The headline: Wendell Lennox—Blacklisted Screenwriter, Father of “The Skeleton Man”—Dies. The article is a litany of his many films, most of which May has never bothered to watch. No mention of his brother, Robert, however. No mention of Clara. Not that May really expected to find their names here—but still. A life reduced to its papery accomplishments. About his upbringing, the article mentions only that Wendell hailed from North Carolina and that he was the son of a furniture maker. Not furniture maker, May thinks. A furniture salesman.
—
THE FIRST TIME she talks to him Wendell is smoking in the Hopsteads’ small backyard between the laundry on the line, which still hasn’t been collected. May, on the other side of the fence, climbs up and peers down at her sister’s beau. The splintery wood digs into her forearms.
“So you like my sister?” she asks.
“What’s not to like?”
He passes her his cigarette, and, putting it between her lips, she inhales with a quick suck. She coughs it all out.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” he says, laughing.
She flicks the cigarette down at him and it hits him squarely in the chest. Unfazed, he plucks it back up from the grass and takes another drag. Far off she hears the family dog barking. She drops down off the fence and runs after him.
—
SHE’S ALWAYS LOVED DOGS. In college, she rides a train home from Baltimore with a cocker spaniel in a hatbox. She hasn’t seen Clara in almost a year, but according to their mother, Robert is even worse than he used to be, especially now that the store is having trouble. These are hard times, their situation pitiable, but then again, whose situation isn’t these days? No one’s without trouble. One must make do, mustn’t one? If only Clara hadn’t rushed from one brother to the next, maybe someone else would have come along, someone more decent, better-looking, and not so gloomy. To think of Clara trapped in a house all day with a man like Robert, it’s almost too much to bear.
That’s why she’s taking Clara the dog. Houdini was the runt of the litter and, as is true of most runts, the smartest of the bunch. (May has always thought of herself as the Hopstead runt.) Despite it being a flagrant violation of school rules, May has kept him in her room for the last few months, hiding him in her coat whenever she takes him outside to pee.
When her train arrives at the station, May carries the dog out front to where her father is waiting. Together they hop onto a streetcar with a stop not far from Clara’s house. Her father says he’ll wait for her across the street. “You won’t come inside?” she asks. “I’d rather not,” is all he says.
May knocks twice and when no one answers, she lets herself in the front door, calling Clara’s name as she wanders through the parlor and the dining room. Next she shouts up the stairs and when no one replies, she goes up to the second floor, where, at the top of the stairs, she hears voices. The bedroom door is ajar, and through it she sees her sister standing behind a wingback chair. Robert is sitting there, smoking a cigarette, his eyes closed, and Clara is delicately massaging his temples. Seeing May in the hallway, Clara’s eyes widen—whether with excitement or embarrassment, May can’t tell. Clara leans down, kisses Robert on the forehead, and then hurries out into the hall, bringing the door shut behind her. Her finger to her lips, she quietly escorts May back downstairs into the parlor, where she puts on a record at low volume. She explains that Robert is having one of his headaches—a migraine, in fact—and now would not be a good time to disturb him.
But what’s this! Houdini topples over the hatbox and plods toward Clara. She scoops him up in her arms, elated. She can’t believe how adorable he is, so small and wriggly. They let him loose on the floor, and he sniffs his way toward the base of the stairs, where he urinates, cutely, at the edge of the rug. The sisters spring up into action, dabbing away the puddle with a cloth. It’s clear to May that Clara loves the little dog and that she wants to keep Houdini here, and so May is somewhat mortified when Clara wonders aloud if Robert will let her keep him. Let her?
“You’re a grown woman,” May says to her sister. “And if you want a dog, you’ll have a dog. It’s as simple as that.”
Clara smiles but doesn’t seem convinced. Not for the first time, May feels slightly disgusted by her sister’s weak will. If she were as beautiful as Clara, May thinks, she’d rule the world one day.
