by Jon Cohen
Iris looked down at the Three Musketeers bar she’d mashed between her fingers, then back up at Paula. “Loose?”
“Loose,” said Paula, heading for her locker. “If it was a word at all, which I’m not betting it was. Loose.”
Iris turned and stared into the Tube Man’s old room. “The man in the window is loose.” Lionel scrubbed the floor as Iris watched blankly. That was the Tube Man’s sentence? What did it mean? Loose? What man in the window? Loose where? Was the man in the window some kind of escaped crazy? She’d waited so long, and now the Tube Man’s final word meant nothing. The whole sentence meant nothing. If it was a sentence, if they really were words the Tube Man had been speaking. Maybe Paula was right. Maybe it was all sounds, meaningless noises misinterpreted by a bunch of tired, overimaginative nurses. She was suddenly angry—at the Tube Man, at herself for going so far on so little, at Paula for not hearing a magical final word. She glared at Lionel, who was standing with his mop, waving her into the room.
“Come here. Hey, Iris, come on in here,” he called out to her.
Iris didn’t want to go into the Tube Man’s room, but she did.
“Hey. Look down there.” He pointed at a square of linoleum with a red splotch in the center of it. Blood. Nothing unusual on a hospital floor.
“Blood. They pulled out his tubes. He leaked. So what?”
“You’re a pain in my ass, girl,” Lionel said. “Bend down, take a look at that. That’s some funny spot of blood.”
Iris squinted at the spot. She saw it then. The blood was in the shape of a heart, an almost perfect valentine heart.
Lionel nodded. “How about that shit?”
PART THREE
WIDOWS AND WIDOWERS
CHAPTER ONE
THE WIDOW Gracie Malone. Widow Malone. Old Widow Malone. Gracie walked alone in her yard on a late December day, trying on names like hats. A silly thing to be doing, just as it was silly to try on hats, as if there were such a thing as a perfect hat, one that truly suited and defined her above all the others. She rarely wore a hat, and she would never call herself the Widow Malone, though she’d been trying it on for months. No one was called the Widow anything anymore. When she was young, every other house seemed to be occupied by a widow—Widow Bunting, Widow Dalton, Widow Pitts. These were women who wore their widowhood well, who seemed, almost, to be born to it. As a child, that’s what Gracie assumed, that just as there were parents or brothers and sisters, there were widows, women who had always been as they were—alone, white-haired, and possessors of some undefined, scary, and magnificent secret. The secret, Gracie knew now, was grief, which was indeed scary, but in no way magnificent.
Why hadn’t the grief, the missing, shown on the faces of Widows Bunting, Dalton, and Pitts? How had they concealed it? Or was it that she’d been too young to see it? She saw it now, on her own face in the medicine cabinet mirror each morning, and each night before she went to bed. She had stood before that mirror a thousand thousand times, and often Atlas had stood behind her, brushing his teeth as she brushed hers. The mirror seemed out of whack now, capable of revealing only half the team of Gracie and Atlas, and Gracie often whirled around in the bathroom, hoping to suddenly see her other unreflected half, Atlas, absently flossing his teeth, or combing his hair behind her.
Had Widow Bunting whirled in her own bathroom, sixty years ago when Gracie was only ten? Gracie imagined herself as a child, standing at night at her open bedroom window, listening to a faint rustling sound coming from a small window on the second floor of the house next door. It was Widow Bunting, in her dry petticoats, whirling round and round in her bathroom, trying to catch a glimpse of her long-dead husband.
Gracie walked in her yard and wondered what hidden child was observing her at this moment, the Widow Malone, the strange new widow of Waverly. Well, guaranteed at least one child watched, her own, Louis, just behind some curtain or shade. She looked back at the house, scanned each of the windows, but didn’t see anything. Which only convinced her he was there, crafting the unnaturally perfect stillness that revealed nothing. She waved, then began to walk the yard again. Louis would be watching only in the sense of watching over her; he didn’t spy. His was a protective gaze, she knew. He cleared the way for her with his eyes.
