To Live

by C. G. Cooper

  The sun outside twinkled through the curtain. He pulled the drapes aside. No one walking by. No mailman with a bundle of junk mail to add to the Nix mailbox.

  Outside. That’s what he needed. When he’d gone to fetch the newspaper, he’d noticed the flower beds needed tending. That was Eve’s job, or at least it had been. He’d done the heavy lifting, hauling bags of mulch, peat moss, or whatever Eve had ordered from the store.

  Yes. Tending the flowers would get him some much-needed fresh air, clear his thoughts, and maybe get a sweat going.

  He changed into his yard work clothes, the same pair of jeans he’d mowed the lawn in for twenty years. The things still fit his trim frame after all this time.

  After gulping down a glass of water, and filling a bottle for later, he grabbed a pair of gloves and Eve’s tools from the garage and set to work.

  He made short work of the weeds, which thankfully weren’t plentiful. Just enough to make the place look shabby. Then came a quick job of pruning with his skilled hands. He found he lacked his wife’s artistic ability. It made sense. Elmore Nix was the utilitarian of the two. Sometimes Eve would shape their boxwoods into interesting shapes or maybe even an animal that would last the season. The best he could do was a round of tidying.

  He was just moving on to the side yard, where the shadow of the house shielded sunlight from a row of anemic plants, when he noticed a figure.

  She lifted a hand chin high. The other was jammed into her pocket.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  She just stood there.

  “Sam?”

  Still no words. He fidgeted with the trowel in his hand. What do you say to a teenage girl who’s staring at you?

  “I’m sorry for leaving you at the hospital,” she said.

  “That’s okay. I’m not your responsibility.”

  “No, but there’s a way to be, like a person, you know?”

  “It’s okay, Sam.”

  She shook her head like she wanted to explain. “Hey, do you need any help?” she asked instead.

  Elmore looked at the pitiful plants on the dour side yard. He was almost finished. “You sure you want to get your hands dirty?”

  “Dirt is my middle name.”

  “Your parents were creative with that one.”

  Her face brightened. “Hey, look at you making a funny!”

  There she was again, the Sam he’d come to enjoy as a sparring companion.

  “Grab a pair of gloves from the garage, you nitwit. I’ve got plenty of tools here.”

  She nodded and headed towards the garage, something of a skip in her step. Her eagerness was back, her enthusiasm for spending time with him, Elmore Thaddeus Nix.

  But instead of being happy that she was back, instead of enjoying the moment, all he could think about was why a young girl would choose to spend her days with a withering old man.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He got up and stretched his legs one calf at a time. He’d had runner’s legs once, but time had put an end to that. Now he was left with limbs that cramped in payment for half a day of tending the yard.

  “You should get some new tools,” Sam said. She was holding the hose out as far as her thin arm could manage and was washing her hands with it. “Seriously. Go to Home Depot or something. The ones you have are ancient.”

  “I like them. Besides, they work just fine.”

  Sam bent down to douse her face with cool water.

  She blew a spray of water. “Yeah, but the new stuff makes it so much easier.”

  He found that she knew something about gardening. She was gentle with the plants and ruthless with the weedy interlopers. She handled a spade like she’d been born with one and arranged mulch with all the deftness of a card shark. He hadn’t asked where she got her talent. Maybe a class at school. Maybe her mother or an aunt liked to garden.

  “Why are you here, Sam?” he asked, watching her wipe her face with the bottom of her oversized shirt.

  She looked at him. “Huh?”

  “Sam.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I said, why are you here?”

  She looked around. “Um, I’m helping with the yard?”

  “That’s what you’re doing. I want to know why you’re doing it.”

  Her gaze shifted to her feet. “I like spending time with you.”

  “But why? I’m an old man.”

  Now her eyes met him, twinkling back. “Right, you’re a crusty old fart.”

  “Cut the crap, Sam. I’m sixty-seven years old. Some people would say this is a little weird. I don’t mind it, I’m saying. But, you know, people get ideas.”

  “It’s not weird. You’re not a creep and I’m not… well, I’m not into that stuff. Look...”

  Her mouth froze mid-sentence. Then closed. And then she gave a shrug and smiled.

  “I’m not asking because I don’t want you here. Truly. But shouldn’t you be with your friends? Family?”

  It was the truth. What teenage girl in her right mind wanted to spend the day, or multiple days with an old man with half a leg in a grave?

  “I… I don’t…”

  “What is it, Sam?”

  Tears filled her eyes.

  She looked as though she wanted to run. And she did. She ran the five feet into his arms.

  And she sobbed.

  And for the first time since Eve’s death, he felt something.

  It was something she’d said once while they walked on the beach with Eddie. The dog had plunged into the water and was knocked over by an unexpected breaker. She started to run toward the dog like a mother. Of course, the collie was fine. A little worse for wear as far as pride was concerned, but fine.

  But he noticed the look on her face. And he asked her about it.

  “I was afraid there for a second, that I’d have one less thing in this world to care for. I’m of no use when I can’t do that.”

  He thought of this now, with the love he was feeling for this girl, Sam.

  Finally, he was of use again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Sorry I got snot all over your shirt,” Sam said, picking at the corner of her sandwich.

