House of Heroes

by Mary LaChapelle

  Binky had stood transfixed, motionless as a hunting dog that has sighted something moving in the trees, excited and fearful too, that he might see it again and he might not. There was nothing he could do to see more. This was how he felt about his understanding: he was only on the edge of it. Looking at Gretta, he realized she wasn’t seeing him now. Her eyes were closed as if she had fallen back to sleep, as if nothing had just happened in that room. And that’s when he noticed her hands for the first time. They were gripping the sheets around her chest, as if they had somehow remained awake to keep her covered.

  Today, Binky felt a similar tension—not simply about the fact that he had to leave. It was that he felt his chance to know things was ending. Gretta sat in her overstuffed chair, a few yards away from where he lay on the carpet. She was doing what she called her “handwork.” Lately, she spent her time making pastel-colored pom-poms out of mesh. They were used to scrub dishes. She called them “chore girls” and gave them to all her visitors. “They are miraculous,” she would tell them.

  Every time she finished one she tossed it in Binky’s direction, sometimes hitting him on the top of the head, sometimes not coming close at all. She could be playful in her own way. But it was that dull time of late morning, and he could smell chicken in the oven, reminding him of all the times he had smelled it before, and this made him sad.

  Since Leslie’s death, Steiner had died too. “Of drinking,” Barb would say. And Gretta’s son Darrel of a heart attack in North Dakota, and her brother Inver, finally, of just being old. All of her last friends were gone—Mrs. Burdon, Mrs. Matthews, Mrs. Johnson with the scent of schnauzer on her skirt hem that invariably gave Binky an erection, until Gretta would say, “Put that pink thing away.”

  All were gone except their neighbor, Mrs. Wood, who would do better to die. But “Meanness kept her alive,” Barb said, a confusing concept to Binky since it didn’t apply to Gretta.

  Wood, they called her. Ninety-six years old and gnarled into the shape of an umbrella handle, she would creep, every few days, down the sidewalk to their house. Binky dreaded her since she was given to generally poking and swatting him with her cane. Her hearing was barely keener than Gretta’s, so much of their visit consisted of misunderstanding each other.

  Wood would say, “My gas bill was terrible this month.”

  “Oh! I don’t blame you,” Gretta would say. “It’s been over fifty years, and I miss my husband as if it’d only been a year.”

  “Mine’s not over a hundred and fifty, but it’s still a crime. We’re old women. They’d let us freeze if it came to it.”

  “I was forty-nine, standing on the window ledge, washing the windows, and Orrin came in the front door. ‘Gretta, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ he said.” Whether or not Wood had heard, Gretta had told her this story many times.

  “It’s a scheme.” Wood would pound her cane into the floor. “Don’t believe them. They call me all the time telling me they should insulate my house, fix the doors and the windows. To save me money. Ha!”

  Gretta would be quiet for a minute, resting. Wood would gurgle and rattle deep down in her throat, trying to settle something disagreeable in herself. They talked. “He was on the bed,” Gretta would say, never without holding herself across the ribs and rocking the way he had. “He said, ‘It hurts so much,’ and he was such a big man who never complained.”

  Binky knew the script of their visits. Wood had many complaints, and Gretta would stare out the window. Sometimes she had the look of a young woman, as if none of her children had died yet, as if they hadn’t even been born. Binky could see her as a girl on the Dakota farm, the miles of flatland stretching around her and her blue eyes full of the sky, which she always said was the thing she had loved most about the plains. Eventually she would look over at Wood, remember her, and ask her a question which she already knew the answer to.

  She would always put the water on to boil when Wood arrived and, toward the middle of the visit, make tea for Wood and decaf for herself. For years she had offered coffee, but Wood couldn’t “abide” it.

  Sometimes when she set the cup on the table before her guest, she’d say in a normal voice, not loud enough to hear, “Here’s your tea, instead of good coffee, goddamn you.”

  And always there was this, loudly: “I came over yesterday, and the door wasn’t open.”

