by Jon Cohen
“So last night, Gracie, I got up out of bed and saw Louis out among the fireflies, not wearing his baseball hat or scarf. I tried to see his face in the dim moonlight. I tried to look, as I have never been able to in all these years. But even from a distance, and in the softest light of fireflies and moon, I couldn’t. He gave me a chance to see him, because he must have sensed by then that I was there. But I turned away. The slightest turn of my head, away. He knew it. How many times have I done that, and how many times has he known it? When you say, ‘Everything that’s happened we’ve borne together,’ that’s not true, Gracie. You changed the dressings, you applied the ointments, you looked him full in the face and did what had to be done. And I turn my head away.”
“Atlas.”
“There’s too much, and I don’t have the strength for it, Gracie. There’s too much of everything. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do Louis. And I couldn’t live without you. That’s why I must go before you. I’m sorry.”
Atlas was done. They sat on the end of the dock and together watched Louis. He knelt in the grass, then a moment later waved and pointed to something he held in his hand. A perfect strawberry.
Atlas reached behind Gracie and found her brush in her canvas bag. He began to brush her white hair. Gracie closed her eyes and mistook the smell of pond water for the sea, and thought she was in Atlantic City.
CHAPTER FIVE
LOUIS WATCHED the funeral from the car. He had come downstairs an hour before, as Gracie was readying herself. When she turned around, he was standing in her doorway dressed in a coat and tie. She expected the hat and scarf—it was the coat and tie that looked odd.
“Look at you,” she said.
“Three words guaranteed to make a recluse cringe,” said Louis. He made a sound that was his laugh.
Gracie smiled. “I haven’t seen that coat in years.”
“Since I was sixteen.” At sixteen it all stopped for Louis, or was put away, or was in some way changed. “Does the coat smell like mothballs? I mean, I know it does, it’s had mothballs in the pockets for sixteen years. But is it overpowering?” He leaned close.
Gracie sniffed. She had been crying off and on since she got up, so she didn’t smell a thing. “It’s fine, Louis. Really.”
“Good,” he said.
“You’re thirty-two and you still fit in the coat you wore when you were sixteen. That’s not bad.”
She turned away and began to fix her hair. “Louis,” she said at last.
He was at the window peering out at the street. He knew all the windows in all the rooms and how to look out of them. He knew how not to be seen, of course, knew what the sun revealed as he stood just so behind a curtain or a shade. And the sun was always changing, so on cloudy days he had to adjust himself this way or that, or alter his stance in the afternoon from what it had been in the morning. Bright days, rainy days, light reflected from the white snow or from the green of a summer lawn—all affected the way he stood at his windows. Even at night he was wary, of streetlights, passing cars, and sometimes the moon. Stars, too. For someone who does not wish to be seen, even the light from stars must be considered. Sometimes, though, he did wish to be seen. He liked to play with Kitty Wilson. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the windows as she passed by on the street, craning her neck, teeth clamped on a cigarette, squinting through her makeup. He’d flutter curtains and jiggle shades, and her mouth would widen, and if the window was open he could almost hear her panting. When she finally gave up and turned to go, he’d reveal himself completely, there and then gone, and she’d freeze, not knowing if it was a trick of the sun or her imagination, or if he’d really been standing behind the glass.
“Louis,” Gracie said again.
He turned and faced her.
“The coat. Were you thinking… are you coming to the funeral?”
He moved toward her, then paused and went back to the window. “Jim Rose is here. In a big silver car.”
Gracie rose instantly and brushed past Louis. “I told him I didn’t want any nonsense. I’m not paying for the privilege of riding in a car owned by Big Bill. I already told Mary Dickson I’d go with her. Those Roses will do anything to squeeze a nickel out of you. Vampires sucking nickels out of the bereaved.”
Louis put a hand to her face, and she stopped. He said, “Gracie, I’d like to ride in that car.”
“You’re coming?” she said, drawing him close. “Louis, there’ll be people. All sorts of people.”
“I know.”
“You’re not used to it, honey.”
“I know.”