  “It’s okay. I was already a mess.”

  After the cry session, sans explanation, they’d gone inside for a late lunch. He made ham and cheese sandwiches warmed on the Williams Sonoma panini press he’d given Eve for Christmas five years before.

  They went on with their meal, not speaking, digesting in more than one way.

  When they finished, he wordlessly rose and collected the dishes. She followed. They coordinated washing and drying as if in a Zen-like trance.

  “My mom,” said Sam. “She’s sick.”

  “I kind of got that idea from the get-well card.”

  “Not that kind of sick. She’s, well, it’s embarrassing.”

  Sometimes the best words are no words at all. Elmore focused on stacking dishes in the drying rack.

  “She’s an addict,” Sam finally said, mopping a towel around a glass.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Sam nodded, setting the glass on the counter and grabbing another. “It’s not good, at home I mean.”

  Why the card? He wanted to ask. No prying.

  “You’re welcome here any time,” he said.

  “Really? I’ve only come here unsolicited like every single time.”

  They worked on. With the dishes done, Elmore fussed in the pantry while Sam stood at the kitchen window, just staring out.

  “Sometimes I wish she would just die,” she said suddenly. At first, he thought he’d misheard.

  Elmore understood. He’d thought the same thing about his father.

  He set the can of chicken noodle soup next to the tomato soup. “Sam?”

  “Yeah,” she said without turning.

  “Look at me.”

  This time she turned to face him, a brave face. He saw right through it. She

  was on the lip of that dark precipice, the tea
rs waiting in the wings.

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t. She wouldn’t want me to.”

  “Who am I going to tell?”

  He motioned to the empty room, but really, he was motioning to his empty life. No job. No friends. No wife.

  She looked around absently. Then walked over to the kitchen table and crumpled into a chair, face in hands.

  “It’s terrible,” she said. “And it’s embarrassing.”

  Elmore took a seat next to her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “So, I guess it begins with Dad,” she said. “He was a rep for Motorola and would leave every so often to negotiate contracts, right? Well, one time, he left and never came back. It’s gonna sound weird, but like, I wasn’t really hurt by it. Don’t get me wrong, it was totally awkward, him not coming home and Mom getting all riled up and making calls and crying at night for a week. Anyway, after a while, she starts going out at night with her girlfriends. You know women, right? The minute something happens, they all flock to the rescue. I was, what, ten? I knew it then. I didn’t question it. Mom would go out and tell me to keep the doors locked. I’d stay in, watch TV, and eat a tub of frosting. Pretty soon, she was staying out all night and coming home smelling like she’d fallen into a pickle barrel. And looking worse. She was, what do you call it? Classically beautiful? Is that what you old people call it?

  “Anyway, on the nights she made it home, she’d always made it a point to tuck me in. She smelled like a cocktail. I actually like the smell of alcohol on the breath. It’s sick-smelling and warm, but I like it. That’s an alky in the making, I guess, right? Whatevs. She’d tuck me in and kiss me and say something slurred. Then, she’d shuffle out of the room and I’d hear the sound of ice in a glass. All friggin’ night. But here’s the deal – there was something so sweet about it. So tender and loving. Someone sloshed like that and they’re obviously hurting and fragile and all that love is like an exposed nerve. Anyway, we went out to eat a lot. And at home it was just the two of us. We were BFFs, you know? Rented movies. Her drinking actually slowed. I mean, it started at five sharp. But I guess she was like steady with it? It wasn’t a problem. I guess that’s the recipe for it getting worse. No one’s paying attention.

  “Then there were her boyfriends. Good Lord, some of them were toads. She first started introducing them as coworkers. First, they stayed in the car while she tucked me in. I would hear her leave and get this nauseous feeling in my stomach, like something awful was going to happen to her. Then they started coming into the house. I guess she wasn’t trying to hide her shame anymore. You get to that point. There was an endless friggin’ parade at one point. These gross guys who couldn’t take their eyes off her ass even as they patronized her daughter. I liked it better when they just ignored me.

  “Now, keep in mind, I’m just, like, eleven? And I’m starting to think about who the hell I am. And so when she leaves at night with one of these dirt bags, I get out of bed, hit the fridge, and start texting my friends. I’d hear the car pull in and jump into bed and all was well. Mom once told me she felt like she was in college again. I felt the same way. I mean, I hear that’s what it’s like in college. You’re free. I loved it. And then Dad showed up, and everything changed.

  “I was the one who answered the door. He stood there looking like a Jehovah’s Witness. He cocked his head to the side. ‘Hey, pumpkin,” he says. Like I’m five. Mom told me to stay in my room. She was nice about it but I resented it. I got real close to the door. I heard everything. The old man had gotten remarried, had two kids, and settled down. He’d gotten a desk job. No more traveling. There was a lot of yelling after that, mostly from Mom.

  “He said there was a third baby on the way. And he said he was tapped out. He couldn’t afford child support. Mom went apeshit. The thing is, he was citing these loopholes, like the fact that Mom was spending a lot more time with me than she used to, and the fact that his new job was paying him less. And so, he had these legal rights and stuff that would allow him to pay a lot less. Mom accused him of not reporting correct income. It got ugly. But part of her gave up. I heard her tell a friend that she couldn’t afford to fight him with lawyers.

