Fellow Mortals: A Novel

by Mahoney, Dennis

  He and Wing, more and more, spend their hours in the yard.

  At least the Finns are here. Peg Carmichael said she wasn’t allowed to speak to him, then chewed him out for five minutes, talking about her two sons’ nightmares until he felt like the boogeyman himself. Billy Kane said thanks but declined any help.

  As far as everyone’s concerned, this is how it has to be. There’s still the matter of civil suits from all the victims—the Carmichaels, the Kanes, Sam Bailey, and even the Finns, who’ve been more or less strong-armed by their insurance company. Joan cried when Nan informed her, but Henry and Ava understood it wasn’t personal and didn’t worry about the money, since all fees and settlements were to be handled by the postal insurer and USPS-retained legal firms, the fire having occurred with Henry on duty as a government employee. Incredible but true, he won’t pay a penny out of pocket, win or lose.

  Ava folds the laundry heap and puts it all away, sock balls and underwear, shirts with the arms crossed over like mummies. She turns her back and Henry watches how she crooks an arm and unzips her dress, dropping her shoulders—left, right—so it slips to her waist. She unclasps her bra, hunching it forward onto her arms, and with another couple tugs, her dress is at her ankles and she steps out, one foot at a time, like she’s stepping from a puddle. He sees the side of one breast, then the underside of both when she bends down low to get her panties off her heels. Her legs have gotten softer, her skin less resilient, and her moles too numerous count. She walks into the bathroom, running her fingers through her hair so it falls back messy to her shoulders, and when she shuts the door behind her, Henry slumps to the floor, and he doesn’t start to cry until he’s positive she’s standing in the shower.

  * * *

  Ava pauses in the bathroom, breathing easy after fifteen hours in a bra. She pulls Henry’s towel off the rod and wipes the floor. The shower mat’s soaked; she’ll have to wash that before it molds. The toilet water’s yellow. She considers letting him know but she can feel him out there, dwelling on the accidental rib shot he gave her. Everything he does since the fire weighs him down. She sends him to the market and he buys the wrong peppers. Has him mop the kitchen and he blinds them with ammonia. She tries to give him jobs that she can fix or doesn’t care about, anything to make him feel useful for a while.

  She’s nostalgic for the summer like it’s already gone, missing the board games and wine on Friday nights, the regular beach trips, Henry mowing the lawn, copper-shouldered in the heat. Every now and then, she even misses his cigars.

  She showers and her hair disentangles in the rinse. The soap is slippery in her hands, softening her skin, down in all the right places with her fingers and her palms. She thinks of being younger, barely out of school, diving underwater with a boy she doesn’t know, and yet her evening in the bathroom—this particular moment, with the warm scent of phlox on the outdoor breeze—is the closest Ava comes anymore to rolling unbuttoned in the sun.

  Stepping out, there’s Henry in the bathroom door. Ava jumps a quarter inch, only partially surprised. The knot beneath her shoulder blade doubles up tight. He stands with a tilt from carrying mailbags and has a permanent furrow on his shoulder from the strap. His mustache is tidy but his hair’s all mussed. He’s strong enough to lift her and she wishes that he would—just grab her in a bear hug and hold her in the air.

  “I ought to call the Carmichaels again.”

  “Henry…”

  “I know, I know. They want to be left alone. I didn’t talk to Bob, though,” he says, referring to Peg’s husband. “And the Kanes…”

  Ava sighs extra long.

  “All right,” he says. “Forget it. I’m worried about Joan, though.”

  “Joan has Nan.”

  “She started crying after Wheel of Fortune.”

  “You can’t expect people to bounce right back, even when you’re helping.”

  “How come Nan never cries?”

  “Because her sister does,” Ava says. “Maybe she cries in bed.”

  She rolls up the mat and puts a dry towel in its place. Henry leans against the sink, ear cocked toward the floor, as if he’s listening for Nan’s faint sobbing in the distance.

  “We could buy a swing set for the Carmichael boys.”

  “Henry.”

  “Anonymously,” he says. “Like the big turkey in A Christmas Carol.”