“Atlas wouldn’t mind. He really wouldn’t mind if you didn’t come. And neither would I. I’ll be fine.”
“I’d like to ride in the car. And I’d like to go to Atlas’s funeral.”
“Louis, why? It’s just so much.”
He looked out the window at Jim Rose starting up the walk, then he looked beyond him as far as he could see, which was not far enough. “Gracie, I’ve tried all the windows. Even the tiny dormer in the attic. If there was a way I could see the cemetery from this house, I wouldn’t go.”
“But Atlas would tell you the cemetery part doesn’t matter. It’s just a show for his friends, for the people he worked with. He’s already gone, Louis, and we’re just burying the shell.”
The doorbell rang. Then Louis said, “I know he’s gone.” A movement in the air, a soft beating of wings, and he was gone. “I know. But if I go, I’ll believe I’ve forgiven him. If I can leave this house in daylight, for everyone to see, if I can do that, I’ll believe I loved him even when he turned away.”
Gracie’s voice barely reached him. “He loved you.”
“And now he’ll know that I loved him.”
They held each other, then Louis said, “You sure, now?”
She cocked her head.
“You sure you can’t smell mothballs?”
Gracie went downstairs and opened the door for Jim Rose. He was ready for her, getting his words out first. Louis heard him say, “Mrs. Malone, I know that transportation was not part of your original funeral package.”
“That’s right, Mr. Jim Rose,” she said. “And if you think you can bamboozle—”
“Someone has stepped in on your behalf, Mrs. Malone. Someone is satisfying all the financial aspects of this day, so that you may attend to more pressing emotional needs without hinderment.” He held out an envelope to her.
“Hindrance,” said Louis, stepping into the foyer.
Jim Rose, who had spent years perfecting his professional composure, that look of unflappable blankness, took a large step backwards and widened his eyes.
Louis was pleased, because he was at least as nervous as Jim Rose, but he could see now it would go undetected.
“Hello, Jim. Good to see you.” The scarf filtered the shakiness in his voice
Jim Rose took a breath. “Louis. Good to see you.” The words were especially meaningless, since it was impossible to see anything of Louis but his eyes.
The two men faced each other. The last time they had been together was in high school, the day before Louis’s accident, showering with the other boys after gym class. The usual chaos prevailed—towel-snapping fights, water skirmishes, tossing soap bars. But one boy didn’t join in the fun. Louis spotted Jim Rose scurrying toward his locker, not even bothering to dry off. He was hiding something, something just below his waist. Unfortunately, and of course inevitably, all the other boys spotted him, too. What had happened to Jim Rose was the one thing, that most dreaded of things, all boys pray will never happen while taking a shower with fifty other boys. It could have been any of them, and they were all so grateful it wasn’t, they decided to sacrifice Jim Rose to the gods. They immediately attacked, all except Louis and a few other decent souls, taunting him, pelting him with soap bars, snapping at his erection with their rat-tailed towels. Mr. Hollister, the gym teacher, finally broke it up, and then punished the victim, not the victimizers, giving Jim Rose an unprece
dented twenty-five detentions. What especially enraged Mr. Hollister was that male sexual anatomy was not going to be taught in health class for another two weeks, and Jim Rose had obviously read ahead in the textbook. The boys added their own little punishment, giving him a nickname, substituting Dick for Jim, so that his name forever identified his sin: Dick Rose.
Louis reached out across sixteen years and offered his hand. Jim Rose didn’t take it. Instead he offered the envelope he had held out to Gracie. Louis took it, and handed it to her. She read it aloud.
“My sympathies are with you on this sad occasion. Please accept this small gesture, so that I can be satisfied that my account with Atlas is now closed. Know that God watches over all of his angels. Pastor Meem.” She looked at Louis, then said, “Well, well, well.”
Gracie called Mary Dickson. Louis and Jim Rose stood silently in the foyer. Jim Rose’s professional composure returned. Louis could feel Jim Rose eyeing him. Louis itched beneath his scarf and he reached up to adjust it. Jim Rose sucked in his breath in panic, and Louis realized Jim Rose thought he was about to remove the scarf.
