by Julia Stoops
Nelson opens his eyes. In the glow from the kitchen his hands are thinner than he remembers. Older looking.
She was easy to seduce.
He was eager to seduce.
That is over now.
70: FETZER
First thing I saw when I woke up was a hairy Nelson gazing down at me. This is it, I thought, the part where it sinks in and he freaks out. Instead he asked, “How are you?”
Sleeping on a one-inch air mattress wasn’t doing me any good, and my bones creaked on the way up to sitting.
“Uh, okay,” I said. His taped-up glasses sat crooked but his eyes were clear. Jen and Franky were in the kitchen, and from the bathroom came the sweet sound of Kate singing to Adrian. “What the hell time is it?” I said.
“After nine,” said Nelson. He put his good hand on my knee. “You needed it.”
“Shit. I was supposed to call Nancy by now.”
Nelson sat back on his heels. “Oh god, she knows, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I told her a couple of days ago.”
Nelson shook his head. “Ugh. Sorry. You shouldn’t be doing all this.”
“Sure I should. And bless that woman, she’s arranging the funeral.”
Nelson closed his eyes. “What about Sylvia?”
Damn, what’s he on? I wondered. “Uh, Franky told her.”
Nelson’s eyes opened, clear, unblinking. “I want her to come to the funeral.”
By now Franky was craning backward to listen from the kitchen. He gave me a quick thumbs-up. “She’d really appreciate that, Nelson,” he said.
Nelson stood up and put his good hand on his hip. “When is it?”
“Friday morning,” I said. “At the church on Seventeenth. The priest there got to know her a little bit, apparently.”
“Good,” said Nelson. “Good, thank you. And how are we paying for it?”
By now Franky and Jen were edging their way into the living room, warily watching this upright and businesslike Nelson. Franky said, “I’m—some of it.”
“And Kate’s helping out,” I said.
“That’s nuts,” said Nelson. “We’re already living off her. We can’t possibly accept that.”
“Sylvia’s, uh, helping out too,” said Franky. Something we’d planned not to tell Nelson, but now that she was invited those rules were history.
“Mostly Sylvia,” said Jen.
Nelson’s hand went to his mouth and his forehead crumpled. “Oh. That’s really good of her.”
Kate came out in her white terry robe, laughing baby in her arms. “Aieee,” yelled Adrian, and he kicked his legs.
Nelson dropped his hand. He gave Kate a polite half smile. “Are you done in there? I really need to shave.”
Over granola with me and Kate and Jen, Nelson asked, “What about the emergency room bill?” The bruise on his face was going yellow.
“Payment plan,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Payment plan out of what?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I have to make things right,” he said.
In the living room, the TV was all Baghdad. Jen muttered, “There are bigger problems.”
I said, “Tell you what. Today you could go meet Nancy at Deirdre’s place. Pick out some clothes.”
His spoon paused. “For Nancy?”
“For Deirdre.”
“Oh. Of course.”
“I was going to do it, but I figured you’d know better. Like, Dee’s favorite dress or something. Nancy said maybe what she got married in.”
Wrong thing to say. Nelson went pale, and I kicked myself for trying to offload the dreaded chore onto him so fast.
“On second thought,” I said, “I need to go over there anyway, so I may as well take care of it myself. Then drop in on the protests downtown. Normally I’d pass, considering the circumstances, but this is, well, historic.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Nelson.
“You’re all bandaged up!” said Kate.
“I’m up for it,” said Nelson.
Jen said, “Nelse. It could get crazy.”
“Not nearly as crazy as it is in Baghdad right now,” said Nelson. “We can’t just sit in our comfortable homes as if this isn’t happening. I can’t.” He shoveled granola into his mouth and mumbled, “I won’t.”
71: NELSON
Fetzer turns off the engine and the street is quiet. Nelson sits still. It’s the same old street. Except for the boarded-up windows. Before Fetzer can repeat, “You sure you’re okay with this?” Nelson gets out of the car. The camellia is bigger this year, and he hadn’t noticed until now. Dark ruby flowers the size of coasters. Deirdre had talked about trimming it after it bloomed. They’d talked about starting a real garden. The single Narcissus papyraceus has come up again where the path turns. Last week, when life was normal and it was a paintbrush-like bud, he’d imagined her kneeling down to smell it when it opened.
