The Way It Happens In Novels

by Kathleen O'Connor

  In every auditorium there was always one kid, a little more intense than the others, his very love for the game made all the more poignant by his fragile physique. Richard imagined that this kid played football—all by himself, but he played. He would be the kid alone in the snowy vacant lot with a wool hat pulled down to his cheeks, tiny wrists poking out of a windbreaker with an NFL insignia on it. And he would not even be playing with a real football, just one of those bright blue or orange foam jobs. But he’d spot his imaginary receivers, make the snap, and be playing pure ball, unadulterated by greed, commentators, or prime-time television.

  But there had never been a Chucky Freedman. And Cheryl, he was damn sure—would even put money on it—had never thrown a football in her life. So what did it all mean? He didn’t know.

  Al nudged him. “Ring,” he whispered, and began pushing Richard’s chair toward the center. The ring, the ring, the ring was where? He panicked for a second, but then the answer came to him with the certainty of a memorized response from the Baltimore Catechism. (Who made you? God made me to show forth his goodness.) The ring was under his right leg. The ring was under his right leg.

  His hand was steady as he slipped the ring onto her finger. True to form, she had no ring for him. Just as she had not bought a new dress or put a ribbon in her hair.

  After they exchanged vows, he went with Cheryl and her parents to the all-purpose room. Cheryl had been surprised that he knew Rose and Al. But Good Lord!—did she think they would just let her marry anybody?

  There was a pile of gifts on a table in there. Cheryl flushed with pleasure. She had not expected gifts, and their quality did nothing to diminish her pleasure. She gushed over each one. First she displayed plastic place mats, which had been made by laminating used birthday and get-well cards in the arts and crafts class. “We’ll have to invite you all for dinner and use these,” she said, smiling at the Mouse and her girlfriend.

  They most certainly would not have these people over, Richard reflected. But maybe Cheryl said things out of nervous politeness. He would have to understand her more fully. His very survival depended on it.

  Next she held up a rhinestone-eyed cat made from a light bulb attached to a beer bottle and spray-painted gold. “For my dresser,” she cooed. Most of the other items were innocuous and utilitarian: washcloths, pot holders, and dish towels.

  When the presents were cleared from the table, Vernice and Maria came in with a massive sheet cake. Cheryl, knife in hand, moved toward the table. Richard was afraid she would plop a bit of the cake into his mouth, and he would choke helplessly. But instead she just coated her index finger with frosting and held it in front of his lips. Rather than licking the gooey stuff, he pretended to misunderstand and kissed her thumb. She blushed.

  “Let’s go home,” he whispered softly but distinctly.

  She hunched her shoulders and eyed him guiltily. As she knelt beside him, her expression reminded him of Heinz right after the dog had torn down the curtains. “Oh, gosh, Richard. Didn’t I tell you? I couldn’t get any aides for the weekend. So I am having the wheelchair ambulance service pick you up and bring you over tomorrow morning.” She penitently grabbed his armrest and gave him a pleading, little-girl, don’t-be-mad look.

  He stared at her. What was she saying? Were they married or not? “I come now or I don’t come at all.”

  “Oh, Richard. Be reasonable.”

  “You want another annulment? Go catch the priest.”

  He had wounded her and brought her close to tears. But she had to understand he was her husband, not some pet she could pick up for her temporary amusement.

  She shrugged and rose to her feet. “I’ll go ask Al if he thinks we can manage.” Al was across the room staring vacantly at a fuse box.

  Vernice was standing next to Richard, looking sympathetic. She didn’t offer any solace now, but he recalled what she always used to say after propping him into some weird position. “We’ll lick this sucker yet.”

  He watched as Cheryl walked slowly back to him. She was smiling—a favorable sign.

  “Al thinks he can get you in the car,” she said. “Shall we get your stuff?”

  Richard gave Vernice a triumphant look. I ain’t licked. I ain’t licked. I ain’t licked.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rose liked being alone in the house. The solitary state sharpened her senses—made the wind sound stronger, the kitchen sink drip louder, and time pass more obviously so that she could almost hear a celestial tick tock.

