“I graduate from high school in two years,” said Chad, “and I have no idea what I’m going to do after that.” He turned on his side, a hand beneath his head to prop it up, and peered down at Larry.
Larry had heard this speech before. He was the one who had college in his sights, but Henry had moped and lamented all through high school that he had no plans for the future. So the future came and got him. The future turned him into a mailman and a husband and father. And he was fine with it. Larry, on the other hand, had planned for ages, thought it all out, revised the plan, and then revised it yet again. He had worked it out perfectly and yet the future had kicked his ass.
“When your dad’s class voted on a theme for graduation,” said Larry, smiling at the memory of it, “Henry suggested A Hair of the Dog.” Chad smiled instantly. “It was voted on by the whole class, and Henry’s motto won. But the teachers and principal didn’t think it was so funny, so they chose Felicia Baker’s instead. We Stand on the Threshold or something corny like that.”
“I know that story,” Chad said. “We had a keg party last week at Milos Baxter’s and I told the guys we should choose Two Hairs of the Dog as our class motto. It broke everyone up.”
Larry looked at his nephew’s face. Like his father, Chad had been born lucky, born with Henry’s dark good looks, with the same long, lanky legs. He was Henry in high school, Henry all over again, except that the boy was more serious, having lived in his father’s shadow for all of his life, until the last year. But Larry had seen it happening in his nephew, those nights Chad had stopped by Murphy’s Tavern to say hello. The boy was slowly becoming the center of attention, almost addicted to the pull of power that comes with such a vocation. But the serious side of Chad seemed to take a step back, as if it recognized early that being the center of attention was a full-time job. He seemed to sense that if he accepted it, he would have to work hard in the years to come. Otherwise, like those kings Larry talked about in his European history class, Chad could be easily dethroned.
Larry took another bite of the sandwich, but this time his teeth hit something that wasn’t liver or onions. He lifted the top of the bread and peered down. It was a small piece of cardboard, just big enough to get attention. In blue ink were the quickly scrawled words: I MISS YOU. He glanced quickly up at Chad, but the boy was looking now at the old football picture of the Fabulous Munroe Brothers, their strong arms around each other, their futures still waiting to burst wide open.
“You guys were something, weren’t you?” Chad said. He lay back again and stared up at the place on the ceiling where his father had carved “HM” into the wood with his jackknife. Chad touched the letters with his fingers.
“I don’t like the sound of that past tense,” said Larry. He eased the piece of cardboard out of the sandwich and let it drop into the trash can. He took another bite.
“Can I sleep here tonight?” Chad asked. “Mom already thinks I’m spending the night with Milos.”
Larry looked up at his nephew, as old as Jonathan would be in five more years, boys who quit fishing with their dads far sooner than maybe nature had planned it.
“Sure you can,” said Larry. Then, “Hey, you wanna try the trout at Bixley Lake next week? We only got a few more weeks until school starts.”
...
It was already past eleven p.m. when Jeanie turned the Buick right on Market Avenue. Beside her on the front seat was the little overnight bag she had packed in a hurry. Nightgown. Toothbrush. Facial cleansers. Hairbrush. Magazine. Nothing of importance. Just enough stuff to get her through the night. With Chad gone on this eve of the memorial service, she found herself incapable of sleeping alone in the house. There was too much memory in the air of that morning a year earlier. Jeanie thought of calling Mona to come sleep in Lisa’s old room. But Mona had her own problems now. She considered sleeping on the sofa, or in Chad’s bed, rather than in the marriage bed she and Henry had slept in for so many years. But she couldn’t. The quiet of the house itself was talking to her, nudging her, putting her on edge. She knew that after the service she would be all right. She would find a way to cope, especially with Lisa’s baby soon to arrive. By the next night, the one-year marker would have come and gone, and with it proof that the universe doesn’t keep track of anniversaries the way human beings do. The universe would spin on as if nothing unique was happening at all. And nothing was, except to the handful of people who had known and loved Henry Munroe.
