Annie emerged from an art gallery across the street. Just a few steps behind her was a bird-boned preteen with straw-colored hair: Fisher, I was sure. The girl had a shopping bag around her wrist, and in her hand was a slim cell phone. When I approached, Annie smiled though she seemed surprised or maybe even embarrassed to see me. I was resolved to be as normal as possible.
“Hello, you,” Annie said. “Fisher, this is Jim Byrd.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Byrd,” the girl said. “A right fine afternoon we’re having, isn’t it?”
She said this like a plantation lady, like a character from Gone with the Wind. I wasn’t sure what to make of this act. Annie gave her a wry look, then smiled. This was some sort of joke between them, I gathered. The way they kept glancing at each other, checking in, the geometry of their bodies, I could tell that they were not just mother and daughter but good friends, too; they were a true pair.
“It’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow,” Annie said, “so we’re out gift shopping. We’ve got nothing. Any suggestions?”
“Well, there’s a cigar store around the corner,” I said.
“Oh, she’d just love that. You know her so well.”
“I wanted to get her a xylophone,” Fisher said.
Annie rolled her eyes—not to me but to Fisher. “Grammy wouldn’t know a xylophone from a djembe drum, Fisher.”
“Plus xylophone lessons,” Fisher added.
Annie looked past me, toward the scene of the accident. “Good Lord, is that woman still on the street? What’s taking them so long?”
The three of us stared across the road at the crowd, the flashing lights, the lump under the sheet, the blood. The driver, who looked ill, was still standing with the cops. Fisher said she wanted to go over and get a closer look.
“Honey, don’t be so morbid,” Annie said.
“I’m morbid? You’re the one who moved us to the town where all the old people come to die,” Fisher said.
I’d never thought of Shula in exactly those terms, but she had a point.
“Well, it’s our hometown,” was all I could think to say.
“We were born here,” Annie chipped in. “It wasn’t always like this. Anyway, I don’t want to hang here on the sidewalk and gawk. Jim, we’re going to lunch. You should join us if you can.”
She glanced quickly at her daughter. Roll with this, please, her eyes seemed to say. I was inclined to forget my appointment and go with them, but I was uncertain if this was a real invitation. I wasn’t sure what to do, what the right move was.
“I don’t want to impose,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be. I promise.”
The three of us started walking together, away from the accident. The crowd had thinned out by the end of the block. Fisher wanted a meatball sub, so we ducked into a sandwich shop and sat down at a table near the back. It was midafternoon, almost three, and there were a few White Hairs in the restaurant already ordering dinner. The waitress brought us menus, and Annie excused herself to the bathroom. Fisher sat across from me with her thin arms crossed. We were quiet for a few minutes. She seemed to be studying me.
“So,” she said. “What was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“Dying.” She leaned forward. “That’s you, right? You’re Mr. Lazarus, right?”
So, Annie had told her about me, about my heart condition. They’d even given me a nickname. I wanted to interpret this as a positive sign.
“Mom said it was just like a long nap. That true?”
“More or less. I don’t remember much.”
“Much—or anything at all?”
I didn’t want to scare her. She was too young to not believe in anything.
“My friends and I . . .” Fisher began. “Back in Charleston, I mean. We used to do this thing where we’d make each other pass out. It was a game, sort of. You’d stand against a wall, breathe in really fast, cross your arms over your chest, and then everyone else would push really hard against you at the same time. Then, when you breathed out, you’d black out.”
“This was a game?”
“It was so fun. You’d only pass out for like three seconds, but you’d feel like you’d been asleep for three days. So weird.”
“What was the point of that?”
Fisher shrugged and squeezed some lemon in her water. “We were twelve, so . . .”
And now, only a year later, she was a totally different person? The mind of her twelve-year-old self unknowable, mysterious, inaccessible? I didn’t ask her these questions, only nodded with a smile, because I wanted her to like me. She was a very smart girl, that much was clear to me.