  “That’s when the party really came to our house. After that visit. Friends, neighbors, random people off the street. Mom started pawning stuff. If my father had paid for it, she got rid of it. The bedroom set, the coffee table, even the coffee maker. We were left with an empty house. At least she let me keep my things, but I suspect a couple of things that she said were broken were sitting on a shelf somewhere in a thrift store. I knew we were in trouble when the stack of mail got bigger. Angry letters. That’s what I called them. Letters from lawyers. Letters from real estate agents. The day I saw the letter in my dad’s handwriting was the same day I found the pills in my mom’s purse.

  “I don’t know what they were, but I know the bottle didn’t have her name on them. She was a nurse then. I knew she’d stolen them from a patient. There’s more. A lot more. I just, well, I don’t want to say them out loud. Do you ever get the feeling that if you explain something out loud, like something that happened in the past that that something will happen again?

  “Yeah, so I won’t bore you with the rest of the details. In summary, Mom and I live in whatever motel will take our credit card of the week. I think the cards are probably swiped. She hasn’t had a steady job in close to a year, and I’m sure the next time I go ‘home’ we’re going to be homeless. And that’s that.”

  Sometimes, the only thing you can say is nothing at all.

  So that’s what they did. They sat at Elmore’s kitchen table saying nothing for a very long time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sam was a daily visitor now. Now that Elmore knew the reason why, he was careful to be as welcoming as he could without making it seem like charity. He knew Sam wouldn’t like that. She was the type that could sniff out pity like a hound dog catching the scent of steak a mile away.

  He made the meals, and she washed the dishes. Sometimes they watched old movies, and other times they played Scrabble, which Elmore loved because it reminded him of Eve. She’d been the best, rarely picking up the Scrabble-approved dictionary for help.

  Elmore never took it easy on Sam, and she seemed to appreciate that. He loved the way she’d stew over a particularly hard mix of letters. Sometimes she’d make him laugh with the choices. Words like “syzygy”. He hadn’t laughed this much since, well, a long time ago.

  When Elmore looked back, he wondered how he hadn’t seen it. Life could be ruthless, and that was the only certainty about existence – that it always found a way to sneak around the corner and sucker punch you when you weren’t paying attention.

  And so it was with one beautiful Tuesday on the block. He’d just finished the day’s crossword puzzle - save for three words that Eve would have polished off for him.

  Here came Sam walking down the block, backpack swaying from side to side. She had her earphones in. He could always tell if it had been a good day by whether she had her earphones in. Good day meant white cord. Bad day meant cord in the pocket.

  White cord.

  He eased out of the rocking chair, thinking that a healthy snack might do Sam some good. He had no idea what she ate at school, or if she ate. Perhaps she was on assistance—he hadn’t asked and she hadn’t offered. What he did know was that Sam never left a crumb on her plate. Even when he made something that he was sure she hadn’t liked, like the gumbo he’d spent an entire morning cobbling together, she still ate it all and most times asked for seconds.

  The man at the grocery store had been helpful. When Elmore asked what he should get as snacks for his grandkids, the clerk had been more than happy to supply a bevy of options. Those options now lined the pantry.

  He selected a bag of trail mix with M&Ms in it and poured half of it into a bowl. Even though he’d told Sam that she could have the run of the place, she never once went in the pantry unless he asked her to fetch someth
ing.

  He set the bowl on the table and grabbed a Sprite from the fridge. He personally avoided the stuff. The sugar didn’t settle well anymore. Another one of life’s jabs. At least he wasn’t wearing diapers yet. Maybe next week.

  Sam came in the front door without a knock. At least she was comfortable with that. He’d told her it was silly for him to greet her every time, like she was an infrequent visitor.

  “Elmore Thaddeus Nix,” she called from the front of the house.

  The constant recitation of his full name made him smile every time. If anyone else had said it, even the woman behind the counter at the DMV, he’d cringe.

  “I got your mail,” she said, stepping into the kitchen, tossing a handful of envelopes onto the table. She already had taken off her backpack and left it inside the front door, along with her shoes. When he’d let slip that Eve mandated a shoeless house, Sam had made it a point to remove them every time.

  She peeked into the bowl. “This doesn’t have raisins, does it?”

  “It’s trail mix,” he said. “Of course it has raisins.”

  She snorted derisively, grabbed a handful of the stuff, and shoveled it in. The way her cheeks puffed like a squirrel getting ready for winter made him wonder if she’d eaten at all.

  “You got more than usual today,” she muffled around the mix.

  The mail-getting was a recent development, one he was heartily grateful for. The weather was getting nicer, and there were more of his neighbors outside enjoying it. He’d found himself dreading the idea of their eyes pitifully filming his every move.

  “What’s that one,” she said, reaching for another handful. “That thick one on top with a cool logo.”

  Sam was into her second handful of trail mix by then. He wandered over to the pile, a gun-shy recipient of well-wishing cards. He saw the symbol on the envelope. It was more like a crest.

  “It’s nothing. Junk mail.”