The reception clerk at the Days Inn looked up at Jeanie with sleepy, late-night eyes. The drone of a distant TV came from a room behind the desk, what looked like a small apartment. A cleaning woman, obviously on some late-night shift, was vacuuming in a hallway leading to the first-floor rooms.
“You got any vacancies?” Jeanie asked. The clerk punched out a few computer keys.
“First or second floor?”
“Actually,” said Jeanie, “is there any chance that number nine is vacant?”
The clerk stared with tired eyes at the computer screen before Jeanie was given a form to fill out and sign, and keys to the room. Now she was on her way down the narrow hallway toward Henry Munroe’s favorite room. Nine. The same number Ted Williams had on his uniform before the Red Sox put the number out to pasture. And now, Ted Williams was back in the news, too, dead for just a week himself and already in a cryonic warehouse in Arizona, his son hoping to keep the baseball great suspended in time until he could be brought back. Henry would now have his hero with him on the other side, wherever that might be.
...
Evie sat on her front porch swing and smoked the joint slowly, letting loose the tension of the past week. She had checked in on Gail, who was sound asleep, just her sad face peering from beneath the fluffy bedspread. Soon, Evie would know one way or another if Larry Munroe was able to rise above the past, to take a new run at the future. Otherwise, she had decided it was time to move on. Since she was without family, maybe the best thing for her to do was to create roots for herself. Maybe she would move back to Temple City, Pennsylvania, to the place where she had been born, the place she had lived until her parents died. It was the same place where Rosemary Ann had died, too, and where Evie had first discovered she could see the faces of the dead. She would take the big portraits in their heavy walnut frames and she would put them up on a wall in some house in Temple City. If it wasn’t roots as some people know it, at least it would be as close as she could get. She would build her own foundation. She would create a kind of museum for the people she had known and loved and now missed dearly.
Across town the church bells struck the hour by ringing twelve times. This was Evie’s favorite time of night. The town had wound down, like the mechanism of some great clock. Now it was almost motionless. Quiet. That’s when the night creatures took up the job, the crickets and bats and owls, the things that wait for the humans to give the night up to them. In the spray of light that fell from her porch and out onto the lawn, Evie could see the sign she’d driven into the earth there, just a year and a half earlier, hoping maybe like the pioneers of old she’d stake a claim. Evie Cooper, Spiritual Portraitist. She’d leave Bixley if the memorial service came and went and still no sign of Larry. She’d move on, like those pioneers did when they were looking for water, or trying to escape locusts, or hoping for more fertile soil to plant their crops. Evie would find a tiny piece of land to call her own and she would settle down to plant roses, to trim roses, to water roses, and then to die with a sense of roots beneath her. But wasn’t this the very dream that had brought her to Bixley, Maine? She took another long drag off the joint and drew it far down into her lungs. She needed to give the shit up. As she let the smoke spool back out in a gray stream, she kept her eyes on the sign in her yard, on that silhouette of a woman, standing beneath that silhouette of a star.
...
A few hours before dawn, the rain returned for one last barrage so that the mild Sunday predict
ed by local weathermen could follow. A loud crack of thunder woke Larry instantly. He lay on his bottom bunk, his eyes adjusting to the room and its items, especially the glowing numbers on the clock. Three thirty. Rain came at the window now in long and angry threads. Lightning broke ragged against the sky. In the dim light Larry could see an arm dangling down from the top bunk. Before his mind was fully awake, in those first confusing seconds, he was certain it belonged to Henry. How many times had he seen that arm during the years they spent together in that room? On those nights of thunder and lightning, he knew his little brother was afraid. Larry would often reach out and touch the hand, just a quick brush to let the younger boy know he wasn’t alone, enough touch that a boy wouldn’t have to be embarrassed the next morning about being afraid of a silly rainstorm. Then Larry remembered that it was not Henry sleeping above him, but his son. He knew this, and yet he couldn’t help himself. With thunder now rumbling in the distance, moving on to the next town, Larry reached up and touched the hand at the wrist, felt the warmth of it. He heard Chad mutter in his sleep.
“It’s just a storm, Henry,” Larry whispered. “It’s just a storm.”
