by Charles Rose
Leaving, crossing the upstairs hall, he felt less hemmed in by his task. Martha was crumpling newspapers below, carefully packing each box and crate. In his room he felt more like himself. He had already filled a trash bag with things his mother would have wanted thrown away. He checked the windows to make sure they were locked. Cold air came through the sashes. He was in no hurry to get started again. He looked down at the side yard, and across the yard at the house next door. How could anyone have ever skated on it?
There was an ice storm that year. The schools closed, things came to a stop. His father couldn’t get to his office downtown. His father had put on a suit and tie, for he still thought of catching the bus downtown. After lunch his father decided to skate. He went into the bedroom for the skates, which he must have kept in his closet. Martha was playing with paper dolls. His father came out of the bedroom, wearing corduroys and a sweater. He held the skates looped by the laces. Dorothy helped him put on the skates. Frank had to go to his room to watch. His mother and Martha were downstairs, at the living room bay window. His father was making figure eights on the hissing, clashing skates. Dorothy was standing behind him. At the window, with Dorothy behind him now, he thought of his father on clashing skates. Dorothy’s turn now to sneak up on him, put her hands so light on his shoulders. Head up, hands locked behind his waist, knees bent, leaning forward, the skater achieved tremendous speed. The figure eights were getting bigger. How long could this man keep doing this, skate around knotted, cold packed roots? He left the window, went to the closet in which his mother had stored her hats. She had taken over his closet. Frank pulled out and opened hatboxes, emptied them out on the bedroom floor. He picked up a soft felt picture hat with a hat band and a feather. He ran his fingers along the hat band, felt the crisp edge of the feather. There were pillbox hats and picture hats, ribboned, straw-plaited sunbonnets, velours and velveteen cloche hats, fuzzy berets, hats with feathers. He put his cigarette in an ashtray that he had brought up here and put on his desk, without disturbing the model airplane he would leave on his desk, unfinished, without touching the blade of the hobby knife. He picked up his chair, and took it back to the closet. It was necessary to clear out the shelf, but the chair, he knew was rickety. Would it hold his weight? It would have once. He turned on the chain to the overhead light. Coats on hangers, shoeboxes stood out in the glare. Placing one foot on the seat of the chair, he gripped the edge of the shelf, ignoring the smell of mothballs, the glare of the overhead light.
What he pulled out first was the goldfish bowl. Then the Big Little Books, in a shoebox. Crossing the hall, he heard a radio, nothing else, nothing from Martha. Perhaps Martha had taken more trash out. Or had she gone to the downstairs bathroom? He heard a toilet flush, yes that was it. But there was no need for secrecy. Why did it matter where Martha was? He didn’t have to close Dorothy’s door to put the goldfish bowl on her dresser.
He thought of filling the bowl with water. At one time it had a grotto, a place in the water for a goldfish to go. Watching the goldfish’s movements had been a young boy’s nightly pastime. Usually Dorothy wore her nightgown. But sometimes it hung in her closet. If the nightgown had hung in her closet, then what had Dorothy been wearing? Perhaps sometimes she wore the nightgown; sometimes she wore a sweater and skirt. Propped up on her thick pillows, an open magazine draped over her knees—Photoplay, Modern Screen, he remembered, True Romances, bedtime reading—she would extend one hand to the radio. He would watch Dorothy turn the station band, her eyes fixed on her magazine. Or sometimes she’d ask Frankie to do it. Easy listening, Guy Lombardo. Sometimes he brought in a chair from his room, but usually she made room for him. Sitting close to her on the edge of her bed, he breathed in her scents, her odors, without yet knowing what they could do—Ray Anthony, Guy Lombardo—no, what Dorothy had already done to him. She would look up from True Romances and sing along with the radio.
Then the nights came when he was there by himself. He was turning the bright gold station band. He sat by himself on the mattress, watching the goldfish in the bowl. It would hover awhile, then dart off. It would hide out in the grotto. He would look at the empty closet. Her dresses, all but one of them, had hung evenly spaced on the hangers. The hangers were bunched up after she left.
