The Book of CarolSue

by Lynne Hugo

  * * *

  “This is crazy. They’re chickens, Mom. They’re chickens, and they don’t belong in the house.” Gary had dropped by without calling and caught me having tea in the living room with the girls. It was raining outside, and much as I love them, I don’t sit in the rain to have tea. That would be crazy.

  “They have names, son. Please be polite. You were raised better. Look, here’s my pretty Beth. Say hello, Beth. You know Gary.” Beth was already clucking quietly. She’s quite the conversationalist. “Gary, tell Beth how pretty she is. Notice how my hair is the same color as hers?”

  “Mom, no, I came to check on you, see if you need anything. I’m not talking to chickens. I’m going to get them out of the living room and back into the coop. Besides, Marvelle will kill them.” Marvelle is a retired barn cat who looks like she’s wearing a fluffy tuxedo. She came to us complete with her unfortunate name. Once a living legend mouser, I brought her inside to the soft life after she quit caring what the mice did. As the words spilled from Gary, she was curled up under my green ottoman, ignoring the hens and him. I thought it gracious on my part not to point this out. Gary started to chase down JoJo, which was a terrible way to start since she’s the fastest, but I wasn’t going to tell him. He wouldn’t have a clue how to round them up anyway. All the farm has long leaked out of my boy, who no longer sees the life spark in creatures or feels its force in the land. You’d think, perhaps, that had to do with the way his son, Cody, died, because of that terrible drunken stranger, and Gary’s fault in it, too, but it had happened well before then.

  “Technically they’re all hens,” I said, very calm. I crossed my legs at the ankles as if I were entertaining the Prince of Wales, not that Gary looked all that royal in those baggy khakis. “You know, your father never did get another rooster after Bronson died. The girls were past their prime. I’m thinking of enlarging the flock again now, though, and then I might get one. Do you think a rooster would understand if I name him Laurie?”

  My son was not looking engaged in this subject at all as JoJo flew up to the hanging light fixture in the dining area to escape him. “Don’t you remember that male character named Laurie in Little Women? I read you that whole book—how old were you? Gary, please, will you please just sit? You’re getting the girls stirred up. There’s room next to Beth.” I pointed to the couch. “Move over, Beth.” Beth, obliging girl that she is, flapped her gold wings and half hopped, half flew up to the couch back on the other side. She couldn’t have possibly created more room for him without entirely abandoning the couch.

  “Mom! What are those holes in the wall?” Gary, who’d backed off his silly chicken roundup attempt and started to sit when Amy advanced toward him in a menacing way—she and I like to play good cop, bad cop, and she’d certainly not appreciated his comments—hoisted himself back up, and scrambled behind my chair away from her. I had to crane my neck to see him finger two small holes chest-high in the wall to the right of his high school graduation picture.

  Oh crap, I thought. Well, it’s my own fault. I could have fixed those a long time ago, and at least he hadn’t noticed the ones under the window. For a moment, I wished he’d notice that the walls need painting—once a cheery buttercup color, now they’re more like a dying dandelion—but on the other hand, if he noticed he might do it, and that would mean he’d be here in my house, and we haven’t been getting along that well lately. He worries about me all the time now and it just brings out my worst side.

  “Those have been there since last summer. Will you please sit down and have some tea?” I pointed to the china teapot in the cozy my mother knit. “Shall I get you a cup or a mug?”

  “You know I don’t like . . . Never mind. They look like bullet holes. Do you have something to tell me?”

  “For heaven’s sake. Were you raised on a farm or weren’t you?”

  “This is hardly a working farm, Mom. The chickens don’t even produce eggs anymore. You need to get rid of them.”

  “I don’t produce eggs anymore either, son. Are you going to get rid of me?”

  “Mom!” he said, and put on his shocked look.

  “You just don’t remember all we did on this land. Your daddy hoped you’d take over, but he always suppor—”

  “Wait a minute. How did those holes get there?” Gary was raised not to interrupt, but he does regularly. I stopped talking entirely to make a point, but it didn’t sink in.