Louis whispered, “No. I’d never…,” and then Gracie reappeared.
Jim Rose went out to the car. Louis, with Gracie at his side, stood on the front porch in the sunlight. He trembled. Gracie began to repeat softly, “There, there. Come on now. Come on now,” as if calming a bewildered animal.
Which Louis was. From his windows he had seen the front walk, the green grass, the azaleas, the dogwood, every day for sixteen years. And often at night, he had touched the dogwood, moved among the azaleas. But the sun… he had lived so long out of the revealing sun. Only at the farm did he dare walk in the light. He looked around, at his street, at the world of Waverly, at everything that was familiar, and knew that he was the object out of place, a shadow on the shadowless land. The sun. The sun in the grass, shining through each blade, and on the leaves of the dogwood, and on the azaleas, impossibly lit, and the incandescent shimmer of the mica in the cement walk. He closed his eyes.
“Flames,” he whispered, and hid his face on Gracie’s shoulder.
“Come on now, Louis. No flames, no flames,” she whispered back. “I’ll take you in. Let me take you in.”
In. Louis opened his eyes and the flames began to recede. In. Where it was cool, and dim, where he could watch the overbright world in safety.
“Take me in,” he said. He saw Jim Rose standing beside the open car door, waiting.
In the foyer again, Gracie said, “You’ll be all right here, Louis. Wait for me—I’ll be back soon. You’ll be all right?”
Through the screen door of the house that had been his safety for years and years, Louis saw Jim Rose standing beside the open car door. Without a word, he suddenly brushed past Gracie, pushed on the screen, and broke into a run down the walk toward the car. Jim Rose jumped aside as Louis dove onto the leather upholstery of the backseat. He made it. He made it through the flames.
Gracie hurried up to the car, looked at Louis, then got in beside him. Jim Rose closed the door behind them and walked around to the driver’s seat. Gracie adjusted Louis’s scarf and brushed at his coat sleeve as the car started up.
“There,” he said. “Nothing to it.”
He held Gracie’s hand as the car moved slowly along. He spared himself, did not look out the window. There was too much to see; he didn’t want to use himself up before the funeral. So he watched the back of Jim Rose’s neck, or kept his eyes downward and studied the upholstery, the hem on Gracie’s dark dress, the tips of his shoes. He imagined leaving a wake of gawking people behind as the car passed along the streets of Waverly to Rose’s Funeral Home. Women catching a glimpse of him and dropping their bags of groceries. Children swerving and falling off their bicycles. Old men on their porches slumping in their chairs. Dogs howling, and birds taking flight. Phones ringing all over town: Did you see, did you see? He’s out. They’ve let him out. I’m telling you, I saw him. Louis made himself smaller.
He stayed in the car during the short service at Rose’s. The car was parked around back, away from the guest lot. He peeked out the window and saw Jim Rose by a dumpster talking to an immensely fat old man who leaned on a cane. Big Bill. Big for fat, not tall. The cane looked as if it was about to snap. Jim Rose pointed over to the car. Louis pushed back against the seat. Jim Rose had betrayed him. Big Bill would come and press his fat nose against the window. Jim Rose, Jim Rose, I didn’t betray you in the locker room. I saw you but did not say a word. Louis closed his eyes and saw himself in the locker room, naked. But it wasn’t an erection he tried to hide from the other boys, but his face. He covered his face with his hands as the boys snapped their towels at him, and pelted him with bars of white soap. They pulled his hands away and he was revealed.
Louis opened his eyes and Big Bill was there. Not pressing his nose against the window, but reaching for the door handle. Louis hit the lock before he could open it, then whirled around and hit the other three. The sunlight sparkled on the parking lot and Louis could see tiny flames.
Big Bill backed away, smiling. “No harm, son. Easy now. I just wanted to have a look at you,” the words muted by glass.
Louis crouched below the window, and wondered why. Who would want to look? But Big Bill was a looker—at all things dead and terrible. He had seen the worst faces Waverly had to offer. Big Bill was a chronicler of the ugly, a connoisseur of the forbidding. But Louis was not dead yet, so Big Bill would have to wait. Louis saw himself dead, then, and imagined those fat fingers tugging at his scarf, the eager grunts of anticipation.
