied and denied it. So I started looking farther afield.
They sent us his backpack and his clothes and his body turned to ash in a box, as if that was proof enough. But nobody mentioned finding a guitar. He would never have gone anywhere without it.
So I started calling around. I called the hostel and got names. Matt was the kind of person you remembered, even without what happened. He made friends everywhere he went, and I found them. I found Susan, who worked at the front desk, and through her I found Riley, who said he’d jammed with Matt and that they’d talked about starting a band and that he was sure they would have really gone somewhere, if they’d had more time. I talked to the suspiciously named Dragon, who told me that Victoria is a hotbed of paranormal activity and that Matt had really tapped into that, really felt it, and that must have been why he’d stayed, must’ve been why he went up there that night. Dragon wouldn’t say he’d been up on the bridge with Matt, only that lots of people climbed it for kicks. It was something to do, and there was a great view. I could tell he’d been up there with Matt, though, because his voice took on a guilty pitch when he talked about how it was like a spiritual experience. That when you got up that high you felt far away from some things and closer to others. Someone must have shown him the way. At least told him that you could climb it. Matt and I did those sorts of things, but we never went that far.