Unburying Hope

by Mary Wallace

  “Back off, will you?” He pulled away and moved over a few inches. “I have a plan. I’m doing it myself.”

  “How can you start a business without a loan?”

  “I don’t need a loan. I’ve been saving money.”

  “You have?”

  She could see that the shock in her voice angered him.

  “You don’t know me,” he challenged.

  “You practically live here.”

  He stared at her, as if she’d slapped his face, his mouth agape. “So it’s like that? You invited me. I thought we’re partners.” He took a few steps towards the door.

  “Wait”, she said, unsure of what was happening. “You say you have savings?”

  “Yeah, a little bit.”

  She felt the numbness still in her hand as she patted the chair next to her. “Sit down, let’s talk.”

  He shuffled back and sat down, but leaned the chair back, two legs off the floor. “I told you I want to open a dive shop. In Hawaii.”

  She burst out in a nervous giggle, “It’s the beginning of winter and the snows are coming.”

  He turned away, then looked back at her, enraged.

  She froze, stopped laughing and settled her hands into her lap to calm herself down. “A dive shop?” She’d have to get into that wetsuit again?

  “Yes.”

  “In Hawaii.”

  “Yes.” He was curt. “We’ve talked about this. Are you too drunk to remember?”

  “No,” she said defensively, wondering why she felt so off-kilter. “Why a dive shop, again?”

  “You know I love to dive. And I dove when I was younger. A couple years back.”

  “When you were in the military?”

  “Not much.” His face darkened.

  “You never told me about diving in the Service.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Nothing worth remembering.” His face clouded over for a moment.

  She felt something in him was receding, like the person in her nightmare falling away into the snow where she could no longer grasp and hold a hand. “Okay. A dive shop. When? Were you just going to leave me? Were you even going to tell me?”

  Something stirred behind his eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t plan on meeting you.” His voice was passionless.

  She stared at him, the too-tanned cheeks from wandering the streets all day, the man she’d slept with who hadn’t kept his phone on but had cash, who sometimes emotionally checked out on her and sometimes seemed altered or exhausted, she could never put her finger on the distinction. He was one person in his stable physical presence and another person in his mental distraction. Maybe he was living in his dreams, she thought. Maybe he’d already checked out of the Midwest and was on Hawaii time in his head.

  “So, I’m saving money for a house.” There it was. She felt the words float out in front of her, a trial balloon she hadn’t expected to raise.

  His eyebrows rose, “Here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here in D-town?”

  She looked around at her bland apartment, perplexed. “I don’t know.”

  He laughed and she felt an unexpected sting, probably the same one he’d felt when she laughed at him.

  “I’m so tired of defending myself. Detroit isn’t a bad place.”

  “It’s a terrible city. I didn’t go to war so I could wait for my building to be demolished.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve been here my whole life.”

  “I know. How’s that been going for you?” he said. “You should move.” He sat back, resisting her now half-hearted attempts at connection.

  “Why?”

  “There’s nothing here. The stores are closed and boarded up. There are no jobs and no one is buying property.”

  “Which means I could get a bigger house.”

  “Only if you want a house in a dying town. It’ll be worthless before you pay off your mortgage, if the city doesn’t try to demolish it in the neighborhood clear-outs.”

  “I have friends here.” Shame filled her cheeks with heat. She’d just blasted her one friend to oblivion and lost the job that had kept her in contact with him.

  “Frank and that church lady from work? You never get together with them.”

  “Not when you’re around. Because I have you.”

  “What?”

  “I used to go out with them, but I don’t since you started coming over. I see them when you’re gone.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “Why?”

  “You put friendships aside when you met me?

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No.” His head dropped, “I put friendships aside when I went to war.”

  “I don’t have someone taking care of me. I have to take care of myself.” She was torn between an unexpected rage, how dare he sleep here and then rip her for working to save money to live here for the rest of her life, and a hapless sorrow that, yes, she lived small.

