The Mercy of Thin Air

by Ronlyn Domingue

  “I didn’t do anything. We agreed to a postponement.”

  “Have you gone cuckoo? Postpone what?”

  “The decision. Until we hear back about our applications. March, probably.”

  “What does that have to do with the price of beans? He wants to marry you. And if you’d stop being so ridiculous and bullheaded and—and modern—well, you’d realize you want to marry him, too.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “You love him. Isn’t that enough?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re two sides of the same coin. You’re what poets can’t put into words. You’re a perfect match.”

  “Spare me, Twolls.”

  “Don’t miss your chance. Marry him, Razi.” She takes my hands in a sisterly embrace. “Who gets to love someone as much as you love him twice in a lifetime?”

  EMMALINE places a cup of coffee and a saucer of ginger snaps on the end table near Twolly. My dear friend thanks her, and the look they share is an entire conversation. With quick steps, Emmaline crosses the study and closes the heavy door. Andrew does not mutter a word.

  “I couldn’t come into town without seeing you,” Twolly says, “even though it’s a short trip, for my friend David’s—I’m leaving the morning after their reception.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “I know. I wanted to.” She reaches for a cookie, nibbles an eighth of it. “Did Emmaline make these? They’re wonderful. She’s such a terrific cook. Our housekeeper always puts too much baking soda in whatever she makes. Cookies like crackers. My little sister Soleil throws them to the grackles. Those birds will eat anything.”

  Andrew pulls a cigarette case from his left pocket. He leans over the couch for a match from his father’s humidor. His right hand is bandaged, protecting the deep clean slice under his little finger. He lights the cigarette, closes his eyes. The first drag is long, like a kiss.

  “I’ve only seen you smoke at parties.”

  “New habit.”

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “I cut it. An accident.” His tone warns her not to ask for details.

  She sips her coffee and finishes her cookie in two bites. “So when are you leaving for school? It must start soon.”

  “Two weeks.”

  “I heard New England will be simply beautiful in the next month or so. All the leaves turning colors. Not like here. We’re lucky to see that for a week.”

  “New York is out, then.”

  “I’m not going. I thought about it. What’s the point, really? I never wanted to be a world-known artist or anything. Anyway, I don’t want to be away from my family right now. Not now. Considering. I hardly know my sisters anymore. I missed out during these past four years.”

  “They were good ones.”

  “Yes, they were.” Twolly holds the cup in her thin, long fingers on her lap. She stares down. A moment later, the dark pool ripples once, twice. She clenches her jaw and discreetly wipes her lashes. “Andrew—”

  He peers through the tobacco fog. The cigarette is half burned.

  “Can I do anything for you?” she asks.

  “No.”

  Twolly clutches her handbag and moves to sit next to him. Andrew continues to smoke, hard gusts held tight. In her purse, she finds paper and a pencil. She scrawls a few lines against her knee. “Here.” Twolly stuffs the paper into his left palm and holds his fingers closed around it. “That is my address and telephone number. No matter where you are, ever, ever, I want you to let me know. That’s all. I don’t expect long letters. A simple note will suffice.”

  “Why?”

  “I care what happens to you.”

  He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t pull away. Twolly doesn’t let him go. Andrew suffocates the cigarette nib with three blunt taps. He needs to cry, with her, again. That happened only once that I witnessed, two weeks after I was buried. The tenderness between them was familial. At least, I had thought, they aren’t so alone in their sorrow.

  “Do you promise to write me?” she asks finally.

  “One condition.” Andrew doesn’t turn. “This is never spoken of again. You know too much.” His face pivots like an owl’s, controlled and cautious.

  Twolly stares at his eyes. She leans back. She must notice the absence of light there, the fissures in the blue that have begun to change the color completely. “If that’s what you want. I expect I’ll be in my parents’ home for a while. Eligible men aren’t exactly lining up at the front steps.”

  “In time.”

  The door folds open. “Hey, old sport. How about a—” Warren halts before he gets into the room. “Sorry. The Negro boy didn’t tell me you had company.”

  “How are you, Warren?” Twolly releases Andrew’s hand.

