by Brian Hodge
So we watched the sun come up one morning, right?
I'd had my share of mornings getting home by the gray light of dawn, but never had made sunrise the reason I was out in the first place. Couldn't sleep, plain as that…because I thought I kept hearing the apartment building settling around me, all night long, and for some reason it sounded noisy as hell. And Tommy, he'd spent the whole night up watching over his grandmother. I don't know why I called him, or even how I'd guessed he'd be awake too—I just did.
We got coffees and trudged a few blocks east, toward the shore, to the old piers that were rarely used anymore, falling apart mostly. We looked toward the far edge of the water and waited for those first rays of golden red, and breathed in the deep saltwater scent. Back in the neighborhood, on days when the wind was right, I could smell the ocean from there, but hardly ever came down here to see it, or listen to the waves splash against the pilings—always seemed like too much bother, not worth the effort.
"How is she?" I asked, finally. Because he hadn't said yet.
"The nurse that comes in gives her another day or two. Her lungs—" He sagged. "She's drowning inside. A wetter cough I've never heard in my life."
Tommy talked about her awhile, then put the topic aside, like he'd had enough of it for now.
"There's something I've been waiting for someone to explain to me, but since nobody seems to be volunteering it, I guess I'll have to come right out and ask," he said. "What happened to Davey?"
"He had an accident a few years back."
"Yeah, that much I figured on my own. What kind of accident?"
I'd half forgotten that Davey had ever been any other way, because how he clomped around on legs of two different lengths just seemed to suit him. He'd always been the kind of wormy little guy who tags along at the edge of whatever's going on, but there's something about him you like even though you'll never treat him quite as an equal. The kind of guy who, ever since he was a kid, is always ready to fetch stuff for you, so he'll have a place in the scheme of things. In high school he was the manager of the football team Artie played on, which is how we ended up with him full-time.
"He got hit by a car late one afternoon," I told Tommy, and explained how Davey had been on his way home after we'd all been hanging out in front of our favorite deli. He'd said later he started having trouble walking, like he was on one of those bigger planets where you'd weigh twice as much, and when he was crossing from one block to another he found himself in the middle of an intersection and that he couldn't move one more step.
"Was he drunk?"
"That must've been it," I said, even though Davey hadn't been. But really, I just didn't know what had gone wrong.
All I knew was I didn't feel like explaining why Davey had gone storming home in the first place…because if we hadn't been razzing him so hard about how he'd never had a girlfriend, maybe he never would've been in the wrong spot at the wrong time, feeling like he couldn't raise either foot enough to get even as far as the curb.
"Why's it happen like that for some guys?" Tommy wondered. "Every strike that can go against them, they get hit with it."
Like I had an answer for that. At least he didn't seem to expect one.
"They don't have much use for me now, do they," he said then, and wasn't asking. "The other guys."
I tried to stall on that one but he wouldn't let it slide, and finally I had to tell him, "Maybe it's just they feel like they don't know you anymore. Like, whoever you were, once, you're not him anymore."
Tommy got this bitter grin. "What, they'd like me better if I was still putting bricks through windshields and stealing pints of gin?" He lost the grin, looking out across the water and shaking his head the way you do when you're about to give up on something. "I guess we'll each just have to live with the disillusion."
So we sat on the rotting pier and finished our coffees as all the world I'd ever known started to lighten, and the slop and slosh of seawater against pilings receded while the tide ebbed out, as the moon relaxed its hold on the ocean and turned the day over to the sun.
*
After work, I stayed at the house with Tommy and his family during those last hours while his grandmother let go. It just seemed like the thing to do for a friend.
But it wasn't pretty, or restful, or quiet. She couldn't breathe well, and every so often it got bad enough that the nurse who was coming by in these final days had to flip on a suction machine and snake a tube down toward her windpipe and pump out the buildup of thick fluid with a slurpy gargling sound. The first time, I watched it sputter and spatter into the jar at the other end of the hose, and then as it started to fill up I decided not to look that direction anymore.
His grandmother's name was Lydia. I hadn't known that until this day.
There were pictures on her wall, and some of them, you took one glance and knew how old they had to be, the people in them looking like no one from our own time. I asked about them when Tommy and I drifted out of the deathroom and into the kitchen, and he explained what I'd figured already, that they were relatives, long since dead, including Lydia's own parents, who'd been the first ones to come over on the boat.
I gave them a closer look when we went back, trying to keep out of the way of Tommy's dad and aunts and uncles as I stared at the haunting faces in those faded old photos, weary but with a few hopes still alive and burning. I had to have a group of faces like this in my own background, just never thought to ask who they were.
They must've been on Tommy's mind, too, when we went out for air later and stood on the porch as another day ended, a hazy summer evening closing in.
"You ever wonder what they came over here for?" he asked, then swept a hand out over the neighborhood, all of it, and his hand hung in the air as if he didn't know what to say about any of it. The parts we could see, and all the rest we couldn't, and just had to smell it, like frying peppers and diesel exhaust, or hear it, like the far-off squawk of a car alarm and the brittle smashing of a bottle and always always always someone somewhere shouting of the top of his or her lungs.
