Sweeter Life

by Tim Wynveen

  When Ruby returned from church, she walked over to the barn where he was still nursing his soda. She looked good, not exactly happy but content, all things considered. When she saw him, though, she sank a little, her mouth losing its upward curl. “Time to move on now,” she said. “There’s more to life than this.”

  He knew she was right. He knew that Cy’s leaving was inevitable, that this boy and his dreams should not be seen as the symbol of a failed life. But then it wasn’t just Cyrus he was thinking about.

  HANK KNEW BETTER. Of course he did. You watch your back. You keep your nose clean. You don’t make waves. He knew that. He’d said as much to his little brother. And some other time he might have done things differently. But this wasn’t another time. The way it is, brother.

  He walked away from his metal press where hundreds of licence plates waited to be stamped. He just walked like a free man out of the room and along the corridor to the laundry, walked with such purpose and determination that the guards didn’t think to ask what in hell he was doing. In the laundry he stepped up to Golden Reynolds and said, “Enough. No more fucking around. The batteries.”

  Goldie looked away. “You talking about?”

  “I want those batteries, and I want ’em now.”

  Goldie checked the placement of his friends and stooges around the room. “Hoho,” he said, sidling closer, “you lookin’ a bit tense. Maybe could use some lovin’ is what I think. The Golden touch.”

  Another time it wouldn’t have worked this way, but this time it did. Hank slammed Goldie onto the cement floor and was choking him with his bare hands. A moment later muscular forearms pried them apart. Two, three, then four men held Hank still as Goldie rose slowly from the floor and dusted himself off, all cool and casual. He studied the ceiling a moment, shifted his weight and balance, then moved in and landed a vicious kick between Hank’s legs.

  “Lesson number one,” he said.

  FOURTEEN

  Isabel got the call about Hank, and she and Ruby set out immediately for Portland. At the prison infirmary, they were told that he had been transferred to the main hospital downtown.

  The man on the phone had told Isabel that Hank had been “worked over pretty good,” and she’d pictured him the way a prizefighter might look after a rough bout. She certainly hadn’t imagined the crumpled mess in the bed at Portland Memorial, or the cage of iron rods and clamps that had been built around him to keep his pelvis and upper body immobile.

  He was sleeping soundly, and Isabel and Ruby stood a few moments staring at the wreck before them, the scabs and bruises, the initials carved into his face, the metal truss like some instrument of torture. For the next hour they tracked down nurses and, eventually, the doctor, who told them Hank’s spine had been fractured in several places, and that it was still too early to know how much nerve damage there’d been. He would most likely be a paraplegic the rest of his life.

  Hank was still asleep when they returned to the room, so Ruby went to get them lunch from the cafeteria. While she was gone, he opened his eyes. “Hey,” he croaked, “if it ain’t Dingdong Fuzzybell. How ya doin’?”

  She moved closer and frowned at him. “You really did it this time.”

  He laughed at that, one wheezing bark that made his face crumple with pain. When the creases faded, he licked his lips and said, “A bit of rough-housing is all. You know how it is. Boys will be boys.”

  She hugged herself as though she were afraid she might lose control. “Don’t you care about anything?” she said. “Ruby’s worried sick.”

  “Give me a drink there, will ya?”

  She manoeuvred the cup through the metal scaffolding and brought the plastic straw to his lips. When he finished drinking, he said, “I care about things, Iz. Like I’m worried you look like a damn scarecrow. Why don’t you eat, for God’s sake?”

  “I do eat. And this isn’t about me.”

  “I’m just saying I care. And that dopey brother of ours. Did you know he came to see me?”

  “Cyrus was here?”

  “Few days ago. The guy even brought me some Black Cats.”

  Ruby came in just then and dumped the sandwiches and cartons of milk on the windowsill, fluttering around Hank’s bed like a big wrinkled moth. After she settled on a hardback chair beside him, Isabel raised her eyebrows and said, “Cyrus was here.”

  Ruby looked around. “While I was gone?”

  “Last week. He came to visit this jerk.”

