His hand and arm the last time he saw her, it was splattered with it. And she was three. Three years old. Lying beside him with her cheek to his chest. And now here he is, and he’s not ready.
Daniel runs the water hot and cups it in his two hands and starts splashing the shaving cream off his face.
54
LOIS LAY on the love seat in her granddaughter’s office covered by a light blanket, her shoes off, Susan and Bobby talking quietly out in the kitchen. From where she lay she could see the desk where Susan did her work, and it was surprisingly neat. There was a clear plastic box of paper clips, a jar of pens and pencils. There was a ripped-open package of printing paper next to a coffee mug next to a short stack of hardcover and paperback books. On top of them was a box of tissues, one sticking out of the slit like a white tongue, and on the wall hung a painting of nothing recognizable, just brushstrokes of red and black that Lois couldn’t look at for too long because she began to feel she was falling somewhere dangerous. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and tried to rest.
It had felt good to cry. Damn good. And now she felt the same kind of sweet-tired she’d feel after making love so very long ago, as if her heart and lungs and various organs had been gently cleaned with a warm, wet cloth by a caring hand. Why had she kept it so bottled up all this time? But that was a stupid question, she knew. Even when Don died, she hadn’t shed but a few drops at his graveside up in Ocala. She missed him, yes, and she’d thought they’d have more time, but even for him she couldn’t go down that road of tears again, for it was a road that went on and on and took you to nothing but burning eyes and a chapped nose and the endless echo of her pitiful sounds nobody seemed to hear or care about.
Except for little Suzie. She’d bring her grandmother tissues. She’d curl up next to her on the bed and lay her head on her chest. She’d say, “Don’t be sad, Noni. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Lois wondered if Susan could recall any of that time. And when she thought of her childhood home, what did she see in her head? Their old apartment behind the arcade she’d lived in till she was twelve? Or was it the one before that? The Ocean Mist that her mother had worked so hard to make into a loving nest? Linda had her husband and new father-in-law, the wordless “Magic Mick,” paint her walls white, and she sewed and hung white curtains from every window. She placed pretty objects on sills and shelves throughout the place, and she kept the windows open all summer long to let in the sea breeze.
Or when Suzie thought of home, did she think of their house in the woods near the river off the county road? Lois hoped that’s what she thought of. It’s the one where her grandmother had stopped her crying, after all. But that’s when the yelling had started, too, though how could that be helped when Suzie began to buck her the way she did? I was just trying to protect you! Was that what Lois had yelled through her blubbering just thirty minutes ago?
“You can’t control everything, Lois. You’ve always been like this.”
The three of them were sitting at the table, Bobby eating his pizza slice while Susan picked at her salad and Lois sat back and smoked. It had calmed her for just a moment, but then Suzie began laying into her again about bringing a loaded shotgun to her house, and Lois had felt her outrage rise in her once more, though everything she said now felt old, old, old, and yet just as new as her next breath. “It isn’t loaded, but it damn well will be.”
“Great, Noni.” Susan had stood. Her jeans were a bit too loose on her, and she wasn’t wearing a bra, and her short dark hair stuck up in the back like she’d just fallen out of bed. She tossed her napkin onto her plate. “Then I lose you, too.” She left the room then. Bobby smiled sadly at Lois and began to fork salad into his mouth. Lose you, too. This part hadn’t even occurred to Lois, that Suzie would be thinking such a thing. She sat there feeling dim and a little selfish and, yes, grateful to hear it, but she almost started to blubber again, and she’d stood herself and said, “I need to lie down somewhere, Bobby. I need rest.”
Out in the kitchen Susan and her husband were quietly talking. Every half minute or so Suzie’s voice rose a bit and Lois could only make out a word or two. “No, Bobby . . . she’s always . . . so what am I supposed to . . . a fucking gun?” And her tone was the same one she’d had as a teenager whenever Lois would lay down the law about a curfew and who she could or could not see, her granddaughter’s voice high and pissed off just like now. It made Lois feel as if people never changed at all, and, well, that’s because they don’t.