  “That’s just a couple BBs,” I finally said, because he wouldn’t let it go.

  “What? What happened? Was someone breaking in?” Gary’s face reddened deeper than its usual shade. He thinks all my business is his to know.

  “Four or five deerflies were in here so I took them out. Back in August. I couldn’t find the flyswatter. I wish you’d put things back where they belong when you come over.”

  “Jesus, Mom. I didn’t move your . . . wait a minute. You were shooting deerflies? That’s insane. You could kill yourself.” He stopped for a few seconds, his mouth hanging open and his eyes widening as the idea took hold. He gathered steam and blew. “Wait a minute. Wait just a minute here. Were you trying to—?”

  “Gary. You of all people shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain, I’m sure. I occasionally miss a deerfly. If I were aiming at a person, any person, I assure you I wouldn’t miss.”

  Do you see what I mean about my worst side just popping right out? CarolSue gets all over me about it. “Stop, Louisa!” She says it all the time. “You’re not helping him or you heal.”

  Gary’s oval eyes went down to mail slots. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said, all this time standing over my chair, looming. I could feel my neck stiffening looking up at him at that bad angle, and I didn’t appreciate it.

  “Nothing, son. Would you like to give the girls some grapes? They’ll eat right out of your hand. They love their grapes.” Very glad to rest my neck by having a good reason to look away from him, I picked up the plate of green grapes I’d cut in half. Amy hopped into my lap right away, proving my point. Gary backed up, knocking the floor lamp into the wall and startling everyone. It hit the wall, and he caught it before it hit the floor. The rag rug might have kept it from breaking, but I think the shade would have been toast.

  “Mom,” he said louder, enunciating as if I was hard of hearing. “We need to think about getting rid of the chickens. They’re too much for you now. They can’t be in the house. I’ve been thinking about the farm anyway. This place has gotten too much for you to handle.”

  “Gary, I love you, son, but over my dead body will my girls leave.” I wouldn’t dignify the rest of his opinion.

  “Is that a threat, Mom? If you feel like you might hurt yourself, I’ll put you on the crisis prayer list and take you to the hospital until God makes things right. It sounds like a threat to me. I’ll find a safer place for you.” He felt around the holes again, stared at me, and without saying anything more turned and went down the hall toward the bedrooms.

  Oh crap, I thought. Here we go.

  Within a clock minute, he was back. He didn’t loiter getting to the point.

  “Where is Jesus?” he said, his whole self in agitation. I was going to get smart with him about how being a reverend, he should know, but I decided to be kind and give him a straight answer.

  “Jesus is in the closet.”

  “Jesus is in the closet? You cannot be serious.”

  “I think maybe it’s why he never got married,” I said. Poor judgment on my part, but I couldn’t stop my worst side. She does love the openings Gary gives her.

  “That is blasphemy. Something is wrong with you. Why is the picture of Jesus in your closet?”

  Here’s the story on that picture: last year, after he became Reverend Gary, my son gave me a painting he’d done himself. He got offended almost to tears when I said Elvis looked good as a blonde in drag. I had to apologize many times and explain that all the paintings involving glitter that I’d seen before were of Elvis, which was w
hy I didn’t know this one was Jesus. I pointed out that no one knows what Jesus looked like. This hurt his feelings because the glitter halo was Gary’s creative depiction of holiness, which was the point I was supposed to get. He is so sincere it would never occur to him that glitter might not be a good idea. Mollifying him backfired, though, because he carried out his plan to hang it in my bedroom, to be “the first thing I saw in the morning and the last before I closed my eyes.”

  I knew where that idea came from, and it’s an example of chickens coming home to roost. My Harold would say Glitter Jesus on my bedroom wall now is exactly what I deserve for what I made him suffer (he claimed damage to his retinas) during our son’s adolescence. Gary was miserable as a teenager, bony wrists and knees and ankles all going in wrong directions, plus he had trouble making friends. In ninth grade, after writing a report on Van Gogh, he decided his isolation was related to an artistic temperament. He’d always enjoyed art class, too. Like any mother, I ignored his father and evidence—anything for your child to have self-esteem, right?—and built him up with praise as gaudy and ill-conceived as his projects. What else would I do? I loved my son then, and I do now. Different as we are, I know I mustn’t lose sight of all that is good and kind in him, and you mustn’t, either.