  “Hey, good to see you. I’d heard you went back home to Shreveport.”

  “I’m in town for a visit. I thought you and Anna had moved to Pennsylvania.”

  “We are,” Warren says. “It took a little longer to get ready to move after graduation and the wedding. We leave on Monday. My job starts the following week. Come on, best man, let’s go to the movies. I’m bored. Twolly, do you want to join us?”

  “I don’t want to go,” Andrew says.

  Warren strides over to the window and tucks the sheers behind midnight drapes. “You’re pasty. What about a round of tennis? A little cruise? I have Father’s roadster.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll leave you boys to your fun.” Twolly kisses Andrew on the cheek and squeezes his forearm. “You promised.”

  “You promised.” Andrew stands and puts Twolly’s address in his pocket. His hand lingers within the space, then visibly, force-fully, clenches into a fist. “Thank you both for stopping by.” He rushes past them but stops with his back in the doorway. “And Warren, you know the boy’s name is Simon. Use it.”

  Twolly and Warren stare into the hall, then at each other.

  “He’s not doing well,” Twolly says.

  “No. Breaks my heart,” Warren replies. “He’s not himself at all.”

  WHEN SHE opened the door, Sarah Beeker Washington reached her arms across the threshold. She hugged the older woman tightly and kissed her cheek as if they were old friends. Once they separated, Nora O’Connell Richmond introduced her daughter and son-in-law.

  “I know them already,” Sarah said. “They bought Daddy’s—Mr. O’Connell’s bookcase. If I had realized who she was then, I would’ve given it to her.” She embraced Amy warmly. “I owe you a refund. I can’t keep what doesn’t belong to me.”

  The living room was furnished with a beautiful camelback sofa, two wingback chairs, and an antique opium table. Sarah had eclectic but elegant taste. Over coffee, they visited without the stilted small talk of virtual strangers. There were no awkward moments. The bond between their fathers had extended to them.

  As they talked, none of them could figure out why Sarah had received another letter from Barrett Burrat. In that last note, she had been instructed to search her father’s house again, closely, to look for items that may have been in Simon Beeker’s possession and forgotten for decades. Her brother, Benjamin, had referenced a box in his letter, which may or may not have existed. She was given the names and phone numbers of Andrew O’Connell’s heirs, who would have to grant permission for a review of any documents left behind. When Sarah called Nora, more than forty years after they had first met, Andrew’s firstborn daughter cried when she learned of the treasure Simon had taken great care to preserve.

  Amy searched the room the entire time, faking a stretch or straightening some part of Scott’s clothing. I knew what she looked for. I’d found it in the office in the back of the house. A footlocker, stenciled “S. Beeker,” was tucked against a wall.

  “Mrs. Washington, would you mind if we got a peek at what you found while you two catch up?” Amy asked.

  “Of course not. Down the hall, last door on the right.”

 
Amy nearly sprinted out of the room, with Scott trailing behind. The footlocker’s hinged top was open before he walked through the door. She glanced to her left and noticed a large, clear plastic box with her and her mother’s names taped to the top. The envelopes inside were addressed in Andrew’s handwriting, his letters to Simon Beeker and Emmaline Coteau. Amy chose to begin with the footlocker.

  A film projector was the first item out, followed by six canisters that Amy judged as full when she held them. Thick twine batched three sets of letters. Under the letters were boxes filled with film negatives, photographs, his old camera, and unused developing paper. There was a catalog from a photographic supply company. A moving-picture camera was wrapped in an old flour sack on top of his college yearbooks.

  Amy looked at the first letter in a bundle. “Mr. Andrew O’Connell, St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana. We’ve been up and down that street a hundred times. But there’s no return address.” Her fingers tugged at the tight, knotted string. Scott handed her a small pocketknife to cut it apart. She didn’t move.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’m actually nervous. I’m about to meet my grandfather.” Her hands trembled as she slipped the yellowed stationery from the envelope. “Barely Thursday, November 1, 1928. My Darling Andrew, Where your tongue lingered tonight, there is a sweet solferino bruise made darker because my hand cannot leave it alone. I am abandoned to an ache deeper than the skin. Yours, truly—Razi, your little succubus.”

