Year After Henry

by Cathie Pelletier

  And then the line went dead and the connection was broken.

  ...

  At six o’clock, Jeanie did what Larry had asked. She parked down the street and waited until she saw Frances and Lawrence putter off in the Toyota truck. Only then did she start her car and pull up closer to the house. Still, she parked on the opposite side of the street, under a large elm with branches that cascaded down as a kind of cover. The key to the front door was under the huge, cast-iron pot filled with red geraniums, the same place it had been when Jeanie first started dating Henry. As she pushed it into the lock and opened the front door, she wondered how many geraniums had come and gone over the years in that same cement pot. Lots of them. Enough blossoms to bury Bixley, Maine. You could keep track of time by counting those falling red petals.

  Once inside, Jeanie climbed the stairs cautiously, as if afraid Frances might pop up from behind a lamp or a vase of flowers. She knew her mother-in-law would feel betrayed if she found out about this secret dinner. Frances had now developed a new strategy about Larry: leave him to sit in his room alone and he’ll eventually miss the world enough to come back out. But Jeanie doubted this. She envied Larry his solitude behind that bedroom door, a quiet place where he could shape and mold the outer world to his liking. The dinner idea seemed wonderful to her, an invitation to step into that superficial world of the bedroom, the Planet Larry. But what she was remembering now, as she made her way up the stairs, were those times Henry had sneaked her into his and Larry’s room, trying to get her past that talking step before Frances rushed out of her downstairs bedroom like a guard dog. Those were the nights that Larry stayed behind, practicing his basketball shots on the court down by the park, only the streetlights to aid him. Some nights he’d be alone, unless a couple of the other guys who had no place special to be were around to shoot baskets with him. When Henry and Jeanie would appear again, an hour or so later as Henry walked Jeanie home, Henry would wave to his brother, a signal that the coast was now clear. Jeanie would pretend she didn’t see Larry there, still too embarrassed at what she and Henry had been doing back in the bedroom. But Larry would smile politely as he twirled the basketball on the tip of one finger. Then he’d tuck the ball under his arm and head for home.

  At the top of the stairs, the squeaking step alerted Larry, who threw open his door and gestured to her, as if he were some kind of maître d’ at a fancy French restaurant.

  “Table number one, Madam,” Larry said. “Shall I seat you now?” He was dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, necktie and all. Jeanie giggled to see him.

  “You look great,” she said. And he did. Larry was attractive in a quiet way, unlike Henry’s loud and flashy good looks.

  “You don’t look so bad yourself,” said Larry.

  “You like it?” Jeanie asked. She twirled around, showing Larry the blue dress she was wearing, a cotton linen, sleeveless and pretty. “I wore this to my wedding reception.” She felt a wash of sadness come over her. Maybe this was a mistake, to come here wearing that special blue dress while Frances and Lawrence were planning her husband’s memorial service. That’s where a good, loyal widow would be, deciding on who speaks first, then second, then third. Deciding who pushes the plaque into the ground, if there will be a flag or not, if the minister should say a prayer before or after the plaque is inserted. All those things that seemed useless to Jeanie since Henry the man, the person it was all about, was gone. Memorial services should be done for the living, let them know while they still can how appreciated they are by friends and family.

  But then Jeanie stepped into the old bedroom and, once again, Larry had saved a moment in time. Before her sat a small card table, a white linen tablecloth spread neatly over its top. Two of Frances’s crystal candleholders adorned the center, one on each side of a vase filled with what must be flowers from Frances’s backyard, a lovely rose among a mixture of mums and tiger lilies. The best china the house had to offer was in place, silverware and plates that Jeanie knew had come from the beloved downstairs china cabinet, the stuff Frances might use if Jesus came to dinner. Two of her preciously guarded crystal wineglasses sat catching reflections from the flickering candles. In the background, a radio was softly playing, an oldies station. At least, the Bee Gees were singing “Too Much Heaven.” Jeanie knew that song well. It was all the rage the year before she married Henry, 1979, the year their lives were still heavenly.