  Anyway, while death threats from me kept Harold’s mouth shut, I’d display Gary’s dreadful pictures in our bedroom, telling our boy I wanted his art to be the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing at night. (Anything to keep them out of the living room.) You should have heard Harold when Gary applied to LaGrange Community College to “jump-start” his professional career with an Associate in Studio Art degree. “Now, there’s a surefire moneymaker,” he said in private, way more times than I cared to hear. That man could roll his eyes as well as any woman. Remembering little things like that crumples me inside like the wadded-up tissue that’s stuck in my every pocket to fight the sneak attacks of memory.

  Harold had to admit it turned out all right, though he never did give me any credit. After one semester, Gary’s tactful instructor redirected him: had he ever thought about the amount of artistic vision computer graphics required? I’d hoped he’d get a Bachelor’s, and Harold wanted him to study Agriculture, but at least Gary eventually got an Associate in Computer Science degree. And a job. When he married Nicole and then our grandson, Cody, was born, Harold and I thought we’d run the big bases and were home, safe. Life was finally so good that Harold and I joked how great it was that Nicole, not Gary, had decorated their house; we could visit without being blinded.

  But I digress. The point is, now I was a widow and had this Glitter Jesus on my bedroom wall, as if arthritis and a double dose of grief weren’t enough to make a body tremble and cringe. I’d never tell Gary that I wanted to remember Harold there beside me, especially horny and passionate and tender, the way he used to be. That I couldn’t possibly, what with Jesus’ hand raised up like a stop sign and a dot of glitter on the pupils of his eyes, giving a woman absolutely no privacy for trying to remember the best times. We all went over the edge after Cody died, but Gary thinking Glitter Jesus was a great gift shows a lot of his brain cells drowned in his tears. Once I even had the thought of getting another goat in hope that an accidental kick to the head might bring Gary to his right mind. Does that sound bad? When you live alone you have thoughts like that and you stop bothering to chide yourself for them.

  How could any sane mother tell her son who’s pushing forty-five that she was trying to give herself a little satisfaction, and Glitter Jesus’ eyes staring her down were an inhibiting factor? It would have been about as natural as mentioning it to a stranger stocking shelves in the grocery store. Gary and I have never been alike, but back when we were all of us a family, all of us living our real lives, I’d watch and listen to him and smile, recognizing myself and Harold and our parents in him, the sum different from the parts, yet adding up to our son with an acceptable, even beautiful, logic. Now I couldn’t find anyone or anything familiar in him. Ever since Gary got religion after Cody died, sometimes he looks like Glitter Jesus himself, little pricks of fire centered in his eyes.

  On the other hand, what mother should tell her son anything about herself and sex? Even if he hadn’t become Reverend Gary, I’m not that far gone. So I did the next worst thing to telling the truth. I stood up, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and lied. “Gary, this has been a lovely visit,” I said. “Bless your heart.” (CarolSue taught me to say that.) “I’m so glad you stopped by. I hope you remember to call first next time, because you know I’ve started to get out quite often with my friends. I really need to be getting my supper in the oven about now, and CarolSue is calling at five.” As I said this, I was moving toward the door with my hand on his elbow. His face was a kaleidoscope as I talked, but I never let him get a word in. I might have been actually pushing him to the door. I realize that great mothers don’t do that, but I’m trying to be honest and let the chips fall.

  He called the next morning a little after ten, but I didn’t answer the phone. I love that Caller ID gadget. And wouldn’t you know, it was Gary who signed me up for it. I know he really tries to be a good son.