They sit down together on the floor at the base of the winding stairs, the soles of their shoes touching, creating a diamond-shaped pen for Houdini. As he runs back and forth between their legs, they talk about the sudden change of weather (so much colder than it was last week) and about what May might do when she graduates next year (her dream: to find a place in the architecture school at Harvard).
“If anyone can do it,” Clara says, “it’s you.”
—
WHAT MAY CAN’T UNDERSTAND is why they had to bury Clara alongside Robert.
“You never stop being husband and wife,” her father says, pathetically.
“But after what he did.” She doesn’t bother hiding her irritation and disappointment.
“We don’t know what he did or didn’t do,” he says. “And we’ll never know.”
May’s father, swinging his arms hard, walks ahead to join his wife at the front of their procession back to the house from the church cemetery. May threads her arm through Frank’s, pressing her cheek to his shoulder for a moment, his wool suit sleeve swishing across her face roughly but pleasantly. One day, she thinks, it will be her and Frank in the graveyard together, side by side. They’ve been married now for only a year. They met through mutual friends and eloped a few months later at the courthouse, all of it very simple and straightforward, dotted lines signed, vows taken. The decision not to have a proper wedding had been hers. She could spare her parents at least that expense.
A few people from the funeral join the family at the house. None of the Lennoxes attended the funeral—not Wendell or his mother, who still lives across town. To May, this is a gross insult, but her parents don’t seem especially upset by their absence. May thinks of her sister—the bandages, the smell, all those months in and out of the hospital. That she survived as long as she did with burns so severe was something of a miracle, though “miracle” hardly seems like the right word to May, considering that her sister’s survival only prolonged her misery. Perhaps it’s good she’s finally dead. Now they can begin to put those terrible years behind them. The saga of Clara and the Lennoxes has come to an end, at last.
After the guests have left the house, May helps store away the food, and then she and Frank go for a quick walk around the block, even though it’s very late, before going upstairs to bed. They are staying in her old bedroom, the one she shared with Clara when they were girls. Frank throws back the wool blanket, and they climb in together, his crotch against her rear end. Through the walls she can hear her father snoring. How is it he’s sleeping so well on today of all days? She resents her father. Everything about him—his good manners, his pride in something as simple as the family silverware, his ignorance, his poverty. This room is even shabbier than she remembers it. The wind whistles through the cracks around the windows, and the floors flex beneath her feet. Frank doesn’t come from much money, but May suspects this house is a shock to him, its dilapidations, its leaks, its layers of impenetrable grime.
She lies awake for a very long time.
—
THE DARLING BUD OF MAY, Frank calls her.
When she’s with him, it’s lightness she feels, as if his love is lifting her up, whisking her away. She’s almost ready to let it keep her, enfold her—but not yet.
Frank is a decent man, a poet, a gentle soul. She kisses his stubbled cheek and wipes away the lipstick with her thumb, rubbing more life into his face. Until the war started, he taught literature at an all-boys school in Philadelphia and directed their small theater program. May didn’t want him to enlist.
She pleaded with him to stay home. The world needs more good high school teachers than soldiers.
When his train disappears around the curve, she heads back to the house and tries not to feel alone. She’s cooking dinner when she hears the trap snap behind the stove. Peering back there she can see it, the little mouse, its head crushed, its tail across the grimy tile like a flaccid nail. With her hand in a long yellow scrub glove, she reaches deep behind the appliance, her face squished against its metal side, and grabs at the trap. Walking it outside to the garbage can, lonely against the garage, its lid hanging sideways like a bad hat, she begins to sob.
—
ANOTHER GOODBYE, YEARS LATER: At the end of a too-short summer, May drives her son Lewis to the station and watches him board a bus to New York, a giant duffel bag over his shoulder. His shaggy brown hair almost reaches his collarless linen shirt. He is a smart boy, though perhaps too introverted and overly sensitive. A bit of a loner. That could be May’s fault. She worries that she’s doted on him too much, coddled him.