  “Larry, it’s beautiful,” Jeanie said, and she meant it.

  “Sit, Cinderella.” He pulled a chair back from the table. Jeanie watched as he poured them each a glass of wine.

  “Did you break the padlock on the liquor cabinet?” she asked. “Or did you actually leave the room and go shopping?” Larry put the wine bottle on the table and then sat in the other chair. He fluffed out his linen napkin.

  “Somewhere in between,” he said. “I picked the lock and then went shopping.” He raised his glass. Jeanie did the same with hers, and they clinked them together, gently. Henry had given the toast at Larry’s wedding, hitting his champagne glass so hard against the groom’s that both glasses had shattered. Everyone had laughed at the time, even Katherine, although champagne had splattered her wedding dress. But thinking back on that day, Jeanie realized that marriages are like that, too. So are lives. They are so fragile they can break if you aren’t careful.

  “You’re thinking of my wedding toast, aren’t you?” Larry asked, and Jeanie nodded. Knowing they shared so many memories brought with it a sense of safety, the kind she always felt when Larry was around.

  “Tell me again why I married your brother instead of you,” Jeanie said.

  “Because he was the life of the party,” said Larry, “and I was the guy who cleaned up afterward.” He lifted the lid of a plate on the table. Jeanie saw almond-stuffed olives, squares of cheese, crackers, a few of the marinated mushrooms Frances loved to buy at the Bixley Deli. The Bee Gees sang on quietly from their corner, as if they were the house band, serenading the diners.

  “How could Katherine let you go?” Jeanie asked. “You make what’s rotten seem bearable in such a short time.” Larry had always had this gift. Maybe it was following in Henry’s footsteps that had taught him to put the pieces back together as he went.

  “Well, my ex-wife saw it as a nuisance rather than a talent,” Larry said. He took another lid off another plate and held it up for her to see. Sliced garden tomatoes, baby cukes, shelled garden peas, fresh garden carrots, all scrubbed clean and presented neatly. Jeanie bit into a carrot.

  “I see Frances has a good garden this year,” she said, teasing him.

  “I’m disappointed in the lettuce,” said Larry. “Too much rust on the leaves or we’d be having a Waldorf salad. I saw walnuts down in the fridge. Maybe next time.”

  A cool breeze pushed through the window Larry had already opened, a book propped beneath it. Wind rippled across the high school banners still pinned like butterflies to the wall, their streamers waving gently as wings. The breeze brought with it the smell of creek, and trees, and grass, and even the aroma of bread baking in some nearby house. Larry sniffed the air.

  “Wish I knew who’s baking,” he said. “Bread would go well with this. Don’t gorge on veggies and cheese. I’ve prepared a culinary delight as our main course.” He pointed to a bookshelf over by the window. Books had been piled on the floor so that the top shelf was cleared for a hotplate plugged into a nearby outlet. A covered pan sat on the single burner. Jeanie pushed her chair back so that she could stretch her legs, enjoy her wine, let the evening unroll as if it were some kind of old banner itself, one that’s been stored too long in the attic. It had been years, maybe since high school, that she’d felt this free, as if the future were still something far-off and shiny. Leave it to Larry to know just what to do.

  Memories came, too, on the wind. For the first time in years Jeanie looked, really looked, at the old football picture of the Munroe bro
thers, still ripe with victory. There was Henry’s crooked smile, Larry’s polite tilt of head. What a day that had been in all their lives. Larry the captain and Henry the best quarterback in school history. It was that same night, after the big game with Montgomery High, the game where Henry had thrown those seven historic touchdown passes to Larry, that he and Jeanie McPherson first made love. Henry had saved enough money for a motel room. And Jeanie had worn a scarf over her hair, afraid that old Mr. Tyson, who worked the night shift and knew her father, might see her. It was her first time ever with any boy. But there was so much magic that day, talk floating in the air of college scouts in the bleachers with their eyes on Henry, the photographer from the local paper snapping away at the Fabulous Munroe Brothers. Frances and Lawrence beaming from their seats. It was enough to make a girl like Jeanie set her sights on an engagement ring, and that usually meant going all the way, going the distance, just as the team itself had done that year. But that was a long time ago now. Larry had gone on to college and Henry had busted his ankle senior year, a break so bad that he’d never play football again except for a friendly game in the park. That old day of victory was now rolled up like a mat and put aside. A day ambushed by the future.

