by Ann Packer
Then, sitting there with the phone in my hand, it hit me: Wellhaven. At Wellhaven, visiting her mother. My mother had said Mrs. Fletcher liked having visitors. Jamie had probably driven down for the afternoon. Maybe she’d taken off immediately after standing in front of my mother’s house; maybe her car had been idling at the curb while she looked. I imagined her alone in her little Geo, taking the interstate south toward Janesville. Sitting there at the wheel, her hair brushing her shoulders, the radio on loud. And a pit in her stomach, to think of where her mother was.
She was afraid of the world, Mrs. Fletcher. It was something I’d always known about her without ever articulating it. She wouldn’t drive on the interstate. Hated having any of the girls go on sleepovers when they were kids—that was why the Fletchers’ house was always sleepover central. When we were in high school she objected when Jamie stayed out past midnight, but in a tortured, pro forma way since Jamie was clearly going to win. Poor Mrs. Fletcher, sitting up all last summer, way past midnight, waiting for Lynn to get home. I thought of the day when I ran into her and Jamie, while I was having lunch with Ania. Don’t be such a stranger, she said to me afterward.
Mrs. Fraser had said the same thing to Kilroy as we were leaving his parents’ house. I remembered her thin hand on his coat, the way he looked down before reaching for the doorknob. Whom had he talked to, in the two and a half weeks I’d been gone. Anyone?
I wrote Jamie a note that evening, saying I’d seen her outside my mother’s and hoped she’d want to talk soon, and that I was going to visit her mother unless I heard back that she didn’t want me to.
I waited until Thursday and then drove down, on an afternoon of heavy gray clouds, the kind of afternoon when you have to hope for rain. The facility was low and modern, set far back in well-kept grounds. The lawn was plush as carpet.
At the desk I was told to limit my visit to half an hour. I sat on a bench and waited, the sharp smell of chemical cleansers reaching me from somewhere. I was wearing the nicest outfit I had, my black pants and velvet shirt. Again. Out of desperation I’d bought some underwear, and one day I’d even resorted to a dowdy flowered skirt from the box in my closet, but mostly I just rotated among the few things I’d brought with me, sicker and sicker of them.
Mrs. Fletcher appeared from a long corridor. Her hair was short and thin, but she was neatly dressed in her customary skirt and blouse, and on her feet were her customary made-for-comfort pumps. She tilted her cheek to the side, and I stepped forward to kiss her.
“Let’s walk around,” she said. “I’ll show you the garden.”
We went through the building and out a back door that led to a courtyard. From there a gravel path took us to a well-groomed rose garden.
“Aren’t they lovely?” Mrs. Fletcher said. Like Mrs. Mayer, she had always been a dedicated gardener.
“Beautiful.”
“My girls are tending the roses at home.”
We continued on to a pair of wrought-iron chairs set at right angles under a tree. A uniformed attendant watched us from nearby.
“How are you feeling?” I said when we’d sat down. Her hands were tucked into the folds of her skirt.
“Oh, Carrie, you don’t know your children until the family is challenged in this way. I can really rest easy knowing my girls are taking care of their dad, and he’s taking care of them.”
I looked into Mrs. Fletcher’s face. I wondered what she meant by “this challenge,” how she characterized it to herself.
“The other day Jamie was here in that new yellow shirt of hers, do you know the one I mean, dear?”
I said I didn’t.
She pursed her lips. “I didn’t say anything to her just then, but would you tell her to be sure not to wash it with darks? It’s really important to separate out your yellows. Reds, too. I guess I should have told her myself.”
She began to cough, and when she brought a hand out of the folds of her skirt to cover her mouth, I saw that it was raw and red, with nails bitten down to the quick.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell her.”
Clouds had been massing and darkening since my arrival, and now, suddenly, it began to pour. Without looking at me Mrs. Fletcher got to her feet. She started back toward the building, ignoring the path and instead walking slowly across the thick grass. I followed after her, holding myself back to her pace. In moments I was soaked.