  “I’ve told you before,” Gretta would shout. “I can’t just leave the door open. We’ve been burglarized. You know that man walked right in while I was hanging clothes on the line. Call me before you leave, and I’ll let you in.”

  But Wood rarely called. She had high expectations, Gretta said. There was a time when Binky would bark and jump on the arm of Gretta’s chair to let her know Wood was there. But he had stopped.

  One day she had come to the porch door and knocked with her cane. Gretta was taking her nap on the couch, her hand curled over her eyes, deaf. And Binky went to the porch where Wood stood behind the locked screen door. Rap! Rap! She banged the frame. “I’m here.” But he didn’t move. Maybe because her walk had been painful or because the sun was glaring through her thin white hair, she looked defenseless. “Tell her, dog,” she said. But he didn’t want her in the house.

  Wood turned away and descended each step like it was a day. She came around the side windows, which were over her head. Binky watched the rubber tip of her cane bounce against the panes. She banged on the backdoor, and finally she was gone.

  It was dinnertime. Gretta opened the oven door and the chicken spattering sounded like applause. “Grease is a great thing,” the chicken almost seemed to say. Binky loved Gretta’s food. Years of it had left a lacquerlike film on the enamel of the stove and the yellow wallpaper. He could smell it everywhere in the house. If she did nothing else in a day, she still cooked. It wasn’t Monday or Tuesday or Thursday; it was meatloaf or porkchops or roast. It was the substance of her day, her inspiration and her pleasure.

  Some mornings, after dressing in the same knit pants and sweater she’d worn for days, before she’d even put her shoes on, she’d announce her menu plan, as if the whole family still lived in the house. “Mashed rutabagas and potatoes. Yes! Lord God, it’s been a long time. It sure has.” She’d go into the kitchen, dig two rutabagas and potatoes out, and thump them down on the counter with conviction. “I’ll do that later for dinner,” she’d promise.

  Barb arrived as Gretta was setting a plate for her on the table. “Mother! What did you do to Binky?”

  Binky stood up, alarmed.

  “Doesn’t he look better?”

  “You missed trimming one of his legs. It looks like he’s wearing a cast. Oh, Mother, can you see the bald spots? Poor thing.” Barb picked Binky up, and he felt like crying.

  “Worse things have happened,” Getta grumbled. “Sit down now—we have chicken, creamed carrots, and rolls.”

  “Just coffee.” Barb looked over at Binky laying on the rug. “My God,” she said, shaking her head.

  Sitting beside Gretta at the table, she opened the drawstring on the plastic bag that she had brought with her. “I washed some of his things,” she said. And Binky, watching her pull out his vests and his small wool leggings, felt nostalgic for those sillier days.

  “Good.” Gretta fingered the material. “He’ll be ready then. Have you talked to the man?”

  “He said he’d call tonight.”

  What man? Binky’s heart stopped and waited.

  “What?” Gretta asked.

  Barb leaned closer. “He said he’d call me tonight about picking him up,” she said louder and more clearly, exacerbating Binky’s misery.

  Gretta continued eating quietly. “Have some food,” she said after a minute.

  “Mother, I said no.”

  When Gretta had finally picked a drumstick nearly clean she tossed it on the rug next to Binky. He took it in his mouth listlessly.

  Gretta dipped a biscuit in her coffee. “They say you shouldn’t give chicken bones to
a dog.” Then she went back to eating. “I suppose one day he’ll choke and die.”

  She stopped eating. “I’ll miss him,” she said. “I’ll miss sitting with him.”

  “Yes, I know.” Barb leaned forward. “But it’s right. It’s the right time.”

  Then Gretta looked up distractedly. “I’m calling Wood for dinner.” She labored to get up.

  “Mother!”

  “She should be here; it’s been a long time.” She was finally on her feet; her napkin clung to her knee, then fell to the floor. “Dial her number,” she told Barb. “Dial her number.”

  “Mom, I am.”

  “Hello,” Gretta said as soon as she had the phone to her ear.

  “Mom, she hasn’t answered.”

