“We could’ve looked at them together,” I say as straight up as I can manage and without a hint of blame.
“Absolutely,” he replies, and he places the picture back in its appropriate pile. “I kept thinking I’d know the moment, but well … here we are.”
“Right,” I murmur, and we both continue to stare at the pile of pictures in front of us.
“Maybe it wasn’t the smartest move on my part,” he says. “But I’m hoping that one day you’ll forgive me.”
I know that my whole life depends on the next few seconds; it’s as though my past and my future are perfectly balanced in the present moment, and everything will be determined by the simple action of whether I can say yes to Doug, or no.
“Sure,” is my response, but then I quickly add, “As long as you give me back my computer and let me get online.”
I laugh a little to let him know that I’m not dead serious. He makes a face, and I feel pretty certain that within the week I’ll be Googling Lubbock, Texas, and watching videos on YouTube. Doug and I continue to sort through the photographs, putting them in order, and for the first time in ages, the past isn’t weighing on us and the future isn’t looming. We’re just here, the two of us, in the moment, remembering our old life, and a whole day is ahead of us.
“And what about Mary Jo?” I ask him, because I have to know. “Is she going to be living with us?”
“You know, son,” he says, slowly placing a picture back in its pile. “When you find the love of your life, it’s not a person. Not really. The love of your life is something you learn how to do. As your mother might’ve said: the love of your life isn’t a noun, it’s a verb.”
I need to talk to Marie. I have to tell her that I met Frankie Rey yesterday, and then grill her about how she managed to keep him a secret for so long.
As soon as I walk through the front door of the place, Sally, the receptionist, pops up from her desk and comes at me with her arms outstretched. I’m a regular, so usually Sally will just give me a nod and a wave as I walk past on my way to Marie’s room. But this afternoon, she’s obviously itching for a hug, and I can tell by her red-rimmed eyes that she’s been crying.
Okay, so crying is not that big a deal at the place. Crying is just something that happens during the course of a day; everybody does it. Like laughing, screaming, or farting, it’s just a function that’s natural and expected; and that goes for the residents and the staff alike. So I figure that Sally is just doing her thing, having her day. No big deal. But as soon as she’s got her arms around me, she starts saying stuff like, “I’m so sorry” and “It’s so sad,” in that way people do when they aren’t sorry about something that they’ve done and they are sad about something over which they have no control.
“We’re going to miss her something awful,” Sally mumbles through her tears. “Marie was one of our favorites. Ask anyone. Always a kind word, a funny story. Even when she didn’t remember you. She went quickly, though. And that’s a blessing.”
What?
I pull away from Sally’s perfumed embrace, and as soon as she sees my crumpled face, she realizes that Marie’s death is as much a shock to me as it must have been to Marie. This is no way to get bad news.
“Oh,” Sally says with a sudden intake of breath. “I thought you knew. I thought that was why you came. We called your father, but he didn’t pick up, and—”
“Where is she?” I ask.
“In her room,” Sally says. “Ora’s with her. Getting her sorted out. Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I really am. I thought it was strange you were here so quick. Almost like you knew.”
As I race down the hallway toward Marie’s room, I busy my mind with every kind of useless thought. Did I eat lunch? No, I didn’t. What will I eat? And when? Should I call Doug? Do I want to be the one to tell him? And who chose this terrible beige industrial carpet? I think of anything and everything to keep myself from considering Marie’s current state of being.
Ora steps out of Marie’s room wearing a grim expression. When she sees me, she closes her eyes and holds up her hands to stop me from going any farther. Then she closes the door behind her. We stare at each other and feel the truth of Marie between us, the absence. Then she grabs me and pulls me to her. She smells of coconut, and I’m grateful to be smothered against her shoulder because I’m crying. But it wouldn’t be the first time that her hospital scrubs have soaked up someone’s tears, so I just let it rip.
“Oh, yes, child,” she says, letting out a great big sigh. “We got to wear this world like a loose garment.”
“So she’s really …,” I say, unable to utter the word.
Ora nods, pulls me closer.
“Like a loose garment, I tell you.”
I never got to say good-bye to Kat. Not properly. We kept postponing it, which I suppose was our only way of exerting some control over a situation that was beyond our control. Neither of us was all that busy, but time moves at a completely different pace when someone you love is on their way out.
Back when Kat was dying, my way of killing time was to sit under the fluorescent lights in the tenth-floor waiting room of the hospital, to ride the elevators, to visit the gift shop, and to check for loose change in the courtesy phone booths. I became a regular feature around the hospital hallways. The nurses and doctors got to know me by my first name, and though they had their hands full with matters involving actual life and death, they always seemed to have time for me. “Hey, how’s our favorite guy today?” they’d call out to me. They were quick with a handshake, easy with their touch, and occasionally would slip me a Blow Pop, a Tootsie Roll, or a Pixie Stix. When they had the time, they played a board game with me and asked if I wanted to talk. I didn’t ever want to talk. I was only six years old; what was there to talk about? But still, they were kind to ask.
