Her morning pilgrimage up Grant Boulevard to the corner of Butternut Street was one of the high points of her day. She walked slowly, taking her time and looking about her, enjoying the fact that she was still healthy, she had strong legs, she could have walked miles if she’d chosen to. Retiring from teaching and moving out of the old house had given her a new perspective on the neighborhood she’d lived in all her life; it had become important to her in a new way. She used her leisurely mornings to walk its streets and grow fond of them, and she felt that she and the neighborhood were somehow one, that she encompassed its entire history within herself. The stores, the trees, the buildings, even many of the people she passed: she knew their histories, she saw them come and go, she had lived with them since the day she was born, and she considered them in a sense hers.
The drastic alterations in the neighborhood were all right with Nell. She found them interesting, and she believed that places, like people, needed to change with the times to survive. Minetti’s Grocery was gone, and Clarice’s, where Caro and Peggy used to have their hair done, and the drugstore with its marble fountain, and the sheet music store. The old Methodist church had evolved into the True Light People’s Deliverance Tabernacle and then into a failing kitchenware shop. The building that had once housed her father’s hardware business had been knocked down years ago; an apartment house was there now, with dusty geraniums growing out of bare parched dirt in the front yard and an overflowing Dumpster in the back.
The Video Bazaar was where Lily’s used to be—the store where she had always shopped for the neat blouses and skirts and sweaters she wore to teach in.
“Don’t you miss Lily’s like crazy?” Pat Garvey had asked her once—Pat who still wore sweater sets and pleated skirts: disasters on her plump, elderly body. The loss of Lily’s didn’t bother Nell; she no longer cared what she wore, and Randolph and his store were part of her new life. So was the deli that had opened on the corner where Minetti’s had been for years. Now it was called Glorious Food, and Nell stopped in regularly to get takeout for her dinner.
When she got there, she stood outside trying to remember what she had in the refrigerator. She was sure there were leftovers from the day before. She stood looking in the window, where a display of something called California Chili (All Vegetable, All Natural) reminded her of Margaret. Videohead indeed! She smiled. Margaret also recommended books: avoid Less Than Zero, she advised, but read Anywhere But Here, it’s out in paperback.
Nell was flying to San Francisco in August to see Margaret—also to eat her way through Chinatown and feast her eyes on the Pacific Ocean and go to see two of her Aunt Alice’s sculptures (one called The Past, one The Future) that Margaret had discovered at the art museum there. Maybe have dinner with Heather and Rob—find out if there was any truth in Margaret’s improbable speculation that Heather was expecting. And something else. When she was cleaning out the old house, she had found a packet of letters in the attic, tied up with ribbon and stored, overlooked and forgotten, with Peggy’s costume jewelry in an old tin candy box: PICKWICK INN CANDY SHOP, SAN FRANCISCO. They were dated fifty years ago, letters to her sister Peggy from Ray Ridley—that two-timer, the man who had deceived Caro and lured Peggy to her death. Nell had unfolded one and glanced into it—My darling I don’t know if I can ever forgive you—and tucked the packet away again, blushing and short of breath, as if she were being watched.
Sitting there on the attic floor, with her hands pressed to her heart, it had all come back to her. Struggling home in the blizzard to hear that Peggy hadn’t returned from shopping, all her friends had been called, no one knew where she had gone. Then waiting through the night and the next day, when the snow stopped falling and a policeman came with the news, the horror of it. And Ray Ridley. After all these years, she had nearly forgotten his name.
Nell had already sent the jewelry to Margaret—she was Peggy’s namesake, after all, and they were pretty pieces, just right for a young girl—but she decided to take the letters to California with her. She couldn’t bear them alone, but she and Margaret could look at them together. There could be nothing shameful in reading them now; everyone involved was long dead. They were family history. She put the box away on the top shelf of her linen closet, back where she couldn’t see it, but she was always conscious of it there, waiting.
California Chili: no, that didn’t tempt her. She remembered that she had some leftover pasta carbonara and some broccoli salad in the fridge, but she went into Glorious Food anyway and bought a giant chocolate-chip cookie and a bottle of raspberry soda. For the first time in her life she was getting what Caroline used to call midriff bulge; Nell didn’t mind that, either.