  “I could take care of you.”

  Her face skewed up, still frozen despite her shame. Words choked in her mouth, she fought to keep them unexploded behind her teeth.

  She stared at him, until a small smile came to her lips.

  His eyes lit up and he leaned towards her. “Let’s go. Let’s move. There’s nothing here for us. We could be in Hawaii for dinner tomorrow night. We could eat pineapples and sit on the beach watching the sunset. We could be there tomorrow.”

  “I can’t move,” she whispered. She waved at the apartment. “I have this place.” Her words fought her to be heard over the pounding in her ears. “I can find a new job.”

  “Come on, you said you don’t spend time with your friends. And this place is a dump.”

  “It’s not a dump,” she said defensively. “I’m saving for a nice place.”

  “Let’s get a nice place in Hawaii.” He leaned in and took her hands. “Come on, this place is dead to you. You’re sleep walking your life. Come with me and wake up.”

  She wouldn’t be able to inhabit a job here or this apartment in the same way if she said no, knowing that the possibility had existed of solidifying the dreamy hologram that sat on the inner reaches of her brain.

  A sunset, like the one on her computer screen. A beach like the one on her coffee mug. She pushed her feet onto the brittle shag carpet below the sofa and could feel the hardened saltiness of past melted snows that would soon return to envelop her world here.

  Instead of turning herself off in order to make it through the snowstorms and eventual graying piles of polluted, crusty snow that lined every road in town, she could walk out the door in less than 24 hours and be on a warm beach watching a sunset with Eddie.

  She smiled at him and nodded, pulled out a pad of paper and wrote a quick practice note to the landlord giving notice. She thought about turning the pages in the pad and writing a note to Frank, breezily giving him the news but she knew that he wouldn’t understand. How could she tell him how gray her world was and that she had to leap at the chance to spill in some color? She didn’t need to write, she’d be gone by the time he would get a note anyway and maybe at some point after the immediacy of the memory of their argument had passed and their hurt feelings found a way to be salved, they could chat online and she’d make him understand then, when he could see the joy she felt, rising in her chest at the hope, finally, of using her savings to create the perfect life with hardwood floors and just enough granite countertop to make pie crusts.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Panic gripped her chest, but she avoided thinking about the vial of travel sickness pills she’d bought and tucked into her purse. She didn’t want to be drowsy while travelling. Instead, she gripped Eddie’s hand, searching his face for any comfort he could give.

  But he distractedly pulled away, writing out an address on a ripped sheet of paper given to him by the cab driver.

  The cab driver took the paper and read it quickly, turned the key in the ig
nition and drove the car forward out of her apartment driveway, jerking to a stop to curse at another resident whose car cut them off in a tart turn into the lot. Celeste looked forward, willing herself to breathe through the fear. It felt as though even the other driver was trying to keep her here.

  It’s not that she didn’t know the way to the airport. Actually, she thought, she’d never flown anywhere. She knew where the airport was, thirty minutes away, but she’d only passed it over the years on her way to the outlet mall. Wondering how she’d handle getting on an airplane for the first time, she decided to simply mimic Eddie. She would put her suitcase wherever he put his duffel bag, she would walk on board the way he walked on.

  In her purse, she blindly palmed her wallet, her makeup, until she touched the cylindrical bottle that held the pills. Maybe she would just need a few to travel, to change her life, and she’d wake up in the new world ready to face the day.

  She surreptitiously undid the lid, got one tiny pill between her fingers and closed the top, moving the pill to her mouth in a tight swath, reaching beyond her lips to pat down her hair after depositing the pill on her tongue, which was numb with panic. Just one pill, to dull the fear, to hold it off a few feet outside of her body.

  Eddie didn’t notice. He held her hand warmly but avoided her gaze and she settled back onto the car seat, closing her eyes, drowsy from the fear of change, collapsing against the seat like a gazelle that knows a cheetah’s jaw is just about to grip its neck, turning its brain off so it doesn’t experience the next act.

