“Alice?” he asked, sitting up straight, blinking. “What the hell?”
“You fell asleep with the remote again,” she said, trying to sound cheerful.
“I wasn’t asleep, I’m trying to watch this,” he said. He rubbed his eyes and concentrated on the TV screen.
“Oh, I thought you were asleep,” Alice said, retreating to the couch.
Ed glanced at her. “You want to watch one of those freak shows again? Can’t you watch those all day and let me see the sports report at night?”
Not freak shows, she thought. And if that’s what you think I do all day. She re-settled the quilt around her and looked at the walls. The wallpaper was supposed to be cream colored with little blue cornflowers, but it was—what. Yellow-beige. Sickly yellow. Pale beigey-brown.
“Sorry, Hon,” Ed said eventually. “Long day.”
“I know,” she said.
He was falling asleep again, his tie loosened to the ridge between his upper chest and his soft belly. His pants were too tight and his feet, freed from shoe and sock, held aloft by the footrest of the chair as if in some absurd offering to the ceiling, were pale and hairy.
His feet smelled, Alice thought. She closed her eyes and told herself not to think unkind thoughts. It wasn’t Ed’s fault. Who ever wanted to know anyone this well? It would be the same with anyone. She leaned back against the arm of the couch. She stood up, took her plastic tumbler from the coffee table, and went into the kitchen. It looked clean and tired, she thought; a scarred table took up most of the floor space and the linoleum on the floor was old.
She opened the fridge and stared. Wrapped leftovers, a Styrofoam tray of hamburger she was defrosting for the next day, bottles of soda, plastic half-gallons of milk and orange juice, two six-packs of beer. She poured herself some diet soda and stood by the open fridge, tapping her fingers against her cup. She returned to the living room, taking the remote from Ed’s hand as she went by him. Re-settling on the sofa, she switched the channel to a talk program and turned the volume up two notches so she could hear over the wind.
Ed snorted and tried to roll over on his side. Alice wrapped the quilt around her shoulders and stood up, shaking Ed’s knee to wake him. He woke up enough to say he’d be right up so Alice went without him. She checked on the kids, leaning over Ed Jr.’s square face, feeling his forehead, and moving quietly down the hall to look in at Jenny. She brushed her teeth, thinking that if Ed didn’t come up soon she really would be asleep if he made a pass. But when he came to bed he put his arms around her from behind and kissed her neck. Had she checked the kids? She had, Eddie would be ok for school in the morning, he had no fever. Ed was kissing her shoulder, shoulder-blade. He had strong arms, that was always nice. The wind blowing, kids sleeping, Ed kissing.
“I love you, Hon,” he said.
A bit of white moonlight hung in the big window above Ed’s bureau. His clothes were piled in an old armchair. Clothes and laundry and dust; a desk piled deep with mail and bills.
“I love you, too,” she said, but she didn’t move.
Ed sighed and turned away from her.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said, evenly.
The alarm clock buzzed and Ed groped to turn it off. Alice, still mostly asleep, sat up and put her feet on the floor. That was the first move when the clock went off—if she didn’t get her feet down immediately, she’d fall back asleep.
She made her way down the hall, rubbing her eyes, her right hand feeling for the light switch. She found the switch and squinted in the sudden bright.
“Eddie! Jenny! Time to wake up, guys!”
She heard Ed lumber down the hall to the bathroom. The shower water began.
“Alice? Alice! Could you come here, please?”
As she approached the bathroom the door opened and steam rushed into the hallway. Ed’s face appeared, his hair wet and pushed back from his eyes in a pile.
“Did you buy shaving cream?” he asked. “Didn’t I ask you to buy more shaving cream?”
“I did,” Alice said, remembering that she’d bought it and put it in the medicine cabinet above the sink. “I think I did. Check the—”
“What? Could you come look, please?”
Ed left the door ajar and turned back to the water. Alice got the shaving cream from the medicine chest. Through the frosted glass of the shower stall she could see the outline of her husband’s body, scrubbing and reaching; she could hear his hands slap wetly against skin. He was humming and grunting.