She brought out her cell phone, tapped on the screen, and showed me a picture of an orangutan spearfishing. This picture was evidence, according to her, not only of a tool-making intelligence but of the existence of an orangutan soul. For comparison, she next showed me a movie still of Tom Hanks from the movie Cast Away, a picture in which he, bearded and emaciated, was holding a spear aloft in his hand. Look into their eyes, Fisher instructed—Tom Hanks’s, the orangutan’s—and then try to tell me one of them had a soul and the other didn’t. I admitted that the orangutan, perched on his rock with a pensive but hopeful sparkle in his dark eyes, did seem rather soulful.
A victor’s smile flashed onto Fisher’s face.
Our food arrived in red baskets. Annie had been gone for almost ten minutes. When I glanced to the back of the deli, she was striding toward us. She sat down, reached into her rather large purse, and removed a small package of Wet-Naps. She gave one to Fisher and then offered one to me. This—the distribution of the Wet-Naps—was the most maternal gesture I’d yet seen from Annie. The three of us scrubbed our hands at the same time in silence and then set the naps aside on the table.
Annie sat up straight in her chair, which had the effect of increasing the distance between us. Her dress spilled out around her. Her dark hair was tied up in a messy bun, and she tightened a few loose strands across her forehead by tucking them behind her ear. I wanted to clear the air, to know where we stood, and the longer we sat here together, acting like we were just friends, the more miserable and dejected I began to feel. I’d completely lost track of the conversation, I realized then, and when I tuned in again, Fisher was animatedly describing a process by which a brain could be mapped with a computer.
“Well,” Annie said, “I’m convinced. Of course orangutans have souls. I mean, why wouldn’t they, right?”
She looked over at me, a sandwich half in her hands, and smiled. I tried to smile back, but I was having trouble even seeming pleasant. It occurred to me that Annie had invited me along to eat with them as a way of nudging us toward friendship. I was going to leave this lunch and our texting would stop. We’d run into each other from time to time, surely—in the grocery store, on the street—and we’d be nice and courteous to one another. We’d ask after the other’s parents. I’d ask her how things were going at the theater and with Fisher’s school, and she’d ask me about my heart and the bank, or maybe just about the bank, since my heart condition was such a personal matter and to mention it would surely conjure in her head an image of the scar on my chest, the scar over which she’d once placed her palm as we made love at the bottom of her bed. One day I’d hear, through a friend, that she’d met someone else and that it was serious and they were maybe getting married, and I’d meet someone else, too, eventually, and somehow, we’d all wind up at dinner together one night, the four of us, and I’d know that it—our friendship—had all started here, on this afternoon, with sandwiches.
At the end of our lunch we emptied our baskets into the trash can. Fisher was the first one through the door and onto the sidewalk. Annie grabbed my elbow to keep me from following her daughter out.
“Hey,” she said. “What happened? Where were you?”
“When?”
“I didn’t realize you wanted me to—”
“I gave you the signal.” She arched her eyebrows twice. “Didn’t you notice?”
I was dumbfounded. The signal? We had a signal? I shook my head mournfully.
“I’ve barely heard from you since your trip to Charleston,” I said. “I thought maybe . . .”
“I’ve just been busy, that’s all.” She peered around me, and I turned to see what she was looking at. On the other side of the glass, Fisher stood on the sidewalk, staring at her phone. When I looked back to Annie, she kissed me. Her lips landed a little to the left of my mouth, then slid into place, locking like shuttles in space. The kiss was quick but forceful.
She studied my face for a moment, her eyes narrowing. A smile fluttered, then disappeared. “I’m not sure you really understand what it is you’re signing up for. My life isn’t my own. This is a big deal.”
The bell clanged against the door, and Fisher stepped back into the restaurant, phone in hand, an irritated look on her face. Why on earth were we just standing here like idiots? What was taking us so long? It was time to go.
We pushed our way through the door together, into the sunlight, and were walking down the sidewalk when my phone made a noise in my pocket: Three chimes.