He protects me now, Atlas, but do you remember when it was you and I who protected him? It was a lovely time, wasn’t it, the years when we thought we could protect him. Gracie looked around her, and for just an instant, the winter brown gave way to a shimmering green, the green of a summer in the backyard. Atlas was there, young, holding tiny Louis in his arms.
Gracie saw herself, her brown hair in a ponytail, rushing toward Atlas. “Don’t drop him!”
Atlas grinned and dipped his arms as if he were about to toss Louis into the branches of the horse chestnut tree.
Gracie froze. “Atlas.”
But Atlas only lifted Louis high enough to bring him to his lips. He kissed Louis’s cheeks once, and then again, before surrendering him to Gracie. “Don’t you drop him either,” he said.
Gracie looked down at Louis. He gave her a drooling smile. “Mothers don’t drop their babies,” she said.
“That a fact?” said Atlas. “I guess mothers are about the most perfect thing there is.”
“No. Babies, then mothers.”
“Doesn’t leave much room for fathers.”
Gracie didn’t answer him. She moved closer and leaned against him, felt Atlas against her, and Louis in her arms, immersed herself in the loveliness. “This is it,” she said after a long moment.
“Yes,” said Atlas, pulling her closer still, and Louis with her, so that Gracie was unsure where she stopped and Atlas began, whether the rapid beating within her chest was her own heart, or Louis’s.
“Oh Atlas,” she whispered. “What will we do?”
Atlas was very still. Then he said, “Remember as best we can, Gracie. Remember that on a summer day, the three of us stood a minute beneath a tree.”
Gracie remembered, then returned again to the late winter afternoon. She walked the backyard. She paused beside the garage where bits of morning frost still whitened the bottoms of the leaves that had blown up against its shaded brick side. She stooped, picked one up, and touched the white crystals. She traced her finger along the back of the leaf until the ice melted, then she brought the leaf to her mouth and tasted the water. It tasted of fall, just as July raindrops on a green leaf taste of summer. She stooped again and carefully returned the leaf to its spot against the garage. Then she picked up a horse chestnut burr. She squeezed it too hard and felt the sharp points digging into her palm. One of the points pierced her skin, and a drop of blood emerged like a single tear. She tasted it, too, then turned and looked at the horse chestnut tree.
I could cut the tree down, she thought, then I wouldn’t see Atlas lying under it. And have the stump dug up, and then I could fill the hole with dirt and plant new grass in the spring. But she knew how it would go. The new grass would never really blend with the old, and she would remember that the grass covered the dirt, and the dirt was used to fill the hole, and the hole was from the stump that was dug up, and the stump belonged to the horse chestnut tree under which, in one way or another, Atlas would always lie. She pictured him there in all seasons, with the green grass of spring around him and perhaps a purple crocus by his head, pictured him in the heavy shade of full summer, and in the fall with the dry leaves banked against one side of him, and pictured him surrounded by the winter snow, still lying there, still dressed in his gardening clothes as if he were only resting, just for a moment, and would rise again.
That’s how it had been since the funeral. Atlas was either terribly present, so that she could actually feel the weight of him, as if she lay beneath him there under the horse chestnut tree, or he was terribly absent, less than a ghost or a memory, unreachable, even though she was surrounded by the facts of his existence, the reminders that beckoned and glittered, like the diamond on the ring
that he had given her so many years ago.
She slowly peeled the spiny burr, picked and peeled until she reached the two perfect brown chestnuts hidden within it. She lifted them out. They were slightly moist, like, she imagined, the surface of an eyeball, or the dampness left behind by a light kiss. She raised them to her mouth, and without really thinking about it, touched them to her lips, first the larger one, and then the smaller one. She thought she tasted something of Atlas in them. She smiled, remembering his kisses, specific kisses, so immediate she reddened and turned away from the window so Louis wouldn’t be able to see her face. Really, Atlas, she thought, not in front of Louis.