Nelson looks skyward. The silver maple towering up from the back yard is covered in brick-red flower buds. The metal stairs are dark against the white of the sky and the tangle of branches behind the house.
There’s the clang of their feet on the stairs. The squeak of her door. The dusty wood smell of her foyer. For a second Nelson expects Dee to call out, “That you, John?”
Fetzer has his hands in his pockets, waiting for Nelson to move forward.
There’s her second door, the way it sticks. And oh, god, the tang of photo fixer, and the musk of unwashed sheets. The smell flows into Nelson’s pores.
There’s their rumpled bed.
The space around him like a whirlpool, rushing, swirling.
There’s the wall, half-filled with new photos. There’s the pistachio-green sofa they found on the corner of Harrison and Twenty-Second. There’s the three windows, one of them with newspaper stuffed in the gap where it won’t shut right and winter air leaks in. There’s her dresser. Her narrow clothes rack. Empty dresses that will never feel her body again. Empty jeans. There’s her boom box, the housewarming gift. Her tiny stack of CDs.
Fetzer stands by one of the windows, his face turned away.
Nelson steps toward the dresser. He picks up her hairbrush. The handle is purple plastic, the bristles are blue plastic with tiny rounded tips. Wrapped around the bristles are dusty fuzzballs, and her hairs. Black and smooth and long.
“Nancy’s just pulled up,” says Fetzer. He goes out to the top of the stairs. Shouts, “Up here, Nancy.”
The hairbrush smells of her, but stronger. A shock reverberates through Nelson with each breath he inhales.
The slow clang of Nancy climbing the stairs. Fetzer is back beside him. He murmurs, “Nancy’s here, buddy.” Nelson breathes in deep from the brush. Fetzer puts his hand around the brush. He pulls. Nelson lets the brush go.
Fetzer has the hairbrush.
The clack of Nancy’s shoes in the foyer. Dee’s long hairs, in that brush. Like she’ll pull it through her hair tomorrow and a few more will get caught. Nelson looks up. Nancy pauses, then comes over. Her sweater is turquoise. Her raincoat is pale blue. She’s wearing turquoise heels. Her arms open and she wraps him, and despite the pain in his ribs, he doesn’t want her to let go.
But she lets go and touches her cold fingers to his cheek. “The saddest damn thing that could happen,” she says. He wishes she would hug him again.
“Thanks for coming,” says Fetzer. “I don’t want to keep you. Maybe we should pick something out?”
Nancy turns to him. “Why you in such a hurry? She isn’t going to get any colder.”
Fetzer’s eyes bug out. “Nancy,” he says, and he looks down at Deirdre’s hairbrush in his hand. “For crying out loud.”
But Nelson is washed in a flood of gratitude toward Nancy. Toward them both. “It’s okay,” he mumbles.
“Oh, you poor men,” says Nancy. She takes the brush from Fetzer and points it at the clothes rack and dresser. “This all she had?”
Nel
son nods.
Nancy lays the brush on top of the dresser, almost exactly where Nelson had found it. “Bring that sofa around to face the bed,” she says. “Uh-huh. Now sit on it. Both of you.”
Beside him on the sofa, Fetzer’s back is straight. Nelson’s back is soggy cardboard. More than anything he wants to lie down on the bed. Bury his face in the sheets.
Nancy’s long fingers make the clothes hangers go thwack, thwack, thwack like she’s counting. “Okay, John. Which was her favorite dress?”
“Uh. The, uh, flowery one.” He wants to hold the hairbrush.
“Now, see, that’s a fine dress.” The floral fabric stretches taut as it’s pulled from between other clothes, then drops back into the Deirdreless shape of the dress. Nancy lays it on the bed. “That what she got married in?”