“Found it,” she said.
A soapy arm stretched toward her. Alice put the can of shaving cream into Ed’s hand and left the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
“Ma, I gotta go!” Eddie implored her. His face twisted as he gripped the waistband of his pajama bottoms with clenched fists.
“Run downstairs, your father’s in there,” Alice said.
“Ooooh,” Eddie groaned, turning to run to the stairs. “He’s always in there first.”
Alice padded to the kitchen and set out cereal bowls, spoons, and milk for the kids. She brewed a pot of coffee. Maybe she could get the houses cleaned extra quickly today and have an hour off in the afternoon; she could go for a walk in the Public Gardens or have a cup of coffee somewhere on Newbury Street. The pond in the Public Gardens would be drained, the swan boats gone for the winter, but it was still nice to sit with a cup of coffee and watch the artists leaning into their canvases or the tourists taking pictures of the footbridge or the statue of General Washington on his horse.
As her family ate breakfast she stood to the side, drinking her coffee, putting juice on the table when one asked, separating the kids when they started elbowing each other, all the while glancing at pants, shirts, hair, fingernails, palms.
“Hon, I can’t find my black socks—the nice ones, you know, the ones—”
“I don’t know, I folded them with your laundry. Did you check in the second drawer down?”
Alice gripped her cup of coffee with both hands.
“Hon? Alice?”
“Ma’s spaced out,” Eddie said.
“Yes?” she said.
“The socks? The nice ones, the ones I bought—”
“Second drawer. If they’re not there, I have no idea where they are.”
Ed looked up at the white plastic clock and took a long last sip of coffee. “Damn, I gotta get going,” he said, rushing from the room, pulling on his suit jacket.
“Time for the bus,” Alice said to the kids, who ran into the front hall for their coats.
“How many jobs today?” Ed asked, coming back through the living room, balancing on alternate legs to tie his shoes.
“Ahhh, three,” Alice said. “The Fultons, the Pinchbecks, and, ahhh, I can’t remember just now.”
“If you get a few more regulars, we should think about hiring you some help,” Ed said, pulling on his coat.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Alice mumbled.
“You’re not a housecleaner,” he told her. “You’re an entrepreneur. It’s a good business to get started in, too.”
Alice smiled at him. “I know.”
“I love ya.” He kissed her cheek.
“Me too,” she answered.
“Come on, Ma,” Eddie called from the front door. “We gotta catch the bus!”
“Damn it,” Ed said, looking at his watch. “They better not miss that bus.”
Alice went to the front hall and pulled on her navy blue parka and a pair of Ed’s boots. Eddie pulled at her arm to hurry her. They left the house in a group. Ed got in his car and waved as he backed out of the driveway.
“Come on, guys,” Alice said. She took Jenny’s hand and Eddie fell in beside her as they walked to the end of the street. Behind them a train lumbered past, shaking the ground. The sun was up and it was chilly. Alice leaned over to zip Jenny’s coat.
The yellow bus whined to a stop and the door folded open. Alice waved to the driver and kissed
her daughter goodbye. Eddie yelled “Bye Ma!” and climbed on the bus without allowing a kiss.
Alice watched the exhaust from the bus disappear into the sharp air. She turned and walked home, her husband’s boots clomping on the cracked sidewalk.
Chapter Four
Sam and Mrs. Atlee
Sam woke up to his alarm clock and before he opened his eyes he imagined his office, people at desks talking on phones, talking to each other, eating and talking all day and papers being written and copies made and filed and retrieved and always the telephone ringing somewhere and someone answering, looking for papers and leaving notes about calls and needed papers. He thought of the carpeted hallways, of sitting in his own little office staring at the computer screen and the phone ringing and his assistant out at her desk, gossiping. He could imagine every step of the walk from his office to the bathroom, every person he’d meet along the way and the polite words he’d have with each of them.