The boy moves to the back of the bus and waves to her from the window. She goes back home and makes herself dinner. Yet another house in which to discover her loneliness. The phone rings a few hours later. Lewis is calling from a pay phone near his apartment to tell her he’s made it fine. She doesn’t need to worry.
—
AT THE BOTTOM OF AN ENVELOPE, stamped and creased: a small gray feather. She twirls it between her fingers and smiles.
How ridiculous: Frank has such an incredible photographic memory and he speaks decent French, but what makes him most useful to the war effort is the fact that he played with homing pigeons as a boy. The army has made him a Pigeoneer with the Signal Corps. What a silly word, “Pigeoneer.” He’s attached to a division that’s been waiting and training in England for the last six months. We must keep our birds healthy and happy, he writes, lest they flap off and fall hopelessly in love with one of the native woodpigeons, who are notorious flirts. Is he talking in code? Has he fallen in love with some British ninny? Surely not. She tucks the feather back into the envelope and drops the envelope in a desk drawer, but when she checks for it again, a few days later, the feather is gone. The envelope contains only his handwritten note.
—
“WHAT’S THIS?” her son asks, holding up a framed photo.
“What’s what?” May asks.
She’s ninety years old, and even with her glasses she can hardly see three feet ahead of her, let alone a small black-and-white picture at the opposite end of the room. They’re in the process of packing up all her stuff. Lewis approaches with the photo. She takes it in her hands. It shows her and Frank the week they eloped. They are smiling at each other, and he has his arm over her shoulder. She’s not sure what to say about the photo, but then Lewis points to something stuck behind the glass in the left bottom corner. Slick, flat, gray, small—
—
THE FEATHER! Cleaning out her desk drawers a few years after the war, the pigeon feather appears from under a notecard. Its ugly yellow shaft, the dark vane soft but broken, like a mouth missing teeth. She wonders if this pigeon might have been with Frank at Omaha Beach. She pops open a picture frame and traps the feather there behind the glass for safekeeping.
—
“DAUGHTERS,” Frank says. “Three of them.”
“You don’t want sons?” she asks.
He smiles and caresses her back. He’s just home from the high school, his briefcase at their feet. They go upstairs and make love, but no babies—daughters or sons—are produced on this particular afternoon.
—
LEWIS HELPS HER DISEMBARK from the plane. A motorized cart carries May from the gate to the baggage claim, people jumping out of its path, and then she’s made to wait on a bench while her son gathers her many suitcases. After more than fifty years in Philly, May has agreed to move back to North Carolina, to Chapel Hill, where Lewis teaches environmental science at the university.
Over the last week he has been helping May sort through her life, helping her decide what to keep, what to purge, a kindness except for the fact that Lewis’s objective, clearly, was to toss as much as possible before bringing it all back to his house. He says he doesn’t like the idea of his mother living alone anymore. He plans to set her up in a spare bedroom on the bottom floor of his house. It’s got its own bathroom, he told her, so you’ll have total privacy.
May suspects it’s him who cares about privacy most. His house is not terribly large, and he’s shared it for the last decade with his girlfriend, a woman almost half his age who also teaches at the university.
A blue Taurus pulls up alongside the curve outside, and Lewis’s girlfriend waves at them from the front seat. She is a long stringy woman with curled hair pulled back tightly behind her head. She doesn’t seem excited to be here or to see May.
She’s never going to marry Lewis. She’s too young. Eventually she’ll leave him, and he’ll be back to square one. Lewis claims he’ll never marry, that he’s not the type, and neither is Sally for that matter.
—
IT’S CLARA’S WEDDING DAY, and they’re at the Lennox house for a small party. Mr. Lennox stands up and delivers a toast—something vague about loyalty being just as important as love—and after that there’s music on the Victrola. Robert takes Clara’s hands and leads her in an awkward, shoeless dance in the middle of the parlor. At the end of the song—“Dreamy Melody” by Art Landry and His Orchestra—Robert kisses Clara, and everyone claps and cheers.