  She tightened the kitchen faucet, then straightened the rag rug in front of the sink. The braided mat had been made by her mother, and Rose could recognize bits of material from many of her childhood dresses—the green kettle cloth, the red gingham, the yellow and white striped. At fifteen the appealing part of that striped dress had been the thick yellow plastic belt that accompanied it. But apart from the belt her memories of the dress were not all that pleasant. She had a vivid recollection of wearing it at a dance where she had been too tall for every boy in her high-school gym. Too stupid to go home, she had stood alone at the place where the wrestling mats were hung and counted every visible stripe in that dress. Since Rose was neither a reminiscer nor a saver of slights, she supposed she had kept this incident fresh to share with Cheryl. But there had been no need. Her daughter had come home in tears from junior high dances and run straight into her father’s arms. “You look sweet as candy,” he would reassure her; though, in fact, she had been a lumpy, lethargic child who should have been advised to cultivate scholarly qualities or charm-school allure.

  Now, that was a mean thought, Rose decided as she plunked down two thick quilted place mats on the butcher block table. There was no sense in blaming the problems of the living on the defenseless dead. Cheryl’s predicament was no more George’s fault than her own. Rose pulled out paper napkins, then the plain white plates Cheryl had given her as a wedding gift. Al disliked an accumulation of unnecessary silverware, so at each place setting she put only one knife, one spoon, and one fork. Which was funny because George, her first husband, proclaimed himself unable to enjoy dinner without two forks and a frosted water goblet. But what Rose found even more amazing than these contrasts was that she, an overly tall, rigidly Catholic woman, would have acquired two husbands with which to make them.

  The grandfather clock chimed five, and Rose rechecked her list, which was long. This was one of those rare Saturdays spent alone, and she tried to accomplish a lot. First she had written the day’s necessary activities in a column on the back of a used envelope, printing at the top: DO EXERCISES. And she had, before eating breakfast. Stretching and twisting to a record was a pleasant activity in Al’s absence. But when he was standing in the kitchen doorway watching, she not only felt foolish rolling on the floor but patronized by the silky-voiced commentator: “5-6-7-8-9. Twist your waist. You’re doing fine. Good girl.”

  Sometimes Rose wished she hadn’t given Cheryl her condominium. It would have eliminated a certain strain in her marriage to be able to stop at the empty house, do her exercises, then pluck her eyebrows in the well-lighted upstairs bedroom. But now her only option was to pursue private matters when Al was occupied elsewhere.

  Today he had taken a temporary job with a logging concern. Since the work was totally dependent on natural light, she expected him home at any minute, which was okay because the casserole was warmed and the garlic bread was ready to pop into the oven.

  In the refrigerator was a second casserole covered with aluminum foil, ready to be taken to Cheryl’s. Rose considered food the most appreciated gift when there was a sick person in the house, so she had also made up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. The cookies were now packed in a fruitcake container that her daughter would never remember to return. But let her keep it. The girl had been forced to pack up and return all the wedding gifts after Stu left her. At least the ceremony had been small. And the presents given to Cheryl at this last marriage were so dreadful no one would expect her to return
them.

  When she heard Al’s truck grinding its way up their steep drive, she slid the garlic bread into the oven. He set his chain saw on its shelf in the garage before entering the kitchen. “How was it?” she asked. But he was still slightly deaf from working near the chipper at the mill and did not answer—just smiled before going to shower off a day’s accumulation of sweat and sawdust. Thank God, she thought, that I haven’t been waiting all day to talk to him.

  She got out Al’s beer, then poured herself a glass of wine. Though Rose had now been married for a year and a half, Cheryl still thought Al’s reticence toward her implied animosity. She couldn’t accept that Al wasn’t a talker; Cheryl apparently never noticed that whatever Rose asked him (“Why did the muffler have to fall off the car right there? How could those parents treat a child like that?”), he always gave the same brief answer: “Just the nature of the beast, I guess.”