  Hank stared straight ahead, with a slight trace of a smile. “What I wouldn’t give to be in his shoes right now,” he said, “playing music, seeing the world. He looked real proud of himself. Cracked me up.”

  News of Cyrus lifted a weight off both Ruby and Isabel, allowing them to fill the air with bright chatter. This made it easier for all of them. Hank could lie there with his eyes closed and let their stories of Wilbury wash over him; they could decorate this grim space with a few reminders of home and avoid having to think too deeply about Hank’s life.

  They stayed a second day, but it was not as successful. Hank had lost his patience with them. Their presence now clearly a burden, they spent the bulk of their time talking to prison officials and learned that Hank would likely remain in the hospital for another two weeks. After that he would be transferred to the prison infirmary. Eventually he would be moved to another facility where he could get around in a wheelchair.

  Next morning the two women drove home. Isabel was so worn out that it was a struggle to keep her mind on the road. She stopped for coffee at every service centre. It was only as they pulled into the driveway at Orchard Knoll that she turned to Ruby and said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you since we left town the other day, but it never seemed the right time. And I know this isn’t the right time, either, but I don’t have much choice here. Gerry and I are separating.” She looked out the side window, unable to meet Ruby’s gaze, and told her about Ginny Maxwell and kicking Gerry out of the house and how maybe they would be putting the farm up for sale.

  Ruby took a deep breath and held it before letting it out in a long sibilant whisper. She had heard the rumours. Word travelled fast in a place like Wilbury. She touched Isabel’s hand and said, “I’ll pray for you, dear.”

  Isabel pulled quickly away. “I don’t want you to pray for me. I just wanted you to know.”

  “Well, okay. I’ll pray anyway.”

  JANICE WOULD ONE DAY CLAIM that her career as an artist began that first Sunday at St. Mike’s, just inside the door with the wind whirling her skirt about, with the smell of candles and incense, and the dark beauty of all that stained glass. But the statement was only partly true. In a way, her career began the day Cyrus disappeared, for it was that feeling of abandonment that led her to befriend Ruby and begin her tour of Wilbury’s places of worship. Yet, even that was not the whole story. Before the emotional upheaval of Cy’s departure, there were those dreary art classes at Wilbury High, under the lifeless tutelage of Mrs. Velma Fleck, in which Janice produced unremarkable charcoal sketches, oil pastels and pen-and-ink drawings of the dusty objects Velma kept in her cupboard. There were the trips with her mother to the art gallery in Detroit, too, and the coffee-table books she flipped through whenever she was bored. There were the rainy days of arts and crafts at summer camp.

  This much was true: Janice came home from the Catholic church and immediately took out pen and paper. Her first impulse was to jot down the details of the experience, to explain to herself the emotion she had felt. She sat for the longest while, the nib of her pen poised on the page, as she recalled the way the light, coming from behind her through the open door, cast a shadow on the Christ figure, but left Mary fully lit. Along with the perfume of incense and candles, she had smelled fresh-cut flowers and women’s perfume and the unaccountable sadness of mothballs. The entire picture, coupled with Ruby’s chatter and the dense murmur of a hundred families jostling in the pews, was what she intended to get down, in point form if need be. But an odd thing ha
ppened. On a whim, she moved the pen down the page in a single stroke, a thin graceful arc that hinted at the shape of a head, the curve of neck and arm, a longer stretch of leg. She paused then, surprised by what she’d done; and more curious than committed, she tried to remember the fundamentals Velma had tried to drill into her head. By morning, Janice had covered her bedroom floor with half-finished and completely worthless sketches of The Pièta.

  Had this been any other time in her life, she would have put aside her pen and paper the next day and never given them another thought. She had always been easily discouraged when things did not go her way. Her dancing lessons, her tennis and figure-skating lessons—she quit them all after a single season. But this was different, as exciting to her as singing in the band, only more personal, more private. She liked the idea that she could explore her feelings through something as sensuous as a line. And for the first time in her life, her failures inspired her to try again.

  Several days later she stopped in to see her high school guidance counsellor, the reptilian Mr. Dietz. Without a word of greeting, she said, “My choices for university. They’re all wrong.”