  “They send their kids to Dunne Keating. They’re richer than we are. Plus they already have insurance and they’re sure to get a bundle from the civil suit.”

  “But this’d come from me.”

  “Anonymously.”

  “It’d still be from me,” he says, lowering his head, his hair a bit thinner at the crown than several months ago.

  She moisturizes her face and fires up the hair dryer, cutting him off so matter-of-factly that he doesn’t take it personally. He’s standing too close; she can barely move her elbow. She gives him a warning blast with the dryer and backs him out of the doorway.

  Wingnut stands at the bed, unsure of what to do. He doesn’t wag a lot these days, tuned as he is to Henry’s overall mood, and even though he’s finally adapting to the changes, he keeps hoping Henry’ll make Ava laugh and they’ll relax, maybe let him snuggle in the middle of the bed. He’s gotten used to Nan, who likes him more than anyone expected, Nan herself included. She sneaks him toast dipped in coffee, compliments his smile. All Wing wants to do is see people happy. He smells the hamper and the hair dryer, comforting and warm, and can’t imagine why the house feels so bad.

  Ava combs her hair, raising heat along her scalp, and then she brushes her teeth and rinses, prickling from her soles to the bottom of her tongue. Henry follows her to bed, where she sits and pats the quilt, and then he joins her, hip to hip, and Wing flops down around their feet.

  “I need you to pull yourself together,” Ava tells him.

  He looks at his hands as if the pulling-together’s real, something he can physically accomplish if he tries.

  She touches Wingnut’s head as if to grant a benediction. Henry lies back, breathing at the ceiling. There’s only one cricket outside, and the air’s so humid it’s congesting in the window screen.

  “We can’t go on like this,” Ava says. “Don’t apologize—stop. If I hear you say ‘Sorry’ one more time I’m going to light myself on fire.”

  She turns and holds a palm to each of Henry’s cheeks.

  “You’re the best man I know,” she says. “But helping the Carmichael boys won’t work. You need to find Sam.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Ask Nan. She knows about everything.”

  Oatmeal cookies, vegetable shortening, ironing, bleaching, fiber, dogs—all of her knowledge slightly out-of-date but basically correct, like one of those old Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia sets they come across at yard sales. But Ava asked for help today and Nan’s been making calls. It’s the first thing the two of them have thoroughly agreed upon.

  “You think he wants to see me?” Henry asks.

  “He probably wants to kill you. But it’s that or killing yourself for the rest of your life.”

  She pecks him on the lips, pressing into his mustache, and then she holds him there and opens her mouth, kissing him for real. Henry kisses back and yet he’s hesitant, submissive. She straddles him and sits, reaching into his boxers.

  “Ava.”

  “Shh.”

  She squeezes for effect. He’s strong enough to throw her off but never to resist her, and he stares up, teary for a whole new reason.

  “We need this,” she says.

  “It doesn’t feel right.”

  “That’s the problem,” Ava whispers.

  “Nan and Joan…”

  “They’re asleep.”

  “What if they wake up?”

  “They’re old enough to understand.”

  She guides him in and plants her weight. Henry holds her hips.

  “You took your pill?” she asks, tensing for
a moment in his lap.

  Henry nods. Ava moves, leaning forward till her hair’s in his eyes and then she hugs him up close, with his face between her breasts, smothering the fire just like that.

  * * *

  Joan Finn is unsettled by the creaks overhead. She’s sitting in a small upholstered chair, wearing rose pajamas and a bathrobe and reading People under a lamp. The guest room is crowded with a bureau, a separate nightstand for each sister, and a bed that Henry bought so they wouldn’t have to sleep on a pullout. There’s a single window out the side that Nan keeps open for the air, but anyone could break through a screen, Joan thinks, here at ground level after dark. She waits for Nan to return from the bathroom and says:

  “I hear something.”

  Nan puts a glass of water next to her rosary beads. She pulls a single dead leaf off a marigold she rescued from their yard, listens for a spell, and says, “It’s nothing to worry about. Read your People.”