He opened the medicine cabinet. The safety razor was where he’d left it beside the can of talcum powder. Dorothy had used it to shave her legs. He took out the double-edged blade, tested one edge with one finger. He dropped the blade into the toilet bowl. The hobby knife still had a fairly sharp edge. Or he could put in another blade. He was gripping the bathroom sink. He remembered he’d left the cigarette in an ashtray on his desk. Or had he left it burning on his desk, with the ash hanging over the edge?
Returning, crossing the hall again to his room, he put the cigarette out in the ashtray. If the cigarette had rolled off the desk, it could have started a fire in the wastepaper basket. But he had left it in the ashtray. What if there had been a fire in his room? He would have had time to warn Martha. He would have had time to get down the stairs and call the fire department to put out the fire. Or he could have put out the fire himself. Looking out at the elm tree, where his father had skated when he was twelve, Frank remembered his father skating. But the memory was not as clear now.
The chair was back where he had left it, next to one wall, in the closet. Turning the chair to wall off the coats, the textures of camel hair and fur that might persuade him to stop, he again got up on the seat. The shoebox was where he had left it. He couldn’t remember putting it there. His mother must have done that. Climbing down with the shoebox, he decided to leave the chair where it was. The coats he would lay out on the bed, along with his mother’s hats. The hobby knife could go in the shoebox. He would carry the shoebox to Dorothy’s room. Martha would miss him soon. She would wonder what he was doing up here.
He sat down again on Dorothy’s bed. The pencil he used had a soft black point. Dorothy, of course, hadn’t known about this, for she hadn’t been here to see it. There were things he had written and drawn on the pages of his Big Little Books. The goldfish bowl had been where it was, still sitting on the dresser. A slight bulge in the shoebox should have warned him he’d have to take out the pipe. The pipe stem, with its teeth marks, stood out from the can of tobacco. There was a little tobacco left in the can. He had stolen one of his father’s pipes. He used to come in here to smoke it, not at night with his father below but late on a winter afternoon, after school, around four-thirty, about the time it was just getting dark. The tobacco he’d bought at a drugstore. He sucked in on the pipe stem. The pipe stem was clogged so he put the pipe down. He shook dry flakes of tobacco out evenly on the mattress. The tobacco can went into the shoebox too. He laid the hobby knife close, on the mattress. Then he stretched out on the mattress.
The closet door was still open. That was where Dorothy’s nightgown had hung. The scuffed toes of his cordovan shoes slowly separated as he spread his legs. He would lie here awhile on Dorothy’s bed. What did he have to look forward to? He could visualize the mellow station band. Ray Anthony, Guy Lombardo, Dorothy liked her music mellow. She was with him while his eyes were closed, a shimmer of pink in the closet door. She was putting iodine on a cut. This will sting a little. He shut his eyes.
He heard the wind rattling the windows, the scraping of a branch on glass. The hobby knife was still close to his hand. His father was making figure eights. Frank Martin, Senior was skating while Dorothy was playing the radio, while Dorothy was lying alone in a room, in her nightgown, taken from both of them now. Frank listened to the soft clash of skates.
There was still some light when he opened his eyes. The closet was open but empty. The shoebox with his Big Little Books lay beside him on the mattress. The shoebox would go to the garbage can. The goldfish bowl he would leave where it was. He got up and went to the bathroom. He opened the medicine cabinet. The can of talcum powder was where he’d left it. He unlocked the
window with his thumb. With an effort he raised the sash half a foot. He felt the strain on his forearms. Then the sash slipped free and the window was up. The shoebox he held against his chest. He could remember what the next step had been, but he couldn’t be sure he could carry it out. He had to let himself down slowly, with his right hand gripping the sill. He felt the toes of his cordovans touch the roof.
He bent his knees with his hand on the sill, then straightened up to try to lower the sash. But he’d raised it too high to pull it down now. Turning, he felt the cold in his face. He moved down the slope of the upper roof. He knew the elm tree was on his left. To the right, he knew, was the heaven tree. He kept himself braced against the cold. He moved on toward the edge of the roof. It was still a long drop to the driveway. He took his father’s pipe out before he dropped the box, and laid it out on the roof. He held out the shoebox and dropped it. The lid bounced off the shoebox. He put his hands on the cold, slick bark.