Ok, today isn’t so bad, he told himself. He would go to work. Work. Every five days he got two off and every couple of weeks a paycheck. The people were nice, really; you couldn’t blame them for being dull. In their own lives they weren’t dull, of course. No one bored himself. Except me, he thought. What a ridiculous thought—“except me.” Maybe they all bored themselves but were just too polite to mention it. Anyway, it didn’t matter, he couldn’t go to that office. Not today. He’d missed a few days recently, and could think of five things he had to get done that day, but he could miss another and deal with the pile of papers on his desk the next morning. He had to get up and leave a message for his assistant, Debbie.
He got out of bed and went to his small kitchen and made some coffee and sat in his boxer shorts, sipping, glancing at the newspaper. Ok, he thought, get the call over with. He dialed Debbie’s extension and left a message that he had something to take care of—he had to check in on his grandmother, who was sick, but thought he’d be in by early afternoon.
He stretched and yawned. A half-day of freedom, what should he do with it? He read the sports section and took a shower, standing for a while under the hot water, hoping it would clear his job from his head. He got out of the shower and stood for a minute in the hallway, holding a towel around his waist. He needed to go somewhere—that living room, small and messy, with bare walls save for one black and white photo of Boston’s old West End before it was torn down to accommodate the expressway in the 1950’s, hanging over his futon couch, could make life feel small and if he didn’t go out soon he’d end up on that couch, his feet up on the shaky coffee table, watching television. He needed life to feel expansive, as if his small part in it wasn’t so—depressing—tiny—soiled—or at least if it were all those things it didn’t matter as much because everyone is small, everyone is tiny and soiled compared to how big life is.
He dressed quickly and pulled his black knit cap low over his forehead. Outside, it was a little warmer than he’d expected; the sky was cloudy but the sun came through in patches. He walked around the corner to a coffee shop and as he waited in line decided he’d go out to the Old North Bridge, a quiet park outside the city with a small wooden bridge, a field, and a hill, not far from where Thoreau had holed up in his cabin. Sam loved to go sit on the hill and look at the bridge, the narrow, muddy river, and the monuments to the minutemen who had fought the British there on the first day of the Revolution.
He parked in the small lot across from the park and walked slowly up the wide, tree-lined path to the bridge. The river was dark, hardly moving, it seemed. To Sam’s left a faded Union Jack marked the spot where the two British soldiers killed in the fight were buried; a bronze plaque, green with age, memorialized them. Sam stopped for a minute at the plaque and then walked out on the bridge, stopping halfway across to look down at the still river. Across the bridge, beside the path leading up the hill, was the field in which the Minutemen had gathered before the fight. The trees along the bank were full of yellow, brown, and red leaves; the sun came out from behind a cloud. Sam looked from the water to the graves to the hill. Just where he was standing men had killed each other. As a kid, when he’d visited the bridge, he’d been half-scared as he looked at the water that one of the dead British soldiers would float to the surface, eyes popping out.
Sam left the bridge, walked past the statue of the minuteman with his rifle, and, about halfway up the hill, took a seat on a bench. The sun went behind a cloud. An elderly couple walked by and said “Good morning.” My problem, Sam thought, is easily inflated hope. Little things would make him suddenly and strongly hopeful—a good day at work meant he might start to love his job; a good date with a woman meant he might fall in love—which left him, when the hope calmed, blank and sad. Hope might be good but hope gained and lost and gained and lost is exhausting; and so he felt exhausted.
He tucked into his jacket and watched the sky. He thought of Mrs. Atlee and wanted to talk to her, maybe she knew something, maybe she could tell him—what. Something. He wanted to feel that he felt something other than tired or pressured.
The clouds shifted. One was an old man, another a rooster, another a desk stretching up and away. Sam walked to the edge of the river, found a damp log to sit on, and stared at the still, murky water.
Across the river, sitting on his tombstone, a British soldier, his red coat tattered, his face sallow and bored, yawned and blinked; he stared at the field, at the sky, waiting to go home, angry that he’d come 3,000 miles to such a beautiful spot only to be shot and scalped.
On his way home Sam decided to stop in and see Mrs. Atlee. He parked in his father’s driveway, relieved to see that his stepmother’s car wasn’t there. He let himself in the house, climbed the back stairs, and knocked gently on Mrs. Atlee’s door.
