Learning to Live Again

by Marie Kinneer

  She put the letter in her pocket and when it was time for her break she told Hannah she would be right back. Margie walked the three blocks to Brownie’s Garage. “Can I talk to you in private?” she asked him, getting down on all fours to peer at him under a car.

  “Sure,” he said, no questions asked, sliding out from under on his creeper.

  They met in his office.

  Margie slid the letter over his desk without a word and patted the top of the folded paper.

  He gave her a look, than opened the letter and read.

  He put the paper down, ran his hand over his head and said, “I’ll run you up there tomorrow morning. Eight?”

  “Eight,” she said, picked up the letter, refolded it and put it back in her pocket. “I’ll be here. Thanks.” She looked at Brownie and didn’t know how to tell him what was in her heart. No questions asked. Maybe he’d guessed some of the answers a long time ago.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said. “You’ll be fine.” Because he would be there to catch her when she fell. That they understood.

  She gave him a quick hug, then turned and all but ran from the garage to hide her tears of relief.

  ******

  Monday afternoon and Sam still hadn’t told his mom of his imminent departure. He made up the excuse to himself that he needed to solidify the date so that he could tell her exactly when he was leaving. He needed two days to drive from Vermont to North Carolina and he wanted to talk to Mike West again to make sure that the following Monday was still okay. Mike had first said Friday. He didn’t want to bother Mike at home and so waited until Monday morning to call him. It was mid-afternoon before Mike returned his call and a worried looking Allison handed Sam the phone.

  “Hope it’s okay I called the residence. Couldn’t get you on your cell,” Mike said.

  “The reception on this hill is terrible,” Sam told him.

  “Guess you called to firm up your return date. Monday is really better all the way around. We’re clearing out a warehouse for you and your team. You’ll be here in time to oversee setting it up.” Mike rushed on, not waiting for a reply. “I need you to project a timeline. Just something basic. Stages of prototype development, testing, debugging, manufacture—you know the drill. E-mail it to me by Wednesday, the latest, for a meeting I have with Iverson on Thursday. If you can get it to me by Tuesday that would even be better. Anything else you need?”

  “That was it, Mike, thanks.” And Mike was gone.

  “Everything okay?” Allison wanted to know.

  “Everything is fine, Mom,” Sam told her, kicking himself for the coward he’d become. For all he knew, his leaving would be a relief to her. She could get back to her normal routine.

  She was watching him, sizing up the evidence, reading him like a book. “You going back to that place, Sam?”

  “I have to work, Mom.”

  “I know that,” she said, looking up at him, wearing a thin smile, “I thought you were happy here, Sam. I thought you might look for work around these parts.”

  Sam felt pain in his chest. “This is an opportunity, Mom. If I value my career at all, I can’t pass this up. It’s once in a lifetime,” he said, as beads of sweat formed across his forehead.

  “When do you leave?” Her eyes were unwavering, her demeanor staid, the smile still visible, smaller, sad.

  “Saturday morning.” Sam wanted to say so much. Offer her the sky to come with him. How could he tell her what was in his heart? “I would love to have you come with me. For a visit or a lifetime, your choice.”

  “I’ll visit when you’re settled. I’m not going to lose you again,” she said breaking eye contact. “I’ve got laundry to do. It’s Monday and I’m getting a late start.” She started to leave, stopped in her tracks and without turning her head said, “When are you going to tell Margie and Peter? You’ll break Peter’s heart, you know that.”

  “I’ll tell them this evening,” he said.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Sam was out in the shed, tinkering. The pot belly stove crackled, warming the room. He heard Brownie’s plow push through the path he’d made last Saturday and wondered at his sudden arrival when Brownie appeared in the doorway.

  “Thought I’d bum a cup of coffee if you got a pot goin’,” he said, slapping his mittens together and peeling them off his hands. He walked to the stove, rubbed his hands together, then fanned them palms up toward the heat.