  “Yes, but Janice, the paperwork was sent off weeks ago.”

  “I know. It’s just hit me that I don’t want to go to university.”

  Dietz grimaced and waved her into a chair. “Last-minute nerves. All very understandable. Have you told your parents how you feel?”

  “Well no, of course not. I didn’t want them to have a stroke or anything before I checked it out. The thing is, Mr. Dietz, I almost made a terrible mistake, and I’ve just got to make it right. I want to apply to OCA. I can do that, can’t I?”

  “The art college.” He nodded thoughtfully, touching his upper lip with the tip of his tongue. “Yes, I suppose. But even if you did—”

  “I’d need a portfolio, wouldn’t I? Jason Browne told me he had to submit fifteen different pieces of work from different media.”

  “Yes, that’s important. They’d be looking for signs of talent. But I have to tell you, Janice, we’ve been over this ground already. I remember sitting here with your mom and dad, looking at your marks, your aptitude scores. You’re one of our best students. Definitely university material. Don’t sell yourself short.”

  She said she understood but needed to consider all options. She took an OCA brochure just in case, a college calendar and application form, and walked out of the school. Then she went straight to the Three Links Hall and pored over the material. The main obstacle, as far as she could tell, was coming up with a few pieces she wouldn’t mind showing to someone. In five years with Velma Fleck, she had yet to accomplish that feat, and would more or less struggle with the notion throughout her career. She never called herself an artist. As far as she was concerned, she was simply making progress, taking necessary steps.

  AFTER ISABEL RETURNED FROM PORTLAND, she handed Sheldon Demeter her resignation and moved across town to Regal Real Estate, a smaller operation originally set up by Len Griswald but, since his death, run by Nellie, his wife. The two women got along well. Nellie, a widow for almost eight years, knew everything there was to know about living without a man. “I loved Len,” she liked to say, “but all things considered, life is better now.” Under the present circumstances, with divorce a very real possibility, Isabel found Nellie’s attitude refreshing.

  One day, not long after her move to Regal, Isabel sat in her car outside her old office, waiting for Sheldon to leave. When he drove off to an open house, she slipped inside to talk to Lawrence Bell.

  “Hey there, Larry, how’s it going?”

  “Can’t complain, Iz. You?”

  She nodded her head and looked around, as if she hadn’t been there in years. “I might have a buyer for that listing of yours on Orange Street.”

  “Hey, no kidding. The little bungalow?”

  “Yeah. Just working out the finances. How low will they go?”

  “It’s pretty firm, Iz. You know, maybe a couple thou’. We get down to real numbers, maybe as much as five grand, but not much more than that. Young couple?”

  “No, a stupid woman who’s ditching her sleazebag of a husband.”

  Larry slowly lifted his gaze until he was looking her straight in the eyes. “You sure, Iz? Everybody makes a mistake one time in their life.”

  She shook her head. “The only mistake was mine, Larry, and I’m finished making mistakes. You’ll have an offer the end of the week.”

  IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1971, Ruby Mitchell turned fifty-six. She had successfully made it through “the change,” as the ladies in her church group referred to it, and in comparison to the horror stories she had heard others tell, the transformation had been gentle—no sweats, no moods, no sleepless nights. If asked how it felt on the other side of fertility, she would have said it reminded her of the sweet silence that settled on the house when the grandfather clock wound down.

  Aside from that biological hush, which she had come to regard as a minor blessing, she had no notable physical complaints. Unlike so many women her age, she had her health. And why wouldn’t she? She had never smoked, never had more than a few sips of wine in her entire life, ate sensibly and like most farmwives got plenty of exercise. Some of the cattier members of the church group might add that she had never suffered the trauma of childbirth—no rips, no tears, no stretch marks—and that was a leg up she would readily acknowledge. But she had not been spared a mother’s grief. Didn’t she sorrow for Hank in his prison cell, even more so now that he had lost the use of his legs? Didn’t she regret each day the friction that existed between her and Isabel? Didn’t she lie awake each night and wonder if Cyrus was safe and well? That they were not her own children made it even more difficult in a way, for she was not simply acting as a mother but also trying to be their one connection to their true mother and, at the same time, to measure her efforts against her own memories of Catherine.

