Everybody Loves Somebody

by Joanna Scott

  Beverly Diamond Owen Knox is becoming the woman she’d been named to be. At first she’s not sure whether to resist or give in. There are patches on the back of her hands. Brilliant crystals picking up the buttery tint from the surface of her skin. The ache in her joints is worse than arthritis. The discomforting bristle of crystals between her toes and behind her ears. The sensation of being buried alive inside precious stone. Help me, Nora. I’m not ready yet. Her lips tearing at the corners. Help me. The taste of blood. Help me.

  “Bev!”

  “She said something. What did she say?”

  “Bev, it’s me, Nora. Lou’s here as well. Can you open your eyes? Do you think she can hear us? Bev? Maybe we should call the nurse. Bev, are you okay?”

  The nurse, summoned by Lou, listened with a stethoscope to Bev’s chest and checked fluid levels in the IV bag. Any sounds she made, the nurse explained, were the body’s normal effort to clear the lungs of mucus. Bev wasn’t in any pain, and she wouldn’t wake up from sedation any time soon. But it would be best not to disturb her.

  After the nurse left the room, Lou needed to be reminded: “Where were we?”

  HE’D FINISHED ONE BOURBON. Two. Three. And then he’d realized he didn’t have enough money to pay for his drinks. A new crisis to follow the last. What could he do? Stiff the bartender? Admit that he had only spare change in his pocket? His gaze had settled on the drunk old lady with the fishnet face. She represented life and hope, and she would surely have compassion on a man who had no family anymore.

  “What did I know? I was an idiot.”

  There was so much he didn’t know. For instance, Nora considered telling him right then and there about what happened in White Oak Cemetery when she was a girl. But now the thought of all the necessary explanation she’d have to offer Lou exhausted her, like the work that would go into renovating an old house that had been shut up for years.

  Lou was talking about the old lady in the bar in Niagara Falls: her head tipped back in laughter, skin a toffee brown, darker in the creases, with lips painted a fiery red, and dark, leathery pouches beneath the rims of her eyeglasses. She wore a red saucer hat to match her red shoes, and her summery dress was a loose black-and-white polka-dot wrap. She looked like a charitable person who would lend a few dollars to a man in need.

  “I called to her—Ma’am!—but she couldn’t hear me above the music. I called louder. Excuse me, ma’am, pardon—but she still didn’t hear me. So I went ahead and tapped her on the shoulder. She tipped her head to look at me over the top of her spectacles. She switched off her smile. And at the same time, the music stopped. I don’t know whether someone pulled the jukebox plug or by coincidence the song had ended.”

  This was the scene in the story that Lou liked to label a situation. An old woman who happened to be the mother of one of the singing men. And it sure looked like the bartender was her grandson, while Louis Owen was a white nobody who stupidly decided to call attention to himself.

  He spoke in the direction of the window facing the hospital parking lot, as though his intended audience were the ghost of his reflection. He didn’t seem to care anymore whether Nora was paying attention. And he might as well have forgotten about Bev. He was talking to himself, refining the patterns of experience that had made him who he was. His tendency, as he would say, to put his foot in it. His many attempts to run. His regrets.

  “Next thing I knew, one man was holding me by the collar, and another had a knife at my neck.”

  Nearly had his throat sliced because he’d been bold enough to tap an old woman on the shoulder. And yet he was alive because of that same old woman’s dispensation. All she had to do was give a slight, severe nod in the direction of the door, and the two men threw Lou out on the sidewalk.

  That was Nora’s father: savvy only in the aftermath of his mistakes.

  His conclusion, always the same, invited dramatic comment. Nora imagined Bev sitting up and uttering a good, verifying insult. She thought of the fight they’d had in the kitchen when she was thirteen years old, the night Lou returned to apologize. She remembered lying in her bed pretending to sleep and listening for the shrill explosions in Lou’s voice when his pleading turned into threats. She thought about how wrong it was that Bev and Lou should be buried side by side in White Oak Cemetery, though she didn’t say this. The truth was, though she sometimes needled him, she never meant to say anything that would cause her father pain.

