A Small Crowd of Strangers

by Joanna Rose

  He went into his office and logged on to the airlines. She leaned on the table, listening to the tapping.

  He called out, “There’s a flight from St. Paul to Newark at one-twelve in the morning.”

  The swan feather was soaked with brown.

  He came back into the kitchen, stood in the doorway.

  “Michael, you go.”

  He put his hands in his pockets, and she could see them curl into fists and then uncurl. This boy who had never been in a fight. He said, “You need to come with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  She knew the words to say. I don’t want to watch you pray the rosary in the hospital. I don’t want to watch you pray on your knees outside an abortion clinic. I don’t want to be back in New Jersey. It would be easier to hope for Mr. Bryn from here, from their house, from St. Cloud. Elizabeth would light a candle, she would light a candle, and she’d stare at the tiny life in the flame and hope for him.

  “I mean I don’t want to,” she said. It felt like a terrible mistake, to not go. “You go.”

  The whipped cream in his Irish coffee was floating in oily yellow clumps. She slurped up the biggest clump. The coffee was still hot, and she choked the big swallow down, her eyes tearing up with the heat of the coffee. She wished it wasn’t her sitting and him standing over her like that.

  “You can’t even drive,” he said. “Can you?”

  Then he called Reverend Rick.

  He went into the bedroom and she listened. The light switch. The closet door. A dresser drawer. She could clean up this mess or she could go in there. She could at least put the steaks away. Mr. Bryn was going to be all right. Let Michael go do his prayer vigil. Let him be the loving son. When he came back, there would be time to talk. Their house, their quiet life, her, it would all still be here. The edge of the swan feather was spiky and sticky, and she didn’t know what those edges were called, the silky hairs along the shaft. Quill.

  Michael stood in the kitchen doorway. He held his crucifix.

  “I was going to rehang some stuff, that little painting,” she said. “You just go be with your family, they need you.”

  She wiped the edge of the swan feather along her sleeve.

  “Call me as soon as you see him,” she said.

  The Irish coffee on the table was drying into a sticky mess.

  “Thanks, really,” Michael said, and stopped. “Sorry.”

  Rick said, “Really. It’s fine.”

  His head was a wreck. He needed to explain but he couldn’t. Because he didn’t know what to explain. That she wouldn’t come. That she was drunk. That she didn’t believe in God. He didn’t know what to be mad about.

  Rick said, “Do you want to talk?”

  “No.”

  Then he was embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  The light, slushy snow wasn’t sticking. The windshield wipers swiped silently. He took out his phone and checked his messages.

  “I need to call my mom,” he said.

  She didn’t pick up.

  “I get in at at 3:20,” he said to the voice mail.

  He tried to remember the flight.

  “I’ll get a cab.”

  She was probably at the hospital. Of course she was at the hospital.

  “I love you.” He didn’t want to say that with Rick right there.

  He checked his flight number and called Claire, but she didn’t pick up either.

  “Delta, flight 652. I’ll catch a cab. I love you.”

  They pulled onto the highway.

  They never said that, I love you, the way some families did. Saying it now was awful in a way. It was how serious this all was, that now they had to say that. He checked his messages again. Then he settled back in the seat holding the phone. Staring straight into the snow in the beam of the headlights made him dizzy, and his head ached. He shut his eyes.

  His grandmother used to take out her rosary every time she got in a car in snow. He wanted his rosary beads now. He wanted that small clicking in his fingers, and the rote prayers that could be in his head without any room for any other thoughts. He used to say his rosary in secret. He wasn’t even sure where his rosary was. The beads were faceted onyx. It was his father’s father’s rosary. He’d gotten it when he was confirmed. He was pretty sure it was in his desk drawer, in the dark red leather pouch. He wished he knew for sure. He tried to remember the last time he’d seen it.

  It was an hour to the airport, and it was quiet in the car. There were towns off in the dark and exit ramps with gas stations sitting in the middle of nothing.

  He said, “Let me ask you something. What’s the school’s policy on gay teachers?”