Gracie approached the horse chestnut tree. She had not gone near it since the summer, since the day she had come around the house from mulching the tulip bed and seen Atlas drop slowly to his knees, then down into the grass. The grass had been mowed and raked since then, but she still thought she could see the shape of his body outlined in broken blades. She dropped to her knees, as he had, and touched the spot. Then she began to pluck at the brown blades of grass, to clear a small area. When she reached dirt, she started to dig with her fingers. A dot of blood appeared again where she had pierced herself with the burr. She held her palm over the small hole she had dug, and watched as the blood made a thin rivulet through the dirt on her hand, swelled into a drop that trembled slightly, then fell. She picked up the larger of the two chestnuts and fingered its smooth surface, then dropped it into the hole and pushed the dirt over it. She kept the smaller chestnut for herself. She held it in her closed hand as she walked back to the house in the weakening light of the cold afternoon.
Louis, of course, had been watching. When Gracie began to scratch at the earth like a squirrel, he looked away so that she could have her moment. He had looked away often over the last few months.
Early the next morning, before Gracie was awake, he slipped out the back door and went to the spot where she had buried the chestnut. The frost covered the grass, the leaves, and even the handle of a misplaced trowel that lay half-hidden in the brown remains of the daylily bed. But the spot where Gracie had dug remained untouched; the frost bordered the fresh dirt and then stopped abruptly. Louis placed the palm of his hand on the dirt and it felt warm, as if it had absorbed the heat of a long summer day. He kept his hand there and slowly closed his eyes. He felt a rustling beneath the dirt, then a small pressure against his palm. He moved his hand away and saw a tiny nub of green poking between small chunks of moist dirt. The nub became a stem, grew an inch, then two, and began to sprout tiny translucent green leaves. When it grew to be a foot, which happened in moments, Louis saw that it was a small horse chestnut tree. He stepped back as the tree continued to grow and grow, until soon he was looking up into its thickening branches. He grabbed a passing branch and hauled himself into a sitting position, his back against the swelling trunk. His house appeared below him, and then his neighborhood, and then all of Waverly. When he couldn’t make out the streets of Waverly any longer, he was almost to the clouds. The tree continued to grow, silently, as silent as the clouds through which Louis now passed. When he was just above the clouds, the tree stopped growing. The white stretched out before him, like the white of the frost that covered the grass in his backyard. He slid off the branch and onto the cloud, turning slowly when someone said his name.
“Louis.”
“Atlas.”
They stood face to face but did not touch. Louis looked down and saw that his feet had sunk into the cloud. Atlas, in his old Hush Puppies, hovered an inch or two above the misty white, kept aloft by the gentle movement of his wings.
“I’m pleased to see you, Louis, but you shouldn’t be here.”
“I couldn’t help it.”
Atlas nodded, because he knew Louis.
And then he said, already turning to go, “Tell your mother, tell Gracie to get on with her life. I’m gone now. Tell her that planting chestnuts won’t do any good.”
Louis closed his eyes against the words, and when he opened them again, he saw that he’d been nowhere, that he still knelt in the frosty grass of his backyard, his hand on the spot where Gracie had dug. When he looked up into the early morning sky, he saw that it was cloudless.
Two yards over, Francine Koessler opened her back door to let out her cat, Minky. Louis dropped down into a crouch. Francine stood on her back porch, resplendent in her pink curlers and orange bathrobe, gazing vaguely in his direction. Minky made an immediate beeline for him, even though he was almost entirely hidden by a clump of bushes.
“Minky,” Francine called. “Minky. Don’t you go in that yard.”
That yard. Meaning where he, Louis, lived. Francine was a widow (though she was not referred to as the Widow Koessler), and things tended to make her nervous. She went up on her toes and stared into the dark twist of bushes where Minky had discovered Louis.
“Minky. No, no, Minky. Come on back.” She clapped her hands anxiously.
Minky walked up to Louis, stared at him, then began to bat at the end of the purple scarf that hung loosely around Louis’s neck. Louis flicked his hand at Minky, trying to shoo her away. Minky thought it was a great game.
Louis looked up and saw Francine crunching through the frost and brown grass, coming his way.
“Minky. Mommy’s had enough of this now,” she said in a wheedling voice.