At the courtyard she stopped briefly and looked up at the sky, then continued into the building. She waited just inside the door for me, then slipped out of her pumps, picked them up with one hand, and headed for the lobby.
Near the exit, she held out her free hand. “You’re a dear to have come,” she said. “I’m so glad Jamie’s got such a good friend in you.” She turned and walked away, and I watched until she was gone: her soaked hair, her mud-spattered hose, the water-darkened shoes dangling from her raw fingers.
Outside again, I hurried through the rain to my mother’s car. I sat inside and listened to it drum against the roof and the windows. I sat perfectly still, as if I were trying to hear something the slightest movement would drown out. I heard cars driving through puddles, a distant crack of thunder, and then I found myself thinking of something Dr. Spelman had said during Mike’s coma: that after a head injury, people sometimes seemed different.
That was Mrs. Fletcher. If you hadn’t known her before, you might assume she was the same sweet, maternal lady she’d always been. Only her family and a few others, maybe not even my mother, would think what I thought: that I’d just visited some other sweet, maternal lady, an imperfect copy of a woman who seemed to be missing.
The next day was May 1st, and before heading out the door for the Mayers’, I sat down and wrote Simon a check for the rent. I was down to a little over three hundred dollars, and I was going to have to get a job as soon as I got back to New York: temping, working at a library, something. I couldn’t stand to think about how much money I’d wasted missing classes at Parsons—eleven as of today.
The rainstorm had cleared the sky, and most of the trees were leafed out now, the new leaves curled and pale green, a delicate pale green that reached in and fingered my heart, it was that painful and exquisite. When I stopped to deposit Simon’s check in a mailbox, I peeled off my sweater and pushed up my shirt sleeves, pleased by the pressure of the cool air against my bare forearms.
Mrs. Mayer was waiting outside the house for me, her handbag looped over her wrist. I’d called and asked if she would show me how to use the van so I could take Mike out sometime, and though I’d meant the lift she handed me the keys and said she wanted to see me drive first.
I got in and she climbed in next to me. The gearshift rose up from the floor like a stiff plant. I’d never been behind the wheel of anything so high before, and I jerked out of the driveway a little roughly before heading up the street. At my side she was silent, gazing out her window at the familiar sights. We drove around town for a while, then she said I should go down to the Beltline.
“What were you thinking you might need the van for?”
I glanced over at her. Her perm had loosened, and it hung in waves around her face. She was staring straight ahead, both hands clamped on her purse.
“To go for lunch,” I said. “Or just out.”
She opened her purse, then snapped it closed again. “How long are you staying?”
I thought of Jamie, standing outside my mother’s house on Monday. Of Mike. “I’m not sure. Maybe another week.” I pictured Kilroy lying on his couch, his arms crossed over his chest, and I sighed.
Mrs. Mayer opened her purse again and pulled out a lipstick. She lowered the visor, flipped open the mirror, and rolled color over her lips, a light coral. She recapped the lipstick with a smart click. “Mr. Mayer and I have been parents for a long time, and it’s strange, the things that bother you and the things that don’t. I’ll tell you this only once. We both feel that you’re not reliable. We’re both reluctant to have you back in Michael’s
life.”
My face burned. I stared at the road, the steady movement of the car ahead of me.
“Shall we turn around here?” she said. “You’re doing very well—I never knew you were such a careful driver.”
I signaled to get off the Beltline. I stopped for a light and then drove back through town. “OK,” she said once we were back in the driveway. “I’ll show you the lift now.”
CHAPTER 37
“You’re not coming back,” Kilroy said, “are you?”
“I am.”
“You’re not. You just don’t know it yet.”
We were on the phone again, the day after my van lesson. I was in my mother’s kitchen, looking through the window at the edge of Rooster and Joan’s deck, where there was a row of clay pots planted with irises, tight sheaves of green spears. My mother had gone to have lunch with a friend.
Kilroy coughed, and I turned from the window. I wanted to go back, but not yet. I wanted to be with him, but I wanted to be friends with Mike: to be there for him.
