Riversong

by Hardwick, Tess

  She smiled, hiccupping. “I don't know anything about food.”

  He chuckled. “And you don't drink. You can't work in a restaurant without drinking. It's against the restaurant code.”

  She tried not to cry but tears fell from her eyes one after the other. “Don't forget about me. I don't want to come back and find you've replaced me with some other woman.”

  He moved his hands to her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Unless George Clooney whisks me off to his villa in Lake Como, I'll be here.” His eyes were full of tears now too. “I've got to go before I lose it. Please be careful.” He kissed her on the cheek and left through the door he'd come and gone from so many times before.

  She looked around the bare condo for the last time; at the vaulted ceilings, granite counters, marble fireplace, designer paints on the walls. Everything had been decorated just so. “We'll be so happy here”, her husband had said the night they moved in. And now he was dead. Out of habit she touched her ring finger to play with her wedding ring. But it was no longer there, sold for cash like everything else. There was nothing but the slight indentation in her skin to prove their five-year marriage ever existed.

  She peered down the length of the eighth floor hallway for human shadows. There was no one, no sounds or movement. She punched the elevator button and held her breath until the doors opened and closed. All the way down she fidgeted until the elevator came to a stop. She walked into the lit lobby and out the door. The rain was coming down harder than before. A car passed but the street was mostly empty. Across the street the man still sat in the black car, reading a newspaper. He might have glanced at her but she couldn't be sure. She forced herself to walk at a casual pace, watching out of the corner of her eye, holding her breath. At the corner there was a homeless man, his bearded bleary face half hidden behind a cardboard box. She saw the man in the sedan turn the page of the newspaper, uninterested in her. He hadn't recognized her, she thought. She put her head down and walked up the hill to Fifth Avenue.

  Parked in the alley behind a bar was a friend of Linus's in a blue Prius. Lee got in the passenger seat without speaking. He nodded and gave her a half smile, white knuckles clenched on either side of the steering wheel. Then they sped down the alley, up Denny Avenue and onto I-5 South, on their way to a gray Dodge Minivan and new cell phone that waited in Olympia registered under a false name.

  Chapter Two

  In the minivan, Lee headed up Olympia's main street to the I-5 South entrance. At each stop light she looked in her rearview mirror to see if she was followed, but saw nothing suspicious. Rain pounded against the windshield as she merged onto the freeway, holding her breath each time a car passed. For several miles there were no lights behind her. She relaxed somewhat and began to feel cold from the sweat that had soaked through the Islamic dress. She adjusted the heat and thought longingly of the heated seats in her BMW. The seats in this van were cold. It smelled of cheap plastic and a vanilla scent air freshener shaped like a tree that someone had hung around the mirror.

  She'd been chilled for three weeks now. It was an iciness that had seeped into her bones and made her teeth chatter with the emptiness that comes with a sudden grief.

  Three weeks ago – to be exact, 21 days, 5 hours and 8 minutes ago, Lee's assistant Paula had stepped inside her office conference room in the middle of her company presentation to representatives from the press and distributors about their new product. Paula's face was ashen and Lee knew something was wrong with Dan. She'd known it when he hadn't shown up for a day he'd been working towards for months. But she'd pushed it aside in order to do the presentation and appear as if everything was normal.

  Paula stammered, gripping the handle of the conference room door. “I, I'm sorry but there's something – we need Lee to come out to the lobby. It's urgent.”

  She began to shake and her legs were like liquid under her as she made her way to the front desk. There were two policemen standing at the reception area.

  “Are you Dan Johnson's wife?”

  She nodded, unable to feel her arms. “Yes, I'm Lee Johnson.” There was a high pitched scream inside her head.

  The heavy-set, ruddy policeman looked at her without blinking. The wiry bushy one stared at the beige carpet. “We're sorry to inform you that your husband has been found dead. We found his body with what we believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head in his car at Discovery Park.”

  She heard herself say, “No,” like it came from someone else. “Dan doesn't even have a gun.” She wasn't sure if she said the words or if they were inside her own head.

