The Best of Good

by Sara Lewis

  The TV stayed on for four days. Sometimes I went to sleep, but I didn’t turn it off. After a few hours, I’d wake up to watch, just to make sure nothing else had happened while I had my eyes closed.

  The fifth day, I felt a little better. Then immediately I felt bad for feeling better. I took a shower and got dressed. I was going to the store.

  The first thing on my list was Kleenex. (I had a list!) I bought three boxes on sale. I don’t believe I had ever bought Kleenex before, and here I was, buying in bulk. Even when I had a cold, I had always used toilet paper, napkins, and paper towels. I bought groceries. I bought cleaning supplies.

  When I got home, I decided to write a song about my brother. No, I didn’t decide; the song just arrived whole, and I wrote it down. It was coming fast, and I had to hurry to put the bags down and get a pen. It was almost as if I had already written it and memorized it. It was about trying to recall what he was wearing the last time I saw him and what the last thing I said to him was, and how he answered. There was a part about how no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t get the picture of his whole face in my mind just the way it had been when he was alive. Then there was a part about how I was sure that he was going to walk through the door a minute or two from now and then this bad part, this sad patch was going to be over. It wasn’t a slow song in a minor key; it had a catchy, simple chorus, and it was easy to sing. You might think this is strange, but this was the first song I’d ever written about my brother. It took me only an hour, and most of that was playing it over and over to myself, listening to it. Honestly, when I had finished the song, I felt better. And it was pretty good too. Next thing you knew, I might just find myself sitting down to listen to the Layla album straight through. You just couldn’t tell what might happen.

  • • •

  I called my sister. We had been talking all week. People all over the world had been calling one another and expressing their love. My sister and I didn’t do that exactly. Instead, we said things like, “You OK?” “Yeah. You?” “Yeah, well, not really.” “Me neither.” But now that I had finally written this song, I thought, we will really be able to communicate.

  “Hi,” I said when she answered. “It’s me. Are you OK?”

  “No,” she said. “You?”

  “Hell no,” I said, “I’m a mess. Listen. Why don’t you come over for dinner?” We hadn’t gotten together since the thing happened.

  There was a pause. My sister was too polite to say, “What?! Since when do you invite me over?” But I could imagine that her mouth had dropped open. I added, “I’ll cook you something, and we can, you know, talk about.… it.”

  “OK,” she said, “I accept. I’ll show you what I’ve done. You know that four-patch set on point? Since you saw it, I’ve been working on it all the time.”

  “What?” I said.

  “The quilt. You saw it when I first started. It’s helping me cope. Remember? The sewing machine?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Right. The sewing machine. I’m with you now. Yeah, bring the quilt. I want to see.”

  There was another pause. “You do? Really.”

  “Of course,” I said. I mean, what could it hurt to look at someone’s quilt if it was important to her? I forgot to say anything about the song. I was going to, but then I forgot.

  I had to go back to the store because of the dinner. Then my Vons card didn’t work because I’d already used it the same day. They had to call a manager for an override. I hate when that happens. I was bringing in the groceries when Robin came home with the kids.

  “Good’s here!” Mike came running over and threw his arms around me.

  “I’m getting a cookie,” Ray announced and charged into my house.

  “Ray!” Robin said.

  “It’s OK,” I told her.

  Elise said, “Welcome home, Good!” She and Maddy went inside their house.

  “Were you on a trip?” Mike wanted to know.

  “Me? On a trip?” I said, patting Mike’s back with my free arm. “No. I’ve been right here. Inside my, you know, house.”

  “Mom said you weren’t here, because we didn’t see you! We thought you went on a plane somewhere and then couldn’t fly home! Know what? A bad thing happened! Bad men killed people, but we’re safe, Good, and we can go to school and we don’t have to worry about a plane crashing into our school or people poisoning us or killing us or killing Mom with a box cutter or anything^ His eyes were wide with terror.

  I put the bag on the ground. I squatted down and hugged him hard. I looked up at Robin, who was rubbing her hand over her face. Like most faces I’d seen lately, hers looked tired, pale, and worried.

  “That’s right, Mike,” I said. “You’re safe and so is your mom. But if you do worry, you’ll tell her, right?”

  “Or you can tell a teacher!” Mike said. He had been briefed.

  “Sure. That’s right,” I said.

  “Or your dad. Or your rabbi or Sunday school teacher. Or any adult you know well. Because they love you and care about you!”

  “That’s it.”

  “They have commecials about it,” Mike explained. “Mrs. Bush is on Disney and Nickelodeon. I could tell you if I was worried, couldn’t I, Good? You’re an adult who cares about me!”

  I nodded.

  Robin said, “Mike, you can get a cookie too.”

  Mike went inside.

  Robin was going to say something, but I went first. “I wonder if you and the kids would like to come over for dinner.”

  Robin was already shaking her head before I got all the words out.

  “My sister is coming,” I said. “She’s bringing the quilt she’s making. It’s a four-patch set on point.” I was just parroting what Ellen said on the phone earlier, desperately blabbing any crap that was in my head. I said, “It’s been such a sad week I decided to do something with my sister. I—”

  She opened her mouth. She was going to say no.

