Keepers

by Gary A Braunbeck

  He looked at me with an unreadable expression on his face.

  For some reason I had the sense Dad had just said You’re welcome to me.

  I shrugged at Drop-Kick and walked off toward St. Francis de Sales where my widowed mother waited among the mourners for her son to return and Mabel was probably chewing through the back of a chair because she still didn’t have her smokes.

  Just as some mistakes are too monstrous for remorse, some moments of wonder are too sublime for anyone who wasn’t there to understand. I never told anyone about what happened that afternoon; it was mine, only mine, and would always remain so.

  Beth and Mabel stayed at our house for a couple of days until things started to settle, but despite all good intentions we started getting on each other’s nerves. There are, in my opinion, three stages to helping the grief-stricken: 1) Is there anything we can do?; 2) What else do you need?; and 3) Christ, what is it now?

  We were skirting dangerously close to stage three when Beth pulled me aside one night and said we needed to talk. Mabel was in the living room teaching Mom to play pinochle, so we decided to sneak out for something to eat. We ended up at the A&W Drive-In where a roller-skating waitress brought us a tray of root beers, hot dogs, and onion rings. There was something comforting in the way that plastic tray hung on the side of the car window, something of the old days, high school weekends, all-night record parties, dancing with your girlfriend in the autumn moonlight, maybe stealing a kiss in the lilac shadows.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Like maybe you want to smother me in my sleep but are too polite to say so.”

  She smiled. “For as big as that house is, it has sure seemed cramped the last day or so, hasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I took a bite from the steaming hot dog. It tasted like the end of all summers.

  “I think Mabel and I should go back home tonight.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “No, not really. I mean, no, not at all. I understand.”

  “It’s just … you and your mom need some time alone. We’ve done all we can but we’re just getting in the way.” Which was true; I’d lost count of how many times I’d nearly walked in on one of them in the bathroom or opened the refrigerator to find my last bottle of Pepsi had been drunk by someone else.

  “Can I call you if I need you?”

  “Of course. Any time, you know that. And you’re still going to give Mabel rides to and from work, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So it’s not like we’re never going to see each other ever again.”

  There was something she wasn’t telling me and I said as much.

  “I wanted to ask you something,” she said, not looking at me. “You remember all the stories I told you about my mother? How she was this famous stage actress?”

  “Let me guess—you were lying?”

  “Wow. You figured that out on your own and everything—of course I was lying. My mother is an old barfly who’d screw a crippled walrus if it bought her a drink. The last Mabel or I heard, she was living in a flop house in Kansas City with some biker. That doesn’t matter—the thing is, I always sort of wanted to try my hand at being an actress. I did some plays in high school and I wasn’t bad—”

  “—you never told me you were in any plays. I would’ve come to see you if—”

  “—I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of you, all right? But things are a lot different now. I want to do something else in my life, something different, something … I don’t know … more. Welsh Hills Players are having tryouts for Pippin next week and I thought I’d give it a shot.”

  “That sounds great!” I said, turning toward her and taking her hand. “Man, I bet you’ll have fun.”

  “The thing is, there might be a lot of rehearsals, which means a lot of evenings where we won’t get to see each other, and I don’t want that to be a problem.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t see why it should. I could even come and watch you rehearse, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “God, no. Just promise you won’t laugh at me.”

  “I won’t. Or if I do, I’ll go outside where no one can see me.” I leaned over and kissed her. “What brought on this sudden desire to return to the stage?”

  “The way your dad died.”

  I stared at her. Ever since the night of the call I had tried not to think about the manner in which he’d died. Dad operated a massive punch-press. It had all but cut him in half when he’d fallen in. I knew that everyone said he’d died instantly, but what the hell does that mean, really? If he’d lived long enough to see those teeth grind down a second time, it was too long. It had to have been agonizing, the pain and fear. Laying there with your guts oozing out, watching as this massive roof of iron teeth came down at you.

  “I don’t understand.”

  She squeezed my hand. “Remember how you told me he’d wanted to raise chickens for a living, be a farmer? I kept wondering if that was the last thing that went through his mind when he died: ‘I should have raised chickens like I wanted to.’ And it made me so damned sad. To die knowing that you were never really happy, feeling like maybe you’d wasted your life and no one would give a damn or remember you.”

  “Please stop,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  I was starting to cry again and didn’t want to. I’d wondered the very same things. Maybe if he’d gone ahead and tried his hand at farming, he would have been happier, would have felt that his life was worthwhile, wouldn’t have started drinking so much.

  “Just … don’t talk about Dad anymore right now, okay?”

  She reached up and wiped a tear away from my eye. “Okay.”

  We sat in awkward silence for a few moments, then—for some reason, maybe because it was the first non-Dad related thing to pop into my head—I asked her something that had been on my mind, off and on, for a while: “What was in that package you mailed?”

  She tilted her head and blinked. “What package? When?”

  “The day we took the dogs out. You went in that back room and you had a package when you came out.”

  She gave a slight shake of her head. “I don’t know what you’re … are you sure I had something?”

  “Yes.”