  “Sometimes,” she said to Lou, who sat waiting for her response, “it’s better just to keep your mouth shut.”

  OR JUST THE OTHER DAY, wasn’t it, when a storm blew in. The smell of fresh-cut grass. Screeching of red-winged blackbirds in the marsh. The first syrupy drops of rain. Growl of thunder. Flicker of lightning. On again, off again. Crash, bang, run for cover in the shed!

  Dripping beneath the cloth hat she uses to hide her thinning hair. The chill of damp clothes. It’s not the same kind of chill as the chill in her bones. This despite the doctor’s optimism. But she can still notice things. In the corner, for instance, a nest made of dry grass and shredded paper from a fertilizer bag, crowded with four baby mice. And there’s the mama retreating with the fifth baby in her mouth to the safe shelter behind an old wheelbarrow that had been overturned and left to rust by the previous owner. Back again, to fetch the rest of her offspring, carrying them one by one while Bev watches.

  Nora, come see!

  Bev, you’re soaked.

  Or the time Gus and Bev threw a party for themselves one year after they’d gone off to City Hall to get married. The two of them dancing to “This Year’s Kisses” in the center of the crowd of guests while Nora watched from the ballroom’s balcony.

  Or the day after Lou left for good and Bev hired a locksmith to change the locks. She sipped her coffee and chatted with the man while he worked on the kitchen door. Nora came into the kitchen to pour herself some milk and overfilled the glass.

  Nora!

  Or watching Nora watching Jeopardy!, leg thrown over the back of the couch. Bev gave her big toe a tug.

  You okay?

  Yeah.

  Want to talk?

  Nope.

  The one thing they needed to talk about kept Nora from wanting to talk at all. She couldn’t be budged. Bev had better luck guessing the questions for the answers on Jeopardy!: Dale Carnegie’s number-one best seller. What is How to Win Friends and Influence People?

  X shaped stigma, reflexed yellow sepals. What is an evening primrose? What are ragged robins and corn cockles? Did you know that a fly must beat its wings two hundred times a second to stay airborne? Look: you can tell from the white dots and the red-barred forewings that it’s a red admiral butterfly. Nora, take out the garbage, please! Nora, did you hear me? Listen.

  THROWN OUT ON MY ASS,” Lou was saying. “First by your mother. And then by two toughs in a bar.” His tone was wryer than earlier, his eyes narrowed in a slightly mischievous squint.

  “It’s true I learned from you,” Nora said, “how to get into trouble. But also how to get out of it.”

  “And remember that there’s rest at the end.” He leaned forward and patted Bev’s hand, the same hand he’d kissed. “The peace of our eternal sleep together on some shady slope in White Oak Cemetery.”

  “You did say White Oak Cemetery.”

  Their own private property in White Oak Cemetery. Two names, two stones. They didn’t even have to let on that they’d once been married. Just as long as they were together in the end.

  “Lou”

  “The only home I’ll never lose to foreclosure.”

  “Lou”

  “Thirty years I’ve been waiting to hold her in my arms again.”

  “Lou!”

  “What? You think I’m not sincere?”

  “If you’d be quiet and listen, for once.”

  “You have something you want to tell me?”

  He looked at her with a smile she interpreted as smug, as if he were satisfied that the setup
had worked and he’d trapped her, making it impossible for her not to match his disclosures with some of her own—and yet because of this expression of expectation he made it necessary for her to resist. This was an unfamiliar predicament. Usually she was adept at closing the conversation with a decisive comment. But she thought she’d had something else she’d wanted to say. What? She wasn’t sure.

  There was no way she’d tell Lou about what happened thirty years ago in White Oak Cemetery. That place where she and her girlfriends would go to smoke in secret. The same place where strange Johnny Baggley—a boy they understood to be disturbed—found refuge from the taunting of his schoolmates. He’d hunt for frogs and birds’ eggs, and one day he either fell or jumped from a high perch in a tree. It was Nora who discovered the body. Climbing the hill after she’d said good-bye to her friends, she had seen a boy’s sneaker turned at an odd angle. Then she noticed that the fingers of his left hand, curled against his knee, were caked with mud.