Martha was still packing china, in the restoring warmth of the kitchen. He recognized his mother’s engagement ring, on a newspaper, next to a sugar bowl. His sister picked up the diamond ring. He watched her move it along her ring finger. She must have been in his mother’s bedroom. Martha got up out of the kitchen chair. She put her hands on her hips and shuffled her feet. He was watching his sister dancing She must have wanted someone to dance with her then. But his father had skated in the yard instead of dancing with Martha in the house.
Martha looked at him; she stopped dancing. She didn’t take off their mother’s ring. Before telling her he wouldn’t move in with her, he would ask her to go back upstairs with him. Martha would know what to do with his mother’s hats, with whatever was still up there.
Island Grove
Julie had already seen the tape, at her gynecologist’s ten days ago. This was a special showing for her father. John Robert watched what the Ultrasound shaped, belly dissolving, head ballooned.
He had tried not to think of Julie’s mother, but seeing Julie had brought Mary Jean back to him. Mary Jean had died a year ago. It had started, her downhill slide, with hepatitis, followed by a kidney infection that had triggered a fungus in her lungs. For his daughter’s sake he felt he should have gone to Mary Jean’s funeral. Julie had been there, he hadn’t.
It’s been years since you were married to her. On another sofa in Gulf Breeze, not Julie’s, not here in Gainesville, his wife Barbara had caressed the back of his neck while he stared out through the picture window at the goldfish pond in back, at Barbara’s flowering hibiscus plant. Two days before Mary Jean’s funeral, Barbara had turned off the answering machine, and the goldfish had cruised through the murky pond, the hibiscus soaking up sunlight. The telephone kept on ringing. He waited three more days before he telephoned Julie. I tried to call you, Daddy. Where were you? He had worked out his story, his excuse. Barbara and I were at Fort Walton Beach. We felt we needed to get away.
But you could have gone to the beach in Pensacola. You could have gone after the funeral.
Now that Julie was pregnant and wanting to see him again, Barbara had wanted him to see her. He could drive over from Tallahassee, spend Sunday afternoon and Monday here, make the long drive back to Gulf Breeze on Tuesday. He had to go to Tallahassee anyway; it was expected of him at Gulf Breeze High, you showed up with your colleagues no matter how many years of teaching you had put in.
The fetal head was lolling to the left, the arms were away from the feet. He asked Julie what the sex was. Julie said they didn’t know yet. She wore a tartan plaid jumper, a short sleeved, lace-trimmed white blouse, her hair in a braid with a rubber band, perhaps to offset, downplay the pregnancy. She was supporting her head with her upper right arm on the Persian rug in the great room, her long, thin pelican legs tucked under her hips. “I could have found out, but I didn’t ask. We want that to come as a surprise.” She kept her eyes on the shifting shapes on the screen.
“We didn’t ask, Julie, remember?” Sitting next to him on the sofa, Julie’s husband raised his voice a notch, hoisting an ankle until it came to rest on his kneecap. Harry ran ten miles during his lunch break, on the days he didn’t have surgery. It showed in his chest and biceps, in the muscles of his neck, the skin stretched tight from the cheekbones.
“We decided we didn’t really want to know in advance.”
Julie sat up, raising her knees. “Let’s concentrate on the tape,” she said. “Look, there’s the heartbeat.”
What he saw on the screen was still going on—yes a rapid methodical twitch—right in front of him, in his daughter’s womb, without numbers, without calibrated vertical lines. The number two showed up on the screen and he asked about the size of the head.
“About five centimeters from ear to ear,” Harry said. “Her gynecologist says that’s normal.”
The heartbeat, size of a buttonhole, blurred into convulsive contours of gray. Julie had the remote, sat up and turned off the tape. Nothing for them to see now.