  “Coming into this room is like lifting the cover on our class yearbook and stepping inside for a visit,” Jeanie said.

  “Not for me,” said Larry. He was helping himself to more baby cukes. “For me, it’s like living in the fucking yearbook.”

  Jeanie laughed, that out-loud laugh that loosens the stomach muscles and releases the tension. A television show she had once seen claimed that laughing can cure cancer.

  The song on the radio was by Rupert Holmes. Jeanie remembered it well, a song about drinking piña coladas and walking in the rain. She wished she were on an island somewhere far away, sun and sand, drinking rum for an entire week. That way, she would have an excuse not to attend the upcoming service.

  “Are you going to Henry’s memorial service?” she asked. Larry poured more red wine into his glass and beckoned to Jeanie, who nodded. He filled her glass as well.

  “You must be referring to the Frances and Lawrence Munroe memorial service,” said Larry. “Funny how they’ve given Henry the credit again. Henry couldn’t organize an ant fight.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Nope. Are you?”

  “I don’t want to,” said Jeanie.

  “Then don’t,” said Larry.

  Jeanie stood and twirled the dress again. She felt like a girl in school, just as she had been when she’d bought the damn dress, she and Mona gliding about the streets of Boston, loaded with shopping bags and having the time of their lives. It was to be their big splurge on life before they both got married later that year and became wives and mothers, which had to come before friends. The dress had fitted perfectly then, and while it was snug now, it still fit. Somehow, that’s all that mattered. It was another one of those symbolic signs, and Jeanie saw symbols everywhere she looked since the day Henry died. The dress seemed to be telling her that life could be unpacked and put back on, if you wanted it bad enough.

  The Eagles were singing now, “Hotel California.” The light of day was fading beyond the window, and twilight was bringing a coolness in on the breeze. Jeanie drank more of the wine and felt it warm her, the way just being alive used to do in those old days.

  “If ‘Disco Duck’ comes on, I’m asking you to dance,” said Larry. And then they were both laughing, the way they used to laugh at the movie theater, when Larry would come along with Jeanie and Henry, nights he was dateless.

  “Dinner is served,” he said, and carried Jeanie’s plate over to the pan on the bookshelf. With a spoon, he scooped something reddish-orange onto the plate and brought it back to the table. Jeanie saw that it was spaghetti and meatballs, the kind that comes in a can. Jeanie shook her own napkin out and arranged it strategically on the front of her blue dress. There was nothing messier to eat than spaghetti. She waited for Larry to return with his own plate.

  “Bon appétit,” said Jeanie.

  “Sorry about the bon part,” Larry said, “but this is the best I can do under the circumstances.”

  “It’s all wonderful,” said Jeanie.

  “We could have eaten downstairs, but what if they forgot something? Or came home early to see if they can catch me washing my underwear in the laundry room?”

  “This is better,” said Jeanie. “More private.”

  They ate in silence, savoring private thoughts, peaceful, no need to entertain or be entertained. The way it should be. When they had finished the small piece of carrot cake that Larry produced from the top drawer of his desk, he poured them more wine. Jeanie took her glass and walked over to the bunk beds. She put her hand on the steps leading up to the top bed, Henry’s bunk.

  “Do you still feel him here?” she asked. Larry didn’t answer right away. He stared at the bunks as if he were trying to find the best words.

  “Sometimes, it’s as if he never left,” Larry said. “As if he never grew up, never met you, never got married. Like he’s Peter Pan. I wake up nights, and I can almost hear him breathing up there.”

  Jeanie looked over at him. The wine had made her braver than she’d been in a long time. And besides, this was Larry Munroe, the person more like family to her than her own brother who lived far away in Washington state, a man she barely knew anymore.

