“Where’s the orange one?” Judy demanded.
“What orange one?”
Homer lifted the gray kitten to make way for Judy’s inspection and felt the needle claws pricking his palm. Judy crawled around, lifting wads of fabric and old towels, which cast shadows up the wall, all the way to the back of the closet, where she stopped suddenly. “Here he is!” she cried. “He’s dead!”
Judy was seated with her back to him for a long time, long enough for him to see her shuddering with silent weeping. He crawled over and pulled her into his arms, at which point the sobs became audible, and Jack, without any idea of why he was upset, joined in to make it deafening. Homer drew Jack to his side, and soon the quiet was broken only by Judy’s snuffling. Homer felt mucus run onto the hand that gripped her tight, and he looked up at Madeleine with an expression of helplessness. When Judy began to calm down, he spoke very quietly about how the kitten was in heaven and how we all hope to go there someday; thinking to close his argument, he said, “Kittens are like all creatures, including us, Judy. They don’t live forever, and neither do we.”
The effect of this was to amplify Judy’s anguish. “I know that,” she said, indignant in her grief, “but I thought we all went at the same time!” Strangely, Madeleine nodded in agreement.
Homer could think of nothing to say. He would have had to care about the kitten to have been inspired to the right remark; Judy seemed to see through his dissembling. Besides, nothing was up to Judy’s profound statement, which hung in the air. “I wish we did,” he said, “it would be so much better. I don’t know why we don’t all go at the same time but we don’t, and we have to accept that.” That’s that, he thought, take it or leave it. Besides, something troubled him about Madeleine’s nod of agreement.
To make things worse, Madeleine’s eyes began to fill, and Homer wondered if it was over that brute Harry Hall and his size-thirteen oxblood saddle shoes, ungainly even in death. Homer could almost hear his booming voice: Come on in, Homer. You like gin? I’ve cornered the market!
Judy no longer cried, but she was very somber and far away. “Someone is responsible,” she said.
“God!” barked Homer with exasperation. “God is responsible!” This yard sale was about to kill him. “Madeleine, is there anything I can do to make you feel better?” he inquired coolly. She was touching each of the children unobtrusively. She didn’t know how to comfort them. He didn’t know how to comfort her.
“Let’s go to the living room. Maybe we can think better there.” The children followed Homer, who, aware of his waning desperation to make anyone happy, followed Madeleine. In the living room, he looked around briskly, as though trying to choose among several marvelous possibilities. “Here, come sit here,” he said, and indicated the bench in front of the old player piano. Judy’s grief kept her from seeing through his various efforts to entertain her. They obeyed with dull bafflement as he loaded a roll of music and started pumping the pedals. “Pretend you’re playing!” he called out, over the strains of “Ida Sweet as Apple Cider.” Looking at each other, the children put their hands on the keys, which snapped up and down all around their fingers as Judy took over the pumping and Jack howled like a dog; soon they were caught up in it.
Inexplicably, Madeleine began doing a graceful if somehow cynical foxtrot with an invisible partner. Homer stared at her, arms hanging at his sides. The noise was unbelievable. Into the space between Madeleine’s arms, Homer placed Harry Hall and his big belly.
Homer darted out the front door to the yard sale, where Cecile was persuading a pregnant teenager that the light-dark setting on the toaster still worked. Four or five others grazed among the offerings, concealing any interest they might have had, though a middle-aged man in baggy khakis and an Atlanta Braves hat was bent in absorption over a duck decoy lamp that had never been completed. “Dark Town Strutters’ Ball” poured from the house, stopped abruptly, then resumed with “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad.” Homer could hear Madeleine joining in with a sharp, angry contralto. When the teenager replaced the toaster on the card table and wandered off, Homer said, “One of the kittens died.”
Staring at the unsold toaster, Cecile said, “You’re shitting me. When it rains, it pours. My God, what’s with the piano?” Holding a cigarette in the center of her teeth she blew smoke out of either side of her mouth.
“Go in and comfort Judy. I’ll try to sell something till you get back.”