“Uh, no. The blue. Yeah, long sleeves, yeah, that one.”
Nancy pulls it out. “Huh. Why?”
“It was a cold day. And she didn’t want to wear jeans.”
Nancy lays it on the bed. “What’s your favorite?”
That’s easy. “She has a blouse,” says Nelson. “Middle drawer. Sea green. With ruffles. Yeah, that’s the one.”
Nancy holds up the blouse. Light shines through it. It was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen, the first time he saw her in that blouse. Dancing.
“She’s got to wear more than a see-through blouse,” says Nancy.
Fetzer nods. “I remember that shirt.”
Nelson’s face feels odd. It’s hard to know what size it is.
Fetzer’s smiling a little. “Yep. And Joe Cocker. And them dancing around.”
“I’ll never forget that song,” says Nelson. A tremble starts under his breastbone.
“Me neither.”
“I love that shirt,” says Nelson. He feels a little dizzy, like he’s drunk. “Blouse, I mean. Dee liked it too.”
“Then that’s what it’ll be,” says Nancy. “Now, there’s a skirt she wore with it?”
“No,” says Nelson.
“No?”
“I mean, no, she can’t wear it. I want to keep it.”
Fetzer shakes his head. Nancy shakes her head. “Bad idea,” says Nancy.
Nelson needs air. His cardboard back sags. “The long-sleeved dress,” he manages to say, “would be more appropriate.”
Nancy wafts the gossamer ruffles through the vacuum of the room. “Maybe. But you’re not keeping this.”
He’d asked Dee to wear it a few days after they had first gotten close. She didn’t associate it with that night, she’d forgotten. It was stretchy. It was tight on her. She was still doing up the buttons when he took her in his arms and pushed her down onto the camp cot. He landed on top of her. Afterward they found bruises on his knee, her shoulder. The cot’s metal edges often got them that way.
Nancy frowns at the translucent fabric. “She’ll need a camisole.”
He’s never going to love anyone like that again.
Which, in a strange way, is good to know.
His chest relaxes. His back firms. “There’s one in the top drawer,” he says. “And there’s a plain black skirt.” He gestures and his arm is stronger than he expects, and he nearly clips Fetzer. Nancy flicks through the rack and finds the skirt.
“That’s it,” he says.
“Uh-huh,” says Nancy. She lays the blouse and the skirt on the bed, and with her long nails flips the frilly bottom edge of the blouse over the waistband of the skirt.
These are the clothes that will go into the ground with Deirdre, and stay there.
Nancy pats the ruffles into place. “Pretty. Now, shoes.”
72: JEN
“Me and Franky walked,” I yell. I have to stick my finger in my other ear, the drums are so loud. “We’re in the unpermitted march. Where are you?”
Fetz says, “Fourth and Taylor. There’s thousands.”
“Cops?”
“Just watching.”
“Same here.” Franky films me. “We’re on Second near Burnside.” Franky points the camera at a guy carrying a giant upside-down flag. Don’t drift away on me, Frankyboy. Last thing I need is to lose you if the crowd gets wiggy.
The sun’s going down and the crowd’s getting thicker. I say, “Hey, um, how’s Nelson?”
“Doing okay,” says Fetzer. “Doing okay. Taking photos.”
“With Deirdre’s camera?”
“No, dumbass, ours. And Nancy was great. She sorted things out real fast.”
“What—what’d you pick?” Then a guy stands up on a trash can and yells through a megaphone, “Steel Bridge, Steel Bridge,” and it drowns Fetzer out.
“. . . and a black skirt. And black heels. It’ll look nice.”
Some daffodils are blooming in a city planter. Seems weird and uncool that nature keeps doing flowers at a time like this.
I say, “It’s so fucking strange, Fetzer. That we’ll never see her again? Like, not even one last time? Doesn’t that sort of freak you out?”
“What’s weird? Someone yelled right when you spoke.”
No more Deirdre photos, ever.
“Looks like people are staging a sit-in on Burnside,” I say instead. “The lanes going onto the bridge are blocked. Awesome. Traffic’s doing U-turns.”