Harry helped Julie up off the carpet. She went to the windows and opened the drapes. Barbara would be feeding the birds about now. John Robert thought of Barbara filling the bird feeder, shooing off cowbirds and grackles so the smaller birds could get to the seed. She’d have to water her plants on the deck—hibiscus, ferns, the spiky cactus. He remembered watering the plants himself, the wet dirt, shiny leaves. It was something they did together, dangling the sluggish garden hose—it had no nozzle—over the plastic pots. Mary Jean would have stuck the hose in a pot, left it overflowing water.
Julie asked him if she could get him a beer. Or would he rather have a cup of coffee? He said he’d have the coffee. Harry asked her to bring him a Heineken. He watched Julie go to the kitchen, her thin legs moving rapidly. Harry extracted the tape from the VCR in its console deck, a big piece of furniture, with a thirty-one-inch screen television. There was a smaller television set in the kitchen, and one more in the master bedroom. Harry put the tape in its box, fit the box in with other tapes, including sports tapes, all of them labeled. Harry asked him about the big powwow in Tallahassee, did he go to this thing every year? No, not that often anymore, but this year he thought he would do it, go one last time before he retired. The meetings weren’t much fun anymore, but he didn’t tell Harry why. Too many young people making speeches about teaching methods he would never use. And he hadn’t been getting awards lately; the recognition went to those coming up. He’d been teaching for twenty-eight years. In two more years he planned to retire. No more lesson plans, grading papers.
Julie came back with the coffee, a Heineken in a frosted glass. She served her father first, then her husband. It had been like that when she was little; she served him first, then Mary Jean, beside the pool at the apartment complex. Mary Jean had a job in St. Petersburg, keeping the books at the Ford agency. He would sit by the pool with Mary Jean before he took Julie off for the day—Busch Gardens, the Ringling Museum. He had let his daughter bring them their drinks. Now he couldn’t believe he had done that. Delight in her eyes once because Daddy was here. He kept his hands on the cup and saucer, watching Julie move to Harry. Harry picked up a bottle and glass from the tray. Julie sat down beside him. She asked him again if he wanted a beer. Or would he rather have a glass of white wine.
“I’ll have my glass of wine for dinner.”
Julie leaned over and kissed him. A little lipstick stayed on his lower lip. “Daddy, I think you’re doing great. Just great. I’m really proud of you.”
They didn’t go out for dinner. Harry did tuna steaks on the gas grill on the terrace. Harry was looking out through the smoke at his private lake, shared with other members of their gated community only. Julie was slicing a loaf of French bread, not quite slicing through it. She patted butter between the slices. John Robert looked at his glass of red wine. It was still untouched. Mary Jean’s spinach casserole, Mary Jean’s tomatoes and cucumbers saturated in oil and vinegar. He remembered how Mary
Jean made them—long on sugar but not much salt. Julie had them in the refrigerator. She set them out in a cut-glass salad bowl. The salad bowl was once Mary Jean’s, was in Mary Jean’s mother’s family.
“We had tomatoes and cucumbers with fish sticks. Or with hot dogs and tater tots. But never with spinach casserole.”
“Your mother wasn’t much of a cook. You don’t have to remind me of that.”
“You did like her spinach casserole. I thought I’d throw in tomatoes and cucumbers.” Julie sipped on her chardonnay. She was allowing herself half a glass. Mary Jean’s lipstick would smear her highball glass and she usually smoked while she cooked.
“I remember when Mama was pregnant. She even cut down on her drinking, but not enough to do any good.”
“I was drinking too much myself in those days. And I kept on doing it for too long, as long as we were married. But that’s been over for years.”
“I want you to have all you want. I mean have what you think you can have. I know the drinking’s been over for you. You’re doing fine. I know that.” Julie looked at the level of wine in her glass. She sipped a little more wine, set down the glass. “We had tomatoes and cucumbers that Sunday before Mama’s miscarriage. The thing was I was still stupid enough to think it was something Mama ate. I thought the fried chicken must have been spoiled. The tomatoes tasted rotten to me. I tried some after I came home from school and Mama told us what happened. I mean her version of what happened. I ate two slices out of the bowl, and then I ate two cucumbers.” Julie smiled. “The cucumbers tasted fine. But they were oily. And very sweet.”