Then came “my father.” It was like a hand closing around Lois’s throat. It had been years and years since Susan had uttered those two words in front of her, and Lois sure as hell did not like the tone she heard now, like Danny Ahearn was somebody Lois had withheld from Susan and she had no right to do it and now Lois was jerking the blanket off her and sitting up, her head heavy, her legs swinging off the cushions. “I can hear you out there! If you have something to say, Susan, I’ll thank you to say it to my face.”
She’d sat up too fast and Susan’s office became cloudy, Lois’s heart a fist punching her own ribs. Then Bobby was walking in. He was just a bald head and long arms before his face came into focus, warm and concerned, and he looked like he was about to say something when Susan stepped past him into the room. “Why can’t you see this from my point of view, Lois?”
“That’s all I’ve ever done your whole life, missy.”
“What?”
“Yes. You bet I have. The whole damn time. You think a single day has gone by I haven’t thought about it?”
“It? What about me? I might not even want to go see him at all, I don’t know. I just want the right to fucking think about it without worrying about you aiming one of your fucking guns at somebody. Jesus Christ.” Susan turned and brushed by Bobby and disappeared down the hall. There was the slamming of her bedroom door, then Bobby pulling his wife’s chair from under her desk and sitting in it so he faced Lois. He crossed his long legs and said, “I don’t blame you for wanting to kill him, Lois.”
Her headache was back. It was like a tight band being stretched across the front of her brain. And she was sitting on the edge of the love seat, but it was as if she were being pressed back into it, and when she took a deep breath, there was nothing deep about it.
55
FROM THE second-floor balcony of Daniel’s room in La Habana Inn, he can see out over the street to the wet sand of St. Pete Beach and the Gulf of Mexico, the late afternoon sun shining so brightly off it he needs the sunglasses he’d left in his truck. He’d parked it up against the opposite sidewalk between a camper and an imported sedan, and beyond them are tall palm trees and an outdoor tiki bar, its thatched roof woven tightly and looking new. Out in front of it are tables under wide umbrellas he can see only the tops of, though he can hear the music playing out there, a man’s voice singing over his guitar about his Chevy and a levee, and it’s starting to bring Daniel back and he doesn’t want to go back. There’s a festive bite in the air, the feeling that where he’s ended up is a place reserved for good times only, so he steps back into his room and pulls the slider shut, but now he’s sun-blind, his small room floating shadows. On his way up the stairs with his key and duffel bag, he’d passed a mounted blue swordfish over a doorway that read Business Office, and after buying some new clothes, he’s going to pick up the phone book in that office and start looking.
He isn’t going back to her school. This was something he felt as he took a left at the main road just past the security shack. It was all wrong going there first. And not just for him because he hadn’t been ready, but for her. What if he had walked into her building and knocked on her door and she didn’t want to see him? She’d have to show that in front of the people she worked with. She’d have to be part of something ugly where she worked. And part of him feels like he came down here for him and him only. How is her seeing him going to be good for her?
He doesn’t know.
And now he’s out on the sidewalk a
nd in the smells of the Gulf of Mexico—seabird shit and dried seaweed and oil from some far-off rig—and he doesn’t remember walking past the little man behind the inn’s desk, though his voice is in Daniel’s head, “Enjoy your evening, sir.” And the hazy sun is still three feet above the horizon, and Daniel’s about to walk across the street to his Tacoma for his sunglasses, but they’re cheap and don’t do much good and at the corner, under a second-floor pub gallery where men and women are drinking and laughing and talking, there is a clothing boutique and the mannequin in the front window is wearing dark sunglasses and a straw hat, and Daniel heads in that direction, the musician near the beach singing how this will be the day that he’ll die.
Daniel knows the song, but there’s no sadness in him hearing those words, just a promise to himself to do it well when the time comes. For everybody’s time comes, and yes, he feels light-limbed and weak as a boy and all he pisses now is blood, but he’s beginning to make friends with the bone-ache in his back and hips and legs, and right now he has laughter above him and the hot sea air on his skin and a thick wad of cash still in his front pocket as he walks into a shop called Vintage Joe’s.