  “Sure thing,” Sam said and poured him a cup.

  “Black,” Brownie said at Sam’s unspoken inquiry.

  “What brings you out at this time of day?” Sam asked knowing full well that Brownie had some agenda beyond a neighborly visit.

  Brownie looked at his watch. “It is four o’clock, ain’t it? How about that?” he said and sipped at his coffee. He was obviously not in any hurry to get into his reason for being there.

  “Let me guess. You’ve talked to my mother today.”

  “I did.”

  Sam wiped off the baby food jar of nuts and rescrewed it into its lid on the beam overhead. He grabbed his cup and sat across from Brownie around the stove. “That old stove sure puts out the heat,” he said, his face feeling hot.

  “I’m going to retire soon,” Brownie said.

  “Seriously? I figured we’d be pulling you out from under a car to bury you.”

  “Goin’ to buy an RV, travel round the country. Maybe take a cruise or two.”

  “Really? You aim to travel by yourself?”

  “Nope. Asked Allison to come with me. Course we’d need to get married first.” Brownie passed his cup to his left hand and undid the string that held the hat with earflaps tied around his head. He pulled it off, did his head routine, tied the flaps up and put the hat back on. “Thought I needed to ask for your blessing.”

  Sam’s eyes grew wide and his grin followed. “You certainly have that. Why that is absolutely wonderful.” Sam stood up, offered Brownie his hand and gave him a bear hug too.

  “Course that doesn’t get you off the hook about hightailing out a here,” Brownie went on. “There’s a whole community hereabouts thinks the world of you so I come to make you an offer.”

  Sam waited while Brownie sipped his coffee, pretty sure he knew what was coming.

  “You’ve always been good with machines and mechanics. That there garage made my retirement possible and I got no one to leave her to. This here is the deal.” Brownie looked intensely at Sam, his mouth forming around each word. “I‘ll be ready to retire in seven months. That’s when I turn the age to get my full social security benefits. At that time someone needs to run that there garage and take over the plowing of these private roads, and do what towing needs doing. You can see where all that money is coming from now, can’t you?”

  Sam had to grin. Brownie may have had some money put aside but it was due to the fact that he was as tight as a violin string. Of course, when it came to his favorite people, Sam amended, of which there were many, Brownie could be quite generous.

  “I thank you for thinking of me, Brownie, but I’d never forgive myself if I let this opportunity go without giving it my all.”

  “Giving it your all is what we’re all afraid of.” Brownie pulled the hat from his head and ran a handkerchief across his forehead. “Well, see what you think in a few months. If you change your mind the offer stands until I retire. I got ‘em standin’ in line to buy the place so there ain’t no pressure to say yes or no until I take my name off the marquee.”

  “Thanks again, Brownie. And you and Mom—wonderful news,” Sam said and pumped Brownie’s hand again. “By the way, what’s the selling price of the garage?”

  “We look over the books, we come up with something we can both live with.” Brownie rose from the chair, untied the ear flaps atop his head and secured them over his ears. “Thanks for the coffee. Oh, I meant to ask. Allison and I couldn’t decide if you should be my best man or give her away so we decided to ask you to do both. What do you say?”

 
“Absolutely, yes.”

  ******

  Sam was in the kitchen washing up when the phone rang. “I’m getting off early and wondered what you were doing this evening,” Peter said. “It’s a real clear night, almost twenty five degrees, and no wind.” It was six o’clock.

  “When’s your mom get off?” Sam asked.

  “She got off at five, I think. It’s Monday.”

  “You go on home. I’m about to phone her. We’ll decide what we’re doing after you get home.”

  Sam ended the call and dialed Margie.

  “Hello.” She sounded out of breath.

  “Hello, yourself,” he said then cleared his throat. “I was wondering if you and Peter might feel like running into Springfield for dinner tonight.”

  “Peter’s working ’til seven.”

  “He just called me. Got off early. He’s on his way home.”

  “Sure. Where?”