The girl who waited on her was new; Nell recognized her as an ex-student. Feathered hair, blue eye shadow on top and bottom lids, wristful of noisy silver bangles.
“How’s it going, Miss Kerwin?”
“It’s going just fine, thank you.”
“You like being retired?”
She couldn’t remember the girl’s name. Debbie something? Or was she one of the Morrison girls? Nell did remember the class she’d been in, a bunch of alienated slouchers who refused to keep up with the readings in Dubliners.
“What do you think?” Nell asked.
The girl grinned at her. “I guess you like it pretty well.”
She was eating the cookie with a cup of tea when old Mr. Fahey’s son Jerry called to say his father was dying and wanted to see her.
“The doc says he won’t last ’til morning, Nell. But he’s still got all his marbles, and he keeps asking for you. Finally I told him, all right, all right, I’ll call her. If it’s not too much trouble for you to drive out here.”
She changed from her jeans into a skirt and a clean blouse. At the last minute, she took off her Jesse Jackson button, which she knew wouldn’t be appreciated by Mr. Fahey, who had been a knee-jerk Republican all his long life. Then she drove out Teall Avenue to Serenity House, the nursing home he had been moved to last winter when the quick work of cancer had begun to supplement the slow work of old age. Old Bill Fahey must be ninety if he was a day.
“It’s the Pepsi that’s kept me alive so long,” he had joked the last time she visited him. That had been just after Easter; even then he was dying. His eyes were milky-blue, lost in wrinkles. His smooth spotted hands reached for hers, and when she held his dry fingers he gave his wobbly smile and fell asleep.
Serenity House was an old Tudor mansion set on a hill in a grove of trees. Nell parked and walked up the path. It was bordered with late tulips, the purplish-black ones that always reminded her of Lent. Here and there on the grounds an old person sat in the sun accompanied by a nurse dressed in white. Where do they find them, Nell wondered. The ancient and dying, she knew, were plentiful, but there was a shortage of nurses. Maybe Serenity House paid them well. Jerry Fahey had told her once how much it cost them to keep his father there; he also told her that he and his wife were on the waiting list.
“But you’re not even sixty, Jerry!” Nell had protested.
“I won’t be young forever,” Jerry said. “It won’t be that long before I’m—” He jerked his head over at his father, who drooled placidly in his chair. “I don’t want to find that there’s no room at the inn when I need it.”
He had hinted that Nell might do the same; a small annual fee would guarantee her a place when the time arrived. Nell always felt a faint sense of dread when she approached the door. The next time she came, would she be a senile old vegetable, struggling for breath? And would they turn her away?
We who were living are now dying. Eliot. Not exactly a comfort, but he tended to hit the nail on the head.
Mr. Fahey was on the third floor, in a sunny corner room; they had paid extra for the location, which had a view of tree-tops. Three folding chairs were set up outside the door. Jerry Fahey sat on one, his wife Rosemary on another, young Brendan on the third. Nell disapproved of them all. She felt they had neglected Mr. Fahey in his
declining years. Alone in that house after Marge died. And all those Thanksgivings when he had to come next door and eat with the Kerwins while Jerry and his family went to Florida. Mr. Fahey hated to fly. It was something he had in common with Jamie—the old dour Jamie, pre-Sandra. Meeting in the driveway, the two of them liked to talk about air disasters.
Jerry and Brendan stood up when she approached. Jerry looked grave, Brendan embarrassed. Jerry was the manager of the Pepsi plant in Utica; young Brendan had been given a series of increasingly low-level jobs there, all of which he had botched. Nell had heard the predictable drug rumors, and something about his going back to school to get a degree in Recreation and Leisure.
“Well, this is it, Nell,” Jerry said. He shook her hand, looking theatrically sad: a large, jowly, red-nosed, Irish ex-football player, twice as big as his father even when the old man was in his prime. “At his age, there’s nothing else they can do.”
Rosemary raised her head; under makeup, she looked weary and bored. “He’s been asking for you. First he wanted to see Brendan. Bren won’t tell us what he wanted.” Brendan looked down at his shoes, shrugging his shoulders. Rosemary lit a cigarette and blew out smoke, raising her eyebrows and shaking her head to indicate perplexed disapproval. “Now he wants you.”