  The older one rested his hand on her arm. “We're very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Johnson.”

  The room tilted and her knees buckled. The fuzzy policeman reached to steady her, his thick eyebrows knitted together in concern, his mouth moving, but the whirr between her ears drowned the words. She staggered to the potted plant by the glass doors and heaved three, four, five times, until her stomach cramped and she gulped air, unable to stand upright. Her eyes focused on the policeman's black shiny shoes. His hand was on her back. His speech sounded like gibberish down a deep tunnel. The younger officer guided her to a chair. She looked past him to Paula, who stood slumped against the reception desk, hands clasped and her face white and stricken. Lee had whispered, “Call Linus.”

  Two days later, Linus held her hand as they walked towards the lobby of her condominium complex. They had come from the funeral home, where Linus made the arrangements while Lee stared helplessly at her hands that seemed to have lost all their blood.

  Afterwards she slumped against Linus's sturdy frame as they rode the elevator up to her condominium unit. There was a man lurking near her front door, dressed in tan pants, a white button-down shirt and tennis shoes. He leaned against the wall, ankles crossed, holding a newspaper in his right hand. His index and middle fingers were stained with what Lee recognized as nicotine and tobacco smoke. Her mother's fingers had been the same.

  “Can we help you,” Linus asked, tucking Lee's arm under his own.

  The man approached them, favoring his right leg with a slight limp. “I work for Gaspare DeAngelo. You owe my boss some money.” She got a whiff of musk aftershave mixed with cigarette smoke and garlic.

  He scowled at Lee's blank look. “Don't play dumb with me, lady. Y'know, Mr. DeAngelo, the guy who gave you a million bucks last year to keep your little business going while Danny boy worked out these, whad'ya call ‘em, bugs, yeah, bugs in the software.” He coughed and his lips parted, showing teeth stained the same brown of chewing tobacco she remembered from the men who stood on the sidewalk outside of her mother's grocery store job when she was a child.

  “I know we have an investor but I don't know the terms of the deal. Dan handled it,” said Lee.

  “I'm sure you know the terms better than I do, lady. But maybe you're a little stressed, so I'll review the highlights for you. Listen close. Mr. DeAngelo gives you and Danny a million bucks at 25% a year, payable by February 21st. Otherwise Mr. D. takes the company, if he wants it. February 21st was yesterday, but Mr. D. starts thinking, Danny's brain is the company and now it's splattered all over his fancy car, so now Mr. D's thinking he just wants his money.”

  Lee heard what he said, but her mind seemed incapable of understanding.

  Linus took a step forward. “Let me understand this. Are you threatening her?”

  The man kept his eyes on Lee. “Very good. At least your, uh, friend is starting to catch on.”

  She stared at him. “Even if what you say is true, I don't have a million and a quarter to give you.”

  “My boss said to give you a few weeks.” He gave her a business card with his name, Von Marshal, and a phone number printed in black and white. “You call me to make the arrangements. My boss isn't someone who likes to be played. People who don't understand that have a way of, uh, not showing up at work one day, y'know what I mean?”

  Thirty minutes later, Lee sat shaking in front of her
gas fireplace. Linus brought her a heavy wool sweater and they stared at one another for a long moment, too shocked to think of anything to say. After a few minutes, Linus got up and went into the kitchen. Lee heard him rummaging through cupboards and then a pop of a wine cork. The doorbell rang and she turned to see Linus rush in from the kitchen, holding his hand up to indicate she should stay on the couch. He put his eye to the peephole. “It's just Paula,” he said, relief in his voice.

  Paula had dark circles under her eyes and her nose was red and raw. “Lee, when I was cleaning out the offices I found this on top of Dan's computer.” Paula handed her an envelope with “Lee” scrawled in Dan's block type print. She took it, splitting the envelope open with her finger, while walking towards the bedroom. Alone, she shut the door, sinking heavily onto the edge of the bed. Dan's red woolen slippers were placed neatly by the end table. She slipped her feet into them, unfolding the papers.