“No reasonable offer refused.” At this two or three browsers cocked their heads, which Cecile noted. “Just kidding, of course.” She went inside and Homer surveyed the prospects, holding his lapels like an expectant haberdasher. No one met his eye and, instead of rubbing his hands together, he plunged them into his pockets and considered the weather: low clouds, no wind. The player piano stopped abruptly and the shoppers all looked up with the silence.
Homer went over to the man still examining the duck decoy lamp. “Why don’t you buy it? It’s beautifully made. It works. I can’t imagine any home that wouldn’t be improved by it.”
“I’m just trying to picture the sort of people who wanted this in the first place,” said the man. “This doesn’t look like a duck, it looks like a groundhog. I hate it. I really hate it.”
“The people who wanted it in the first place are my daughter and her husband,” said Homer.
“My condolences,” said the man, before he turned to go.
Homer stared hard and said, “Go fuck yourself.” He could hardly believe he’d said it. It was like a breath of spring, such vituperation.
“Get in line, Pops.”
Cecile returned and muttered, “Bugs Bunny on low. Usually holds them. Your friend is resting on the couch with a washcloth on her head. She looks like she’s on her last legs.” A very thin older man in a navy-blue jogging suit with a reflective stripe down the pant legs was interested in the NordicTrack. He had an upright potbelly, bags under his eyes, and a cigarette in his mouth that made him turn his head to one side to examine the distance meter on the machine. Homer watched Cecile approach within a foot of the prospect, but the man went about his examination without acknowledging her. He knelt to examine the bottom of the machine, then sat back on his haunches, removed the cigarette, and bethought himself. When he finally stood, he said something very brief to Cecile. She seized her head in both hands while he puffed and looked the other way. When she came back to Homer with some bills in her hand, she said, “I got creamed but it’s gone.” The new owner was trying out his new machine, the cigarette back in his mouth. A gust of wind showered Homer and his daughter with cottonwood leaves. Wild geese creaked above. Soon there’d be ice on the river.
“You seem to have gotten over the bottle collection,” said Homer. He saw the American flag go up a pole across the street, a hedge concealing whoever raised it.
“Guess again.”
“Why don’t you go and ask Dean to give them back?”
“That’s what he’s trying to accomplish. The whole issue has been over him having anything I need.”
“Does he?”
“Yeah, the bottles.” She stared hard at him. “I know exactly what you’re thinking, exactly. You’re thinking, How can anyone lose themselves in such trivia?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I’m not going to dignify this by fighting over it. But don’t you ever look down your nose at me. Just because things haven’t exactly worked out doesn’t make us white trash.”
“It’s beyond me why you’d have such a hateful thought. Your mother would have felt the same way, if you had ever deigned to share your thoughts with her.”
Homer had already decided that he would retrieve the bottles. By that time the sale would be over and the awful things would be part of the desolation of the living room again. When he asked his daughter why none of the other customers had mentioned the theft, she said, “The only one he had to fool was your friend, and I guess that wasn’t too hard.”
H
omer just let it go. It was hopeless.
He went inside to check on Madeleine. Without removing her hand from over her eyes, she said, “I feel terrible for losing those horrible bottles,” and when he tried to speak, she waved him away. He went back outside and watched the tire kickers and the idly curious begin to drift away, leaving four who looked like real buyers. Out of the blue, he wanted to make a sale. Homer thought they were couples but, after considerable study, could not match them up. He became fixed on this task as a difficult crossword puzzle, but finally he sighed and gave up. He was wary of misreading anyone as he had the duck-lamp guy. He couldn’t believe the two redheads were together, because he’d never seen that before; which left the two short ones, and that pair seemed less unlikely. Their gazes crisscrossed like light beams, giving nothing away. Homer wondered whether they were like our ancestors, wary and footloose. The red-haired male took sudden notice of the American flag ripping away in the wind across the street, and Homer realized he was avoiding eye contact. No sale.
He returned to the house, where he found the children sitting on either side of Madeleine. “We’re discussing their Halloween costumes,” she said, her warmth restored. “Judy is going as a punk rocker and Jack is going as a traffic cone.”
