by Ann Hood
No, Sam had thought, I don’t understand.
Now, after a day with Aunt Iris, playing checkers over and over and polishing her crystal pyramid, she was telling him the same thing.
“I know,” she said, “that Willie can’t replace your daddy. But he’ll be kind and fun in a different way. A new way.”
She bent beside the pyramid.
“Sam,” she said, “as sad and terrible as it may be, your real daddy is gone. He’s left this world of ours.” Her voice was soft and sweet. “He can’t come back anymore.”
Sam thought of his father. He thought of Helen Keller and the man on the street who couldn’t talk. He thought of Atlantis and how it disappeared and never was found again.
When Mackenzie came to get him, he was staring in the bathroom mirror. Waiting to vanish.
Mackenzie and Sam walked from Iris’s down Union Street to the hotel.
She had picked him up and talked to Iris, her tone light and almost cheerful, even though her eyes were red and puffy from crying. Outside the apartment, Mackenzie had held Sam’s hand tight as she leaned against the building, as if she could somehow get strength from the stucco wall. Sam had focused on the man wearing the red bandana who sat in the doorway. His sign said: STOP LBJ. Later, a few blocks away, Mackenzie had said softly, “Grandma’s not coming home after all.” That was all she said. She didn’t let go of Sam’s hand.
Every few minutes he poked himself with his free hand, pinched his flesh, pressed his nails hard into his palm. Mackenzie stared straight ahead as they walked. She felt numb, the way she had been right after Alexander died, after she’d realized that her brother was never coming back again.
The people on Union Street pushed past them. Laughter trickled out of an open window, and music. Huey Lewis and the News. The Heart of Rock and Roll is Still Beating.
Mackenzie tried to imagine going back to Rhode Island. She thought of the seashore, the smell of clam chowder. She thought of that woman, Patty, living in the house, moving easily through the mostly empty rooms. Her mother, Mackenzie thought, had seemed girlish in the cafe this morning—the way she touched her hair, the new light in her eyes.
Sam tugged at his aunt’s hand.
“What?” she said. She looked down at him and was, again, struck by the blueness of his eyes, by the fact that this little boy was part of Alexander.
He led her into a store. Harry’s Haberdashery. It smelled of mothballs and potatoes. Hats were crammed onto every available space—the tops of counters, stacked on racks, hanging on hooks.
Sam stood, confused for a moment, in the center of the tiny store. He grabbed the flesh on his arm, below his shoulders, and squeezed, hard.
“Sam,” Mackenzie said.
A sales clerk sat perched on a stool in the corner. His belly was big and round, stretched tight across his T-shirt. The shirt said KILL ’EM ALL AND LET GOD SORT ’EM OUT. His hair hung in a flat ponytail, woven with leather.
“You okay, kid?” he said.
Sam looked around, took in all the hats. Then he began to put them on. A tall silk top hat. A straw boater. A dusty gray fedora, a white Panama, a Brooklyn Dodgers cap. One on top of the other. He turned very slowly, one hand held high to catch any that might topple off, and faced the store’s triple mirror. His image looked back at him from every angle. Sam traced the shape of his face with one finger, as if its tip held a magic potion that he was anointing himself with. The places he touched softened and he smiled, a slow, unsure smile. He reached up, and placed one last hat on the lopsided stack he already wore. A blue sombrero, heavily beaded and braided and fringed. His mouth opened, then closed quickly.
“Hey,” the salesman said.
For an instant, Sam’s eyes grew round and flat. Then they refocused and settled on the image of himself wearing all those silly hats. He pointed his finger at the reflection, opened his mouth, and laughed. Right out loud. At first, the laugh was tinny and cracked, like the laugh of an old man. But as it grew louder and stronger, it turned into the laugh, the uncontrollable giggle, of a little boy.
Mackenzie kneeled down beside him.
“Sam,” she said.
He laughed even harder, his finger still pointing to his own reflection in the mirror, the sombrero’s fringe bouncing and dancing along with him. And then Mackenzie began to laugh too. She put her arms around his shoulders and laughed with him.
The salesman said he’d never heard anyone laugh so hard before. He began to put new combinations of hats on Sam. A black Stetson. A bowler. A fishing hat with dangling bait. Sam laughed even more.
Mackenzie stood back and watched him, listened to the sound of his voice. She imagined him back in Maryland. Playing with Brandy. Riding in Daisy’s big pink car. He would get used to this man, Willie. They would eat breakfast together, play softball. She thought of her mother, how she looked stronger and younger in that cafe this morning. Mackenzie looked away from Sam, out the window. She felt again a sharp pain of loss and desperation. Sam was going to be all right in time. Her mother was going to live here, write poems, open a bookstore, probably find a lover. Jams had told her that her mother wasn’t going to come back. He had said it with such certainty. Everyone was going to get through this.
Her eyes settled on a pay phone at the back of the store. Mackenzie went to it and dialed Jason’s number. Maybe Kyle O’Day was in that new apartment now, swishing her long red braid, popping her bubble gum. Maybe he had changed his mind about Mackenzie. He might not ask her again.
Please be there, she thought as the telephone rang. She imagined the wires carrying her energy to him, imagined the way they had shuddered with electricity and killed Alexander. Perhaps now they could save her.
“Hello,” he said.
She took a deep breath.
“Hello,” he said again.
“It’s me,” she said. She squeezed the cord hard in her hands.
“Mackenzie,” Jason said, “come home.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A special thanks to my parents, Bob Reiss, Gail Hochman, and especially Deb Futter.
About the Author
Ann Hood was born in West Warwick, Rhode Island. She is the author of the bestselling novels The Knitting Circle, The Red Thread, and The Obituary Writer. Her memoir, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, was named one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her other novels include Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, Waiting to Vanish, Three-Legged Horse, Something Blue, Places to Stay the Night, The Properties of Water, and Ruby. She has also written a memoir, Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time; a book on the craft of writing, Creating Character Emotions; and a collection of short stories, An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life.
Her essays and short stories have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, Tin House, Ploughshares, and the Paris Review. Hood has won awards for the best American spiritual writing, travel writing, and food writing; the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction; and two Pushcart Prizes. She now lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her husband and their children.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to reprint the following excerpts: “It’s Only a Paper Moon” by Harold Arlen & E. Y. Harburg. Copyright 1933 by Warner Bros Music & Chappell & Co., Inc. Copyright renewed, International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission. “Yesterday,” words and music by John Lennon and
Paul McCartney. Copyright © 1965 NORTHERN SONGS LIMITED. All rights for U.S., Canada and Mexico controlled and administered by BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. Under license from ATV MUSIC (MACLEN). All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission. “By the Beautiful Sea,” words by Harold R. Atteridge, music by Harry Carroll. Copyright 1914 Shapiro Bernstein & Co. New York. Copyright renewed. Used by permission.
Copyright © 1988 by Ann Hood
Cover design by Tracey Dunham
978-1-4804-6683-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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ANN HOOD
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