Say Goodbye for Now

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  During his last sentence she saw the dark shape of what she took to be Prince watching her from behind a post of the pasture fence. She saw his ears swivel, taking in sounds from every direction. But she was too caught up in the conversation to pay him much attention.

  “That was really half an answer,” she said, hoping she hadn’t sounded confrontational.

  “I would have invited you, Lucy. I wanted to. I thought about it a dozen times. But I just couldn’t figure out where you could find an apartment in the city that would let you keep sixteen dogs, eleven horses, a pig, and an owl.”

  “Right,” she said, still staring at the wolf-dog. “Interesting how I conveniently forgot that.”

  “You said it yourself. It’s what you do. You can’t go taking people away from what they do. And I would just feel too guilty,” he added, “if something went wrong for us. It would be a hard life for us, even in Philadelphia. It could get ugly at any time. And if it did, I’d have to feel that it was your idea to come up there. I couldn’t live with myself if something terrible happened because I talked you into coming.”

  A brief silence fell, during which she continued to watch the wolf-dog. Possibly because of a need to extricate herself from the conversation.

  “Hey, Prince,” she called, raising her voice. “You want to come down here?”

  The wolf-dog stared at her in the gathering dusk—or at least, his head remained tilted in her direction—but he did not move closer.

  “Where do you see Prince?”

  “Right over there.” She pointed. “On the other side of that fence post. He has a way of disappearing behind things.”

  “I wonder why he came back.”

  “He wants to know Pete is okay.”

  “How would he know anything bad happened to Pete?”

  “Because he was there. He’s been hanging around near Pete’s house. Keeping an eye on things. Apparently he’s what stopped that fight today from becoming even more disastrous than it was.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “I have to go get Pete. Wait here a minute.”

  She made her way through the darkened yard and back into the house, where the indoor lights nearly blinded her for a few moments. She found Pete and Justin sitting cross-legged on the examining room floor, their heads leaned together. Both boys were in the process of wrapping elastic bandages around their right thumbs.

  “Somebody out there wants to see that you’re all right,” she said.

  “Oh,” Pete said. “Okay.”

  But she could tell by his tone that he didn’t get it. She helped him to his feet and guided him by the shoulders toward the back door.

  “Who’s out there?” Justin asked, following along behind.

  “A friend of Pete’s.”

  They stepped out into the night.

  It was fully dark now, or seemed so because her eyes had not adjusted. She hated that it was dark, because it meant Calvin would need that ride home soon.

  It took her a moment to identify the correct fence post, and when she did she saw nothing behind it. But a second later a movement closer to the house told her that the wolf-dog was already on his way down.

  “Prince!” Pete said.

  Prince trotted up to Pete and sniffed his battered face thoroughly.

  “Tell him you’re okay,” Dr. Lucy said. “He came all the way back here to see with his own eyes that you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay, boy,” Pete said, and wrapped his arms around the wolf-dog’s neck. He said a few more words, but the animal’s fur swallowed them up. Which was okay, she decided, because the words were for Prince, not her.

  Pete let go and the wolf-dog sidled away toward the dark woods.

  She felt Calvin’s hand on her shoulder.

  “I know this is not what you want to hear me say, Lucy, but Justin and I had best get home and finish packing. And besides, I don’t know about you, but I hate that moment when you know goodbye is right around the corner.”

  “I hate it, too,” she said. “I’ll just go get my keys.”

  “The other thing I hate,” she said as she shifted into park in front of their little brick house, “is knowing you’re about to say some parting words to someone. And then all of a sudden those words have to be good. They have to sum up just about everything. And then the pressure’s on and you can’t think of anything to say at all.”

  “It’s not going to be like that, Lucy, because as soon as we get to Philadelphia I’m going to call you and tell you we got in okay. I won’t be able to afford to talk long, but I’m damn well going to call. And then no more than two or three days later I’ll be writing you my first letter. And you’ll be getting them no more than a week or so apart after that. And I can only assume you’ll be writing me back. So all you have to say right now is ‘Talk to you soon, Calvin.’”

  She pulled a deep breath and let it pour out again. It felt tragic. Everything did.

  “Talk to you soon, Calvin.”

  “Talk to you soon, Lucy.”

  He kissed her on the cheek and climbed out of the car. She sat a moment, watching him—them—go. Part of her wanted to pretend it was only that polite thing you do to be sure someone gets inside safely. In reality it was more about knowing she was fresh out of chances to watch him do anything.

  She was still staring at the house when the lights clicked on inside.

  “You okay, ma’am?” Pete asked from the backseat.

  “Oh. Yes. I’m fine. We’ll go home now.”

  She shifted into gear and drove, thinking it felt interesting and strange to refer to her house as home for both of them. But not disturbing or wrong.

  “Okay, now tell me the truth,” she said as they drove. “Why would you and Justin both have a hurt thumb at exactly the same time?”

  He didn’t answer for a long moment. Long enough that she knew he didn’t want to tell the truth, and also that he wasn’t about to lie.