  But it wasn't a note. There were no explanations, no words of love or sorrow. It was the terms of the agreement with DeAngelo, listed just as Von had described.

  She began to rock back and forth on the bed. And then, like a movie she didn't want to watch, she imagined his last moments. He sealed the document in the envelope, scrawling her name in a guilty rush and took a long swig of the whiskey he kept in his desk drawer, for the courage to do what he had to do. Then he was in his car, parked in a busy lot at the Waterfront Park with its view of the Olympic Mountains. Here the reel became blurry. He might have watched the joggers, mothers with baby strollers, truant teenagers sneaking drags from a pot pipe, maybe thinking how much he would miss the world with its simple beauty and pleasures. Or perhaps he merely stared at the dashboard, overwhelmed with despair and panic, and nothing registered in his mind but “get it over with,” so the pain and hopelessness could end. Possibly it was like a tunnel that sucked and twirled him into blackness and he thought of nothing but the doing of it, the mechanics of his own death. The pulling of the trigger.

  She wept into his pillow, yearning to smell his aftershave but it smelled clean, like soap and fabric softener. He'd been sleeping at the office for weeks, working towards the product release date.

  She thought then, where did he get the gun and why did he do it in the car and how did he become that hopeless? What was the last thing he thought as he pulled the trigger? Was it of her or just his failures?

  Chapter Three

  About fifty miles north of the Oregon-Washington border the radio went to static. Lee moved the radio dial until she found the only station, country and western. That would be it from now until Portland, she thought. She drove another fifteen miles before stopping at a rest stop to use the facilities. It was dark now. She scanned the parking lot and then sprinted to the women's restroom. The smell of human excrement and damp cement made her nauseous. She stood for a moment over the toilet, thinking she might vomit and wondering if this was the beginning of ‘morning sickness’.

  Outside, she spotted a vending machine and remembered a friend saying she ate crackers during her pregnancies to help with the nausea. She put two quarters in the slot, choosing animal crackers. As she headed for the minivan, she heard a rustle in the bushes. Terrified, she ran the rest of the way to the van, jumping behind the wheel and locking the door. She turned on her headlights and saw a possum creep out of the bushes, scuttling along the sidewalk. Somewhere between a rodent and reptile, his skin, long tail and pointy nose making him appear like a creature from another planet.

  The gruesome image lingered with her as she drove the I-5 corridor through southwest Washington, crossing the bridge over the Columbia River from Vancouver, Washington to Portland Oregon, along the flat green fields of the Willamette Valley, and as she wound up and around the mountains near Roseburg. She stopped at one of the small towns along I-5 to refuel and find something to eat.

  She stood at the Dairy Queen counter, attempting to ignore the smells of fried meat and old grease. She ordered a Heath Bar Blizzard, thinking this small desolate town was similar to where she was headed. They all had Dairy Queens.

  Since Dan's death and the subsequent nightmare days and nights that followed, her skin seemed to ache all the time. She fought the urge to put her head on the counter and weep. Instead she stuffed several napkins and a straw into her purse. She watched an older couple in the corner booth. The woman, missing several teeth and gray hairs hanging from the sagged skin underneath her chin, shoved a breakfast sandwich in her mouth, all the while berating her male companion and rubbing the silver cross that hung below her ample breasts. “It's your problem,” she said. “She's nothing but a druggie. I'm not taking her brats into our house.”

  The man's skinny legs rested in the aisle because his beach ball sized stomach couldn't fit in the booth. Like a pregnant woman he rested one arm on the top of his stomach and turned the pages of a newspaper as if he couldn't hear her. He took four fries in his hand and scratched his head, leaving a layer of grease on the pink shiny scalp.

  Woozy, Lee turned to see if her order was ready. The teenager was at the drive-through window, talking into the speaker. Behind her she heard a child's yell and looked over to see toddler twins chasing each other around and between the plastic tables. The mother, bones showing under sallow skin, greasy limp hair, yellow in the whites of her eyes, stared at the wall. Her baby, trapped in the cheap wooden high chair, blubbered and held up his arms. “Mama, up. Mama, up.” Without looking at him, she threw fries onto the table in front of him. “Eat.”