  Though Rose had to admit Al’s conversational skills were undernourished, he sometimes displayed an old-fashioned delicacy she found touching. Since no amount of scrubbing could completely erase the grease stains from his hands, he was shy about touching the common food. So when he appeared with hair still wet from his shower, she broke off several chunks of garlic bread and set them on his plate.

  “Thanks.” And then staring dreamily at a spot over her right shoulder, he said, “Lou Hazen got his foot smashed today.”

  Smashed might mean bruised, broken, or worse. As she had a queasy stomach, she was temporarily grateful for his vagueness. Any medical discussion would have destroyed her appetite, which wasn’t much to begin with. She ate what she could and then waited for him.

  When Al was through, Rose got up for the coffee, then went to the refrigerator for milk. She watched him staring at the familiar blue and white container.

  “It’s buttermilk,” he said.

  She flushed and slapped her hand against her forehead. “Oh, Lord. I’m getting blind as a bat. Must have bought it because the package is the same color as the regular.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll mix up some of the powdered stuff.”

  She knew he was being deliberately casual about this incident and felt doubly humiliated by his kindness. Had they been the same age she could have accepted it. But he was thirty-eight and couldn’t possibly know what it felt like to have failing vision, hot flashes, and a permanently stiff neck. His hair was still wavy, thick, and black—while she had to work with a hot comb every morning to coax life into her tinted coif.

  And her vision was getting bad. This afternoon she had stood on tiptoe in front of the bathroom mirror with its tiny sausage-shaped light bulbs and, using her old bifocals as a monocle, tried to tweeze her eyebrows.

  After all that effort they were still straggly. She knew he would install an overhead light if she asked him, but she also knew she could never ask. It would make her feel too pathetic.

  If only she had anticipated how quickly she would begin to age after fifty, she might never have married him. But there had been very little anticipation and absolutely no reason involved. At forty-nine, her hormones had betrayed her and left her with sex drives so unbecoming to her age and widowed state, she often mentally compared herself to a piece of rotting fruit—an abandoned orange, turned moldy green and oozing its vital juices. When the school bus driver, Al Valerino, had asked her to dinner, she felt foolish for wanting so badly to accept. Al reminded her of the dark-eyed, swarthy boys she had admired in high school. Bronx imports, her Yankee father had called them.

  But in Al’s case, he would have been wrong. The senior Valerinos had moved to Fairfield County from Queens. “Why here?” she asked him on that first date.

  “My dad came up to the state fair and thought it was pretty country,” he answered, and touched his wineglass to hers.

  After that he became disturbingly quiet, and she began to babble nervously. “Did you know it was Charlemagne who is supposed to have initiated the toast? He felt that drinking involved all the senses but hearing. I don’t know if there is any truth in that. It came from my husband, and he was a lawyer.”

  “Were you happy being married?”

  He asked so innocently and wistfully, she felt she owed him more than a defensive of course. “Yes and no. It’s a lot of work. Sometimes you just feel like you’re on a treadmill. I was always making lists, always so regimented. There was this bound set of Shakespeare’s plays in our bedroom, and I thought when I got some time I’d read them and try writing some poetry. But after George died, I hadn’t the patience for Shakespeare and though I still wrote lists, I never wrote any poetry. So I don’t know if I lost the capacity for solitary thought or if I just never had it.” She had no idea whether he understood or not, but three weeks later he proposed, and the only hurdle left had been telling Cheryl.

  Oh, God. They still had to go over to Cheryl’s disorganized house tonight. The very thought of that mess made her neck ache. She lifted her hand to rub it.

  “You tired?” Al asked.

  “No. I just need to wash up and we can go.”

  “Leave the dishes. We’ll get them tonight.”

  She was about to argue. The dishes did not take ten minutes and she hated to leave them dirty, but he was already standing and impatiently shifting his weight from one leather work shoe to the other. She grabbed her sweater and followed him out to the car.

  On the short trip to Cheryl’s she concentrated on her back. Rose had discovered it eased tension to pretend her spinal column was composed of building blocks that needed individual realignment. By the time she had mentally reached the top block, they were nearing the town line on old Route 6 and just passing the Connecticut Court Motel.