Meanwhile, a parade of friends and relatives came traipsing down the corridors as regular as rain. They carried cakes, flowers, cards, candy, stuffed animals, and balloons. They stood at the foot of Kat’s bed presenting their best selves, their most upbeat attitudes, and many worn-out get-well wishes. Despite the fact that they worked hard to hide their true feelings, they couldn’t disguise the fact that they were scared: they were scared to see how Kat was fading away, scared to ask her how she felt, scared of her answer (“Like shit, actually. And you?”), scared of the plant that would surely outlive the patient, scared of their own dying.
At a certain point, Kat made a pronouncement: she didn’t want to see anyone except Doug and me. She was too ill, she said; the effort of making everybody feel better about her condition had become too much for her. Doug made excuses, rules, and apologies.
And then the day arrived when Doug informed me that I wouldn’t be going to the hospital. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe she’ll feel better tomorrow.” I didn’t mind. I was willing to wait. As long as Kat and I didn’t have to say good-bye, there was always another day, a better tomorrow, a little more future. She wasn’t going anywhere. We had forever—until the moment when we didn’t.
It was the same with Marie; I always believed that there’d be more time—right up until the moment when there wasn’t. And now I’m sitting on the floor outside her room, and I don’t know what else to do, where to go. Everything seems pointless. I notice that I’m holding my cell in the palm of my hand, grasping it so tightly that it has left an impression of itself on my skin. I flip the phone open and scroll down until I come to Doug’s name, his number. I dial, and he picks up.
“Dad?”
I can hear him choking as though he’d just swallowed dust. I guess that’s what happens when your kid calls you Dad for the first time in years.
“You there?” I ask.
“Yup.”
I can tell by the way he clears his throat that he hasn’t heard the news about Marie. And for a moment I’m scared he’s going to launch into a big speech about how much it means to him to hear me call him Dad, but he has something else on his mind.
I agree with him; I will never guess.
“Corey,” he tells me. And when I don’t respond right away, he adds, “Y’know, your old friend, Corey McDermott.”
“Great,” I say. But Corey is so old news, and since I haven’t received so much as a text from him throughout the summer, I’ve been assuming that our friendship came to an end somewhere in the Alps, without either of us needing to acknowledge it. Moving on. And besides, there is real, up-to-the-minute news, and I have to break it to him.
“I’m at the place,” I say, and then I gulp and add, “Marie’s gone.”
Silence.
“Geez. Not again,” he says finally, and I can hear him stamp his foot on the grass where he’s standing. “All right. I’m on my way. We’ll go looking for her. This has got to stop. I’m telling you, we’ve got to do something about her running away all the time.”
He hangs up before I have a chance to explain.
Buckets of Rain
In the rec room, a few of the oldies are milling about by the snack table; some of them are propped up in chairs, some are swaying to the music or tapping a slippered foot. Two ancient women are actually dancing; they cling to each other for dear life in the middle of the room, and despite the caution of their steps, they’re managing to keep the beat, and you can see that their muscles and bones are remembering a time when they actually could dance.
There’s a long table set against the far wall and covered with a paper tablecloth left over from Christmas. Refreshments are on display, and they consist of several baskets filled with potato chips, pretzels, and peanuts; a few family-size bottles of soda next to a stack of red plastic cups; and a bowl of hard candies. There’s also an arrangement of artificial flowers, a couple of vanilla-scened votive candles, and a photo of Marie. This isn’t just your ordinary evening get-together with refreshments and a big-band beat. We’re here to honor Marie, to remember her.
Turns out, Marie left detailed instructions about the sort of memorial she wanted. “Nothing fancy,” she wrote in a four-page handwritten document that Ora found folded and tucked beneath the mattress of her bed. “Just bury me plain and simple. After that, get everybody together for a dance party. Everybody loves to dance, and there are too few opportunities these days. So go for it.” She also wrote out the names and phone numbers of a few local people who, in her opinion, might enjoy “cutting some rug.” After the burial, which was “plain and simple,” as per her instructions, Doug made arrangements with the place to host the dance party. Ora phoned around to invite people. It has a been few years since Marie wrote those instructions, so quite a few of the invitees are already, as Ora described it, “cutting rugs with the angels.” But there are more than enough people to make a good showing on Marie’s behalf. Even the folks who didn’t exactly know Marie are happy to be mixing and mingling on a Friday afternoon.
I’m happy to see that Desirée and Crispy have made the effort. The summer is over and school will be starting in a few days, so their mothers are insisting that it’s time for them to get back to real life. What that will be for each of them is a mystery to me, but I’m hoping that we’ll be able to stay in touch. They are, after all, my first real friends in years, and the fact that they’ve come by to pay their respects to my grandmother on their last day in town is proof of something.
“You didn’t have to,” I tell them as they enter the room.
“Of course we did,” Crispy says without missing a beat.
He’s wearing an oversize T-shirt with the image of a tuxedo jacket, tie, and shirt front printed onto it. This is as close to formal as he is liable to get, and I appreciate the gesture. When I tell him so, he shrugs and says, “Marie was cool. She deserves the best.”
Desirée agrees and then gets a little choked up when she says, “She wanted to marry me. Remember? How cool is that?”
“Cooler than Frank Sinatra,” I remind her.