  “Hello.” Binky could hear Wood’s voice sounding like an insect’s over the line.

  “I’m inviting you for dinner,” Gretta said.

  “I can’t hear you. Who is this?”

  And Gretta, who had her hearing aid in this time, said, “She can’t hear me. Come to dinner!” she shouted one more time.

  “Here, let me try.” Barb took the phone. “Mrs. Wood…. Can…you…come…for… dinner?” But there was only confusion on the other end.

  Then they were both shouting into the phone different things at the same time: “We’ve got food” and “You’re invited.” The way fans hopelessly cheer a losing team to win.

  Then a click. And all three of them, including Binky, watched in their minds as Wood walked from the phone to stand bewildered in the middle of her living room.

  “You go see about her, Barb,” Gretta said, “and Binky and I will stay here.”

  Early evenings, Gretta had to tend her garden. This was something she would do every day until the first frost. It was her constitutional. Tonight she looked over the narrow plot along the south side of the house that bordered the driveway and Binky stood on the concrete beside her. The mums were still healthy, and the bees were kicking their hind legs into them in that frantic way they have at summer’s end.

  It had been years since she had been able to kneel on the ground and ever hope to get back up again. But Binky still remembered those days. Now she managed by putting one hand on the house for support and reaching down with the other. She folded the wilted petal of a pansy back as if to look at its face. “Almost gone, aren’t you?” she commiserated. “Pop your head off, I’m afraid.” And she did, because the rule of thumb with pansies was to keep them thinned.

  The pavement was still warm from the day, and Binky lay down. Gretta inched her way along the garden, pulling up weeds and dead plants and tossing them onto the drive-way to be swept together later. Every few feet that she progressed, Binky would slide his body along to follow her.

  The sun’s angle had changed, and it seemed to lie like an arm around Gretta’s shoulders as she leaned over her work. Her hearing aid had gone back into its box after dinner. And this time of day, when she was deaf, Binky felt deaf, too. The world took on a stillness in early evening, as if the two of them were together in a painting.

  Binky rolled on his back. The sky was blue, and a plane passed silently, high over the treetops. He felt deeply peaceful. Dreaming, he had the sensation that the plane’s shadow was covering him, and he suddenly felt very cold. No, it was a man’s shadow. There was a man somewhere? Instinctively he rolled and found himself in a tense crouch. He was growling with that rumbling growl deep within his body that signified to him there was a danger even before he knew what that danger was.

  Was the man really there? It was so strange. He stood, hands in his coat pockets, on the driveway not eight feet away from Gretta and said nothing. Was he the man who had come to take him home with him? No, Binky somehow felt this wasn’t true.

  The stranger watched Gretta as she continued to reach into the garden, searching out and grasping the roots of dead plants. And Binky watched her, too, with a great protectiveness. He loved the independence of her hands as they worked, as if through a century of sheer use they had come to possess a soul of their own. She moved quietly along the garden, the man standing behind her. Her face was smooth, and she seemed unaware she was being watched. As if to change this, the man stepped toward her. Binky crouched. He had never felt so protective of her in his life. His heart became huge in his chest; his lips drew back over his teeth; and he poised for an attack, growling louder and louder, finally leaping at the stranger. But the man disappeared, leaving Binky to attack thin air.

  Binky, naturally, felt foolish, like the times in his youth he had zealously leaped at the mailman only to crash into the door between them. He knew he was whimpering as he went back to Gretta. And the fact that she couldn’t hear him and didn’t know what had happened made him feel utterly alone. He thought of Wood walking along this garden, trying to beat on the windows, and the loneliness of it. Gretta was slowly sweeping the weeds together in the driveway, and the light brushing sound was no more comforting than the sound of time passing. Why was she giving him away? What was going to happen to him?

  Binky howled. He stood in the middle of Gretta’s pile of sweepings and continued to howl. She tried to push him aside with her broom, but he wouldn’t budge, and he knew that, eventually, if she looked at him, she couldn’t help but see that he was calling out to her. She did finally, and she picked him up, held his head in her hand, looked into his face. He was trembling. “You’re a troublesome little thing,” she said. “Even so, I can’t give you away today. I will though, Binky.” She took his paw firmly in her large hand. “It won’t be long before we’ll just have to find another place for you.”