...
The last thunder that the storm could muster woke Jeanie as it passed over the Days Inn, on its way out of Bixley. She sat up in the middle of that strange bed, in the middle of that symbolic night, in room 9, and reached a hand out into the darkness, certain that Henry Munroe was standing there by her bed. She could almost smell his cologne and the sweat of his body after a long day.
“Henry?” she whispered. Then she felt silly. She snapped on the bedside light and looked about the room. Nothing. She went into the narrow bathroom and turned on the tap. She scooped cold water into her hands and patted it about her flushed face and neck. In the mirror she could see the room behind her, the shower curtain, and the bath towel folded and hanging from its rod. Was Henry hiding in the shower? Would he jump out of the tub and go boo? He did that sometimes, hiding in the kitchen or his workshop, when he was horsing around with the kids. Had Henry come back to check out room 9? Was there really such a thing as the departed coming back for another peek at the living? Jeanie doubted it, as much as she wanted to believe. It would be nice to think her mother and father were keeping tabs on her, as they had done all through high school. They had begged her not to date Henry Munroe, much less marry him. But once she and Henry had gone all the way, Jeanie felt it was the right thing to do. Henry had laughed when she insisted on wearing a scarf over her hair, disguising herself so that she could slip past Mr. Tyson’s reception desk. It was that adrenaline-filled night of the big football game. The Munroe brothers had reigned supreme. Henry had rented a motel room so that he and the captain of the cheerleaders could finally make love. Now and then, over the years, Jeanie wished Mr. Tyson had spotted her sneaking into the motel and called her father. Maybe they could have stopped her from being so much in love with that wild Munroe boy.
There was nothing but the empty shower behind her. As was typical in their last years of marriage, Henry must have made other plans. Jeanie got into bed and snapped out the light. The room fell back into darkness. But what if Henry had come? She couldn’t help asking herself the question that had been on her mind all evening. Would he have been disappointed to find her there, and not Evie Cooper, or Wendy Carlson, or Annette Page, or Marla Benson? Would he be heartbroken to learn that it was just his plain old wife, Jeanie McPherson Munroe, waiting for him between the cool white sheets, as she had that night of the big game? And that’s when a weight had rolled away from Jeanie’s heart, a stone lifting itself from the rest of her lifetime, there in the darkness of that god-awful room at the Days Inn. She felt it go, just as she had felt Henry’s soul float up and into eternity the morning he died. Jeanie knew then that she was free.
12
When Jeanie pulled into her drive, Frances was already there, standing by the side of her car. Jeanie quickly pushed the overnight bag onto the floor by the front seat. The last thing she wanted that morning was to explain to Henry’s mother why she had spent the night in Henry’s favorite motel room. Jeanie grabbed her purse and summer jacket and got out of the Buick.
“Look who’s up early,” said Frances. “I figured you’d still be in your jammies, the coffee just making.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” said Jeanie. She looked up at the blue sky and took a deep breath. Sunshine was everywhere. A soft breeze rippled through the elm tree on the lawn. “What a great day for the memorial.” It was hard to explain what was happening inside her at that moment, but Jeanie sensed a new beginning just ahead. She had even rolled down the windows of the car as she drove over from the Days Inn, letting the air stir up the old particles of dust. She’d take the car in next week and have one of those professional places clean it from top to bottom, get rid of the cigarette stench, wash out the cobwebs, vacuum up the human hairs, clean out all the old memories. And she knew, too, that this was what she must do to her own life. She was just wondering if she should insist on Grandma or Gran. Grannie was out. Too old. Too Beverly Hillbillies. Nana was nice. Nana sounded young and vibrant. She liked Nana.
“What brings you over so early?” Jeanie asked. She put her arms around Frances and gave her a sincere hug. Frances hugged back, and this time she didn’t cry.
“I just wanted to be sure that you’re okay,” said Frances. “That you can get through this day. If you can’t, well, I want you to know I understand. This memorial service wasn’t your idea. It was mine.” These were the times when Jeanie felt a true love for her mother-in-law. These were the times when she forgave Frances Munroe for spoiling the devil out of Henry.