ROBERT BOYD LENNOX
RARELY DOES HE LINGER at home. He prefers it here, in his furniture store. The good years. The years of plenty. Fatty meals. New suits. He’s standing in the middle of the showroom, surrounded by customers. With a plastic but effective smile, Robert extols the virtues of a wingback chair to a big-boned woman with gin on her breath. The time isn’t even ten a.m. The woman is teetering. She’ll never buy this chair, not in a million years.
What could Clara be doing right now? He can smell her perfume on his shirt. Their two scents have mingled into a single scent. Orange peels in an ashtray, perhaps.
—
NOW IT’S AFTERSHAVE he smells—and sweat and wet wool. So many people pressed together, so many coats, so many muddy shoes sliding across the greasy floors of the streetcar. He’s a little boy, barely ten, and he and his brother Wendell jingle the change in their pockets as they ride the car to the end of the line, to Shula Park. They shove their way through the Saturday-evening crowds. A twenty-minute wait for the merry-go-round. Robert sits on the monkey, and Wendell claims the elephant. The Wurlitzer organ blares in their ears as they travel.
Out on the lake the motorboats bounce across each other’s wake. Everything is so bright! Electric Park, people have taken to calling this place. The Southern Power and Light Company supposedly used over eight thousand bulbs to create the spectacle. Wendell says he wants to move here when he grows up. He wants to live in a house right by the roller coaster so he’ll get to ride it whenever he pleases. Such a stupid dream but Robert doesn’t have the heart to tell him. Eventually even roller coasters would grow boring. Everything bores you eventually. Roller coasters. Girls. Furniture, definitely—
—
HE’S LOCKING UP THE STORE for the night. Sales are down. Nobody can afford a new couch in times like these. He shuts off the lights in the showroom and goes back to the office. His migraines have returned. His jaw aches. His eyes are like bullet holes. The headaches follow him into his sleep at night. There’s no escaping them. Last night Robert dreamed a hot mouth with needle-teeth.
He smokes half a cigarette, stubs it out in the ashtray, and quits the store for home.
In the middle of the road, he waits for a car to pass, his tweed cap pinned under his arm, his right toe at the edge of a large orange mud puddle. A sinkhole straight to hell, no doubt. It would gulp him down. It already has. Sell the house, the house Clara loves so much, or shut down the store—a decision he can’t much longer avoid.
A summer day in Shula. Sweat behind his knees. Sweat across his neck. He goes home for lunch. When he yells up the stairs for Clara, she doesn’t answer. He only has an hour before he’s due back at the store, and Clara promised him she’d stay home so they could talk about last night. He regrets the way he yelled at her. He wants to apologize, so where the hell is she?
In the dining room, he finds his lunch waiting for him, the fork very neatly arranged on the napkin, a ham sandwich expertly prepared and placed on the plate, the ingredients stacked with finesse, the finely sliced cheeses, a wedge of lettuce, two rounds of tomato, and it’s obvious to him that she took such care with his lunch only out of spite. Never before has she made him such a picturesque lunch—and anyway, who in the history of the world ever needed a fork for a sandwich?
Such a strange girl, Clara, always flitting about the house in search of something, always speaking to the dog with that inexplicable fake Cockney accent. Now, to top it all off, she’s convinced herself the stairs are haunted. Sometimes, as she descends, she hears a voice. The dog senses it, too, she says. Always the dog is lingering there on the steps, barking.
Is this the same girl he fawned over for so many years? The girl whose very touch used to make every single cell in his body vibrate with nervous joy? The girl who very nearly married his brother Wendell? The girl who tapped on the glass late one night at the furniture store, drenched in rain, to tell him that she’d marry him after all?
—
CLARA, HER DRESS CLINGING WETLY to her skin, is tapping on the store glass. She’s carrying no umbrella, and she’s soaking wet. After unlocking the door, he brings her inside and sits her down in a chair. He doesn’t care if the chair gets wet; he only wants her to be comfortable. In the office he finds a spare shirt and offers it to her as a towel. She thanks him and then gives him her answer. She’s decided she would like to marry him—that is, if he’s still interested. He grabs her hands and kisses each tiny white knuckle.