  It was just something to talk about besides the fact that his wife didn’t believe in God. And that his father was having a heart transplant. And that he hated this big empty place.

  Here’s what she learned that night: that the little house was just the right size for one person. The wood floors got warm if you turned the heat up to seventy-eight, but then the bare windows got foggy and dripped. You could clean a swan feather with a toothbrush dipped in dish detergent. Irish coffee would keep you awake and drunk all through the night. She didn’t even know what a human heart looked like.

  She woke up on the couch, the Loretta Young bathrobe twisted around her legs, and she was all sticky and sweaty. The yard was in dark blue shadow, and everything was frosted thick and white. She drank Alka-Seltzer and went back to sleep on the couch until almost noon, when the banging in her brain turned into someone knocking on the front door.

  Angela Park stood there in the bright middle of the day, wearing a fuzzy pink beret that seemed to buzz. She had on pink lipstick too, same shade of pink, her jacket too, and she was standing there on the front porch.

  “Honey,” she said with those pink lips, “I just heard about Michael’s daddy, and you know we’re all just rooting for him. How you doing? You get any sleep? You heard anything?” Her pink, blue-eyed face was ringed in clouds of breath.

  Pattianne’s feet were bare, and she backed away from the cold that came in the door. “Jesus.” An icy draft on the back of her sweaty neck. “Come on in.”

  “Boy, you got that heat jacked up or what?”

  “I was just going to make some coffee.”

  The wad of napkins was still on the table, the steaks were still out on the broiler pan.

  “Look here, hon,” Angela said. “I stopped by the bookstore and Elizabeth said how you weren’t working today.”

  The Tullamore D.E.W. bottle was down to less than half. Sadly less than half.

  “I was at the school this morning and Max told me. A new heart, can you believe that? Max is taking care of the debate team. They got a debate over in Tyre this week. Michael called him this morning.”

  Michael had called Max, but he hadn’t called her. Angela set her shoulder bag on the counter next to the steaks. She looked over at the table. She looked at Pattianne.

  “Hon,” she said. “You look like shit.”

  Instantly hilarious, laughing that almost took her breath away, but only for an instant.

  “I think I have a headache.” She was either laughing or crying, or both. “My brain feels like those steaks look.”

  Angela took off her big pink jacket and hung it on the chair, and pushed up the sleeves of her red sweater. Its tiny pearl buttons strained over her breasts.

  “Why don’t you go jump in the tub? I’ll make a pot of coffee.”

  “I have to call Michael.”

  Angela stepped back and checked out the Loretta Young robe, the number 12 basketball jersey, the bare feet. She said, “Not as much as you need a tub and a cup of coffee.”

  If anything had gone wrong, he would have called.

  “Go on,” she said, “I’ll get the phone if it rings.”

  The shower was as hot as she could stand, and then she switched it to cold, then hot
again, and got out, dried off, like she couldn’t move fast enough, and got into jeans and the number 12 basketball jersey, the nylon of it sticking on her wet back, some hangover panic making her hurry. Her hands shook. She tied her wet hair back in an elastic. Someone would have called.

  The kitchen sink was clean and empty, and the counters were wiped and the table scrubbed clean, and Angela sat there, one black stretch pant leg crossed over the other, her red sneaker thumping against the table leg. She was writing things down on a list with a pencil.

  “Hey, there. I was just working on my grocery list. You look like you might just feel a whole lot better, maybe ready for a cup of coffee?”

  The steaks were gone. The ice cube tray was out on the clean counter. The kitchen window was filled with daylight, wiped clear of drips.

  “Thank you. I do. I am. I have to call Michael.”

  “Just milk, right? Here you go, ma’am. Now, I have to go run up to the corner, that grocery store, so you talk to Michael, and I’ll be right back. I’ll just let myself in. Have you got a hammer?”

  “Do I have a hammer?” Oh God, the hammer. The crucifix. She would hang it back up above the bedroom door. “Yeah, I do. Hey, could you pick me up a toothbrush?”