  “You might be mad if I tell you.”

  “Try me.”

  “We did blood brothers.”

  “Oh. Blood brothers. Okay. And you drew blood with what?”

  “My little penknife.”

  “The one you use to scrape mud off your shoes and cut fishing bait? That penknife?”

  “I cleaned it up with some of your alcohol, ma’am.”

  She figured he’d have to stop calling her “ma’am” pretty soon, but she hadn’t yet decided what he should call her instead.

  “That’s good. I guess I’m starting to rub off on you a little.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Pete said. “I kind of think you are.”

  PART THREE

  NEARLY EIGHT YEARS GO BY, SO FAST

  September 1959–June 1967

  SEPTEMBER 1959

  ONE MONTH AFTER THE BELLS MOVED AWAY

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Dr. Lucy

  She heard Pete’s bike wheels on the gravel of her driveway at a few minutes after five thirty p.m. It was a little later than she had expected him, but not much. He had his shift at the ranch after school. She’d known that. So it was not late enough to stop her already delicate heartbeat.

  A minute later he stuck his head through the kitchen door.

  “Anything to eat?” he asked, sounding almost guilty.

  Guilty for what, she wasn’t sure. His constant hunger, maybe? His very existence?

  “I’m making a casserole for dinner, but it won’t be ready for half an hour.”

  “Anything I can eat between now and then?”

  “There are some cookies in the breadbox.”

  She watched him wash his hands carefully in the sink. Then he took down one of the everyday Melmac dishes and loaded it up with ten cookies. She had trained him to fix snacks for himself on a plate, and with a paper napkin.

  He tried to slink off toward the stairs.

  “I’d rather you eat those at the table,” she said.

  He stopped. Froze. Did not speak.

  “Cru
mbs,” she added.

  This was not an entirely true statement. Yes, cookies had crumbs. But mostly she wanted him to sit at the kitchen table so they could talk.

  “Please,” she said at last.

  Pete sat.

  Dr. Lucy sat next to him, marveling at the amount of dirt he’d managed to grind into his shirt that day. She hoped he’d picked up all of the soil at his job and none of it fighting at school.

  “How was your first day back?” She asked it as calmly as she could. She tried to keep her voice light, as if it were not a loaded and potentially tragic question. She only partially succeeded.

  Pete shrugged.

  “Well, I hate to say it, Pete, but that’s not enough information. Did anybody give you a hard time?”

  He seemed to struggle to swallow a mouthful of cookie. As if his throat had grown more constricted.

  “Depends on what you mean by a hard time, I guess.”

  There was a line to walk in this situation, and she knew it. She had known it for some time, but hadn’t managed to figure out how to walk that line in advance. She’d felt as though she had to see it, experience it first. Now she would have to figure it out as she spoke.

  “Did anybody lay their hands on you?”

  His eyes seemed to widen. Or maybe that was her imagination.

  “Why would anybody do that?”

  “I meant in a violent way. Did anybody try to physically hurt you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You don’t have to call me ‘ma’am’ anymore.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He shoved the second-to-last cookie into his mouth whole.

  She almost asked him if anybody had said anything cruel. She opened her mouth to ask. But that, she decided suddenly, was on the wrong side of the line. There was no way she could control what people said to Pete, and she knew it would cause him pain to repeat any such comments to her. So she closed her mouth and left it alone. That might have been a right move or it might not have been, but it’s what she did.

  Pete shoved the last cookie into his mouth and chewed it, working diligently to keep his lips closed around it. He swallowed hard. Then he spoke. Voluntarily.

  “Did they give you any trouble in the principal’s office when you went to sign me up?” he asked.

  For a moment she didn’t answer. She’d been worried about the moment when she went down to register him for school at a new address, because she was not his legal guardian. She’d thought it might cause all kinds of trouble. Instead they’d just changed the address on his records and life had gone on. The feeling she’d gotten was that no one at the school seemed to care. But she might have been wrong. They might have been so happy to see him in a safer home that they chose to ask no questions about the situation. Or maybe they were not even required to ask.

  Her own son had not lived long enough to be registered for school, she thought with an inward wince. So how was she to know?

  Meanwhile, she was not answering, so he added, “I mean, I know it worked. Because my name was in the roll call and all. I just wondered if it was hard.”

  “Strangely, no,” she said.

  “Okay. Good.”

  He ran his plate over to the sink, clearly ready to head for a part of the house not filled with such difficult questions.

  “Before you go upstairs,” she said, “did you see that letter from Justin I left on your bed this morning?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, heading toward the stairs again.

  “Is he doing okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Pete stopped on the second stair, and turned to face her. Looked right into her eyes, which was unusual.

  “You get letters from Mr. Bell, too. Right?”

  “Yes. I do. All the time. But I haven’t asked how Justin was the last couple of times I wrote. And also I just wondered . . .”

  Pete waited. But in the end, he waited for nothing. There was nothing she could say out loud that would tell her what she wanted to know. Or at least, nothing she should say.

  “What did you wonder?”