“Should I go in?” Nell asked.
“He was asleep a while ago,” Jerry said. “Let me just check.”
He opened the door a crack. A voice said faintly, “Nell?” Jerry stepped back and nodded, and she started to go in. Jerry grabbed her arm and hissed, “Five minutes.”
“Nell, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me, Mr. Fahey.”
The door closed behind her, and she went over to the bed. It was cranked up to a sitting position, but Mr. Fahey was slumped with his chin on his chest. He rolled his eyes up to look at her, then managed to raise his head. “It’s about time, young lady,” he said—or something like that. His voice was thin and indistinct, as if he spoke on an inhale.
She went closer and took his hand; he slumped down again. Nell had no idea what to say. She thought of all the people who had died. Her sister Peggy, her brother John. Her mother, who died while Nell was in her Milton class. Her father, who had what was called a good death while she held one hand and Father Dwyer the other. Caroline’s husband, Stewart, who died in unspeakable agony of emphysema. Caro herself, cold and quiet in her bed when Nell looked in to see why she was sleeping so late. Poor Aunt Alice, dropped dead of a heart attack in the shower, ninety-three years old. And Thea, who died in the hospital alone in the night because the nurse persuaded Nell to go home and get some sleep.
I had not thought death had undone so many.
“Jerry said you were asking for me,” she said.
“That’s right.” She waited, watching the old man’s face, while he struggled to say more. He had cancer of the pancreas: a useless operation and now this slow decline. She wondered what it was like, how did it feel to have your body inside its shell consume itself. The old man’s eyes closed, opened again, closed, opened. He had been old for so long. He looked the same as he had looked for years just smaller.
“Nell?” His head was sunk into the folds of his neck like the head of a white turtle.
“Yes.”
“Nell?”
“I’m here.” She squeezed his hand in case he wasn’t hearing her. “I’m here, Mr. Fahey.”
“You were always my favorite, Nell. I always liked you.”
“I know that, Mr. Fahey.” She squeezed his hand again. She had never forgotten those two times, once in her backyard and once in the Faheys’ kitchen, though she had forgiven him years ago. These same hands on her breasts and under her skirt, these frail old waxy fingers—younger then, eager, strong. The little moustache bristling against her neck. The voice muttering, “Don’t tell.”
“You were the one I always liked.”
“I know.”
He showed his yellow teeth and made a death-rattle sound that she knew must be a laugh. “I sent you Pepsi,” he said.
“Yes. All those years.” Mr. Fahey’s Pepsi, in fact, had been one of the ludicrous, unsolvable problems of her life: the amused dread she and Thea used to feel when the delivery truck came lumbering up Hillside Street. She had left cases of it behind when she moved.
“Well—” Mr. Fahey sighed and closed his eyes. Nell wondered if she should leave. Her mind wandered. She thought about Jamie and Sandra, who were flying over from England with the twins for a show of Jamie’s work in Boston, then to Syracuse for a visit. She wondered if they were planning to stay with her, and she spent some time trying to figure out how she could put them all up. Give Jamie and Sandra her room, take the tiny guest room for herself, put the babies in the dining alcove in rented cribs? Or put the cribs in the guest room and sleep on the sofa? Or maybe they weren’t in cribs any longer, maybe they could just sleep on the floor in the—
“But I know you appreciated it, Nell.”
What? Ah, the Pepsi.
“Yes. I certainly did. It was—”
It was what? He lay there peering up at her. The room was dim, the drapes closed against the light. She wondered if he would like them open, if a view of green trees would make dying better or worse.
“It was good of you,” she said.
“Well, I wanted to give you something.” His voice faded out.
She stroked his hand. “Do you want to rest now, Mr. Fahey?”
He opened his eyes and looked straight at her. “Rest? I’ll be getting plenty of rest,” he said, and made the terrible laughing sound again. “But you know, Nell—I always did like you. You and your. You and your.” Nell’s stomach fluttered. What on earth was he going to say? “Your lady friend,” Mr. Fahey wheezed finally.