Louis looked at Minky, and Minky looked at Louis. Then Minky gave Louis the cat equivalent of a devilish grin, took the corner of Louis’s scarf into his mouth, and gave it a yank. It was a very doglike maneuver, and Louis was so surprised he didn’t react. But he was not half as surprised as Francine, who let out a piercing yelp when Minky shot out of the bushes dragging the scarf like it was a big dead rat. Francine instantly recognized that scarf, although she had never actually seen it before. Louis’s purple scarf (and baseball hat) was the stuff of legend, everyone in Waverly knew about it, though few had seen it.
Francine yelped, then dashed across the yard, curlers bouncing off her head as she went. When she reached her kitchen door she was so upset, she pushed when she should have pulled, which upset her even more because she thought somehow Louis, or Louis’s scarf (for who knew, maybe the scarf possessed evil powers, that’s how scared she was), had gotten into the house and was blocking her way. At last she jerked the door open, scurried inside, and banged the door shut with her shoulder. Francine’s frantic efforts frightened Minky, who dropped the scarf and took off at high speed through several backyards, finally coming to a stop midway up a dogwood tree. Louis made his move then, taking a quick look around to make sure the coast was clear. He sprinted around the bushes with one hand over the exposed part of his face, and rescued his scarf, which he tied around himself as he ran back to his house, wondering whether the moisture he felt on the scarf was melting frost or Minky spit.
Gracie came into the kitchen just as he burst panting in the door. At first she was alarmed, but then she saw the smile in his eyes.
“Well,” she said, cocking her head. “Out for a bit of a stroll, were we?”
“I was attacked,” he said, “by Francine Koessler’s precious Minky.”
“Attacked?”
“Well, not exactly attacked,” said Louis, dropping into a chair, “but she did steal my scarf, which was worth it, because of the show Francine put on.”
Gracie imagined the show, smiling as she reached into the refrigerator for an egg. Then she frowned. She didn’t much care for Francine, but her sympathies had changed. “Poor Francine,” she said. “She’s a widow. You shouldn’t be out there scaring the widows. We widows have to stick together, you know.” She spoke distinctly, emphasizing the word widow each time, trying to get a feel for the continued foreignness of it.
They ate their breakfast silently for a time, then Gracie spoke, as if continuing out loud a conversation she’d been having with herself. “She is an old cluck, though. Francine, I mean. Atlas could not abide that woman. She was a flutterer, he said. He was always tell
ing how he’d be having a nice peaceful day at the hardware store, then in fluttered Francine Koessler to ruin it.”
Louis remembered, too, those peaceful Saturdays at the store, he and Yank Spiller stocking shelves or helping customers, Atlas at the cash register, when suddenly there’d be an alteration in the quality of the air. Everyone felt it, all the regular Saturday customers—Joe Turner in for his paint thinner, Jake Lucas bringing in his screens to be fixed, Fred Werther browsing in the toilet fixture section. Louis, Yank, and Atlas all felt the change even before Francine touched the doorknob to let herself into the store, felt the commotion that always preceded her, like the smell of ozone and electricity before the first flash of lightning and clap of thunder of an approaching storm. Then Francine would burst into the store like she was running from thieves, waving her arms, her voice all charged up. The men would look at her, their faces neutral, trying not to let their shared sense of grief and disapproval show, not that it mattered since Francine, so distracted by her own performance, hardly noticed them. The men didn’t disapprove of women in their store (their store, even though Atlas was the owner, because a hardware store is a shared institution, like a church, and for a certain type of person just as sacred)—most of the women acted with dignity and restraint, if not always decisiveness, when shopping in the store. But the atmosphere of the place was most definitely male, a church run by and catering to the needs of monks, not nuns.
Before she was five feet inside the store, Francine had pulled half a dozen things off the Peg-Board display, scooped up a handful of stuff off the shelves, and was already pressing Atlas with a run of exasperating and unrelated questions, while simultaneously sending Yank and Louis in search of any number of vaguely described items. Francine knew she was in need, and she must have instinctively sensed, like Mrs. Meem and Harvey Mastuzek, that the hardware store, with its curative potential, was the place to satisfy that need. She searched hard, turning the store and everyone in it upside down in the process.