Inside, a different music is playing. It’s classical and it’s the cello. The place smells like rolled cigars and washed linen, and there are racks of brightly colored Bermuda shirts, shelves of folded pants—brown, gray, blue—and there’s a whole wall of suit jackets under a dim gold light so they seem like the finest a man could wear. And he’s owned only one. The suit his mother and Liam bought for him for court. He wore it every day he needed it, and after he was sentenced and Linda’s little brother pointed his finger at him like he was shooting him in the face, Daniel wore it straight to lockup, though fifteen years later, the day he was released from Norfolk, he did not want to be wearing that same suit when his mother picked him up. He called her and told her to bring him some of his old work clothes, and she did, and Daniel told one of the processing screws to give that suit to any con who might need it for a hearing. When his mother died all those years later it was a cold afternoon with patches of snow still on the ground, and for the service Daniel had ironed his best shirt and bought a black tie and a new wool sweater and wore those. But never a jacket again. Almost sixty-four, and he’s never owned a jacket for the good times.
Over the cello a woman has been talking to him. And not from behind the glass counter where there are rows of sunglasses and other shiny things Daniel can’t make out. She’s standing three feet away, and she’s lovely the way fifty-year-old women are lovely, like they know their beautiful time has come and gone and now they can just be who they really were all along. This one is warm and just a little heavy, her brown hair gray at the roots. Daniel wants to apologize for not hearing her, but he says, “I don’t know.”
“I do.” She smiles. “Forty-two regular, I’d say. Here—” She reaches past him and holds a light green suit jacket up against his chest. “It’s a Joseph Abboud. Summer-weight. Try it on.” She holds it out for him to put his arms into, and he does, one arm at a time. She pulls up on his collar and pats his shoulders, smoothing her hand down along his back and away, and his eyes begin to fill, the cello rising and falling in the air like time bending here in front of him, this woman guiding him to a full-length mirror under a display of straw hats. Looking at himself in this new sports coat over his cleanest work shirt and khaki pants, it’s like seeing an old house with half its siding torn off and only one section of new siding nailed up. But he likes how the jacket fits him, how it makes him look like he’s maybe read a few books and has money in the bank, that he’s a man of leisure, a hardworking citizen whose work is done.
The woman’s hand is back on his shoulder. It’s light, and it’s heavy, and he doesn’t want to move.
“That’s a good color for you. Can I find you some pants to go with that?”
“Yes.”
She steps back and looks down at his waist. “Thirty-six?”
“I don’t know.” But he does know. Once a year he drives up to the Walmart in Seabrook and buys what he needs, and the pants are always the same, 36–32. For years they’ve been that. His habits in concrete. His habits in steel. But why doesn’t he tell her she’s right?
Because he wants her to pull out that measuring ribbon she’s pulling out now. He wants her to have to tell him to lift his arms up so she can step this close to him and get her tape around him and he can smell her hair—the warm skin of her scalp, the word gardenias in his head—then the ribbon falling away and she’s saying she was right. “Thirty-two for the length?”
“Yes.”
And as she flips through the folded pants on the shelf he sees her wedding ring, a dull old diamond, and he’s Danny again driving down to Port City with five hundred dollars to spend and he spent all of it on the tiniest diamond in the shop, though when he slid it on Linda’s finger in that office of the justice of the peace she smiled down at it like it was as good a ring as she’d ever seen, and when they got outside on those granite steps she turned it in the sunlight and said, “Look, it sparkles.”
“These work.” The woman holds a pair of lighter green pants to his waist. Her knuckles touch his belt and gut, and the cello swings lower now, dipping into notes that sound to him like a very old hunger that’s never gone away. This woman. Her caring for him, like his mother making him a second breakfast after he’d gotten kicked out of school, his mother sitting close beside him in her housecoat while he read to her from Enemy Ace and Danny’s favorite character, “The Hammer of Hell.”
“Go try these on in the fitting room. I’ll find you a shirt to go with it.”