“Oh,” she says. “And I brought back her dress. It’s in the car.”
Desirée was devastated when she learned that the Miss Jupiter Christian Teen Contest was cancelled due to lack of entries. Everyone agreed that Des had the best chance of winning, and I think she secretly believes that she would’ve walked away with the crown and the scholarship money. But it’s just as well that it turned out as it did, because when Des’s mother found out that her daughter intended to strut her stuff in front of strangers, Christian or otherwise, she yanked the girl out of the running and announced that the party was over. Now they’re heading back to Atlanta, where Des is going to finish school, get a steady job, and sing in the choir on Sundays. In other words, she’s grounded until Christmas.
“You can keep the dress,” I tell her. “Marie would’ve wanted you to have it. In fact, Ora has a couple more packed up for you to take with you. You never know when they’ll come in handy.”
Des kisses me on the cheek and then runs off to find Ora, leaving me alone with Crispy.
He and his mother are leaving in an hour, he tells me. She’s waiting for him out in the car. He can’t stay long.
“We should invite her in,” I say, looking over his shoulder as though I can see clear through walls to the outside.
Crispy steps back and looks at me long and hard. He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out his trusty sunglasses, the ones with the white plastic frames. He hands them to me.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“They’re for you. To remind you that (a) sometimes taking the risk doesn’t always get you what you want, but (b) it always leads to the next thing.”
What he says doesn’t make much sense to me, so he spells it out for me as though I’m an idiot child who’s been left in his care.
“Even after Angela dumped me, I was still hooked. I joined this crazy club because, just like you, I wanted to get in good with her. I took the risk. Funny thing is—I ended up with something better than a girlfriend.”
“Which was what?” I ask.
“Which is a friend. Who would’ve thought we’d end up being actual friends, you and me? I wasn’t even accepting applications. Now, let’s see how those glasses look on you.”
I put them on. He shrugs his approval, pulls another pair of identical sunglasses from another pocket, and puts them on. We stand there, mirror images of each other, each of us reflecting the other in his glasses: friends.
Our good-bye is awkward. We promise to stay in touch and swear to see each other the following summer, even if it means running away from our respective homes. I’m glad to be wearing sunglasses; I would hate for him to see me all teary as we hug it out.
After Crispy and Des are gone, I stand by the snack table and get myself together. The framed portrait of Marie is propped up on the table, and it serves as a reminder of what we’re doing there. It’s one of my favorite pictures of Marie, one that was taken when she was at the height of her beauty and her future was all spread out in front of her and all still a mystery. In the picture, she’s practically daring the camera with a big toothy smile. Her strapless gown serves as a come-on to one and all. She has a hand on one hip, and her opposite shoulder is thrown forward, as if to say, Get me—aren’t I something? The picture is proof that her life happened despite the fact that she had a plan. And I take comfort in this, knowing that my life will happen even if I can’t figure it out beforehand. It’s just the way it works; life goes on and arranges itself according to our heart’s desire—like it or not.
“She sure was something else.”
Doug has sidled up alongside me, and he’s staring at the portrait. Even though he’s sad because his mother is dead, I think he’s also secretly relieved. The burden of caring for her has been weighing heavily on him these last few years, and he’s visibly aged. There’s plenty of gray in his hair now, wrinkles have appeared where his skin used to be smooth, and everything is deepening around his eyes. But still
, he looks good for a guy his age, tan and fit.
“So listen,” he says without looking over at me, “I’ve got myself a new job. I start Monday.”
“What about Down to Earth?”
“Finito. From now on I’ll be working for a video-production company over in West Palm Beach. Mostly editing and archiving, but it’s more along the lines of my talents. There’ll be plenty of late nights for me, so you might have to look after yourself a bit more, stay out of trouble.”
“No prob,” I tell him.
I congratulate him and give him a slap on the back. It’s hard not to give some of the credit to the Blessed Virgin Mary. After years and years of working in the dirt, Doug finally found the get-up-and-go to get up and go looking for a job doing the thing he loves most. Maybe this was his miracle. But when I suggest as much to him, he shakes his head and tells me that it was time, that’s all. It was just time.
Ora is DJ-ing, which means that she’s standing over a boom box and flipping through a scraggy pile of old CDs featuring dead crooners backed by big bands and clarinets. As I walk up to her, I notice that Marie’s little gold god is standing at attention right next to the boom box. All the air goes out of me.
“Ora?” I say, which causes her literally to jump in her shoes.
“Oh, child, you scared the livin’ Jesus out of me. What you doin’ creeping up on people like that? What’s wrong? You gone pale.”
“Where did that come from?”
“That belonged to your grandmother,” she says, taking a step back and giving the thing a proper look. “Frankie Rey gave it to her.”
“Did you ever meet Frankie Rey?”
“Frankie Rey?” she repeats after me.
“Yeah. Was he real? Did you meet him? I have to know. It’s important.”
“Believe me, child,” she begins. “I listened to your grandmother day and night talking about that man: Frankie Rey this and Frankie Rey that. I listened till I felt for sure I knew him well enough. Never in the flesh, okay? Never actually met the man. But I tell you, he’s alive in me just the same.”
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