  These concerns, not to mention the death of a sister and the illness of a husband, had deepened the care lines of her face and added a complicated texture to her days, an ever-changing mixture of joy, apprehension, guilt, grief, pride and gratitude. And now she had another worry: the change that had come over Clarence since his operation, and even more so since Cyrus walked out of their lives.

  Ruby once confessed to Catherine that she had admired Clarence long before she loved him. He was president of the student council at their high school, always so well-dressed, wearing a V-necked sweater over a shirt and tie, his shoes polished, his posture soldier-straight. He organized relief drives for some of the poorer families in town, enlisting Ruby and her sister in the noble cause. He was intelligent and charming, with an even temper and seemingly unlimited patience and energy. Most of all he was kind—and never kinder than he was to Riley Owen, the young boy he had taken under his wing. But now, for the first time in her life, Ruby had discovered a side of Clarence that was less than admirable. At first she thought her husband’s self-pity was a question of belief, that he hadn’t taken Jesus into his heart. Lately, she had started to wonder if he had ever taken anyone into his heart, even her.

  She was the one who started most conversations. She was the one to initiate Sunday drives and weekend getaways and their few sexual encounters. She recalled the way he would shut her out of his bad moods, rolling onto his side in bed and rebuffing her every advance. He would think it a sign of courage, the way he swallowed all thoughts of his illness and didn’t make a peep. But Ruby knew that was more a case of endurance. Courage was different. Courage was what you found not in your descent but at the bottom of your fall, the very thing that allowed you to start over, to climb back up toward the light.

  After she had tidied the lunch dishes, she wandered into the yard. The air was warm, a beautiful May afternoon, and she walked out to the packing shed to sit with Clarence. He had just returned from the orchard, where Frank and a handful of college students were thinning the crop with bamboo poles. He was at his workbench with a handful of leaves
and branches, looking for signs of the next pest. The radio was tuned to a Tiger game. She turned it down and said, “Tell me what’s eating you.”

  He looked up a moment and then back to the magnifying glass. “I guess I’ve been thinking about those Cortlands we’ve got in cold storage,” he answered. “Should have sold them when the price was up.”

  “And that’s why you haven’t spoken to me in almost a month? The Cortlands?” She laughed and touched his hand. “Come on now, you can do better than that. I think it’s more like you blame me somehow for Cyrus leaving. Or that maybe you think you’re the only one hurt.”

  “Ruby …”

  “Don’t ‘Ruby’ me. These are things we should handle together, Clarence. You think I don’t need comfort? You didn’t even come with us to Portland. If you’d seen what they did to Hank—”

  “I didn’t want to see Hank.”

  “Well no, I know that. That much is clear. It’s like you don’t want much of anything these days.” She rubbed his hand with both of hers. In a softer, more sympathetic tone, she said, “Twenty-five years, Clarence. We’ve been married twenty-five years. And I was thinking, it’s the two of us now, just like before. Maybe it’s time for a change.”

  He bowed his head and swallowed heavily. When he turned to look at her, all she saw was fear.

  AT THE END OF JUNE, Hank moved into the Willbourne Correctional Institute, which even as an address seemed a step in the right direction. There was a feeling of hope in the idea of correction, of making something right. A penitentiary, by contrast, sounded painful, where lost souls wearily awaited final judgment. It didn’t hurt that Willbourne was brand new, with low-slung buildings set against a rural backdrop. There were no stone walls, no barbed wire, no armed guards. Inmates called it the Country Club.

  Hank had a ways to go before he’d get to see much of the place. He was still confined to his bed and had weeks of rehab before he’d even get into a wheelchair. But the metal brace had been replaced with something plastic and portable. And he had a new radio that required no batteries. He could listen all he wanted. Away from Portland’s dour cellblock, of course, the need for music wasn’t as pressing. He could be choosier in what he listened to. Some nights he turned the dial back and forth, scanning the airwaves for hours. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Maybe nothing. Or at least nothing he could explain.