  The number for the hospital was on Michael’s desk, small round numbers on the clean sheet of notebook paper in the middle of his neat desk next to a stack of school comp notebooks, a manila envelope, a schedule of debate practices that said Debate Practice Schedule across the top in neat round letters. His collection of dashboard Madonnas was along the windowsill. The yard was full of sun.

  She asked the woman who answered for Michael Bryn. “Mr. Bryn’s son,” she said.

  Blue frost shadows under the trees.

  Claire came to the phone.

  “He’s in post op,” she said. Her voice was rough. Pattianne heard cigarettes smoked outside the hospital doors in the cold.

  “You sound pretty beat.”

  “The surgery took seven hours,” Claire said. “Michael is with my mom and Father McGivens. They’re saying a rosary.”

  Angela was cracking ice cubes loose in the kitchen. Maybe Claire could hear it. Maybe she would assume they were rosarying it up here too. Maybe Pattianne would tell her that.

  “Tell them I called,” she said instead. “I’ll be here waiting.”

  Which would be the greater sin, lying about saying the rosary or not believing in the rosary in the first place?

  “God bless you, Pattianne,” Claire said, her voice not flat now, not far away, but rich with some sound—love, hope, some crazy emotion caught there in her throat, and maybe she did hear the rosary. “I wish you were here.” And that was a whisper.

  All Pattianne wanted was a cigarette. The worst time to have one, hungover, her stomach threatening dire consequences for anything. Then there was the unmistakable pop of a champagne cork in the kitchen.

  “I wish I was too,” she said, and bye, and love to your mom, and she hung up quick.

  Angela had wine glasses out, and they were filled with cracked ice. Dark purple liquid pooled at the bottom of each glass.

  “Got to have your Vitamin C,” she said. “Now watch this.”

  The orange juice was in a bowl, and she had beaten it to froth. “Some egg white makes it foam up all nice like that,” she said, and she poured the frothy foamy orange juice carefully over the ice, about halfway up the glass. The purple at the bottom stayed purple. The orange stayed orange. “The trick is you pour real slow,” she said. Then came the champagne, and a twist of orange peel that glittered. “Dipped in egg white and sugar,” she said. “Here you go, this is my own invention. It’s called a Mimi-mosa. Now that purple stuff is this purple-flavor liquor.” She tapped her pink fingernail on the gold cap of a small liqueur bottle. Parfait d’Amour. Then she picked up her glass. “Here’s to Michael’s daddy. Tell me how he’s doing. You okay?”

  “He’s not back awake yet. I just talked to Claire. Michael was with his mother. They can’t go see him yet.” One sip of orange juice and fizzy cold champagne made the whole kitchen brighten. “Wow. This is great.”

  Angela unbuttoned her sweater a few buttons. “So his sister is there?” she said. “You know, it is really warm in here.”

  “She goes to school in Pennsylvania, Slippery Rock State College, and she was there, she answered the phone at the hospital.”

  “Now this is not my undies, it’s a summer top—I don’t want you to think I’m going out of the house in my underwear.” Angela took off her sweater. A pearl button popped off and rolled under the table. “Oops,” she said. She was wearing a candy-striped tank top. “I know I’m too fat to wear this.”

  “You’re not fat, Angela.” Angela was sexy and beautiful. She said, “You’re beautiful.”

  “You are so sweet. Now, did you say Slippery Rock?”

  “That’s the name of the college.”

  “Why, my first husband, Hal, he used to watch Slippery Rock play football on the TV or something, I remember that name from him watching football—he loved his football. Well, that’s good that she lives so close. So Michael is just going to stay till his daddy comes home from the hospital?”

  “Maybe longer, make sure things are going okay.”

  “They have good insurance?”

  “Oh yeah, they’re pretty well off.”

  “I bet Michael wishes you were there right now. I think it’s just a shame that you couldn’t go with him. A new heart. Imagine.”

  No, she couldn’t imagine. It didn’t make sense. How did they hook it up? What did they do with the old heart? What did anyone ever do with an old heart? The sweet orange juice foam, the bite of champagne, now that made sense.