“I’m fine with this day,” said Jeanie. “We’re all gonna be fine, Mom. Come on, I’ll make us some coffee.”
Jeanie put her arm around France’s shoulder, urging her toward the house.
“I don’t want to intrude,” said Frances. “I just had this strange feeling.”
Jeanie knew what the feeling was. Several times when Frances had come to visit, bringing those countless casseroles and desserts, she would often find some excuse to leave the kitchen. Maybe she was just going out to the patio to see how Jeanie’s plants were faring. Or maybe she was on a quick trip to the bathroom. Or maybe she was just looking for that book on gardening that Jeanie kept on a shelf in the living room. Whatever excuse it was, Jeanie knew that Frances went into the room where Henry had died and just stood there, immobile, as if there were one of those cold spots you read about in ghost stories, a portal out that Henry had taken. Maybe Frances felt she could be closer to her son in the place he’d last been alive. Jeanie knew, and now she no longer minded.
“Let’s go in,” Jeanie said. “I made a cake yesterday. It’s that same recipe you gave me back when Henry and I first got married.”
“Chocolate Devil’s cake,” said Frances. And this time she smiled. But Jeanie saw the tears there, a wet glistening. She tried to imagine losing Chad or Lisa. Do spouses and lovers learn, after so much pain, to let go more easily than mothers and fathers?
“Guess who’s coming to the service,” Jeanie said then. “Lisa and Patrick. The doctor says she can make the trip. They’ll get here just in time for four o’clock.”
Jeanie would put some coffee on and ask Frances if she’d mind going to the bedroom to fetch Jeanie’s reading glasses, on the table by the bed. Jeanie knew they were there since she’d forgotten to take them to the motel the night before. And that would give Frances her time alone, her chance to say good-bye, maybe for the last time, to the son she loved so well. Saying good-bye for the final time in one’s life was important. Jeanie knew.
...
Larry opened his eyes to sunshine and the sound of the patio door opening and closing downstairs. His mother or his father, one or both. He threw the blanket back and got out of bed. Chad was sound asleep on his bunk, mouth open, little snores popping softly, as if he were blowing invisible
bubbles. Larry used to put stuff in Henry’s open mouth to get him to wake up, sometimes a browned apple core, or maybe pizza crusts from the night before. And once, even the tip of one of Henry’s dirty socks. Most times, Henry would just spit out whatever it was and keep on snoring.
Larry could smell the fresh coffee before he even got to the kitchen. He poured himself a cup, found milk in the fridge, and the sugar bowl in the cupboard, where his mother had kept it for as long as he could remember. It felt strange to be just standing there in the middle of the room, calmly, no longer sneaking in for supplies. Before, coming to the kitchen was like walking out into an open field where a sniper might see him. But he was past all that now. He had his breakdown moment and he was over it. He even felt ashamed, considering the stress it had put on his parents at such an emotional time, a year after losing Henry. They would never get their son back. But Larry still had Jonathan.
Larry took a drink of his coffee before he opened the back door. His father was sitting alone on the patio, a cup on the table in front of him. He was staring straight ahead at the maples in the backyard. They had been planted years earlier as a privacy border along the fence. Birds were now busy at the hanging feeders tied to branches of the two largest trees. Butterflies and bumblebees hovered about the many planted flowers and above the neat rows of the vegetable garden. It had been one of the family stories the Munroe boys had grown up hearing, how their mother agreed to marry the senior Lawrence Munroe provided the couple always had trees, flowers, and vegetables growing in the backyard of any house they might live in. Lawrence had not broken that promise to his wife, and now he sat staring into the backyard, that wedding gift to his bride.
“Dad?” Larry let the screen door close behind him. Lawrence looked up, surprise on his face, as if he’d been told once, years ago, to never be caught daydreaming. He looked at Larry with weary eyes. He had aged in just the past year, more whitish-gray hairs, even more lines around his mouth. He had aged from losing Henry, but so had they all.
Year After Henry Page 19