  “Now,” she said, walking to the corner of the house, “there are just a few more things we should do tonight. We need to check the rain bucket.” It was full, and somehow she managed to pour it into her watering can, still holding Binky. She set it back under the drainpipe. “It’s bound to rain again,” she said. “You can feel it, can’t you?” And he put his nose up to the air as if to show her he was listening. And sure enough there was rain in the air, coming from the west. Suddenly the fact that it was coming felt very immediate, as if he could see it beating against the western plains, like an army’s march in their direction.

  The rain was an oddly comforting thought. Somehow that Gretta was so sure of it made him feel safe again. He’d almost forgotten about the visitor in the driveway, but the thought of him came back again, quite simply. He understood. It wasn’t earth-shattering. It didn’t even change anything. Gretta had known the man was there the whole time. He was Death, wasn’t he? And he had visited for years—he was in her windows and in her yard and in her morning cup of coffee. He would make no huge claim on her. She was peaceful with this, and Binky loved her for her strength, and for the moment he had the feeling they could live forever.

  She walked slowly, carrying him back to the porch, occasionally stopping to knock a dirt clod back into the garden with her shoe, and he knew they would sit in her porch chair watching the sky darken in the west. She would have no inclination to go in until her expectations were met, until the thunder was in their neighborhood and the rain started washing across the street onto their yard and up against their windows.

  FAITH

  She stood with a family in the pew in front of mine. She might have blended in as one of their daughters, except that they were an ensemble of blazers, pastel wool coats, smoothly groomed hair, and she was not. She was a sort of jam session of clothing: navy opaque stockings, white slip-on sneakers, lime green culottes (something I hadn’t seen worn since 1968), and a bulky pullover jacket that came nearly to the hem of her culottes. Her hair was closely, but unskillfully, chopped, leaving square edges around her ears. And the jacket, light enough, had a hood trimmed with long fur. The sleeves were also trimmed with fur and covered everything but her fingertips. I could see a few beads of a rosary wrapped around her fingers, and since very few people say the rosary anymore, let alone a girl her age, it struck me as odd.

  She looked aro
und frequently—at the stained glass, at the chandeliers in the dome of the basilica, at the candles burning in a dark foyer behind the altar, and at me. Her face was so superb, it diminished any prejudice her clothing or even the rosary had brought to my mind. She had that quintessential dark Irish look, the black black hair and eyes against clear white skin that I’d only seen before in movies or National Geographic.

  I had hoped for a shorter ceremony. But I’d watched Kathy, the receptionist in the office I share with two other psychologists, escalate the event for months. Perhaps because I was the only other woman in the office, she kept me informed of the details as they compounded. “We got the basilica!” she’d squeal at me as I walked past her on my way to the rest room. “We are going to be in the absolutely most gorgeous church in town!” I’d hear through the restroom door as I washed my hands. And I’d wonder what the patient who was now in a session with one of my colleagues in the next room thought of this. Or, “Steve can’t find enough groom’s men to match my six,” she’d tell me after our morning greeting in the waiting room. And after the many days of being included in her planning, I wasn’t capable of making the excuses my associates had mustered for their RSVPs.

  Now the uncle she had been afraid wouldn’t be able to celebrate the service stretched his arms out of the wide sleeves of his vestments toward the crowd. “We are here to witness this precious union. Each of us has a special relationship with these young people. Our hopes for them are our gifts. And at this time of year”—he gestured toward the statue of Mary, where there were many baskets of tulips and lilies at her feet—“we can appreciate Mary and the special care she has for Stephen and Katherine.” The mildest wave of revulsion passed through me. The dark-haired girl was up on her toes, trying to see the shrine, and I was reminded of those first May days in my girlhood parish when making the flower procession to Our Lady was the greatest honor.