  “Angela, what are you doing here?”

  “Oh, holy buckets, I almost forgot my errand. There’s a vanilla envelope of flyers, one of those big yellow kind? I told Rick I’d pick it up for him. He was out front of the school when I dropped Max off, and I got to go out there this afternoon so I said how I’d bring it. You want more Mimi-mosa? I think it’s putting some color back in your cheeks.”

  “More flyers?”

  “These aren’t more of the pretty ones, these are for the prayer vigil Michael and Rick got going Friday. It’s got the rules, like about how close we can get and all.”

  “Planned Parenthood?”

  “No, the other place out on the highway.” She stirred her Mimi-mosa with her finger and stuck her finger in her mouth. She sucked on her finger, staring down into her Mimi-mosa. “They actually kill babies out there.”

  “Oh, Angela, not you too? Just tell me what exactly it is you’re doing? Trying to save the babies?”

  Angela filled their glasses back up with Mimi-mosa. Her spiky black mascaraed eyelashes were like the eyelashes of a baby doll Pattianne got for Christmas one year. Pattianne sucked the foam through her teeth, foam, orange, then sweet thick purple. She’d hated that doll. She’d been hoping for figure skates.

  Pattianne crunched the ice, pain shooting through her back teeth, and she said, “Trying to save the mothers from committing the sin of murder?”

  “Well, my word,” Angela said. “There’s that too, there’s those poor girls besides the babies, which, God will take care of the babies, but those poor girls.” She slurped up a piece of ice. “Those poor girls.”

  The swan feather was white again, but it was stiff and separated along its feathered edge that Pattianne didn’t know the word for. She smoothed it out. Her hands weren’t shaking now. Mimi-mosas. “I have a friend named Mimi. Miss Mimi.”

  “That’s a pretty name,” Angela said. “Oh, and here.” She held out a brand-new toothbrush in its shiny toothbrush package.

  “My friend Miss Mimi is an older woman. She was the Avon lady.”

  “I get Avon. One of the boys at school? His mom is the Avon lady. She sends out catalogs. I got some new Avon right here. Not this color I got on, I believe this is Maybelline.”

  “I miss her.”
>
  “Your friend Mimi?”

  “She never had kids.”

  Angela added a touch of Parfait d’Amour. “That’s a sad thing, I think, no kids, growing old with no family. Does she have family? I have my nieces which I adore, and my sister’s got a new baby boy, so there’s a nephew too.” She filled her glass up with champagne.

  “Mimi doesn’t seem sad. She has a beautiful house, and she’s beautiful too. She has to be at least eighty.”

  “You can adopt now, even if you aren’t married. Some folks are single parents. If they got a home for a child, they’re allowed. There’s so many kids need homes, they ought to be allowed to have at least one parent, at least as long as it’s a mom.”

  Pattianne added champagne to her Parfait d’Amour and tried to imagine kids running around Miss Mimi’s house, running around her life.

  “Miss Mimi loves purple.”

  Angela picked up one of the glittery orange twists. She stuck it in her mouth, chewed it. Took it out.

  “There was one time,” she said. “Summer before last, that field behind that place caught fire, and I was hoping it would just keep burning right up to the clinic and just burn it down.”

  “Right,” Pattianne said. “That would solve the problem.”

  “I tell you what.” Angela set her glass down carefully. “Wasn’t any killing done that day. Everything on the whole road was stopped up with that field burning. I couldn’t even get out to Sears. I remember I was going out there to return this pair of the cutest pink boots that were too small for even my little one. Sears is always good about taking returns.”

  The window light made Angela’s eyes opaque, bright, glassy.

  “I just want to stop the killing. It breaks my heart, I tell you. It does. We could help find homes for all those babies their mamas don’t want.”

  Pattianne just wanted her husband back. Maybe not her husband. Maybe her boyfriend.

  Angela bit tiny bits off the orange peel. “Those girls killing their babies,” she said. “I don’t know, I guess folks’ business with God is their own business.”