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Beyond the Bedroom Wall

Page 46

by Larry Woiwode


  “I went to my nine o'clock Psych, but didn't feel up to anything after that, so I came back and lay down. I guess I fell asleep. It's almost one-thirty."

  The brick wall and the oak leaves jumped into focus; his misreading of a half-asleep look as grief made him feel an important faculty in him was giving out. "Was it a heart attack?" he asked, and his voice sounded too loud for the size of the room.

  "That's what they think. There’ll be an autopsy.”

  'What for?"

  "It was so unexpected, I suppose they want to make sure."

  "Of what?"

  "He died of."

  "That's awful!"

  "It's a formality, I think. I don't know, it might even be a law."

  "I don't care!" Charles cried, and the substance went from his legs and left him standing on numb shadows of them. He took a floating step and sank into a chair. A round plaster-of-Paris ashtray sat on the black Formica tabletop.

  "Would you like something to eat?" Jerome asked.

  "No." He was nauseous,

  "A cup of coffee?"

  "I guess. Please."

  The ashtray became a foreshortened silo on a heat-shimmering plain and heightened his nausea, so he set it on the floor behind him. His hands. Springing from green cuffs, too large and too white, fringed at the wrists and little-finger sides with black hair, they lay on the table like the ashtray. Objects. He moved them to his lap.

  "Are you packed?" Jerome asked.

  "No."

  "I was going to before I fell asleep.”

  "I don't want to go home. All those people. The funeral."

  "I know," Jerome said, and his voice reverberated in a way that said to Charles, The dead will not come back to us. Don't exhibit them, mourn over them, weep over them, pray over them, lower them into a grave before our eyes. Let their living actions, held in the minds of the living, remain pure. Brought up against that effigy in the coffin, in no way a part of the person we knew, the mind balks, memory comes to a standstill, and they're killed for good.

  "Here," Jerome said. "It's hot. Watch out."

  They sat in silence for five minutes before Charles was aware they weren't speaking. Their pasts were nearly identical and, as long as they didn't limit them with language, remained intact, and many of the years of them were interwound with the influence of their grandfather. The stillness of the Forest Creek living room settled around them. Charles was so accustomed to Jerome's manner, it hadn't occurred to him it was an inheritance from their grandfather. His monumental silence. Jerome's hand lay beside his cup, delicate and relaxed, the hand of their mother, and Charles wanted to take it in his.

  Jerome looked up. His eyes seemed to say, I know you're troubled, but you're difficult to help.

  "I imagine Dad will need a lot of help from us," Jerome said. "He sounded upsetting over the phone."

  "Upsetting?"

  "The way he talked. It was mostly about Grandma, and I'm not sure he knew how he sounded."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Pretty hysterical."

  "Well, will we be able to do anything about it?"

  "I hope."

  "I better go."

  “They'll be here at five."

  "Who?"

  "Dad didn't know. Maybe just him. I hope he doesn't drive alone."

  "That bad?"

  "I don't know."

  "I’ll be here at five."

  Jerome enveloped him in a skyey-blue stare that said, I wish there was more I could do.

  "Goodbye."

  "Goodbye."

  He looked for Jill again on the street. The air hurt his eyes. He'd left his jacket on and now his body warmth kept draining from him until he felt he'd turned blue. The wind came up and sent a scattering of leaves past his cheek. He blinked and flinched. His lower lip pulled down and started trembling, and then his neck muscles twitched, and he began to shake with chills. His legs didn't feel they were working, but a big low-branched black walnut tree, tilting up the sidewalk it grew beside, advanced on him. If he hit it with his fist, hit it hard, then everything would come to a stop. He leaned against it but his hand wouldn't clench. He felt somebody's eyes on him. In a house close to the walk, the curtain of a window was parted and an elderly woman was staring out at him. He studied her as if to know the reason for this.

  Then a handful of objects struck the sidewalk close to the tree, went scattering in a widening circle, and turned into a flock of sparrows. Their tail feathers flicked and emphasized their cries, the excoriation of them in the cold air, as they hopped over the walk and pecked at purplish-brown stains on it, their claws traveling across an inscription in the cement:

  ROBERT K. PIERCE

  Gen.Con.