  “Larry, I know you better than anyone in this family,” she said. “You invited me to dinner because you want to talk to me about something. And I came because I promised Frances I’d be her spy.” That wasn’t true, of course, but Jeanie knew it would make Larry smile, and he did just then.

  “If I could pick a sister, it would be you,” he said. He had told Jeanie this often over the years, especially at those god-awful tree-decorating parties Frances gave each December, when Henry would always drink too much eggnog and make an ass of himself. And Katherine would go home to correct school papers, always arriving in her own car so that she could escape early. And Jeanie and Larry would sit on the light blue sofa and watch a tipsy Lawrence try to put the aging Christmas star on the top of the tree while Frances held the stepladder and directed from below. It was like watching an old vaudeville act. Laurel and Hardy. Just before the tree came crashing down, or Frances threw up her hands in disgust, or Henry started snoring from the recliner, it had always seemed like a good idea for Larry to thank Jeanie for being the one in the family most like him.

  “I know,” said Jeanie. “But that’s not why you asked me to dinner.”

  She was right. She did know him better than anyone. What made Larry sad was that it would’ve been nice to have had Jeanie as his sister in all those growing-up years. He never really got to know Jeanie McPherson until Henry starting dating her. By that time she was an added fixture in front of the television, sitting in their dad’s car between Henry and Larry, sitting between them at the movies, fixing Larry up now and then with a cute girl he happened to notice in chemistry class or at a ball game, something he was often too shy to do for himself. And maybe, just maybe, if his mother had had a daughter to fuss over, it would have made things easier for her sons.

  “That woman you mentioned last week,” he said, “Evie Cooper?”

  Jeanie put her glass of wine down on the table.

  “What about her?” She waited.

  Larry reached into the pocket of his pin-striped suit and pulled out the envelope he’d put in the Still to Deliver pile. He placed it on the table beside Jeanie’s plate. She picked it up and read the address. Ms. Jeanie Munroe, 39 Hurley Avenue. Larry waited, tense. He felt himself sweating inside his suit. It was the best one he owned, the same he’d worn on every one of those job interviews where he had been turned down, rejected, dismissed. He watched as Jeanie pulled the letter out of the envelope. She read silently, which was fine with Larry since he knew the words by heart.
/>   Dear Jeanie,

  I am so very sorry for your sadness. I have seen your car outside my house on many nights. Would you like to come in and talk sometime? I would then have the chance to apologize to you in person, for I owe you that. I realize we will never be friends, but life is too short for us to be enemies.

  Evie Cooper

  When Jeanie finished, she put the letter back inside the envelope and looked across the table at Larry. She knew this wasn’t all. But she had no idea where he was heading, what he was about to tell her. Maybe that Henry had had other affairs? Maybe that Henry, like the race car driver Mona Prescott had seen on television, liked to dress in women’s clothing? Who knew what might be coming? The world as Jeanie had known it no longer existed. All the rules had been ripped up and thrown to the winds from the moment she woke up that lovely summer morning a year earlier and realized that her husband was lying dead in the bed beside her. It had all changed, and it would never be safe again, for it was now a world without rules.

  “I’m in love with Evie Cooper,” Larry said. When Jeanie didn’t scream, didn’t throw something, didn’t run from the room in a burst of tears, Larry reached under the table and grabbed that second bottle of wine he had stolen from the liquor cabinet, just in case there was a need for a second bottle. Jeanie said nothing as he uncorked the bottle and poured her glass full. Wind rattled the old banners again, Bixley High school banners. Cars came and went along the street. People were out for their evening walks, their voices drifting up to the window on clouds of excitement. From its corner of the room, the radio was talking.

  “Now we’re taking you all the way back to 1973, folks,” the deejay said. “So come ride that ‘Midnight Train to Georgia,’ with Gladys Knight and the Pips.”

  Larry picked up a pretend telephone and put it to his ear. He punched at invisible numbers as he dialed. He waited.