  “Oh, my God,” Scott said.

  “Oh, my God,” she echoed. “Do you think he wrote back?”

  “The question is, what did he do back?”

  “Scott, really.” Amy shook her head in feigned disgust. “I can’t imagine they’re all like this. And that he kept them. And that he ever let them out of his sight.”

  “Read another one.”

  “Wednesday, December 7, 1927. Dear Andrew, How delighted I was to receive the little monkey figurine. He’s on the dresser looking at me now. Twolly was here when I got it, and she pestered me until I told her what it was for. She thinks you’re a peach of a fellow to listen to me on my soapbox. I swore you got a word in edgewise, but I don’t think she believed me. I do get passionate sometimes. Everyone gets used to it. Sincerely, Razi.”

  Amy flicked through the stack, glancing at postmarks. There was one without a stamp. It was the last letter I had written to him, the one my father had saved, the one Simon had salvaged. The bloodstain on the envelope had not faded.

  “Why didn’t Aunt Twolly tell me that she knew Poppa Fin long before he married my grandma? She didn’t tell any of us. And what about that ‘our fathers knew each other from business’ explanation about how Poppa and Grandma met? Aunt Twolly knew him first, and I’ll bet knew him well.”

  “But why didn’t your Grandma Sunny tell the whole story?”

  “What if she never knew?” Amy asked.

  “Knew what?” Nora said as she and Sarah entered the room.

  “Did you know that Poppa knew Aunt Twolly from college?”

  “No, that’s not right. She went to Tulane—Newcomb College. He went to Oxford. Their families knew each other.”

  “Are you sure?” Amy asked.

  “Mr. Fin went to Tulane first,” Sarah said, “then to Oxford to study philosophy, and then Boston for law school. Daddy said my great-grandmother Emmaline got letters from England and Boston now and then.”

  “What? Law school?” Nora said. “He never practiced law.”

  “No, but he had the degree. He taught the subject. Didn’t you know?” Sarah was clearly surprised.

  “Poppa was a rhetoric professor. He retired from the university in Lafayette.” She paused. “Rhetoric. My God, it figures.” Nora looked hurt. She pointed at the bundles near Amy’s lap. “What are those?”

  “Proof.”

  THE STORIES Sarah Washington remembered most were her father’s accounts of his reunions with Andrew—Fin—O’Connell.

  During Emmaline’s funeral service, Simon had turned to scan the pews. He knew that Andrew had received the telegram about his grandmother’s passing, and Andrew himself had confirmed that he would attend the funeral. Seated alone in the back was a solitary white man, his black hair carefully combed. They nodded at each other when the family made its slow walk down the center aisle and out of the church.

  Simon greeted Andrew after the burial. As he reached out his hand, Simon noticed that the man’s eyes had changed. Simon had remembered them as the darkest blue he’d ever seen, what he imagined was the color of the middle of the sea, but that reunion day, the irises were a strange blue-green. Against his fair skin and black hair, Andrew’s eyes looked—as Simon said—haunted.

  When Simon spoke his name, Thank you for coming, Mr. Andrew, the young college man was corrected. Fin, he said. Simply Fin. A classmate exposed my middle name, and I was on the Oxford rowing team at the time. The nickname stuck, I prefer it now. I don’t go by Andrew any longer.

  He didn’t need an explanation. Simon—twenty-three, a freshman at Howard University, the new beau of a lovely girl named Liza-Beth—realized that what he had witnessed the summer of 1929 had shattered that gentle man at his core.

  That night, after they met for a drink in a club known for its swing, Simon asked if he could keep in touch. Fin said he would find Simon first. Fin had graduated from Boston University with his juris doctorate the previous June and was traveling until he decided what he wanted to do. At the end of the evening, Simon asked why he had not attended Yale as he had planned. Fin replied that going would have invited too many memories. Nothing more. They shook hands. Simon never thought he’d hear from the man again.