  Lou had been out of the country at the time, and as far as Nora knew, Bev never told him about Nora finding Johnny. It was important to Nora not to tell him. She hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, except her mother—she’d told her mother right away, as soon as she’d raced home from the cemetery. When Bev called the police, Nora couldn’t help but feel betrayed. She felt tainted and newly vulnerable in a way her mother didn’t understand. She had cooperated with the police and led them up the cemetery hill, but only out of necessity. And afterward, she’d shut up. Even when her friends gathered around her and demanded to know what she’d seen, she’d kept her mouth closed.

  But thirty years had passed, and she was ready to talk to Bev about it now. She needed to know why Bev hadn’t chosen somewhere else to spend eternity. Why White Oak, the place where lonely children died horrible deaths and were left to rot? Why did Bev want to be buried there—and next to Lou, no less? Why hadn’t she ever mentioned this to Nora?

  They’d talk as soon as Bev’s condition improved. They’d talk about ugly, rotten, horrible death. What, exactly, would her mother have to say? They’d begin with the story of finding Johnny’s body in White Oak Cemetery, and from there, wherever. The past or the present. It would depend upon Bev. Nora could only guess what her mother would tell her. But she didn’t want to guess. She wanted to know what Bev would say, if she could say anything. That and more. Her mother being far less predictable than her father, complete, though partially hidden from view. Lou, much as he liked to talk, would never adequately answer the one question Nora wanted to ask:

  “Why White Oak, of all places?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you choose White Oak Cemetery?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why White Oak? Why that place? I don’t know. Why anyplace? We just wanted to be together, if you can believe it. Doesn’t seem possible, does it? Hey, Bev? Can you hear me, Bev? I wonder if she’s been listening. Why there? Why us? Why did we spend thirty years apart if we planned to be together in the end? Why did we do anything?”

  Both Lou and Nora watched Bev for some indication that she had an opinion she wanted to share. She just lay there, unblinking, unsmiling, her chest swelling and flattening with the action of the ventilator. Lou and Nora would have gone on watching her forever if the nurse hadn’t come in to tell them that visiting hours were over, which seemed strange to Nora, whose fatigue had led her to believe that it was the middle of the night. She’d call a taxi, she said. Lou reminded her that he had his car. They could stop at a diner for a bite to eat, she suggested, and they could talk some more. They’d have a good night’s rest and come back to visit Bev the next morning. She would probably be awake by then. Lou said he’d bet she had heard everything and would give them an earful!

  THE VOICE OF HER OWN FATHER. The red circles on his cheeks. He was telling her about Joe Louis KO’ing Natie Brown in the fourth round. One cigar after another.

  Bev, phone’s for you!

  What?

  The whir of a fan. The roll of a carousel horse. The swoop of a swallow.

  Or the time she found her husband’s lover’s name and number written on a slip of paper in his wallet. See how it is, Nora, when we have to make do with suspicion? Sometimes it’s best to tell.

  Two cups of flour. Cream the butter with the sugar. Crack an egg against the rim of a bowl. The satisfaction of catching the yolk whole.

  The time Gus came out to the garden, where Bev was trying to screw the nozzle of the hose on a spigot, and she could see from the look on his face that something terrible had happened. More precisely, somehow she knew that his son was gone. She didn’t yet know the details—that he’d been killed in a bus accident while traveling in Mexico. But in that flash of a glance, she felt as though she knew everything.

  Or the days following the day Nora ran home to tell her mother she’d found something in the cemetery. Nora wore her softball cap around the house to hide her eyes in shadow.

  Or the time Bev was about to remind her again how much she loved Adam and was grateful for Nora’s happiness, and the next thing she knew...

  What?