  “We could go to Village Inn Pizza, or the Hartford House. Since it’s Monday, I doubt we’ll need reservations for the Hartford.

  “Village Inn sounds good.”

  ******

  Sam chided Peter on the drive to Springfield about the weather. “It’s so cold when I blow on my hands a coating of ice forms around them.”

  Looking in the rear view mirror, Sam could see Peter grin where he sat behind him. “Guess it’s too cold to go snowmobiling?” Peter said.

  “Not for a polar bear, maybe, but it’s too darn cold for me.”

  “So, Mom, who was that letter from you got today?” Peter asked.

  “Nothing important, Petey,” she said turning her head and staring out at the cold blue night through the passenger side window.

  “But who is Mary Merryhill Bennett? Do I have an aunt you never told me about?”

  “Peter, maybe this is private and shouldn’t be discussed in front of me,” Sam offered, looking at Margie who was still turned away from them.

  “It’s from your Grandmother,” she said in a dead pan voice to the window.

  “She’s dead. You mean a different grandmother? Which one did we live with that died? Merryhill, that must be my dad’s mother.” Peter rambled on then waited. When Margie offered silence he said, “Mom?”

  “We’ll talk about this later, Peter.” She turned around in the seat and looked at him, “I’m sorry but that’s all I’m prepared to tell you right now. Let’s enjoy the evening.”

  ******

  Peter talked Sam and Margie into sharing a large pizza with almost all the toppings offered. He ate with gusto and seemed to be the only one with nothing on his mind to distract from enjoying the meal and the company. Always a storehouse of current information, Peter was rarely at a loss to fill in moments of silence. He entertained them with stories of the pharmacy customers he waited on and the general town gossip.

  Back at the house Margie invited Sam in for coffee and he accepted. This was the moment he planned to tell them of his return to Charlotte.

  ******

  Margie left the males in the living room while she hid with her thoughts in the kitchen, filling the pot for coffee. How could she have hoped Peter would forget the letter? Not her Peter. She began to pace while the pot began to drip. What am I going to tell him? Sam would say “the truth,” but how can I come up with the truth after all these years of lies? My God, he’ll hate me, at worst, lose respect for me, at least. She felt someone enter the kitchen while she poured the coffee with shaking hands.

  “He’s run off to get a magazine from his room to show me something amazing. What’s going on?” Sam appeared behind her.

  Margie didn’t answer, just handed him the letter she’d kept hidden in her jeans. Sam closed his eyes after reading it and ran a hand across his forehead.

  “Brownie’s taking me up to Rutland at eight tomorrow morning,” she told him. “I don’t know how to tell the truth, Sam. I just don’t know.”

  Sam hugged her to him. “Let Peter see the letter. Tell him you were fifteen, pregnant and she threw you out. You don’t have to tell him the details.”

  “What do I say when he asks about his father, and you know he’ll demand I tell him and why wouldn’t he?” Her voice sounded normal to her ears but she felt hysterical.

  “Say he was someone who said he loved you and who you thought you loved in return. When you told him you were pregnant, he abandoned you. It’s a sad story, Margie, but it is the truth and Peter is going to find out someday. Isn’t it better coming from you?”

  “What will he think of himself? What will he think of me?” She bit her trembling lips, but had no tears to ease the pain.

  “You might be surprised. Peter is very protective of you. He’ll probably want to kick the bum’s ass.” Sam heard Peter in the hall and whispered, “If he doesn’t right away, he will understand your love and sacrifice in time, Margie. You have to tell him the truth.”

  “I know. I know,” she said.

  Peter entered the kitchen while Sam and Margie carried mugs to the table. Margie poured a glass of milk for Peter and pushed it across the small space between them as he sat holding the magazine aloft for Sam to look at. Sam made appropriate murmurs while Margie downed a couple of aspirin before joining them at the table.