  Occasional postcards and letters passed between them for several years. Then, when Simon moved his family to their second home, he rediscovered a collection of boxes his grandmother had left for him after she died. Her instructions had been clear: See that he gets them one day. Simon asked to visit Fin one summer in 1958 and was surprised to receive a positive reply. Although the Beeker family was welcomed, the largest piece of luggage Simon had taken with them, a footlocker, was left at the station. Fin O’Connell refused to even know its contents. On the ride to the O’Connells’ home, throughout a pleasant conversation, Simon remembered that Fin kept his hand in his right pocket, twirling change with a steady rhythm.

  The speed of a prayer, Sarah said. Daddy said he rolled that change at the speed of a prayer. My father had a strange way with words. I think he read too much.

  AMY BREATHED sharp when the razor ripped an inch-long strip of epidermis from her ankle. The bath water turned pink at the site where her foot submerged. She finished shaving and rinsed the almond-scented conditioner from her hair.

  Scott poked his face through the door. “Want to watch the DVD tonight?”

  “Sure. It won’t take too long,” she said. “Only three of the six canisters were any good. The others didn’t develop. They couldn’t be transferred.”

  “I was reading those letters again, and—”

  “You know, there’s something inappropriate about your fixation. She’s my dead grandfather’s dead girlfriend.” Amy laughed.

  “We both have good taste in women. Listen, I found that ring slipped in with one of the letters. Do you want me to put it back with the jewelry?”

  “No, I’m going to put it in a bookcase drawer. I think it belongs there, with the pictures of Razi.” Amy stepped on the white mat, and watery blood ran toward the floor.

  “What happened?”

  “Just a slice.” She wrapped the towel around her body.

  “You’re bleeding everywhere.” He handed her some tissue. “I didn’t realize Razi’s last letter and that ring were connected.”

  “Neither did I.” Amy pressed the cut with the wad of paper. She said nothing more. She didn’t tell him she had found Andrew’s ring, out of its box, balanced on its side, on top of her jewelry chest one morning and carefully read the inscription again. When sh
e ate her breakfast, the letter was out of its envelope, spread flat, at her place at the table. Amy had searched the room with her eyes, held her breath, and tilted her ears from side to side. Then she nodded, as if she understood directions given.

  “I’m going to load the DVD player,” Scott said.

  Amy hobbled to the sink, found bandages and antiseptic, and propped her foot on the tub to inspect the injury. The flow was still steady. She kept pressure against the broken skin for several moments with one hand, rubbing a towel against her hair with the other. Amy breathed deeply, then sighed. I cooled the air to ease the flow at her foot. She shivered.

  I smelled her blood—and Andrew subtle, diluted, within it.

  The day she found the bookcase, perhaps Amy had sensed him, too, his bloodstains like tannin within the drawer where he hid images of my body. A recognition deeper than the flesh, beyond the conscious, ordinary awareness of the senses. Almost instinct, the way an animal knows the members of its pack, a baby knows her mother, two people flood with a mysterious urge to embrace as lovers.

  Amy covered and taped the wound. She walked into her bedroom and stood before the full-length mirror in the closet.

  There she was. Naked. I saw Andrew again, altered. The shape of her eyes, the cut of her nose, a familiar freckle—how could I have missed that surprising dark spot on that fair skin?—on her left hip. Her auburn hair, proof of the recessive strand that had run like hemoglobin through each of his black follicles, dormant, waiting. Amy slipped her palms over her breasts and down the arcs of her hips. In that motion, I saw myself. The small pink-tipped peaks, smooth flat abdomen, slight curves below the waist.

  As she grew up, had he ever looked at his venturesome granddaughter from across a room, in his quiet way, and saw something, someone, he missed?

  From a hanger, she pulled the big white robe Scott never used. Amy slipped into it as she stepped toward her nightstand. Slowly, she opened the drawer and reached for her diaphragm. I watched her rub the edge with spermicide. Amy placed her foot on the bed, crouched, ready to slip the contraceptive into her body. Then, after a pause, she placed it back in its case. When she turned to leave, she seemed relaxed, prepared.