If Kilroy were with me, I knew there’d be no question. He’d look at me and his face would say he knew me, and that would be that. He’d reach out a hand, veins raised and snaky, and that would be that. Kilroy. Of course I was going back.
“OK, when?” he said. “I want a date.”
Something heavy tumbled through me. Silence fell along the line. “Sorry,” he said.
“No, I am.”
He laughed sharply.
“What?”
“That’s your great dodge, isn’t it?” He elevated his voice to mimic me: “ ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
My heart thudded, reminding me of something: the sound of my own footfalls as I walked down a quiet Madison street in my New York boots. Thud, thud, thud. Sorry, sorry, sorry. True, true, true.
“Just say,” I said. I twisted the phone cord around my finger, then slid it off. “I mean, I’m not saying this, but what if I did want to stay here? There are temp agencies here; you could come here.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I live in New York,” he said in a tight, controlled voice. “I want to live in New York.”
“More than you want to be with me?”
“Is that an ultimatum?”
“Didn’t you just give me one?”
We talked a little longer, to no good effect. Afterward I climbed the stairs and lay on my bed. I felt dizzy. I thought of his hands on my arms, how they were just the right size for my arms, to smooth my arms. How they felt on my stomach, especially when they were cold, that exquisite chill. His hands on my legs. His hands on my breasts. I put my own hands on my breasts and they felt soft and flabby, they felt like nothing. Like pockets of flesh. How extraordinary, I thought, that someone could touch you and make you into something.
I took Mike out to lunch. Sandwiches one day, pizza another. In the van he was quiet, but once we were settled and eating, he grew animated. It was good to leave the Mayers’ house, their neighborhood. Sitting opposite me in a restaurant on Monroe Street one day, he looked across his pork chop, which he’d earlier asked me to cut into pieces for him, and said, “Mike Mayer eats his lunch with gusto.”
I smiled. “Mike Mayer does?”
“Yes, he does.”
We talked and ate, and the place emptied out until at last it was just us and two women in tennis clothes. We sat in the lacy sunlight filtering through the branches of a tree just outside the window. From the kitchen we could hear voices and the sound of plates clattering. Near the back, our waiter sat in a booth and ate a sandwich.
I told Mike the story of me and Jamie, going back to seeing Lynn at the Alley that night in August, and how I’d never told her about it.
“Boy,” he said when I was done. “Whew.”
“I know.”
“I wouldn’t have predicted this, but Jamie’s kept it completely to herself. Wouldn’t you have thought she’d at least hint? She and Bill came over the other night, and when I said something about your visit she made it seem like everything between you was OK.”
My visit.
“I guess she feels it’s private,” I said.
“It is,” he said. “But still.” He leaned over for a sip of water. “So what’s going on between you now?”
“Nothing at this point. When I first got back I’d go stand in Cobra Copy and look at her, and she’d ignore me. That happened five or six times. Half of me just wanted to yell, you know, ‘Should I do a cartwheel now? Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’ ”
Mike smiled. “And the other half?”
I looked down at my paper placemat and traced its scalloped edge with my forefinger. “The other half felt she was justified.”
“But you know that’s crazy now, right?” he said. “I mean, yeah, maybe you should have told her about Lynn, but there’s no way it’s your fault.”
“Something is.” I stared at him for a moment, then couldn’t stand it any longer and looked away.
“Carrie,” he said. “Jesus. Shit happens.”
“I guess.”
We were silent. He sat there in his nice plaid shirt, which I was sure his mother had ironed. Things seemed tense between him and his mother. As we left the house earlier she called, “When do you think you’ll be back?,” and I heard him growl faintly.
We split a cookie and then left the restaurant and headed toward the van. The afternoon sun felt good on my face, something clean about it, about the air. The sidewalk was empty and I glanced in at shop windows as we went by. In one, a linen slip dress hung from a rack, and I paused. At my side Mike stopped, too. It was a nice grayed purple, some tiny crochet work along the straps.
“That’d look good on you,” he said.
I looked down at him, and when our eyes met a worried look came over his face. “Should I not have said that?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” I nodded.