  During a silent moment Sam plunged into the words he’d rehearsed a hundred times over the course of the afternoon. “Talked to my boss at Digitronics, Mike West, this afternoon. He’s offered me a big promotion.” The silence grew so thick and heavy, a pilot could have landed a plane on it. “It’s a project I’d hoped to head up before I had my heart attack. Anyway, it was put on hold for a while. The company wasn’t sure whether they were going to go forward or scrap it.” He was talking in double time now, running it out before he lost direction and crashed. “They made the decision to proceed and have asked me to …”

  “When do you leave?” Margie said saving him the effort.

  “Saturday morning,” Sam said, then rushed on while looking at Peter, “but I’ll be back often to visit.”

  Peter stared at him one brief moment before he scraped his chair back and left the room. Sam started after him but Margie grabbed his arm. “He’ll be crying and you’ll embarrass him.” She let go of her hold of him. “Just go, Sam.”

  She began clearing the table and stacking the cups in the sink as if he wasn’t there.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Margie stood at the sink oblivious to the water running between her fingers and into the cups. Sam left as directed, Peter was in his room, and she felt the same abandonment as when her grandmother died five years ago. Alone with decisions she had no idea how to make, she decided she had to take Sam’s advice. At least with the truth she wouldn’t have to cover tracks with sand that blows away at the worst of times.

  She turned off the water, dried her hands, and left the kitchen. From her living room window she could see the light on in Sam’s bedroom. She wanted to be angry with him, hate him even. She felt tears well up, but shook them off with a grimace and a sniff and a no, don’t you dare. Stars winked in a sky blue/black and clear as no other but the Vermont winter sky can be. She wondered if there was a God up there watching and wondering what mistakes she would make next. “If you’re up there,” she whispered aloud, “put the right words in my mouth.”

  She walked to Peter’s room with reluctance in every step. Peter’s room was dark, but moonlight silhouetted his head and she could see him staring out his window into blackness that was the woods behind the house. “We need to talk,” she said in a soft voice.

  He didn’t turn around. “How come we never visit my dad’s grave? Tell me again why we don’t have any pictures of him.”

  Margie turned the nightstand lamp on and sat upon his narrow bed. She pulled the letter from her pocket, opened and smoothed out the creases then laid it down. “You can read this letter if you like,” she said.

  He turned around then and she could see his face was puffed, his hair mussed as if he’d been pulling it in fistfuls. His mouth
was a thin line, mean, angry—a Peter she didn’t recognize. He picked up the letter, walked to the lamp and read it. “Are you going?”

  “Brownie’s driving me tomorrow morning,” she said.

  “Would you have told me if I hadn’t picked up the mail?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “She doesn’t mention me. Does she know about me?”

  “Yes, but she’s never met you.”

  “We lived with your mother until she died; this is my father’s mother?”

  “We lived with my grandmother until she died. This is my mother.”

  “But she’s Merryhill. You were never married.” His voice was a monotone. Margie guessed he’d cried himself dry, that his emotions were spent.

  “I was fifteen years old when someone much older than I persuaded me that he loved me. I got pregnant and my mother told me to leave. I went to live with my grandmother in Cavendish and remained there until she died.”

  “Did this man know you were pregnant?”

  “I told him.”

  Peter, still holding the letter, looked at his mother, cocked his head, “And …”

  “He … left.”

  “Left what? Left where? Are you telling me or not?” His voice rose while his hands flailed the air.

  “He knew my mother. He took me to her and left us. That’s all there is to the story.”

  “How old a guy was he? What was his name? Where is he now?”

  “He was a little older than my mother, forty something, I guess. His name was Jesse James. I have no idea where he is now. I have had no contact with him or my mother since the day I told that I was pregnant.”

  “He dumped you and your mother dumped you. Were you a tramp?”

  “He was the only man I’d ever been with and he seduced me, not the other way around.” She had no call to be indignant, she knew, Peter had no reason to believe her when she’d been lying to him for years, but the pain of blame was as raw today as it was years ago.