“Ah,” Nell said. She closed her eyes, seeing Thea’s face.
“Liked you both.”
Nell wanted, suddenly, to get away, to go home and wrap herself in Thea’s afghan. She was afraid she might cry, and not for poor old Mr. Fahey.
Jerry put his head in the door and lifted his wrist, pointing at his watch. Nell said, “I’d better get going, Mr. Fahey. I don’t want to tire you.”
He turned his head on the pillow and saw Jerry in the door. “Get out of here,” he said fiercely, hoisting himself up. His voice was perfectly distinct. “Get out of here, damn you, I’m talking to Nellie.”
Nell tried to withdraw her hand, but his grip was tight. “I probably should leave, Mr. Fahey.”
His milky old eyes narrowed with anger. “You go on now! I’m talking to Nellie.”
“Dad—”
Jerry turned, rolling up his eyes, to look at his wife out in the hall, and Rosemary joined him in the doorway. “Now, Dad, remember what the doctor said.” She grimaced at Nell, half apologetic, half irritated. How unfair it is, Nell thought, to treat him like a nincompoop just because he’s old and sick and out of it. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to sit a while longer with an old friend? And yet she wanted desperately to leave.
“Dad, I’m going to have to get Dr. Granger.”
“Get out of here, the whole bunch of you. I’m talking to Nell.”
Nell bent close to him; he smelled of bad breath and disinfectant. “Mr. Fahey, I really don’t want to wear you out. I’ll come back. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
He clutched her hand, imploring her with his eyes. “I’m not long for this world, Nellie,” he said. “Do you know that? I’m a goner. There’s something wrong with me.”
Nell remembered her mother: there’s something wrong with my head, she had whispered. And then, before they could do tests, she was dead. A massive brain tumor. It was so long ago, and yet Nell could call it back so vividly it seemed to be happening all over again in some shadowy half-tangible world not far away. She squeezed her eyes shut again, opened them to find the old man staring at her. The look on his face, she realized, was fearful.
“Nellie?”
“You need to rest now, Mr. Fahey,” she
said. She felt close to tears. “I’ll come back and see you again.”
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes.”
His grip on her hand relaxed. His face smoothed out. He smiled faintly. “Tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here.”
She withdrew her hand. The chair creaked when she stood up. “You were the one, Nellie. The one I liked.”
She watched him for a moment to make sure he was still breathing. His hand lay on his chest, and she covered it with hers; their hands rose and fell, rose and fell with his old sparse breath. How young and firm her hand looked compared to his. Mr. Fahey began to snore. She backed out of the room. Jerry was coming down the hall with the doctor—a tall, striding man in a flapping white coat.
“Wouldn’t let you get away, eh?” the doctor said.
“He was my next-door neighbor for sixty years,” Nell said stiffly.
The doctor said, “Amazing,” and went into the room.
In the hall, Nell turned to Jerry and Rosemary. “I hope he doesn’t wake him,” she said. “He was just dropping off.”
“Did he say anything?” Jerry asked her. She looked at him blankly. “Anything?”
“Dad. Anything special?”
“No. He just wanted me to know he—” She paused. “He considers me a friend.”
Jerry looked at her doubtfully and then said, “Well, so do I,” taking her hand and pumping it hard. “And I appreciate your coming, Nell. I know it meant a lot to him.”
She shook Rosemary’s hand, and took Brendan’s limp grip. Then she went back down the hall, her heels clicking loudly in the silence. When she got to the elevator, the doors opened and a nurse pushed forward an empty wheelchair. For a strange moment, Nell imagined it was for her: she was supposed to ease herself down into it, let her chin sink to her chest, and be wheeled away to a sunless room to die. She stood staring at the chair. It took her a moment to realize she was in the way. She stepped aside. The nurse smiled at her and said, “Have a nice day now.”
She watched High Noon, sitting on the sofa eating Gourmet Cheesy Popcorn and drinking raspberry soda. She had the afghan around her, Dinah curled up on her lap; whenever Nell touched her she began to purr violently. The movie was as satisfying as ever, though Nell wondered how much depended on that great theme music. She would have to discuss it with Randolph.
Souvenir of Cold Springs Page 29