“There’ll be no time for dreamin’ tonight!” someone yells, and a few people actually laugh.
—
MAY IS JOSTLED awake by the lift of the mattress, the creak of the floor, the squeak of the door hinges. She rolls over to find that her sister has left the room. May tiptoes after her into the darkness of the hallway. From the top of the stairs, she can hear voices in the living room. Going down a few steps and peeking under the rail, she sees them on the sofa. Robert is stretched out flat, his head on a pillow, shirtless, his bare feet flexed and protruding in either direction. Clara is on top of him, and she has one hand across his mouth. The other hand is flat on his chest. She’s bobbing up and down like she’s riding a series of rapid but soft ocean waves. Robert makes a low, aching noise, exhaling hard against her hand, and then Clara leans forward to kiss his forehead. May sneaks back up the stairs and darts into the bedroom, climbing under the blanket. When Clara returns a few minutes later, she lies down on top of the blanket and stares up at the ceiling with a faint smile on her face.
“Where’d you go?” May asks.
“I had a splinter,” she says. “I’m okay now. Go back to sleep.”
—
NOW IT’S MAY RISING FROM BED. She’s an old woman, her feet under the covers, her throat dry. She walks down the hall with an empty water glass and hears voices in the kitchen. She lingers just outside the doorway to listen. Lewis and his girlfriend, Sally, are having a discussion at the table. It’s almost midnight.
“Lewis,” Sally says, “I’m proud of you for taking such good care of her, I am. You’re a good person, and what you’re doing for your mom is so good.”
“You said ‘good’ three times,” he says, “which leads me to believe it’s not.”
“Baby, I’m worried about you. You need to focus on yourself right now. Don’t you think our first priority should be getting you well? I know you want to be good to her—”
“There’s that good again.”
“—but what about three months from now?” she asks. “Or six months?”
As May finally steps into the kitchen, she taps on the door frame, announcing her presence.
“Hey,” Lewis says. “Sorry, did we wake you up?”
“What’s going on with you, Lewis?” she asks.
“Tell her,” Sally says.
“It’s nothin
g, really,” Lewis says.
“Just tell me,” May says.
Lewis takes a long sip of his wine.
“He’s sick, May,” Sally says, her index finger moving to the corner of her eye. “He didn’t want to tell you, which is ridiculous because sooner or later you’d have realized.”
Lewis gets up from his chair and moves toward May. He tells her he’s going to be fine. He didn’t want to bother her with it because it’s not important, because he’s going to be fine, and so she doesn’t need to worry.
—
THE CAR HONKS its horn as it swooshes by, only a few inches from the front bumper of May’s Buick. Lewis has let the car roll too far forward into the intersection. He’s learning to drive.
“I’m okay,” Lewis says. “I’ve got this. Don’t worry.”
This is his third time behind the wheel, his first on such busy streets. May is in the passenger seat, hands cupped over her knees, trying not to feel nervous as Lewis reverses the car a foot and then waits for a break in the traffic so that he can turn right. This is one of the most dangerous intersections in town. May should have known better than to bring him here. Three cars line up behind them, waiting their turn. To escape this, Lewis is going to have to gun it, but she doesn’t want to tell him that. He’s such an easily flustered boy.
“Now?” he asks.
But it’s too late. Another car swoops around the curve and is upon them. He slaps the steering wheel with his palm and gives her a nervous look. The driver in the car behind them, growing impatient, honks twice, and Lewis startles.
“I think you should just do it,” he says.
“Is that what you want?” May asks, feeling relieved, though she suspects this is not the best way to teach him. She needs to act confident and give him firm directions. But then again, maybe the best way for him to learn is by example? They fling open their doors and run around the car to swap seats.
The Afterlives Page 17