  1927

  Then he smelled smoke. Burning leaves. A fire. What was that from?

  A gray knit glove lay on the lawn next to him, its leather-covered palm turned upward, and beside it was a piece of flat bone the glove seemed to have moved; a ways away, pressed into the grass, was a yellow indentation the shape of the bone. The curtain was lowered and the woman gone.

  He took off on a run, stopped outside his apartment long enough to catch his breath, and went down the stairs to the door of his bedroom. Jill was there, with her back to him, putting folded clothes into a suitcase on the bed. He saw her loose hair swinging beside her cheeks, her shoulder blades working in her back, and realized once again, as when he first saw her, how young-girlish and vulnerable she was, and thought. Mist fell across his eyes through the morning.

  She snapped the locks on the suitcase and set it on the floor, and then sensed him and turned, her eyes wide, and ran to him and held him close. "I was so worried! I'm so sorry! Where were you?"

  "Walking."

  Over her shoulder the gold-framed picture of her smiled out at him.

  "Herman Melville," he said.

  "What?"

  "Nothing.”

  He worked free from her and went to the closet and pushed through coat hangers until he came to a black suit with gray stripes in it. He took it out. "I'll have to wear this one. It's the only black I've got."

  "I've never seen it on you. I like it.”

  "It's my high-school graduation suit, for God's sake."

  "I still like it."

  "It's the wrong weight for the weather, the pants are baggy, there's a cigarette burn in one knee, and it looks like shit!"

  "Don't."

  He threw it on the floor.

  "Charles!"

  He leaned his forehead on the wall and had a vision of himself fumbling around for the suit on the floor of the closet in absolute darkness, lighting matches, clothes hangers clashing, butcher knives and razors, the hour zero, his heartbeat and breathing sounding in his ears, rumors from a drawer, and then he heard in the distance, as if from the high loft at the rear of the church in Hyatt, a voice chanting Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, it was his grandfather's voice.

  "Oh, God!" he cried.

  Jill's arms came around him from behind and her breasts widened over his back. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I know how much he meant to you."

  "It didn't seem real. Nothing has. I've been waiting for something to happen and it's already happened. He's dead."

  "Don't. There's nothing you can do."

  "No, he's gone now."

  "Oh, no, he's been with you all day. I've felt him."

  He turned and saw crystalline tracks dried on her cheeks, and the grief that seemed to be resting outside him, in her and this room and its objects, and in the rooms and apartments and houses beyond, closed around him with such force he felt smothered. She helped him to the bed, sat on its edge, and held his head against her breasts, but he felt stranded in her arms, contained yet abraded, at a distance from the comfort she was trying to give. He took her hair in his hands and kissed her forehead, her face, her lips, her throat, and when that only made him feel more estranged and contained, and more helpless to do anything about it, he swung her legs around and lowered her on
to the yielding bed, into the center of grief, and was buried there for as long as they were able.

  38

  HOME

  Jerome pulled the car onto the concrete drive, switched off the headlights and ignition as he coasted to the front door, and then let out the clutch and pushed against the seat, exhausted by the day and the effect of driving on his nerves, and realized that his father, who was in the rear, was shaking the back of the seat in his impatience to get out, and his shaking of its mechanism, the scratch of his fingernails against the fabric, his heavy breathing, were magnified in the silence of the engine and its focusing power, and then there was a pop of a lock on the passenger side as Charles pulled his door handle, and their father went out in such a rush that Charles was jackknifed forward Martin took a step toward the house, and then turned and leaned his face into the chalky illumination from the car's interior light

  “Do you need any help with your things?"

  “We’ve each got a suitcase is all." Didn't he remember?

  “I’ll tell Laura you're here."

  The aluminum storm door rattled its familiar pattern and he was gone. Jerome was worried about him. He'd arrived at the apartment two hours late, diffident but with the combative grief he'd relinquished after nearly ten years back in his manner again, as he came through the door and said, "It's so sudden and awful, I still don't believe it," the only mention he made of the death- Then he slumped in a chair as if listening to a melody that rose from the center of his state and was as yet wordless, an unlit cigar in his mouth, occasionally pulling himself forward as if to speak, but never did; and then was pacing through all the rooms, anxious to get everybody into the car and leave, and at that point Tommy, their cousin, who'd driven him to the campus, came clattering down the metal-edged stairs, grinning and blushing in his shy manner, sat on a couch and stared around, and said, "Boy, is this some digs." Where'd he get such a word?