  Fifty years ago, Joan had boyfriends—she was briefly engaged once upon a time—but she’s been living with her sister so long, it takes an extra minute for the lightbulb to finally flicker on. Once it does, she rustles through her magazine, trying to mask the sound, as if by hearing them together she’s infringing on their privacy. She’s seen plenty of lovemaking in movies and did, in fact, have sex with a man half a century ago, but the intervening drought, deepened by religion, has resulted in what her sister calls secondary virginity. It’s a true state of grace, listed in the catechism.

  “They’re married,” Nan reminds her. “They’ll be done in a few minutes.”

  Joan’s impressed that Nan can estimate a time frame. Her sister seems privy to a universe of secrets, even though Nan herself retained her primary virginity and was rarely attached to a boy longer than a high-school prom.

  The creaks finally stop and Nan prays the rosary, counting Hail Marys briskly and efficiently, the words so ingrained they form a kind of silence in her mind. She prays for Sam and Laura Bailey, the Kanes and Carmichaels, the man who cut her off at Stop & Shop, the sick of the parish, the obituary names from the morning paper, Wingnut, and most of all Henry. Bearing one’s cross is a much-neglected art, she thinks, glancing up at Joan, and then she says a prayer for Ava, her own private thorn, a good woman whose only serious fault—domestic inflexibility—irritates Nan because it’s her fault, too.

  With the Hail Holy Queen, she wishes for a home, and then she lays her beads on the nightstand, takes a sip of water, and settles into bed with the latest issue of O.

  3

  Laura’s wardrobe burned. The funeral home provided clothes—or had it been him?—but Sam Bailey spent most of last night remembering the wake, unsure if she’d been buried in a dress or a skirt, unable to visualize the style of her hair. Eventually it struck him: she was out there, right that minute, in a coffin underground less than twenty minutes from the motel, her clothes and hair all perfectly arranged and it was possible—unthinkable but possible—to see her face and even hold her hand. And there he sat, sipping soda, flipping back and forth between several different movies, and he couldn’t shake it off until he finally grabbed his keys and got in the car. He drove in a daze, at the very least determined to see her grave—he had no memory of the headstone, either—until the bustle of the town, the high-school students playing music in their cars, the neon colors of a normal Friday night, brought him back to his senses and he skipped the cemetery altogether, returning once again to his room at the motel.

  He’s been staying at the Chalet Motor Inn for nearly a month, long enough to feel at home with the green telephone, the wood veneer on the walls, the carpet stain shaped like the birthmark on Laura’s right thigh. The first night of his stay, he found a bat clinging to the air conditioner. He told the owner but the bat disappeared. He’s called the place the Bat Chalet ever since and often remembers the first night in bed, when he was scared he’d feel a flutter if he drifted off to sleep.

  He hears a Johnny Cash ringtone playing through the wall, enough to get the song looping in his head, and when a motorcycle roars, he opens his eyes, sees the daylight, and groans out of bed. He walks into the bathroom and the toilet seat’s up. He puts it down, bothered that he’s already lost the habit, then raises it and pees and puts it down a second time. He brushes his teeth, wets his hair, and dresses in the same clothes he wore yesterday.

  “No,” he says.

  He dresses in a fresh shirt and jeans, takes an awl from his toolbox, and pokes a new hole into his belt. He’s lost close to fifteen pounds and his skin is too pale, but even though his appetite’s been iffy, he decides he ought to treat himself to breakfast, something to commemorate the day.

  He packs his knapsack, heaps the bedsheets and pillowcases by the door, ties the garbage bag, and wipes down the counter of the sink. He does a final check for the bat in the air conditioner, and then he takes his bag and leaves, closing the door and squinting in the light. There’s no one at the checkout office. He realizes that he hasn’t seen the owner since he prepaid early in the week—that from now on, he really won’t be around people anymore.

  He takes a notebook out of his bag, writes Thanks. Sam Bailey, and folds the paper and key into the drop slot before driving off. He orders two egg sandwiches, coffee, juice, and a bag of crullers at a drive-thru and takes his time going to Arcadia Street. He listens to a male and female DJ team, their banter both confident and desperate in its humor, like they know there’s something shameful in their own forced cheer. He turns them off and rolls down the windows, trying to pretend that it’s an ordinary drive.