  She’s not sure she weeded the garden before she left. Those stubborn little maple saplings, as tough as mandrakes. The songs she used to sing. Gus, according to his wishes, reduced to ashes and scattered over the north Atlantic. Lou, come closer so I can look at your face. The wiry white curls of your beard. The wide pores of your tanned skin. And you, Nora. Sitting in the garden cradling cups of coffee. We must do something about the potato vine tangled in the pachysandra. Is that what she wanted to say? Also, the thicket of loosestrife at the top of the front walk.

  THE LUCITE CANE

  Blue sky. Summer day. One car after another. A woman talking back to the radio, the thread of her voice trailing through the open window of her Chevette. Another woman sucking into her mouth the deflated bubble of her bubblegum. Two boys riding in the bed of a pickup truck, one expertly flicking away his cigarette butt. Yellow ribbon in support of our troops. Ticking of a blinker. An attorney who last year was defeated in his bid for the city school board calling, “Maria!” into the mouthpiece of his cell phone. Another man telling the woman beside him about the television show he’d watched last night. The woman in her Chevette snapping, “Go to hell!” A baby wailing, straining against the belt of his car seat. A brother pinching his sister. A sister slapping her brother. A retired social studies teacher fuming as he heads back to the hardware store to return a garden hose with a cracked nozzle. A retired salesclerk crying silently because today is the twenty-second anniversary of her son’s death. An anesthesiologist pretending not to listen to her daughter and two friends in the backseat trading gossip. “It was like, you know, and when she like said she did she really meant she did...” Red light remaining red while the green light changes to orange. Cars idling. Cars speeding up. A man with a cane appearing out of nowhere. A fly bumping against a rear window. A squirrel on a branch. The woman chewing bubblegum watching the man with the cane as he steps off the curb. The same woman moving her foot to the brake. A paper flag tied to an antenna. A squirrel leaping. A brass plaque on a stone near the intersection marking what was once a spur of the Ohio Trail. The young mother yelling at her children. The attorney calling, “Maria, Maria, hello, are you there!” Two boys laughing. Three girls laughing. “Because she didn’t like have to, you know.” A squirrel catching the tip of a branch to save itself from falling. Orange light changing to red, red changing to green. The outrage of money spent on faulty merchandise. The fact of dirt. The annoyance of dry skin. The man with the cane stepping off the curb. A child complaining. A squirrel swinging on a branch above the sidewalk. Boys watching the squirrel. Girls watching the boys. The retired salesclerk noticing the man with the Lucite cane and failing to remember the word she wants to shout in warning. The woman with her foot on the brake wondering if the old man has Alzheimer’s. A fly buzzing. The driver of the pickup truck banging his hand on the horn to warn the m
an with the cane. A woman singing, “If I could see...” A cloud slipping like a cutout in front of the edge of the sun. A plastic gallon of two-percent milk lying on its side in the trunk. A flock of sparrows rising all at once, like smoke. “Like yeah, like I was saying.” The imprint of last night’s strange dream on the waking mind. Imagining the time when she didn’t exist. Heading east. Heading south. Twelve minutes after four. Damn. The anesthesiologist furtively slipping her finger under her shirt to finger the lump in her breast. The jolt of one sneeze followed by another. The retired salesclerk staring at the empty place where she’d seen, or thought she’d seen, a man with a cane. The woman with her foot on the brake recognizing that time is moving as slowly and as rapidly as the sun sank into the sea that evening last month when she and her friend walked down the beach to have dinner at the restaurant in a little fishing village on the island of Corsica. The driver of the pickup truck blinking away the hallucination. Boys swearing. Rumble of a jet passing overhead. “Like how typical!” Aware and not aware all at once. The pickup truck driver telling himself that he must have had one too many beers last night. A single feather nestled between a wiper and the windshield. A burp. A yawn. Boys waving at girls. Girls laughing at boys. Stop, that’s the word the retired salesclerk had been trying to remember, but the light has already changed to green, and she realizes that she’d been mistaken about the man with a cane. There is no man with a cane. At the moment, there are only the people in passing vehicles, girls and boys, men and women—among them three individuals who have realized simultaneously that they didn’t really see what they thought they’d seen and now can secretly savor the good feeling of knowing that only they know how ridiculous they are for getting all worked up over nothing.