The fitting room is just a dark corner of the store behind one of those Japanese screens, each panel covered with pictures of women in geisha robes and men in cone-shaped hats. These new pants feel like light silk against his legs, the waist a bit loose, but he has his old belt, and now a shirt flops over the top of the screen. “Try this one.” It’s the color of cream with tiny palm trees the same color all over it, and it fits better than the pants, and when Daniel walks out from behind the screen wearing the jacket too, the woman smiles at him and says, “Very distinguished.” And he can tell she means it, though her eyes have moved to his scuffed and untied work shoes, and she shakes her head. “Oh, dear, you’ll need alligator-skin with that ensemble. Do you own any?”
“No.”
“How about a belt? I have just the thing.” She turns and leads him to the glass counter and pulls a shiny brown belt off a standing rack beside it. Daniel takes it from her and works it through the belt loops of his new pants. Doing this, he can see the scuffed toes of his work shoes, and he knows she’s right about them, but again, there comes the feeling that he’s overdoing it, that it’s one thing to present himself well to his daughter, but it’s another thing if he looks too good.
Like he’s done just fine for himself without her.
Which he has not. No, he has not.
“No?”
Daniel’s face warms and he pulls the new belt out of the loops and hands it back to her. “I’ll just take the clothes.”
“You sure?” She’s smiling at him again, but it’s a slightly teasing smile, as if she’s known him longer than she has and she’s earned to right to do this when she hasn’t.
“Just the clothes.” Daniel turns and walks back to the “fitting room.” He didn’t come in here for clothes like these. Just some new khakis and a polo. Maybe a new pair of work shoes.
The music is different now. When did that happen? It’s some jazz singer, a black woman’s voice singing slow and long about a gentleman she used to know. Behind her voice are the tinkling of bar glasses, a man coughing, Daniel probably a small boy when this woman sang this song. The war had been over for a few years, and Liam Ahearn had stayed in the Navy and was painting planes at the Lakehurst hangars in New Jersey, the same field where that massive blimp exploded before the war, Daniel’s mother saying, “I was a little girl then, Danny, but I remember i
t. Nobody can tell me I don’t. It lit up the whole sky. The whole sky, Danny.”
Liam, the quiet sailor who’d maybe seen and done things in that war he’d never told his son. But the way he looked at Danny the last time Danny wore a suit, Liam was hunched in his courtroom seat beside Danny’s mother, and he was dressed in a white shirt and a short black tie, and he was looking at Danny like he’d never seen him before but also like he reminded him of other men and they were no damned good.
Daniel carries the clothes over his arm to the woman. She’s standing behind the counter now. The light from the display case puts her face in a strange shadow so that she doesn’t seem so warm anymore. He sets the pants, shirt, and jacket onto the glass. Under it, lined up on a shiny white material, are pairs of gold-rimmed sunglasses, their leather cases open beside them, and he points to a dark pair of aviators, the kind Will Price used to wear. “I’ll take those.”
“The Ray-Bans?”
“Yeah.”
Daniel will do that much, but not this suit. Did he forget who he was?
She hands him the new sunglasses, and she’s smiling again. “Are you here for business?”
“No. Yeah.”
She laughs. “You don’t know which. That’s a good sign. You must love what you do.”
Soaking a coil of fresh cane in a bucket in his small yard under the sun. Working it through caning holes a dead man had hand-drilled over a hundred years ago. Weaving each strand with his needle-nose and fingers till the pattern looks like an artist had done it and it has just the right give and bounce. Yeah, he enjoys his work, he does, but now the woman puts on a pair of red reading glasses and is flipping over the tag on the jacket’s sleeve and writing the price on a sales slip. He reaches over and touches her wrist. She jumps just a bit, and he pulls his hand back and wants to apologize. “Just the sunglasses.”
“Really?” She looks at him through her reading glasses, and she’s just used the surprised, slightly concerned tone one friend would with another. It’s a tone Daniel has overheard in diners and restaurants for years but rarely, if ever, has had it directed at him.
Gone So Long Page 39