  “Never mind,” she said. “It’s nothing. Go on.”

  Pete trotted up the stairs and disappeared from her view.

  She sat still at the table for a moment, wishing she still smoked. It was a sensation that arose in her now and again, without warning. Part of her knew it might pay to note what she’d been thinking at those times.

  She wanted to know if Calvin was seeing anyone new in Philadelphia. Which was probably silly, because it had only been a month. But if he was, she worried he would not mention it in his letters for fear of hurting her. At least, she assumed he would avoid mentioning it until he knew whether or not it was a serious relationship worth mentioning.

  Just for a moment she had almost asked Pete if Justin had revealed any information on the matter. Fortunately she’d stopped herself in time.

  Ruffled now to the point of agitation, she walked to the hall closet and took down the shoebox in which she’d been keeping Calvin’s letters. There were only five so far, but she knew there would be more, so she’d stored them in a box with plenty of room for expansion.

  Besides, she had been keeping copies of her letters to him as well. She had been typing her letters, rather than handwriting them as he did, so she could make carbons. She passed it off to him as a solution to her miserable doctor’s handwriting, but that was less than half the truth. She would never have admitted the carbon copies to Calvin or anyone else, because it seemed so compulsive. But, lying in bed at night, she would go over in her mind not only what he had written to her but what she had written back to him. Both sides of the dialogue seemed to demand at least the option of rechecking.

  She sat in the wing chair across from Archimedes and found the third letter from Calvin. The one he’d written in response to her using the word love for the first time—not just as a simple closing to her letter, but drawing direct and honest attention to the way she meant it.

  She turned on the reading light beside the chair and read his response again.

  August 29th, 1959

  Dear Lucy,

  Love. Yes. I’ll happily own up to love.

  Funny how you used the word love and then immediately noted that it was too soon for all that. Maybe it’s too soon to know what we might be in the long run. But if two people meet and fall in love, and try to make a life together, and fail, does that mean they were wrong and there was no love? Or does it only mean that they didn’t manage to carve out a space for each other?

  I don’t have a crystal ball, Lucy, and I know you don’t either. I can’t predict the future. But yes, here in the present, I agree that there is love.

  Also with us in the present is reality. And the reality is that you might meet someone who can be a part of your life right now. And if that happens, I’m not going to be so selfish as to suggest you should pass up the opportunity and wait for me. Because, frankly, I’m not entirely sure what it is we’d be waiting for.

  I think in time the world may change some. It already has, to some degree. My great-grandfather was subject to being sold and owned and I am not, so no point saying nothing ever changes. Whether or not another sea change will come about in our lifetime is beyond me to know.

  In the meantime I do love you, and for all the right reasons.

  All my love,

  Calvin

  She looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen, as if to assure herself that she was not being observed, before unfolding the carbon copy of her response to him. She really didn’t need to read it again, as she almost could have recited it by heart. She had reread it two or three times as often as any of her other letters. But she reread it all the same.

  September 9, 1959

  Dearest Calvin,

  I know I don’t usually take so long to respond, and I hope you weren’t worried about what I was thinking. But the truth is, you proposed a scenario and I didn’t want to respond to it off the top of my head.<
br />
  My initial response was to sit down at my typewriter and immediately write back and say, “No, of course not. I won’t meet anyone else. I won’t love anyone else.”

  But it made me remember times when I was younger and I would do such things thoughtlessly, with absolute youthful assurance that I would never feel even the slightest bit different from the way I felt in that moment. And then time would prove to me that everything changes.

  Though nothing can be said with certainty, if over the years some space is created for us to be together (probably up north, maybe when Pete is old enough to live alone here with the animals, and if he is willing?), it’s highly unlikely that I would already be with someone else when that window opened.

  First of all, if we don’t count Pete I’m by myself here. And considering my current options, I like it that way. The rest of the people who live around here seem satisfied with the arrangement as well. I really don’t have a big array of new people parading through my world. It was quite an unusual moment when life brought you to my door.

  But let’s say for a moment that another strange turn of events brought a new man this way. My eyes have been opened to some situations. I guess it might be fair to say I woke up, which will be a difficult situation for this fictional new man to accommodate. If I were to tell him about what happened to Justin and to you, his reaction would have to be an almost perfect match for my own. Even if he were the sort of man who would never commit such overt violence, if he just had a casual and slightly callous attitude toward the thing, I would have to put him off my land.

  Based on what I know about this place I’ve called home for a handful of years now, I’d say a reaction such as “Oh, that’s a shame, but now that they’re back with their own it’ll be no problem” is about as good as I would get. And that’s not nearly good enough.

  As a result, it’s a pretty sure bet that I’ll be alone.

  Another subject which feels tough is the fact that you are far more likely than me to meet someone, living in a big city as you are. Were this to happen, I can’t say I would not be hurt. But I have thought it over carefully and decided I would not be selfish, and I would bear you no ill will. If you really love someone you want them to be happy, with you or without you if it comes right down to that. Anything less can’t be real love because it’s too much about self-interest.