"Because it had to be for more than this," Tommy said.
I realized it was the second day in a row that I hadn't seen the other guys. I couldn't say I missed them, and figured they were clustered a few blocks over, maybe thinking the same about me. Three guys I'd known forever, just waiting for one day to end and another to begin so they could get back together in their little huddle and wait for that day to end too.
"The other morning, while she could still speak," Tommy went on, "she told me the thing she hated second-most was looking out the window."
"What was tops on her list?"
"Waking up. She said for years now she's been dreaming she goes someplace called County Carlow."
"Where's County Carlow?"
"Ireland, it'd have to be. Even though she's never been there. Must be where her parents came from." He glanced off the side of the porch toward the window of her room. Nothing to see but a drawn curtain. "She says you wouldn't believe how green the grass is there."
"Grass—what's that?" I said, and laughed. "Oh yeah, that scraggly brown stuff that grows between the sidewalk and the curb."
Again he looked up and down the street, this place his ancestors had come to, the place he had come from, and said again, "It had to be for more than this…"
Maybe because he'd moved away before the neighborhood had sunk its deepest roots into him, it probably wouldn't occur to Tommy to wonder this, but it sure occured to me: And why is it so hard to leave it behind?
Anymore it seemed like there was only one way.
So we went back inside then, to Lydia's room, and saw the rest of it through to the end. The air was filled with the rattling of her breath and the weeping of her daughters, and her eyes were like two dwindling embers as they focused on nothing anyone else could see, or maybe nothing at all. Earlier she'd tried to lift a hand to someone's cheek and you could tell how heavy she was, so heavy. But now in her last mome
nts the corners of her mouth seemed to turn upwards in a grin, like she'd heard a joke told just for her, and when her last breath left her it seemed to go on forever, and I wondered how anyone so tiny could have that much breath still trapped inside her, and after a few moments when we all realized that that was it, I looked at some of the old photos again, those that I was guessing might've been taken in County Carlow, and I suppose I halfway expected to see Lydia in the background of one of them now, looking light as a rose petal and barefoot in the green green grass.
But it was just the same old faded sepia as before.
Once they'd had a few minutes to stay put and hold each other and absorb the moment and say their prayers for the dead, Tommy's family started moving around again. Still on the floor near the bed was the big jar, three-quarters full of what the nurse had cleared from Lydia's lungs, and one of the uncles accidentally kicked it. It bounced off the baseboard intact, but then hit the stainless steel frame of a rolling medical tray. The whole side cracked open like an egg and all that cloudy, clotted ooze flowed out onto the floor.
One of the teary-eyed aunts scolded the guy, said someone was going to have to take a mop to it. I spoke up and said that I'd do it, because anybody can say he's sorry and leave. And because I knew that Artie and Angelo and Davey would pretend they hadn't even seen the mess, right then it seemed important not to be like them.
But after a few moments, when everyone else had busied themselves with time of death and calling the funeral director, I was the only one left looking at the mess in the corner.
And it started to move again.
Not on its own, I'm not saying that…but like something else was pulling it toward the baseboard so it could flow underneath, and straight down through the hairline cracks between the floorboards. It happened fast, right there in front of my eyes, faster than you'd ever expect to see something drain in an ordinary way, until nothing was left but broken glass and a wet sheen.
I caught up with Tommy in the hall, and if anybody had seen my eyes I guess they only would've thought Lydia's death had gotten to me as much as anyone.
"A mop," I said. Because it felt like I had to know: "Would there be one in the basement?"
"The house doesn't have a basement," he told me.
*
I headed for home soon after, because it had gotten to that point where you start to feel like you're intruding on a family's grief instead of helping them cope.
It had been night for hours, late but not so late that the bars weren't still open, even though I didn't feel like stopping by any of them because I knew then I'd have to talk to someone, and really…what do you say after a day like this? After you feel like you've gotten to know the neighborhood a little better, what you've never noticed before because it's always been right under your feet, sucking the life out of you. I figured if I was to pry open a manhole cover and shine a light down below, I'd see what really fed this place and kept it going: a slow, thick river of our blood and sweat and slime and everything else that could be squeezed from us.
So I just walked toward home, slowly, paying close attention to how it felt each time my foot left the ground. And I had to wonder how it had started that time for Davey—if he'd been so upset over the way we'd been razzing him that he'd gotten it in his head that maybe he'd just up and leave, move someplace else if he could find a place where no one would razz him over never having a girlfriend.
I'd grown up hearing the old-timers around, the lifers, always saying how the neighborhood takes care of its own.
So I walked toward home, noticing like I'd never noticed before how the buildings sounded as I passed, settling into their foundations and groaning from deep within their aged bones of iron and brick. And I didn't dare trip and fall, because if I did, I might never stand again, and instead get pulled down and down and down, right on into the asphalt, frozen there like a bug in amber and staring up at the sun and the moon that we'd always figured were up there shining just for us.