  I said something else quickly to stop her from speaking. “You could bring the kids. Of course! I’ll do all the food and everything.” This is easy to say when you’re sure someone is going to turn you down.

  Robin pressed her lips together, thinking. Then she said, “A four-patch set on point? That sounds nice. Do you know what size? I mean, is it for a bed or a crib or a wall hanging or what? Do you know what colors she’s using? Or is it scrappy?”

  “Oh,” I said. “I have no idea. Ha! You have reached the end of my quilt knowledge. I don’t even know what a four-patch set on point is. No idea whatsoever. But you can see tonight. When she comes. You don’t even have to stay or anything. You can just look at the quilt for two seconds and then leave, if you want. You don’t even have to talk to me. I won’t even—”

  “I have a frozen pizza for the kids,” she said, thinking it over. “Mike was worried about you. I don’t know why, but he somehow got the idea that you were on one of the planes, and then we didn’t see you for a couple days—”

  “But I was right here! Didn’t he hear my TV?”

  “Yeah, but he has a friend whose mother leaves theirs on when they’re out, to fool potential burglars.”

  “I’m sorry! I should have made more noise. The poor kid. Why didn’t you just knock on the door?”

  “I don’t know. We were so sure that you weren’t home. Anyway. OK, we’ll come. We’ll be there. What time?”

  “You’re coming? You’re sure? OK. Six?” I said. “I could make it earlier, if you want. Or later.”

  “Six is good.”

  forty

  There was a knock on the door that I knew was Ellen—five soft knocks, the way she always does. When I opened the door, though, it was everybody.

  “Oh!” I said. “You’re all here,” which sounded as if I didn’t want them all to be there, as if they weren’t welcome. So then I said, “Ellen, this is Robin. Robin, this is—”

  “Tom,” Ellen interrupted. “We’ve met. Many times.”

  “Oh, that
’s right. Of course. And do you know all the kids?”

  “Elise, Mike, Maddy, and Ray,” she said. The expert.

  “Oh. Wow,” I said. “That’s impressive.”

  “Not very.” she said. “Are you going to let us in?”

  Everyone laughed, as though this were funny.

  “Come in,” I said, backing up to give them room.

  Ellen was carrying a big plastic bag stuffed with things. At first I thought she had brought a lot of food. “What’s in there?” I said, preparing to be insulted that she hadn’t had faith in my ability to provide dinner.

  “The quilt,” she said. “Remember?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right. The quilt.”

  “Let’s see!” Robin said.

  Ellen opened the bag and pulled out a huge thing with blue and yellow squares all over it. It had grown since I first saw it.

  “Oooh!” Robin said, picking up the cloth. “It’s gorgeous!”

  The kids gathered around and took a look. Elise tentatively traced a seam with one finger.

  “It’s not done yet,” Ellen said. “I still have to put the borders on and, you know, quilt it and everything. But it’s gone faster than I thought it would, that’s for sure.”

  I said, “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “I’m just learning,” Ellen said to Robin. “I’m taking a class.”

  “Still,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s—that’s a lot of… of work.”

  Robin and Ellen laughed, as if I were one of the kids saying something incredibly innocent.

  Then they started talking about quilts, fabric, different classes you could take. What was this? They hardly knew each other. How did they have so much to say?

  I went into the kitchen. I had actually made dinner. I didn’t choose a very complex menu—spaghetti with sauce from a jar, premade salad that came in a bag, bottled dressing, and heat-up garlic bread. Unfortunately, the fact that they had arrived all at once had thrown off my timing. Now I got flustered trying to get everything ready at the same time.

  I had never had this many people in my place at one time. My table was too small. Robin went home and got a beach towel and put it on the floor for the kids to sit on. I had a new rug, which had scared them all into taking their shoes off. “It’s just a rug,” I kept telling them. “Whatever gets on it, it’s just a rug.”

  I had rented a movie, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, that I slid into my new DVD player for the kids. They had already seen it, of course, but that didn’t seem to matter. As soon as Robin handed them their paper plates and pressed PLAY, they sat there silently chewing their pizza and staring at the tube. I felt guilty that they were so easily absorbed, as if I had drugged them to get them out of the way.

  I managed to overcook the spaghetti until it was a gluey mass, but Ellen and Robin ate it anyway.

  The two of them had hit it off immediately, almost too well, as I was completely out of the conversation.

  “So is this your first quilt?” Robin wanted to know.

  “I made one in college,” Ellen said. “And I loved it. I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. Then I never made one again, until now.”

  “If you liked it so much, why did you stop?”

  “Stupid, I know,” Ellen said. “At the time, I was trying to get a high-enough GPA to get into law school. I thought if I made quilts it would entirely take me over, and I would be a failure. So I stopped.”

  “That’s too bad. But you did get into law school,” Robin said. “Right?”

  “Yes,” Ellen said. “And I hated it. I still hate law. Anyway, there’s a flying geese class next month that I’m going to take. I can’t wait.”

  “Aren’t triangles hard to work with?”