  Jerome jerked out the keys and went around to the trunk in air redolent of leaf decay and recent rain, his breath blue-gray against its blackness. Nostrillials. Hot bronchials plus holes in the good bold nose. Hello, Tim. Home. Are you up and part of the help we might need these next hours, or days here? A slam echoed off the house and then at his back he felt scatterings of his father's combativeness and an anxious distress.

  "I'm glad Tommy was along," Charles said.

  "Yes, that was a good idea."

  "If he hadn't been, if we wouldn't have had to drop him off at home, we'd probably be at Grandma's right now, and I don't know if I could take that. I mean—"

  "I know." Charles was petrified of death and of the emotional demands it imposed.

  They went through the garage carrying their suitcases and as Jerome took hold of the kitchen doorknob he found his hand around a beveled novelty that wouldn't turn. He rapped on the door with a raised knuckle and realized that it, too, was a recent addition, and had the ringing sound of a solid core.

  "What is it?" Charles asked.

  "It's locked."

  "What? This door is never—"'

  "Shhh. I think somebody's coming."

  The garage lights went on overhead, rendering them miniature and felonlike in the windows along the back wall, a catch snapped, and the door swung in. "Laura keeps this locked now," their father said. "She'll be right out." He went to the door to the other side of the house and closed it behind him.

  Jerome set his suitcase down, surrounded by satiny levels of dark-toned birch. A peninsular counter, with a soffit and cabinets above it, separated this end of the formerly long room from the dining area, and there were other new cabinets lining the walls, built-in, bronze-colored appliances, a new sink, and a new window above it. He'd forgotten about the remodeling. Their father had also enlarged a bedroom on the other side of the house, now the master bedroom, and added a laundry room there, and a sewing room-office. He and Laura were married in August.

  "Where is everybody?" Charles asked. He most particularly meant Laura from his tone. He hadn't been home over the summer, as Jerome had, except for the wedding, and found it difficult to accept her as his stepmother. He hardly knew who she was. Her fine features and flawless skin made her seem in her thirties, although she was almost their father's age, and she had a sense of humor that was cosmopolitan and raw; she told Jerome that Pettibone was French for "inadequate tool." She hated the place. She enjoyed going out for drinks and dancing with younger couples, smoked like tar being burned, read popular novels and non-fiction (there was always a book within reach of her bed), and it was a revelation for Jerome to see their father, usually so solemn, teasing and cajoling and telling off-color jokes sotto voce, reading instead of watching the tube, getting tipsy on nightcaps, and behaving, in general, as he must have when he was a young man courting their mother, during that other half of his life.

  Laura came through the door in a housecoat and slippers. She was tall, taller in high heels than their father, and carried herself as if proud of her height. She came straight to Jerome, took his hand in hers, and said, "I'm so sorry. I know how much you boys were attached to your granddad and he was such a good man. He made me feel a daughter right off. I don't know if it's any consolation to you, I'm not sure how you believe now, but I'm sure his soul is in heaven." She reached over and took Charles's hand. "I'm sorry," she said. "I feel so bad."

  She went to the cupboard beside the sink, took out mugs, and plugged in a percolator that was standing ready, her hands trembling as at death's propinquity. Charles brushed past and Jerome saw he was carrying both their suitcases, heading upstairs. That upset? Or so inconsiderate he should be cuffed, the— Laura chose to ignore his exit and Jerome decided that, for now hers was the best tack, and went to the table and sat down, and felt alone in the room.

  "How does your dad seem to you?" she asked.

  "It's hard to tell."

  "He didn't say much?"

  “No."