  Stirring half an hour later or more, she felt the cab turn, ride over a speed bump at a driveway and she opened her eyes, surprised by the brightness of the day. She looked to Eddie’s face, his lips were pursed and his jaw hardened.

  She looked out and did not see big buildings, or the airport, or airplanes, or billboards naming airlines and gates.

  Instead, she saw squat trailers, windows, front doors, plastic flowers in planters. Confused, she blurted out, “What are we doing here?”

  “I have to pick up something.”

  “Do we have time?” She glanced at the clock on her cell phone and an alert went off, the one she set for two hours before their flight departure time. “Don’t we have to be at the airport now for the security lines?”

  “We’re checking our luggage curbside, so we’ll run in when we get there.” As the cab slowed, he abruptly pushed her over, closer to the car door, creating space between them.

  “Hey!” she objected, and she settled herself in close to him again until he unceremoniously shoved her away to her car door and then leapt out his own. She rubbed her hip after it hit the door and cursed, aware that the cab driver was watching her being shoved away. “What the hell?” Her suitcase was jammed now under her feet, she’d sat next to him to have leg room, letting her bag take up a spot that less connected people would take, she thought.

  The front passenger door opened and she looked out her window, wondering what was happening. She saw Eddie, his nervousness visible in his tight shoulders, he held himself tall and was motioning frantically to the front seat of the cab.

  She followed where his face was looking and took in a sharp breath. An old lady in blue pants and a beige sweatshirt had her arms crossed, glaring at the taxi, her mouth grit into a stony rejection.

  Next to her, on a plastic bench, sat a small figure, hidden behind a full black trash bag.

  She watched as Eddie lurched towards the old woman. His fierceness showed in his stride across the gravel path to her steps, to her front door, which she guarded, stocky and sure.

  Celeste winced as he stopped abruptly in front of the old lady. She watched him soften, his arms falling to his side. He shook his head, as the old lady railed at him, her words stripping him of his bluster and anger. He nodded his head and his hands went up, gesturing a story that Celeste couldn’t follow.

  But Celeste could see the old lady’s eyes, and whatever he was selling, she wasn’t buying. Finally, she put her hands on her hips and spoke, so quietly that Celeste couldn’t hear any tones, but she watched as he doubled over in shock, and unexpectedly he grabbed her into a huge embrace, enveloping her in his arms, gently lifting her a few inches off the ground, then lowering her softly, still holding her in his arms until both of them released each other and he stepped back.

  He reached into a pocket of his faded Army jacket and pulled out a brown paper bag, putting it gently into her hands, cupping her fingers around it.

  She spoke again, this time gesturing to the little girl sitting on the bench outside the front door, half hidden by the trash bag. His eyes followed her movements and Celeste watched as he and the small child made eye contact. He nodded, reached for the black trash bag, took the girl’s hand and pulled her off the bench to standing. The small face turned to the old lady and Celeste watched a benediction and then acquiescence as the girl walked quietly towards the cab.

  Eddie put the knotted black trash bag in the front seat and slammed the car door, walked around and silently shepherded the girl into the back seat, right next to Celeste’s shocked face and body and, as the cab pulled away, she watched as he feebly raised his hand to the old lady in salute and was troubled to see the old lady crumple onto the bench, her fiery face suddenly empty and gray, staring at her with waves of illness and fear overtaking her until she quickly stood again and walked into her house and the cab drove out of the residential lot.

  Celeste felt her spot on the back seat suddenly crush in on her, the small body next to her was not weighty but the air around her felt unreal.

  A child. In the taxi. With them.

  “Are we still going to the airport?” she asked in confusion.

  He nodded, refusing connection, looking at her peripherally, then looked out his window.

  “And her?” She couldn’t bring herself to look directly at the figure next to her.

  “This is Rosalinda.”

  Celeste looked down at the worried face and the tightness in her chest melted a bit. She stuck out her hand slowly to shake and said quietly, “I’m Celeste.”