“For God’s sake, give me a minute,” he heard, followed by a violent coughing fit.
Sam closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. He heard the bed springs squeaking and more coughing.
“Well, what do you want?” came the toneless, bubbling voice.
“It’s Sam,” he said, pushing the door open. “I just stopped—”
“Oh,” Mrs. Atlee said, a pillow almost wrapping her face. The two small lumps of her feet moved beneath the comforter. “I thought you were the other one. It’s the worst thing about being sick, people coming and going all the time.”
“I just stopped in to say hello,” Sam said, approaching her.
“Horrible,” Mrs. Atlee said. “Horrible, horrible. Try using the toilet knowing that at any moment your most spiteful child might walk in.”
Sam put his hands in his pockets. “How are you feeling today?” he asked.
“I hate bananas, and if I drink orange juice my stomach will explode from the acid,” Mrs. Atlee said. “But that was my breakfast.”
“That’s what she brought you?” Sam asked. “I could get you something else.
Mrs. Atlee shook with coughing and retching. The lumps of her feet rose and fell three times in quick succession. Sam stepped forward but a pale hand waved him back to his seat.
“Just some water, if you would,” Mrs. Atlee said.
Sam took the water glass from the bedside table into the bathroom and filled it.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Atlee said as he handed it to her. She held the glass in two hands and drank half the water before pausing to gasp in air. She turned her bright black eyes to Sam.
“Shouldn’t you eat something?” he asked. “I can get you whatever you’d like.”
“There are no more ‘shoulds,’” Mrs. Atlee said. “Sit. Sit for a minute.”
Sam sat in the armchair.
“You won’t believe this,” Mrs. Atlee said, sliding her head to the edge of her pillow so she could see Sam. “But I was a very nice person until about 1948.”
“What happened in 1948?” Sam asked.
Mrs. Atlee coughed and started to laugh. “Oh, I don’t know. Truman defeated Dewey?” She forced the words out in short gasps between coughs. Her feet moved up and do
wn and her laughter spun from a deep, quagmire snuffle to a high-pitched squeak.
“No, Dear, no,” she said at length. “Even worse than a Democrat. That one, downstairs. She was late. Years late. A mistake. I didn’t have the energy anymore and I never could forgive her.” She wheezed and shook. Spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth.
Sam blinked.
“Besides,” Mrs. Atlee added, taking a sip of water. “Her personality has been the same since we came home from the hospital. Gimme, gimme. I remember as the car pulled up to the house and her father came round to open my door—I remember thinking, ‘Well, at least maybe she’ll be quiet.’ And as we got out and she saw her sisters lined up on the top step to meet her she let out a long yell. My God.” She drank the rest of the water. “Oh Lord, I need a cigarette,” she gasped. She lay back on the pillow, holding the empty water glass out, and was quiet.
Sam took the glass from her and listened to her breathing and to the clock ticking. He gazed out the window at the branches of a cold tree. The room was close and dim. Mrs. Atlee’s breathing leveled off and he thought she must be asleep. He re-filled the water glass in the bathroom.
“I learned to swear in 1951,” Mrs. Atlee said as he came back to her bedside. She laughed and coughed, pressing her head back into the pillow. “Thank you, Sam.”
“No problem,” Sam said.
Mrs. Atlee peered at him. “So, no work today,” she said.
“I’ll probably go in this afternoon. If I can muster the energy.”
“Ahh, one of those days,” Mrs. Atlee said. “What did you do instead?”
“Not a lot. Sat on my butt and stared at the clouds.”
“Are they nice today?”
“Yeah, they are. I went out to the Old North Bridge, have you been out there?”
“Yes, years ago.”
“I love it out there. I’m not sure why.”
Mrs. Atlee laughed. “I’ll tell you why,” she said. “It’s beautiful, and it was violent there, and you have an active imagination.”
Sam smiled. “It was nice today. It was quiet. There weren’t any tourists.”
THE GHOST DETECTIVE: Boston Page 3