Homer said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Cecile was still outside, cleaning up after the sale, tossing everything toward the garage. Madeleine and Homer paused on the sidewalk for a moment. It seemed not unreasonable that Cecile might say a word or two to them, but she didn’t. Homer wondered whether his daughter had developed this awful carapace on account of being raised by a helpless mother. Once inside his car, he said, “Can I take you to dinner?”
“We’re going to get those bottles,” said Madeleine.
“Oh, you don’t want to go there. That’s a real can of worms.”
“Bring it on.”
Imagining for a euphoric moment that Cecile’s ex-husband would see the light quickly, Homer reluctantly agreed to go to Dean’s house. Wait till she gets a load of this! was his uncharitable thought. It was getting dark as he started the car.
“I’ll buy the bottles,” Madeleine cried.
“That won’t solve it.”
She said, “I thought I’d seen everything.”
He stepped up onto Dean’s porch and rang the bell, nearly embedded in careless layers of house paint. He had a reassuring hand on Madeleine’s back. There was some sort of somber music coming from within. The door began to open. He wanted to help but knew that Dean liked doing this sort of thing himself. The door opened wide, revealing the interior of what was little more than a cottage, single story by necessity, with the kitchen and living room adjacent to the front door. Then Dean rolled around into view. He had a smile on his big soft face, and the weight of his head seemed to be sinking into the expanding circles of his neck. One hand poised birdlike over the controls of his wheelchair. None of the waywardness was gone from his sky blue eyes. On the television screen, an aircraft carrier was sinking with slow majesty. Homer was relieved to find that the dirge he’d heard at the door was not just something Dean was listening to.
Homer introduced Madeleine and Dean greeted her warmly, and they followed him into the house.
“That’s a new wheelchair,” commented Homer as he made his way past Dean. There was very little furniture but the gas fire log made a twinkling, habitable light, concealing the bareness of the room. “Brand-new,” said Dean. “Haven’t even knocked the paint off it.” There were some trophies on an old library table and milk crates filled with paperbacks, a cheesecake calendar on the far door, which led to the bathroom. The young model, naked on a white fur rug, was holding an automobile muffler.
“Front-wheel drive. Watch this.” Dean pivoted around the back side of the door and, with a graceful thrust of the chair’s motor, swung the door to and latched it. “Onboard battery charger,” he said, leading Homer into the living room. “Actually got to pick the color. That last chair wasn’t nearly enough for quads, more for limited-leg-use folks.”
Madeleine said, “I’ll bet you can go anywhere you want.” She seemed to like Dean. Maybe it was just for leaving Cecile. Homer was glad to see it. He knew Madeleine had had about all she could stand.
“Hell, I’m on the town again.”
He wheeled over in front of the television, on which the funeral of Princess Diana played: it was an anniversary on an odd year. “Madeleine, check this out: here she is again!” Homer didn’t know where this was headed but he was encouraged by the friendliness with which Dean addressed Madeleine.
There were slow panning shots of Diana’s cortege interspersed with scenes from happier times, including those with paramour Dodi Fayed at the beach; then the mayhem with the paparazzi and the fatal limousine chase with the drugged chauffeur ending in underground calamity.
Moving to the side, Homer determined that the shaking he saw in Dean’s body was caused not by grief but by laughter. Madeleine noticed and said sharply, “She died young!”
Dean said, “It’s a start.”
“What?”
Dean turned it off with his channel changer, and as the picture sank to a blue dot he said to Madeleine, “None of that would have happened if she’d been fat.”
Two years earlier, Dean had attended an after-game Cats-Griz party at the Nez Perce Inn, a dependably rowdy annual uproar, and fallen from a second-floor balcony into the parking lot with a freshly opened beer in his hand. He woke up the next morning, hungover and paralyzed. He had been out of work, but now he was running for mayor.
The commemorative bottles were lined up on the floor next to the north wall, receiving the last light of the day. Dean said, “There they are.”
“Let me take them back to Cecile,” Madeleine said reasonably.