They drive straight over to her house, where they announce the big news to her family. Her parents, who were just about to climb into bed, are so elated they open a bottle of wine that they’ve been saving for years, pouring just a little bit into all those glasses. To our new son, Mr. Hopstead keeps shouting. To our new son!
Clara’s parents already have three sons, plus Clara and her sister, May, all of whom sit in the kitchen, sipping wine and tossing a red rubber ball to each other, one sibling to the next. Robert can make no sense of their game, can detect no logic in it. They do not toss the ball to him. Whatever is happening, he is not a part of it. He hears the ball bounce against the floor behind him, but when he turns, it’s already in the hands of Clara’s oldest brother. It rattles the plates on the cabinet shelf when it strikes a door.
Wedding planning commences almost immediately, despite the hour, and at the end of the night Clara’s mother insists that Robert sleep on the green Dutch sofa in the living room. She brings out two blankets and a pillow for him and makes sure he’s settled before leaving him. For a long time he lies there in the darkness, listening to the house’s peculiar noises, its creaks and pops. At the far corner of the ceiling is a brown spidery stain, split with cracks. The tub, he realizes. The crack is directly below the bathroom.
He’s almost asleep when he hears footsteps on the stairs in the hall. Clara pads into the room noiselessly and slips under his blanket. Her hand over his mouth, they make love for the first time, and when it’s over she kisses him on the forehead and disappears to her own bed, upstairs. Robert stares up at the ceiling again, at that spidery crack, at the bulge of the plaster, marveling at this sudden change of events. Three weeks ago Clara told him she couldn’t possibly marry him—and now this.
The next morning he drinks the Hopsteads’ weak coffee and returns to work, whistling as he enters the building. His father is so distracted—where are last week’s orders?—that he doesn’t notice his son’s good mood or the fact that he hasn’t changed shirts since yesterday. Robert considers calling his brother, he even picks up the phone to do so, but decides against it. H
e will write Wendell a letter instead, explaining what has transpired. But once he has the nib of the pen against the paper, he isn’t sure what, really, he can say that will help his brother understand what has happened between him and Clara. In the showroom a customer is waiting, clapping his thighs impatiently. Robert drops the pen back into the drawer and slides it shut. The letter can wait. There’s time for that. Wendell is thousands of miles away. Robert owes him nothing.
—
THAT SANDWICH AGAIN. Such a ridiculously perfect sandwich. If he wasn’t so hungry, he’d toss the meal in the trash, just to show her how little he cares, how little he needs her, but unfortunately his stomach is growling and unfortunately he needs her and cares about her very much.
He’s about to take his first bite when he hears the front door open and close. He stands—but then sits again. Yes, he will remain seated. No sense in seeming too eager. He will wait here at the table. Clara can come to him. But it’s a deep, timorous voice that calls his name from the other room.
Walking into the parlor, it’s Mr. Hopstead he sees. Clara’s father is an honest man, hardworking, but he’s also a borderline simpleton, incurious, with an inflexible sense of right and wrong that, irritatingly, has little to do with the way life is actually lived. If not for Clara, Robert wouldn’t have much to do with a man like this.
Mr. Hopstead wants to have a conversation with Robert, he says, a little chat about last night’s fight, but Robert shakes his head. He’s not in the mood for a conversation such as that, not with Mr. Hopstead, and besides, he already knows what Mr. Hopstead will have to say, that Clara is a sensitive girl, that she offends easily, that what’s required with her is a more delicate approach.
Robert asks Mr. Hopstead to please stay uninvolved. He has his hand on his father-in-law’s back, and he’s guiding him toward the door, but the man comes to a full stop, refusing to be moved. “Every man has his demons,” Mr. Hopstead says, “and the trick is learning to keep them locked up inside yourself.” With that, the man goes out through the door and stomps away down the steps into the cold.
The Afterlives Page 8