  They went on and on like this. You’d think we’d spend some time on the most recent developments in the unfolding horror story, but maybe because the kids were there, everyone decided to stay off that. Or maybe we all needed to be off that topic for now. The sadness and tension and worry were still there, sitting right at the table with us, but for the moment, the two women were looking in another direction, to something that attracted them and absorbed them, made them happy. Robin went home a couple of times to get books to show Ellen. Quilt books. She had a whole library of quilt books, it turned out. She used to make quilts, too, before she had kids, but since then she hadn’t had time. Who knew?

  They were talking so much, and I had so little to contribute, that I finally Joined the kids on the towel. How could I mind? I hadn’t seen my sister so enthusiastic about anything in a long time. And the movie was pretty good. But Ray fell asleep on the towel, and Maddy was curled up on my bed with a distant look in her eye. I could have closed my eyes and drifted off myself, but Robin stood up and said it was time for them to go.

  “Oh,” I groaned, as if I were one of the kids. “Now?” Immediately, I felt sadness and loneliness pinching at my chest.

  Ellen and Robin looked at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing,” they said together quickly, as if over the past couple of hours they had become a unit.

  I knew what they meant. I never used to want people around, and now I did. I was different, and they noticed. After years of being alone and stuck, something had finally shifted inside me. Did you ever see one of those time-lapse movies about changes in landmasses? Subtle, imperceptible shifts in the earth push two plates together. Rain and wind wear away rocks, softening the shape of coasts and mountain ranges. Occasional strong earthquakes create surfaces that weren’t there before. At the end of a few thousand centuries, you wouldn’t recognize the place. I was like that. For years, I had seemed inert and immutable, but underneath, there had been the minute shifts going on. I’d had the occasional momentous event that shook my whole structure. Taken together, these experiences had been gradually edging me toward this moment in which I was finally different. I had changed, and change was good. Change was Good.

  One thing about big transformations is that when they happened, it is hard to remember how different things were and what they were like before.

  forty-one

  My phone rang, and it was someone I didn’t know. She said her name, Marjorie Something, but it didn’t mean anything to me. “Jeanette’s daughter,” she said.

  “Oh!” I said, “How’s she doing? We’re looking forward to getting her back! The kids made a sign and everything!”

  “My mother passed away last night,” she said. “In her sleep. She didn’t suffer. There wasn’t any pain.”

  “No,” I said. “Jeanette? No!” And I started to cry right then and there. I had only recently realized how attached I was to Jeanette, and now she was gone.

  The daughter was saying, “… very fond of you and Robin. She’s at work now, I guess? I tried to reach her, but… Anyway, Mom was so grateful for all the help you gave her at the… at the end of her life.” Now she was crying.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, all choked up. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Well,” she sobbed. “She was old, but, but I wanted to keep her!”

  My heart broke for this woman I had never seen. Death was just a bad idea, and there was far too much of it around. The daughter said she’d get in touch with us about the funeral.

  I had to tell Robin. She would want to know. I drove down to Vons. She was at lunch, but I told Alex, the manager, that it was important that I find her.

  “She usually eats by the fountain on the lower level of the shopping center,”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She was sitting by herself, eating a salad out of a clear plastic container. She didn’t see me at first. I stood, there a few seconds, thinking about how I should say it, what words I should use. She had on her Vons shirt and her name tag and her black uniform pants. She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun for a minute. Then she went back to her salad.

  “Robin?” I said.

  She turned her head and looked at my face. After
just a second, her whole expression changed. Her eyebrows went together and her mouth opened. She said, “Jeanette?”

  I nodded.

  She put down her plastic fork, put the salad container down next to her, dropped her face into her hands. When she cried, her whole body shook with each sob.

  I sat down next to her and put my hand on her back. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry. I know she really liked you, and you did so many things for her.” I handed her some tissues that I had brought with me for this reason.

  She blew her nose. “I have to go home, Good,” she said. “I hate this job, and I have to call my mom.”

  • • •

  Sometime after The Awful Thing happened, Adam Blackburn from Point Blank called. He needed a song for a telethon to raise money for the children of the victims. He had tried to write one himself and came up empty. He asked if I had anything. “Maybe,” I said, and I played “A Minute or Two from Now,” the song I wrote about my brother, for him over the phone. He liked it, and he asked if he could use it, “Sure,” I said, “be my guest.” I taught him the song. I didn’t think much more about it. One curious thing about transformation is that often when the biggest shifts occur, it doesn’t seem like anything much is happening at all.

  • • •

  I was in bed asleep when the phone rang. “Honey?” My mother. “Well, it was wonderful. It was a beautiful song. You’ve really done it now, kiddo.”

  Slowly, it dawned on me what she was talking about. “Mom?” I said. “You’re watching MTV?”

  “Oh, Ellen told us your song was going to be on.”

  “Oh,” I said. “How did she know?”

  “Sweetheart, you told her.”

  “Did I?”

  “Of course you did. Now, I’ve got to go. I need to call in my donation. I love you, sweetie.”

  “I love you too, Mom.”

  We hung up.

  Someone was knocking on my door. I opened it, and Mike was there. “Good, you were on TV!”

  “What are you doing up so late?”