  The arc of dilapidated cabins had been built some twenty-five years ago as a honeymoon haven for New Yorkers unable to afford the Cape. Now the white bungalows with their peeling paint and sagging porches reminded her of decaying teeth; they looked like a place where you might go to commit suicide. Rose shivered and draped her sweater around her shoulders. She was getting ghoulish and knew why. In just a few minutes she was going to have to face that sick boy again. She had nothing prepared to say to him. What was there to say to someone who would never walk or lead a useful, productive life again?

  When she had first met Richard, she had focused on his innocent face. That made her feel hopeful. If Cheryl wanted to devote herself to assisting Richard, she had no objections. His recuperation was certainly a more worthwhile goal than those idiotic diets she generally embraced. Besides, at first Richard reminded her of those fair-haired boys with dogs in Walt Disney movies. It was not apparent until six days ago, when Cheryl brought him home, how helpless and hopelessly infirm he was. At least, it had not been apparent to Rose. Al had known and tried to coax her into stopping the wedding. But when she stated her reluctance to interfere, he withdrew his protests. Now she wished he had been more resolute about his misgivings. But he was never very resolute. He even hesitated to voice his opinion on a made-for-TV movie until he knew whether she liked it or not.

  More than twenty years ago some guidance counselor had branded him as “not college material” and the scars still ran deep. If only she could communicate to him what little impact higher education had made on her own life. Her four years had left her with vague memories of behavioral objectives in Education 101, a few useless French phrases, and the faded program from her graduation ceremony. College had not endowed her with any magical qualities for effective decision making or left her with a coherent scheme for making sense of the events in her life. But she could not tell him that. They did not have those kinds of conversations.

  Rose looked over at her husband. He always drove with slumped shoulders and a fierce, withdrawn expression—like some animal expecting attack at any moment. His right knuckles held the wheel at the twelve o’clock position. His left hand rested palm open on his jean-clad thigh. It was not the posture recommended by driving instructors, but he was by far the best driver she had ever known. She watched
as he signaled and pulled into Constitution Square.

  There was no guest parking available near Cheryl’s condo, so they left the truck in another section of the development and walked through the parking lot. Al carried the casserole in one hand and held her wrist with the other. If Cheryl hadn’t been able to find a nurse’s aide to care for Richard, Al would have to help the boy to get up, bathe, and shave. It was a physically and emotionally difficult job, but it never occurred to him to complain. She looped her fingers through his and squeezed. There was nothing to say.

  Cheryl opened the door before they even reached the front steps. She was wearing an unflattering horizontally striped T-shirt. Her hair looked as if it hadn’t been washed since the wedding.

  Al set the casserole on the kitchen counter while Cheryl cowered and said, “He’s been in bed all day. I called all the agencies but none of them had an aide to send.” She waited there anxiously, penitently, as if she were expecting Al to make some pronouncement on her actions. But he just shrugged and went directly to Richard.

  Rose placed the cookies beside the casserole, then peered through the kitchen entryway into the living room. Al had pulled the wheelchair up to Richard’s bedside and was talking gently to the boy, who lay motionless in the big hospital bed. “How are you feeling? Watching some television? I’m going to rub your leg and arm to loosen them up a bit.” Al shed his nylon windbreaker without dropping a syllable. “Are you feeling kind of stiff? Is this helping? Is the leg looser? How about now? The arm okay? Ready?” Then Al put his left arm behind the boy’s back, his right under Richard’s knees, and with one swift, graceful movement swung him into a sitting position. For the last four nights Rose had watched in awe. She knew Al had been a medic in Vietnam, but before Richard’s arrival she had never seen him demonstrate his skill with the disabled.

  Cheryl tugged at her arm. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  Rose jammed her hands into the pockets of her skirt and reluctantly followed her daughter up the carpeted stairs. She needed to talk to Cheryl but would have preferred remaining in the entryway watching Al. There was something very touching about one man helping another.