  She thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “Sorry. Parts of that day are fuzzy. I was pretty upset.”

  There was something she wasn’t telling me, and I knew it.

  Of course, since we hadn’t so much as kissed over the past few weeks, it wasn’t hard to figure out.

  “So, who is he?”

  “Who?”

  “The guy you’re dating? Someone who’s trying out for the show, as well?”

  She sipped her root beer and shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about him with you. I don’t like talking about other guys with you, okay?”

  “Okay … ?”

  “I’m sorry I brought up your dad, but I just don’t want to reach the end of my life and have only regrets. Does that make sense? Acting is something I’ve always wanted to pursue, so I’m going to. And don’t you worry—I’ve got no illusions about going to Broadway or being in the movies. Community theater is the ticket for me.”

  “And I can come watch you rehearse?”

  “And you can come watch me rehearse.”

  I couldn’t come watch her rehearse; the director—a pretentiously flamboyant small-town ar-teest who was so enamored of his own incomparable brilliance it was everything he could do not to fuck himself twenty-four hours a day—wouldn’t allow it. Beth got the female lead and was scheduled to rehearse four nights a week, then—as opening night loomed closer—every weeknight and Saturday evenings, as well.

  I took a part-time janitorial job to fill the evenings. I liked janitorial work; you were alone, it was quiet, no one was breathing down your neck, and at the end of the shift you could actually see what your labors had accomplished: a disaster area
was now rebuilt and tidy, things shone where before they looked lightly sheened in rust, the smell of the bathroom was pleasant and clean, nothing crunched underfoot as you walked across the carpet, the windows now glistened. Let’s hear it for the bad-ass with his mop bucket and Windex.

  I finished each night in plenty of time to take Mabel to work. On nights when I knew Beth’s rehearsal would run late, I stopped in and talked with Whitey so he could update my growing list of character flaws. At home, I took care of dinner and laundry and paying the bills and making sure that Mom didn’t discover where I’d hidden the rest of her medicine; after the first time I caught her trying to take a triple dose of sedatives—“Oh, hon, I didn’t think it would hurt anything, I’ve just been real jumpy” (which I didn’t buy for a second)—I made it a point to get one of those pill trays and fill only one compartment at a time with only the prescribed doses. I did this three times a day. I wanted to trust her, wanted to believe that she’d never try taking more than she was supposed to … but I didn’t.

  I started to understand why Mabel sometimes seemed so depressed at the end of her shift; despite telling yourself you were doing this for someone’s good, you felt somewhat like a captor.

  The week Beth’s show was to open, I picked up Mabel after I got off work, as usual. She said hello and asked me how my night had been, then sat staring out the window, nervous and tense, chewing at her thumbnail. I asked her if everything was all right and she mumbled something that was supposed to be in the affirmative, then returned to silence for most of the ride. As the nursing home came into view, she cleared her throat and said: “You won’t have to do this anymore after tonight.”

  “I don’t mind, Mabel, really.” She’d been doing this a lot lately, telling me how bad she felt about imposing on my time, how she’d just find another nurse to ride with; for a while that’s endearing, then it just starts to offend. I did not want anything bad to come between us. “You don’t have to find someone to ride with, I—”

  “Oh, no, it’s not that at all.” She smiled at me, a full, cheek-to-cheek smile that should have been radiant but instead seemed an affectation. “I’m buying a new car tomorrow morning. Got it all picked out, have the down payment, the whole nine yards.”

  I pulled into our usual parking space, killed the engine, and looked at the building. The Cedar Hill Healthcare Center no longer looked like the same place; two new additions (a larger and more up-to-date Physical Therapy unit, as well as a second—and nicer—visiting area) gave the place an almost regal, ersatz-exclusive appearance, and a third addition—what would be a friendlier employee break area, complete with a bunk room for those working double shifts—was nearing completion. Whoever had taken over the place was making serious changes.

  “The new owners must have some capital behind them,” I said.

  “You have no idea.” Her smile wavered for a moment, then came back just as bright and twice as phony as before. “Beth wants the station wagon for God only knows what reason, so we’re going to get that fixed up, and I’ll have my own car. Do you know this is the first time in my life that I’ll have a car that’s all mine? The very first time. It’s nice to able to afford new things, better things. For the first time in my life I don’t go to bed worrying about having enough to pay the bills at the end of the month. You have no idea how good that feels to an old gal like me. So I figure I deserve a new car. You can come over and see it. Maybe I’ll even drive you around.” Cheerful words, mundane words, words you hear in various combinations every day from various people; someone’s getting a new car, independence, go where they want when they want … nothing special in these words.

  Except that her inflections were all wrong. I don’t want this to sound histrionic, because there was nothing overtly dramatic about it; it’s just that as I’d come to know what Beth was feeling through her body language and silences, I’d come to know Mabel’s moods through her speech patterns, her tones and inflections and pauses, and that evening they were wrong; her tone would rise where it should have lowered, she’d stretch out syllables for no reason, her volume would sometimes go from a normal conversational level to a near-shout to a conspiratorial whisper in the same phrase, once even in the same word. A stranger meeting her for the first time would assume that she was just a little tense and distracted; I knew that something dire was going on and she wasn’t talking about it, and it was going to end badly. I had seen this happen enough with Mom to know when someone was about to implode.