Big Bill leaned on his cane, still smiling. Louis could feel him, feel the horrible weight of him. The car began to heat up. Louis closed his eyes and saw Big Bill as the devil, his cane a pitchfork, standing in a sea of flames. And then suddenly, through the glass, Gracie’s voice. He looked out the window and Big Bill had vanished. Or had never been there at all.
He unlocked the door and Gracie got in. “You didn’t miss a thing,” she said. “I’ve been crying all morning, but in there, in that awful place, I was dry as a stone. It’s the most neutral place I’ve ever been—it sucked the emotion right out of me. People were shedding tears, but I was just so furious, Louis. Having left Atlas there for two days—it was worse than leaving him in a McDonald’s. And you know how he felt about McDonald’s. ‘Gracie, don’t you ever take me into a restaurant again where they talk into microphones.’ He couldn’t tolerate that, ordering a hamburger, then having them repeat his words over a microphone. ‘Makes you feel like you’re wearing your underwear on the outside,’ he said.”
She suddenly grabbed Louis’s arm. “Oh Lord. I gave Jim Rose those clothes, remember? Only I didn’t give him a pair of Atlas’s underwear.” Now she began to cry. “Do you think they put a pair on him, Louis?” Louis put his arm around her.
Up ahead they loaded the casket into a white hearse. The car started up, and Louis leaned back in the seat, away from the window. Everyone knew by now that he was there. The procession to the cemetery snaked down the streets of Waverly, the hearse first, then Gracie and Louis, and a long tail of cars. A lot of people liked Atlas, although very few of them understood his sense of humor. For instance, he probably would have thought it pretty funny, poor Gracie’s tears aside, that all these dressed-up people were going to all this trouble to bury a man who wasn’t wearing any underwear.
Louis watched the funeral from inside the car. He had whispered something to Gracie, and then she’d told Jim Rose to park in the shade and apart from the others after he let her out. Now Louis sat up, and even rolled the window down. Most of the guests were trying very hard not to look in his direction, some trying harder than others. Kitty Wilson, staring, tripped over a folding chair. Others were more discreet, shooting quick glances at the car. Louis clutched the armrest but didn’t hide. The pallbearers eased the coffin out of the hearse, and the eyes left him for a moment. Sixteen years had passed since he had seen the men who now held Atlas’s c
asket. They had become old men, pale as ghosts, six ghosts carrying Atlas to his grave. Fred Nistle, who used to own the bakery next to Malone’s Hardware. Jim and Bob Madison, Madison Brothers’ Grocery. Ben Hoy, Hoy’s Five and Ten. Sam Lester, Sam’s Barbershop. And Yank Spiller. Yank was Atlas’s assistant at the hardware store, and he was known as “slow.” Louis knew that Yank was slow, but that he was wise, too, in things that mattered.
Fred, Jim, Bob, Ben, and Sam were all members of the Rotary Club, as Atlas had been, and they were attempting to honor one of their dead by marching in a kind of dignified military unison. They had either not told Yank Spiller they were going to do this, or, and Louis knew this was more likely, they had told him so many times, and so carefully, the instructions were still whirling around in Yank’s brain and not making it down to his feet. The casket moved along like a centipede with a limp. Yank was getting it all wrong, and Louis could see the mourners cringe every time the casket received a particularly strong bounce. At last they got the thing where it was supposed to be and everyone looked relieved, except Yank, who looked a little disappointed because he was just starting to get his steps right.
The men began arranging themselves in the six seats set apart for them, and the rest of the mourners grew quiet. The Reverend Plant opened his Bible and had his mouth around the first word of the eulogy when Yank squinted into the distance and spotted Louis at the car window. He smiled brightly, the smile he always used to greet him with when Louis worked at the store on Saturdays and after school.
“Hey!” he shouted happily, and waved. “Hey, Louis.”
Sphincters tightened, lips were bitten, fingers dug into palms, but no one uttered a sound.
“Louis, how you been?” He waved again.