  "To me either. I'm worried sick,” she said, and hid herself in the work area of the room. On the door to the other side, a C. J. C. Neumiller & Sons calendar, graced by a view of one wall of the Grand Canyon configured by crossing birds, hung from a safety pin. The family referred to the firm as "the corporation," and it was incorporated, true, but humble-sized, with only the immediate family holding shares of stock, and when his grandfather retired, he merely stepped down from the presidency while retaining his shares, the controlling ones, and Fred, the oldest son still in the business, took over. Fred was his father's opposite (nemesis?), an extrovert who considered politicians and bankers his best friends, and he immediately enlarged the shop, bought new equipment, a couple of trucks, a new station wagon, and then there was a tightening down on money and nobody could get a loan to build; it took prestidigitation and plain luck to keep the family members, much less the crews, in regular work, and when they weren't, everybody blamed Fred, when, for God's sake, it was a circumstance the larger world had brought about. In that instance, anyway.

  "How's school now?" Laura asked.

  "Oh, all right, I guess." She wanted to talk and if it were any time but now he'd tell her about the trouble he was having there, not academically, really, and not socially, either, except he hardly ever went out with women; he simply didn't know what to do with his screwed-up life. He'd enrolled in pre-med, planning to specialize in pediatrics, or general practice, perhaps, but then got drawn to psychology and stayed this last year to take his Bachelor's in that, in case he decided on psychiatry, which was another field he was considering. Shrink himself. He wouldn't get his degree until the spring but had already been offered, on the basis of an experiment he'd run for a British behavioral psychologist ("Footpound Heart-Ohms," as he transliterated the man's compound name), a substantial fellowship for graduate school. Maybe he should get a Ph.D. and do research, or teach.

  He'd lit a cigarette and its smoke stung his eyes. He rubbed them and discovered his lids were stiff with the oil of fatigue. Where was his father? Laura put an ashtray on the table a
nd returned to the work area just as the] percolator began to rumble and give out a sound as of i someone thumping on the countertop. Charles's footsteps could be heard overhead.

  "How's Ginny?" he asked.

  "As well as can be expected, I guess." Laura shrugged. "You know her."

  She was the only child of Laura's he did know. He'd met her sons, who were about his and Charles's age, only a few times, and they'd seemed aloof and protective of her in the manner of a possessive husband. Ginny was ten and nearly as tall as Laura, but skeletally thin and self-conscious of her height, and stood with stooped shoulders, her weight slumped on one hip, her head bowed; she wore eyeglasses, her teeth were being corrected with braces, and she had, it was discovered over the summer, eleven separate allergies.

  "It's been hard for her," Laura said.

  "You mean here?"

  Laura glanced at him and looked away. Her highly arched eyebrows, plucked in pencil-like lines above turquoise eyes, arched higher, and a cautiousness tightened around her mouth. "No, mostly at school. She doesn't like any of her teachers or classes, and not many of the kids, either, I'm afraid."'

  "How are her grades?"

  “Mostly A's. I think she feels they're way behind her down here."

  "I imagine she misses Chicago!"

  "Oh, yes. She's never been away from the city much since she was a baby, you know. We never seemed to get away much."

  "Mmmm." Do you miss it, he wanted to ask, and she averted her eyes again.

  His father came in and sat down. He'd removed his jacket and tie and as he settled himself at the table released a half sigh, half groan of relief—Laura gave him an anxious glance—and then clasped his hands and squeezed until his fingers were mottled blue-crimson. "If he could have kept his mind off that corporation, he might have lived."

  "Yes," Jerome said.

  'The latest is they're facing bankruptcy."

  "It's that bad?"

  "Yes, and it was one of the last things Dad learned before—" He couldn't go on.

  Laura brought over bowls of chips and packaged snacks and put them on the table.

  During high school and into college, Jerome had worked as bookkeeper for the firm, and he'd seen the downhill , trend into red begin; lumber bills remained unpaid, the new equipment was under liens, and there were rumors that Fred, always a drinker, was drinking heavier than usual. Complaints came in about promises broken, appointments missed, buildings falling behind schedule, and his grandfather took them personally, since the business was in his name, and once cornered Fred in the shop, and said, "There's a right way and a wrong way to run this business, and you know it. If you can't do it the right way, then just don't. And I don't mean workmanship. I mean the way you treat people. In case you've forgotten the—" But by that time Fred had walked out on him and then got into a truck and drove off.

 

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