A jet sounded high above us. I looked up at the line of white it trailed. I watched it loosen and fade, soon to be absorbed by the deep blue of the sky.
Mike pressed the lever on his wheelchair, and we started off again. “Here we go,” he said. “Mike Mayer takes Monroe Street.”
Kilroy and I talked. Twice a day, every two days, it didn’t matter. Being together required being together, and our conversations became grave and lugubrious. “I love you” was an idea that demanded physical proximity. Back in the fall, telling him about my life in Madison had been like handing him object after precious object to hold for safekeeping. Now I told him about seeing Mike, and it was like taking those objects back, one by one.
He didn’t have much to report. One evening he told me about a mangy dog he’d seen wandering through a road construction site just off West Street, eleven o’clock at night. Three-legged, the dog was. Shuffling along. Then suddenly it keeled over, dead.
I asked if he’d been going to McClanahan’s and he said, “Of course I have.”
I felt split in half. When I was with Mike, I thought of Kilroy. When I was on the phone with Kilroy, I thought of Mike.
His hard time was late afternoon. He was tired by then, and his neck hurt, and he had to spend time in bed, lying on his side to avoid pressure sores from being in the wheelchair for too long. He could transfer himself with a board—incredibly slowly, incrementally, burdening his shoulders as he inched along—but on harder days he let his mother move him. If I happened to be there I watched while she planted her legs and went to work, silent with concentration, her face full of strain.
Late one afternoon he and I sat in his room together, right around the time he usually lay down. I knew he was exhausted: I’d taken him out to lunch and then to the mall for some new shirts. His face was pale under the bit of sun he’d gotten along his cheekbones.
“Tired?” I said.
“What gives you that idea?” He smiled, and I thought of what a sweet smile he had, easy and wide and full of good humor.
At lunch earlier he’d been full of smiles, telling me a long story about a joke he and Harvey had played on one of the orderlies, a guy who had somehow earned the nickname of Bags.
“Can I transfer you?” I said. I’d been meaning to ask, though I hadn’t decided on today. “I think I know how.”
“It’s not about thinking,” he said. “Believe me.”
“What isn’t?”
I turned and there was Mrs. Mayer, looking in on us. She did that a lot: poked her head in to ask if he needed anything, stopped in to remind him to have a drink of water. It was like the old days, when she’d invent excuses to make sure we weren’t having sex.
“Transferring me,” Mike said. “Carrie offered to do it.”
“She can’t possibly,” Mrs. Mayer exclaimed. “That’s out of the question.” She faced me with her mouth pressed into a thin line. “It’s quite complicated. If you lose him for a second—”
“She wouldn’t lose me,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Obviously she’d be careful.”
“People have to be trained,” she said. “It’s a question of training.”
“Then train her,” he snapped. “Or better yet, why don’t you both just get out of here and I’ll do it myself?”
Mrs. Mayer clasped her hands and brought them to her chest. She held them together in front of her flowered blouse as if she were cupping a tiny, wounded animal. “Oh, Mike,” she said. “Oh, sweetheart.” Her eyes were wide, and I thought she would cry. I couldn’t look at him, but I felt him off to my side, sitting in his chair, rage massed in his useless body.
Then it was over. Mrs. Mayer came into the room and said, “All right, let’s train her. Carrie, this is the best workout, you’ll see.”
It was harder than it looked. It took more strength than I would have guessed I had—I couldn’t fathom how she did it. I stood in front of the wheelchair and wiggled my hands under his arms and around his back, where I locked them together. Bent close, I felt his ear against my face, smelled his soap and shaving cream and the musky, intimate scent of his body. I pulled him up, bit by strained bit, until we were both more or less upright. The burden of his body was enormous. I knew I had to swivel him around, but I was terrified to move, terrified he’d knock me over—my arms were shaking. Finally I just did it, swung us around until the bed was behind him, a dance of dead weight. I lowered him, and behind me Mrs. Mayer sighed extravagantly. I stood there panting, then let his upper body down, our eyes meeting as his head touched the pillow. At last I raised his legs and smoothed out the fabric of his pants so he wouldn’t be lying on any creases.