  * * *

  I wasn’t surprised at all when the sheriff’s car bumped down my driveway soon after I didn’t answer Gary’s call. My son is nothing if not predictable. He was probably up until midnight hot-wiring the crisis prayer lists. But I was ahead of him: the hens were in the coop, the yellow kitchen was scrubbed, floor swept—even the cabinets wiped down—dishes out of the drainer. This isn’t easy to do because so many things in my kitchen—oh, say, the red-handled paring knife, the cast iron skillet, the daisy spoon rest, the good spatula—were my mother’s, and I remember them all the way back to when Harold and I were engaged. My mother was making me learn how to cook, and Harold would come early to sit in our kitchen, which just made me nervous because Mom would correct my every other move. Later, he’d praise what I’d made so lavishly that I knew it must have been terrible while he managed to hang around until Mom and Dad couldn’t stay awake anymore. Oh, his kisses were so gentle, like he was afraid I would break. Believe me, I convinced him I wouldn’t. And not that I could say it, but it would have been all right with me if his hands had wandered farther than they did before we were married. It was plain embarrassing, the way I wanted him touching me all over.

  Anyway, I’d prepared everything today for unwanted company, even made my bed, and picked up the bedroom in case of a prying glance in there. But I left Harold’s good shoes where they were, still half under his side of the dresser. Really, I should donate them to the Goodwill in Elmont, but the idea of someone filling my Harold’s shoes, well, I just cannot. The bathroom’s cleaned, and I remembered to move Harold’s straight razor from its place on the side of the sink where he’d left it that last morning. I’d replaced it there practically the minute CarolSue left for home after we got through Harold’s service and settling his affairs and she’d satisfied herself that she’d boxed up his things so I wouldn’t have to look at them.

  Never an electric shaver for my Harold, not ever since we were first dating did that kind, good man give me beard burn. He’d shave a second time before we went out. He used to bring me daisies because he thought they were my favorite flower. I let him think that: he could pick them for free from the side of the road on his way to our house. Really, I love the scent of Peace roses and when we bought the farm and I ordered a bush from the Burpee catalog, Harold planted it for me. It’s strong and healthy, fragrant with a tinge of lemon like his cologne I loved to breathe in. Oh God, where is my sweet Harold?

  The usual ghosts appeared when I dusted the living room, each object reminding me how it came to be part of Harold and me. The pewter-base lamp that was a wedding present from Harold’s aunt Elsie. A polished wood picture frame my parents gave us for our tenth anniversary. The picture of us in it is long faded. The green ceramic bowl I made in a college ceramics class for my father; my mother gave it to Harold
when Dad died. And there’s the white afghan that his mother knit for me; I refolded it over the back of Harold’s empty chair. Everything in my house tells the story of what’s gone forever.

  Holes in the walls are filled with toothpaste and touched up with yellow highlighter. No, you’re right, it didn’t match the walls that well, but men don’t notice something like that, now do they? I made sure that I had a calendar out on the kitchen table with some fake engagements written in. My hair pinned up with little tendrils left out, and even a makeup job: eyebrows, a touch of shadow, mascara, blush, lip gloss. CarolSue isn’t my sister for nothing. I do so wish she had told her second husband that she hadn’t signed on to leave her family and no, she wouldn’t move to Georgia with him. It’s almost a thousand miles from southeastern Indiana.

  I opened the front door and stepped out on the porch when I heard the patrol car tires crunch on the gravel as Gus put on the brakes too hard. He is really full of himself. A mistake to go outside, though. I wasn’t thinking of the heady scent in the air to bring When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d to mind and then, O Captain! my Captain! even though it’s a full year now. Or will be next week. The first dark purple buds formed two weeks ago. Another thing I do wish is that Harold hadn’t killed himself in April, right when the earth was rising up a hopeful pale green, bursting into pink and white and lavender, awash in yellow sun after the darkest winter we’d ever known, the winter I was surprised to outlive. It was the insult of spring Harold could not abide. It made me feel guilty that I could, and now I feel guilty that I’ve gone on a year without him, though every day I find another corner of life empty. O Captain.