  Across the restaurant the older woman huffed, her voice a harsh rasp. “Why some people don't control their monsters, I'll never know.” The mother flipped the old woman the finger.

  Lee paid for her order and left. She sat in the car, her breath fogging the windows. She thumped her head against the steering wheel several times and then, sighing, turned on the car. She dialed Ellen White's phone number from the cell phone. There was no answer, just a click from an outdated message machine with a recording of Mrs. White's voice, sounding startled. “It's Ellen. Leave a message at the beep.”

  “Hi Mrs. White. This is Lee. Just wanted to let you know I'd be there in about three or four hours. Uh, well, thanks. See you soon.”

  Ellen White had kept her promise to Lee all those years ago and looked after Eleanor. She checked on her every day, made meals, did her shopping, and paid her bills with money Lee sent every month. At the first of every month Mrs. White sent a note on plain white paper with an update on Eleanor's health and a detailed account of expenses. In a postscript she often included a personal note, written in a brief, almost telegram type style, as if the personal side of things should be kept brief. All those P.S's over the years had never failed to make Lee smile.

  Ten years ago Mrs. White had written, “P.S. Retired last month. I assume were glad to get rid of an old bat like me but gave me a grand sendoff with cake and champagne. I'll miss teaching Hemingway and such but glad to have more time to garden.”

  Lee, in turn, wrote brief notes in the same style included with the monthly checks. On her admittance to the MBA program at Wharton she'd said, “Off to graduate school to study business. The art world is fine if you don't mind starvation. Hoping to add more dollars to these checks in a couple years.”

  Mrs. White wrote back to her new address in Chicago. “P.S. I'm proud of you. Don't forget to take out those paints once in awhile just so you can remember who you are. My beans are taking over the garden – will take me a month of Sundays to can all of them.”

  From Wharton Lee wrote, “Graduate in one month. I've met a man in the program named Dan Johnson. He's full of fire and ambition. Not sure of the future.”

  About Dan Mrs. White wrote, “P.S. Hope this fellow deserves you. Don't marry him unless you're absolutely sure. It's the most important decision you'll ever make. I won first prize for my pie at the County Fair. Stupidest contest in the world but what can I say, I'm a vain woman.”

  After her wedding Lee wrote a quick note from her n
ew desk in Redmond, Washington, along with a check for twice the amount she had been sending. “Was married last month to Dan Johnson. Had a small wedding in between interviews at Microsoft. Writing this from my new desk in the marketing department.”

  Mrs. White sent a beautiful pine easel for a wedding present and a note, written on a card with a painting of tulips, without a P.S.

  “Congratulations. Once you get married it seems you have to share everything – the bad and the good. So here's a little something just for you. Even if you just paint on the weekends it will feed your soul.

  I imagine you as a grown married woman, capable, sophisticated, beautiful, and wish I could see you in person sometime. Maybe you'll come for a visit one of these years? You could bring your young man. Of course, you could stay with me, seeing as your mother's filled her house almost completely with junk. Be well. Be happy. Warmly, Ellen White.”

  But a year ago Mrs. White called on the telephone instead of sending news via a card. Eleanor was dead. She'd asked to be cremated. Would Lee like to come for a memorial service or to spread the ashes? Lee declined. Mrs. White said, “Don't blame you. But I'll keep the ashes in case you change your mind.”

  Lee had told herself there was no reason to pretend that a memorial service was something her mother would have wanted, since she hadn't cared if Lee visited when she was alive. Not to mention, Lee thought, of her angry alcoholic disdain for most people in the small town where she lived. Anyway, Lee couldn't face all the memories that waited there in that town, in that house, all of which she tried to pretend never happened. She hadn't wanted to think about the girl she once was, or her complicated, excruciating relationship with her mother. Starting the month after Eleanor's death, she sent the budgeted money to “AIDS Alliance,” and worked late so she didn't have to think about her mother's cremated ashes poured into a little ceramic container.