  When he reaches the old neighborhood he parks around the corner and walks the rest of the way, checking each house for signs of life, but he slept so late that it’s already midday and everyone’s at work. He’s so intent on reaching the woods that he’s oblivious to fragments of his home underfoot. Looking back from the trailer, he’s reminded more of anonymous construction sites than any place he once lived, until he notices a seltzer can—one of Laura’s—that must have fallen out of the old recycling bin. He leaves it there and checks the trailer door, where Peg has left a note asking if there’s anything he needs. Wait until she hears he used another real estate agent.

  He shoulders his bag and hikes into the woods. There’s no trace of the path he beat the previous day, but he follows the terrain and recognizes garbage: a snack-size bag of Wise potato chips, the heel of a bottle, a forty-gallon oil drum, empty and graffitied with a penis. Several minutes walking and the trash disappears. The trees smell richer and the weeds thicken up. Here and there it’s so dense he has to fight his way through, tripping on the roots and getting lashed around the face, and when he stops to take a breath he can’t see the trailer anymore.

  The woods back here used to scare him in the dark. He and Laura hiked it several times and they’d considered—in a playful, mostly Laura-driven way—camping this spring before the bugs got bad. But he had planned to build a fence like the Carmichaels have because at night, when he stood in the yard and looked toward the trees, he often heard sounds and wasn’t sure if they were animal or human. Now the woods are his: thirty acres of undevelopable land, surrounded by hundreds more that may as well belong to him, too, all of it sprawling backwards from Arcadia Street and off toward the long, rolling hills around town.

  The land and the trailer cost him most of his homeowner’s policy, but with Laura’s life insurance he won’t have to work for upwards of a year, longer if he’s frugal. He’s been an art teacher at the high school for half a decade, but now a substitute is finishing his classes and he’s glad to put it behind him. It isn’t the kids. He likes quite a few and he’s relatively popular, but he couldn’t bear the adults lurking in the teachers’ lounge, asking how he is and second-guessing all his answers. How’s he doing, is he eating. Is he getting any rest.

  “Laura would want you to smile,” a colleague told him at the burial.

  He’d always liked this woman, a soft-spoken social studies tea
cher with a lisp.

  “No, you’re right,” he said. “I’ll rent a comedy or something,” and the woman went away looking glad that she had helped. He remembers it now whenever he watches TV. He wouldn’t mind trying a comedy some nights except he always pictures her, sitting with her husband, laughing at a show with her tongue between her teeth.

  He reaches a clearing in the trees, a quarter-acre plot of grass and wildflowers with a small, lumpy hillock in the rear. Sunlight flickers through the leaves, dappling the ground with a thousand moving shadows. He can see the open sky directly overhead. On the hill there’s an outcrop of shale, mossy at the base and dampened by a freshwater trickle. Sam sits and eats one of his egg sandwiches, watching titmice and tossing pieces of croissant to some of the squirrels. Minutes pass, possibly an hour, enough to move the angle of the light upon his face. He takes his time standing up, unsure if he’s been dozing. The squirrels are gone. His legs are pins and needles so he tries to walk it off, hiking back farther than he did the day before, looking for the tree he needs so desperately to find.

  He has an Audubon guide and spends the day exploring and identifying species. Cedar, birch, elm. Tamarack and ash. He sees fewer and fewer promising shapes the longer he looks until eventually he can’t see the forest for the trees, or the trees for the forest, or a single good reason to have purchased thirty acres. He’s tired from the hike, out of shape and out of food. He left the crullers at the trailer but he can’t bear the thought of walking out without a nap, so he settles on the ground and sleeps much longer than he means to.

  When he wakes it’s already evening—an evening much darker in the woods than in the town. He’s up right away, heart jolting in alarm. The rushing in his ears is like the rustles of the leaves. He can’t remember which way is out. It’s got to be less than half a mile west, but he can’t quite determine the direction of the sunset. He rummages around to find the flashlight buried in his bag, thinking to himself, It’s all right, it’s all right, because he doesn’t want to say it out loud.