“Over my dead body.” His lips were drawn flat across his teeth. He was quite menacing.
“Ohhkay.”
Homer could see that Madeleine was not happy. She would bolt at the first opportunity. All the mean people, all the open space, seemed to be closing in upon him at once.
“I don’t like disappointing you, Madeleine. Or Homer neither. But those bottles are mine.”
“No doubt they are, but I’m the one who let you take them, and now it seems I’m in trouble. You ought not to have done that to a lady. Besides which, you have two beautiful children and you continue to poison your relationship with them over your bottle collection. I’m an out-of-towner and I don’t get it. Cecile has quite a job with those children. She could probably use some help as opposed to battling over a collection of whiskey bottles.” Homer was impressed at the practical way Madeleine swallowed what must have been her distaste for Cecile.
“I’m lucky she isn’t feeding them sardines with the mother-seagull glove to make them think they can fly. Do tears embarrass you, Madeleine?”
“Not at all.”
“Homer’s seen all this before. I blubber, and he just goes with it.” He swept his hand down his face, but it continued to glisten. “The bottles don’t belong to Cecile. I bought those bottles full and I emptied them in my own home. They’re a monument to better days. So, here’s what you tell Cecile: no dice. Also, where’s the phone decanter?”
“Yakima,” Homer said, rather pleased he could supply this fact.
“I emptied that phone last New Year’s Eve. Cecile was upstairs watching the ball come down on Times Square. When she showed up, do you think she wished me happy New Year? No. She said, ‘Shit-faced in a wheelchair is a look whose time will never come.’ ”
Madeleine gazed at Dean for a long moment, with wonder or compassion Homer couldn’t say, though he struggled to understand. He seemed to expect that she would say something wise, should she finally speak, but all she said was, “I give up. Perhaps the bottles are happier with you.”
Madeleine couldn’t make it all the way that night, but Salt Lake City was a hub and gave her several options for the morning, and there were shuttles to the hotels near
the airport. She assured Homer that she had loved visiting the West and learning firsthand that it was, as all had promised, breathtaking. And just think: once in Salt Lake, you could go direct or change in Memphis, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati— all those cities!—and still get home. Homer seemed downcast at these prospects, but she assured him it had been a treat catching up.
The Refugee
Errol Healy was going sailing to evade custody in one of the several institutions recommended for his care. He believed the modest voyage from his berth in Cortez across the Gulf of Mexico to Key West was something he could handle. All therapeutic routes in which he was described as having a labile affect and deficient insight had proved ineffective, and friends and professionals alike felt the trip might help him reconstruct events in a way positive to his well-being. In particular, his boss at the orange groves urged him to pull himself together or else, and he realized with a panic that losing his job would, under current circumstances, not be endurable. In contrast to the skepticism he directed at mental health professionals, he ascribed almost supernatural powers of healing to an old woman in Key West, Florence Ewing, whom he’d not seen for so many years that it was questionable whether she still lived in Key West or lived at all. In many of his plans these days, he was reduced to superstition, and the mestizos he managed in the groves, who had won his friendship and peculiar loyalty, were superstitious about all things, hanging their charms everywhere, from their old cars to the branches of orange trees. Errol, quite sensibly, thought it was absurd to describe someone who was drunk all the time as having “a labile affect and deficient insight.” Better to note that a do-or-die crisis seemed at hand and something had to be tried if body and spirit were to be kept together. His body was fine.
Years ago, he’d had a sailing accident. As a result, his closest friend, Raymond, was lost at sea, and the meaning of Raymond’s death, nagging and irresolute, continued to consume him. The customary remedies were unavailing, and he intended to resort to this soothsayer of his past. His employer, the owner of numerous large orange groves, had agreed to this final shot: after that, he was on his own. This ultimatum was not offered lightly: Errol, a fluent speaker of Spanish, had a loyal crew who would disperse in the event of his firing. The employer, a patrician cracker who also owned a large juice plant in Arcadia, Florida, said something that really caught Errol and made him see his plight more clearly. “I just can’t have someone like this. Not around here.”
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