But then, wouldn't that be perfect, too…because ever since I can remember, they tell you how, no matter what, you'll always be part of the neighborhood.
AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION IS WORTH A POUND OF FLESH
Dear Wendy,
You've probably never received a letter like this before, and I know for sure I've never written one like it. For that matter, I can't remember when I actually sent you a letter on honest-to-god paper, instead of just picking up the phone or sending an e-mail. Probably when we were kids and M&D would send us to different camps and we'd mail our pitiful notes back and forth about how miserable we were, or how we'd fallen in love with this or that counselor from the boys' side.
And you probably can't help noticing: There are two letters here, actually.
Do me a favor. Don't open the second one unless you have to. Just leave it alone, sealed in its own fat envelope, and put it away someplace where it won't tempt you…a file cabinet drawer you hardly ever open, or better yet, your safety deposit box.
Yes, I hear you…how are you supposed to know if and when you should open it? Trust me…you'll know. And I'm not unaware of how cruel this must seem. All I can ask is that you fixate on that word a couple of sentences back: trust. Ever since we were little, we've kept each other's secrets when it mattered. That's all I'm asking, Wendy. Keep my secret. But this time I'm asking you to keep it from yourself, too…at least until you hear something about me that makes it seem like opening the 2nd envelope is without doubt the thing to do.
With a little luck (or maybe a lot, I don't know), it'll never come to that. And then, someday in the distant future when we're both old and our bodies are puckered with scars from all the nips and tucks we've gotten to assuage our vanity, we can sit down where nobody can see us slip on our old-lady glasses (yours will be the pair with the rhinestones) and tear open the envelope and then I'll share my last secret with you…and maybe by then it'll just seem like a bad dream.
So put it away. Right now, before you weaken.
I trust you.
And love you,
Corri
*
Okay Wendy, now you've done it…
You've either betrayed my confidence to an extent you never have before (but I forgive you for it, because I know the position I put you in), or the worst has happened in one form or another and I'm no longer able to speak for myself. At least not in the way you deserve to hear things from me, with all the details intact.
That's what this mystery letter is all about: telling you my side of things, before you hear too much from anyone else that might poison you against me. I realize that puts you in the position of trying to salvage what everyone else in the family might think of me, but then you're good at that. You were always the diplomatic. Unless I've forgotten something, in all our petty arguments, you only called me an evil bitch once, and that was over a guy whose name neither of us has probably spoken in years. It's important to me that you don't end up thinking that the label actually applies.
It's important to me that I don't end up thinking the label actually applies.
Please just keep this one thing in mind: I'm still me.
As I write this, it's been about 10 months since I signed the lease on the condo where I live now. I sent you a few pictures then, so you know what the buildings look like, these faux-Tudor facades. There's around a dozen of them in a ring, along the outer edge of a circular drive. The inside of the drive is like a little island, and more or less communal property…plenty of trees, and they use sprinklers to keep it green over the worst of the summer. That's where the pool is, too, and it stayed busy this summer, with the schoolkids on break and anyone else with enough leisure hours to lie around doing nothing.
But now the pool's just an empty blue pit. They drained it weeks ago and covered it to keep out the falling leaves. So most people no longer have any reason to come over to this middle area…myself excepted, of course.
In front of the pool is what they call the clubhouse, even though it
's devoid of life most of the time, and there's no club to belong to. Upstairs is almost entirely one huge room with a fireplace as big as a BBQ cooker and lots of comfy plump chairs. You can reserve the place if you want to, for parties or meetings or whatever…but I never have any reason to go there.
I only ever go downstairs. That's where the weight room is, and as dingy and sometimes dank as it is, it was probably the clubhouse basement that sold me on living here.
Here's why: On my own, I probably would never have made the association between exercise equipment and medieval torture instruments, until one time in a so-called health club this guy on an adjacent weight machine did it for me. And of course he did it with a leer. Picture some knotty-looking guy with a god-awful tan and too much body hair and this moustache so butch it's kitsch. I took one peek at him and all I could think was that he looked like a porn star from the '70s, and probably had the mentality of one, too.
That whole singles-bar-on-steroids atmosphere, where to stay fit you're also forced to put up with unwanted invitations for coffee or lunch or microbrews…that's the sort of thing I became adamant about avoiding. So when I found this place, with the clubhouse, it was just a match. Go down there late enough in the evening and you're almost guaranteed to have the place to yourself. Judging by how infrequently I find changes in the way I racked the weights during my last workout, I've always gotten the impression that hardly anyone bothers to use the place at any time of day.
And before you object that something could happen down there that's bad enough I'd be better off taking my chances with the '70s-era porn star, I never head over without my pepper spray.
OK. Enough background. Now we're getting into it.
A few nights ago, Thursday, I walked over to find a sign on the door:
Closed 'til further notice. Problem with sewage back-up.
DISEASE RISK—DO NOT ENTER!