“Okay. We’re nearly at Alder,” says Fetzer. “It’s jammed. But I need to get Nelse home soon. He can barely hold the camera straight with his one good hand.”
“Man, get him out of there, will you?”
“I intend to. We’ll head your way first.”
I tell Fetz that we’re walking across the bridge and we’ll come back and meet them at Second, then I close the phone.
Heh. This is very cool. Five lanes and no cars—just lots of people. Franky zooms in on the barricade. He never would have participated like this before. Something illegal like an unpermitted takeover of a bridge.
Halfway across, we stop and look over the railing. Below us the Willamette is dark and wide. “Salmon swim up every year,” I say to Franky, for the sake of saying something to Franky. He’s been so quiet, since.
“That’s cool,” he says. The camera is off and cupped in his big hand. “But this river’s never going to be the same.”
We look south, past the Morrison and the Hawthorne bridges, toward the marina in front of the condos where they think she went in. The sun has set, and down there the water is darker. At least, it’s where they pulled her out. The strap of the pink coat snagged. Half hidden under hanging foliage. No one saw, no one heard.
We start walking again. I call Fetz back. Weird how I want him nearby. A woman walking next to us yells, “We’re liberating the bridge!”
“You hear that Fetz?” I say into the phone. “We’re liberating the bridge.”
Fetzer snorts. “What’s it going to do now that it’s free?”
Franky films people flying past on bicycles. “Become a park, maybe,” I say. “Hey, community ownership of public spaces, man. It’s so wide and the view is so great, it would be a cool place to hang out if there was grass and trees and—Oh, wow!” I grab Franky’s sleeve and point over the railing. Right away he’s filming the people climbing the fence below.
I yell, “Fetz, the fence between the esplanade and I-5 is breached! People are climbing it. Wow. They’re spreading out across the interstate. Dude, the freeway is stopping. It’s, wow, it’s stopped.”
Fetzer goes “Hah!”
“Wow. There’s a chain of people sitting down across all the lanes. Facing the cars. And traffic’s backing up for miles.”
I-5. A river of gas consumption from Mexico to Canada, and here it’s stopped like a finger on a guitar string. Put a finger on the string and it plays a different note.
We should do this more often.
Back on Second the crowd is bigger. And there’s Nelse and Fetz outside the Salvation Army and we’re all hugging. The low clouds are lit up brown by the streetlights. Everywhere it’s faces flashing by, bobbing dots from candles, folks s
itting in the intersection. And a girl seems to be hanging on to my arm.
“Heyyy,” she says. I’m flipping the mental Rolodex but nothing’s coming. “It’s Emma,” she says, then murmurs, “Maryville,” near my ear.
“Course,” I say, and there’s greetings all around. She spreads her arms wide. “Isn’t this beautiful?”
“Yeah!” yells a guy nearby, and he pumps his fist. “All power to the Burnside Free State!”
Emma tugs at me. “You guys should come meet Kashan.”
“Kashan?” says Fetzer, but Emma just pulls us through the crowd. Why do girls like to pull us through crowds?
A big old guy is sitting on a blanket with Brian. Brian says, “Dudes!”
It’s good to sit down. On a blanket, in the middle of Burnside Street, surrounded by singing and drumming and candles.
Turns out the old guy is Kashan. After the introductions, Fetzer says, “Jen and Franky saw people stopping I-5. And I heard Critical Mass stopped traffic on I-405.”
Kashan is wearing a long heavy coat and an old-fashioned brimmed hat. He sits cross legged with his hands cupping his knees. “What is critical mass?” he asks, with an accent.
“A cyclist group,” says Nelson in an uber-respectful voice. “They do alternative transportation advocacy work.”
“So they stop the vehicles,” says Kashan, and he waves his hand like you don’t see people do here. “It is a gesture.”
I’m about to say, It’s awesome, but Nelson looks down at the blanket. “Yeah. Just a gesture.”
“Don’t give the police your name, okay?” says a woman as she walks past. “Jail solidarity.”