  “Okay, Mabel, c’mon. It’s me, okay? What’s the matter?”

  She lit a cigarette and rolled down the window. “There shouldn’t be anything wrong. I don’t know why I’m acting like this. You get to be my age, you learn to live with things that bug the shit out of you; you learn not to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “Did you just skip to the end of this conversation or did I miss something?”

  “Huh?” She looked at me, blinked, and shook a small but at least genuine smile onto her face. “I, uh … I’m sorry. I guess I drifted off for a minute.”

  “What gift horse? What’re you talking about?”

  She pulled in another drag, let the smoke curl in front of her face for a moment, then exhaled. “It’s been so great since they took over, it really has. We’ve got new uniforms, extra help, better food, the working atmosphere has never been so good, and the money … Lord, I’m making almost twice what I was making this time last year, and that’s on top of the great bonus we got for—” Her eyes flashed a quick oh-shit and she left the sentence unfinished.

  “The bonus you got for … ?” I prompted, then it came to me: “The confidentiality agreement. Is that it?”

  “I really can’t. I just”—She reached over and took my hand—“really can’t talk about it. The way I figure it, I’m just about a year away from having everything paid off and being able to afford a house—not just rent a nicer one, but buy one. Do you know I’ve never owned a home? Isn’t that a pisser? It would be nice to spend the third act of my life in my own home. And if I don’t screw up, if I do what I agreed to and keep this job, then I can have all that. Is that so bad? Does that make me callous? Is it such a terrible thing to want an actual home and peace of mind? Christ, I’ve spent so much of my life worrying over one thing or another that by the time I took a real breath it was halfway over.”

  “No one’s saying you haven’t worked hard for everything, it’s just—”

  “—and I’m not going to find anyone, you know.” This followed by a phlegm-filled, bitter, ugly little laugh. “Sure, if I lived in San Francisco or Los Angeles or someplace like that, someplace where they don’t look down on you because you’re gay, I might stand a chance. But look at me—I’m an old gal. Whatever chance I had for a great romance in my life has long past, so if I’m going to be the lovable old-maid aunt, why can’t I at least be comfortable and content? Dammit, I’ve helped people, you know? I’ve cared for them when no one else wanted to—and not just because it was my job, understand. I did it because I wanted what was best for them. All of them. This is no different, really. Is it?”

  Look up “bemused” in the dictionary and you’ll find a picture of my face at that moment. “What the hell is wrong, Mabel? Why are you talking like this?”

  She squeezed my hand and opened the car door. “I have no idea. They say the mind is the first thing to go.”

  I held on to her; I wasn’t going to let this drop. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “What I’m not supposed to. Maybe I’ll be able to explain it someday, but not now. I don’t know. I keep my word. I’ve always kept my word, that’s important. For right now will you just answer a question?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Am I a bad person?”

  “God, no! You’re one of the finest people I’ve ever met. Why would you even ask—”

  She pulled away from me and closed the door. “I’ve got a ride for later. I’m going straight to the dealership when I get off. Co
me by later this week and see the new car. I’ll drive us to Beth’s opening night.”

  I watched her go inside, then started the car and drove away. I was almost home when I jerked the wheel around, made an illegal U-turn, and went back. Maybe Whitey would still be up and could tell me something. Even if he wasn’t up, I’d shake his ass awake. I figured I was owed one genuinely rude interruption.

  I parked in my usual spot and started to go through the back entrance.

  It was locked. Not only that, but it now required a card-key to open. Something made a whirring mechanical noise over my head and I looked up in time to see a security camera pirouette on its wall-mount and point at me.

  I did what we’ve all done at one time or another—made a goofy face and waved. A few moments later one of the regular shift nurses—Arlene—appeared at the door and used her card-key to open it. “Let me guess—Mabel forgot something?”

  “Maybe I just wanted to flirt with you.” Arlene was sixty if she was a day.

  “Maybe if I was twenty years younger I’d drag you into the linen closet and make you do more than flirt.” She opened the door wider and let me in. “But my husband wouldn’t like it.”

  “It’s the thought that counts,” I said, moving past her.

  “Mabel’s in the break room having coffee. Come get me when you need to leave and I’ll let you out.”

  I pointed at the new lock. “Has there been much of this? I mean the new security?”

  “They’re turning this place into something out of that 2001 movie, I swear. You need card-keys to move between units now, and every hall has its own camera and a microphone so we can hear if anyone calls out for help. You’d think we were guarding the gold at Fort Knox. There’re even three more full-time security guards, two inside and one covering the grounds for each shift. We’re getting to be quite the place, we are.”

  “I don’t have to worry about being stopped or something, do I?”

  “No,” she said, reaching into her pocket and removing a plastic credit-card-looking thing at the end of a dark ribbon. “Just make sure you wear this where it can be seen.” She draped the visitor’s pass over my neck. “You have to wear one of these at night—even a fixture like you.”