  The little girl gingerly pulled her hand out of her sweatshirt pocket and warily touched Celeste’s fingers, then withdrew back into herself.

  Celeste looked over the girl’s long dark brown braided hair to Eddie. “Who is she? Is she coming with us?”

  His voice was sad, “She’s my daughter.” He crossed his arms, jostling away from both of them, facing towards his window and the view of the approaching airport.

  “She’s coming with us? Or is someone meeting us to take her?”

  He shook his head, refusing to engage. “I’m worried about my mom.”

  She leaned forward around the girl and grabbed his arm, “What’s happening to Rosalinda?”

  “She’s with us now.” He gruffly turned away.

  “What was in the brown paper bag?”

  “Money. I gave my mom some money.”

  Celeste felt no guilt this time as she openly jostled through her purse on her lap, yanking no longer useful apartment keys and packets of tissues out of the way to grip the pill container, pulling out two pills and shoving them into her mouth. Enough not to think. To sleep on the plane. To wake up in a new place. Where she hoped her courage could re-right itself, like a buoy on the water, rocked by the insane waves of the small hurricane that sat silently between them in the cab as it pulled up to the departure gate.

  Chapter Thirty

  Driving away from the beachside motel in Kihei, on the island of Maui, in the small sedan Eddie had bought used from a clerk at a gas station the day before, Celeste realized that it had been almost two years since she’d sold her car in Detroit, tired of scraping ice and snow off windows in the winter, frightened by one too many slides on black ice in heavy storms.

  It was such a relief to be in a warm place, in a clean car that wasn’t rusted on the bottom from years of crusted salt thrown from city trucks in an attempt to dust the roads and beat back any snow that
dared stay. Celeste found it absurd that a city known for making hunks of steel into cars couldn’t stop their inevitable rusting. She had finally sold the car when she realized that renting a garage would cost as much as renting another bedroom in an apartment. She’d laughed at the line of people waiting to pay for a room for their car when a local locked garage space came up for rent. Taking the bus had been an easy choice from then on.

  Eddie had gone for a walk while she napped after getting off their plane, and he’d phoned the number posted on the car, which turned out to be the gas station attendant’s cell phone a few feet away. Within minutes, the attendant had the cash he needed to pay off his tuition bill so he could continue in college, and Eddie was driving back to the motel with a huge grin on his face for Celeste and Rosalinda to see.

  The Toyota drove smoothly. It had 117,000 miles on it but was clean and got good gas mileage, he’d been told.

  House hunting did not interest him, however, and he offered to keep Rosalinda with him, which was a relief to Celeste.

  The girl was quiet but Celeste couldn’t imagine getting in and out of the car over and over again with a kid following her.

  She had her list of twelve available rental units, culled from online listings. She started northwest in Kanapaali and Lahaina, walking through open houses at condominium complexes. The interiors were similar to her Detroit apartment, the exteriors were similar except for the views of either tropical trees or courtyards filled with green flowering bushes. Much nicer to walk into, she realized, when you smell gardenias in the wind. She phoned Eddie, who seemed disappointed. No houses?

  The fifth place was a house in the flat part of Lahaina behind the tourist strip of art galleries and restaurants near the beach. For a few hundred dollars more a month than the condos, you could rent a small, one story ordinary suburban house with low ceilings, one old fashioned bathroom and an alley kitchen that had dark cabinets and no windows.

  She drove away towards the upcountry, checking her watch. Three places in the hills, then back down to the more industrial area around the Kahalui airport for two condos and then near Kihei to two small houses in the flat area where the higher paid employees of the fancy hotels lived. She’d driven through that area and spotted both houses but she knew now that they would probably be similar to the non-descript Lahaina rental house. They didn’t seem worth the extra rent. She’d rather have a condo that had been updated but she thought it would be safer to tell Eddie about how ugly the ranch houses were before settling on a condo that she knew he wouldn’t like.