When Lester pulls into the parking lot, he narrowly misses hitting another car on its way out. Maybe he’d better drink a lot more coffee at the breakfast; he’s more tired than he thought.
In the conference room where the breakfast is being held, Lester sees no sign of Mary Alice. She could be in the bathroom, he supposes, but he can’t help feeling disappointed. What if he missed her altogether? He could call her, he knows now where she lives, but what he wanted to do at this breakfast was assure himself of a mutual attraction before he… Well, before he did anything.
He moves to the buffet table, which looks like it has been set upon by a pack of wolves. Bits of scrambled eggs are spilled onto the ripped paper tablecloth, none of the remaining pancakes are whole, and the syrup container sits in a sticky pool, with what must be a very happy fly directly in the middle of it. There’s still a fair amount of bacon, and Lester lays a few strips on a plate, along with two slices of curled-up, overbuttered wheat toast. He has to tip the coffee urn to get out the last of what’s there, and thinks the brand might most aptly be called Mississippi Mud.
“Not much good left here,” he hears a voice say, and turns around to see Mike Massey, one of the star jocks in the old days, and someone who in the old days would never have deigned to speak to Lester.
“Nah, I got here too late, I guess,” Lester says, and then notices Mike’s outfit: a golf shirt with stains, a cheap pair of khaki pants. It is very close to what Pete Decker wore last night and in fact is still wearing—there he is, sitting at a table with Candy Sullivan. Mary Alice is still nowhere in sight.
Mike notices Lester looking over at Pete and says, “Can you believe what Decker’s wearing? There’s five or six of us got together in a little show of solidarity. Went out to Kmart this morning and got ourselves some shitty-looking golf outfits.” He shrugs. “Turned it into a goof, you know, so he wouldn’t feel so bad.” Mike shakes his head. “Poor guy’s a wreck.”
Lester nods. “Yeah, it’s too bad.” Pete doesn’t look like a wreck now, however, sitting there with Candy, smiling. Has he moved on from Mary Alice, then? Is that why she’s not here?
Lester gives the buffet table one more glance and sees a cheese Danish in decent shape in a metal bin at the end of the table. He points to it, saying to Mike, “I think I’ll grab that pastry. Unless you want it.”
Mike pats his stomach. “Nah. I got diabetes. Doc kept telling me to watch my weight, and I thought, Yeah, yeah, mañana, you know? And then damned if I didn’t get it, just like he said I would. I can’t have any fun anymore. My doctor is a sadist, man. He likes to tell me all the things I’m going to get. He was ecstatic when I had to go on high blood pressure pills. Hey, you’re a doc, aren’t you? What do those pharmaceutical companies do, cut you in or what?”
“I’m a veterinarian,” Lester says.
“So’s Don Summers. But he didn’t come. Pulled out at the last minute—death in the family.”
“That’s too bad. Yeah, I was kind of looking forward to talking to him. That’s one of the reasons I came.”
A shaft of light suddenly broadens and fills the room with light, and Lester sees Candy shade her eyes against it, then stand and put on sunglasses. She’s apparently leaving.
“Nice talking to you,” Lester tells Mike.
“Well, hold on—do you get cut in with the pharmaceutical people? I’ve always wondered. I mean, for animal pills and shit?”
Lester looks at Mike and sighs. “No. Okay?”
Mike steps back, offended. “Yeah, okay. Sorry.”
Lester heads over to Candy and reaches her just as she’s about to walk out the door. “Hey,” he says. “Taking off?”
“Oh, Lester! There you are!”
“I got here late. Had an emergency. I’ve got two dogs with me.”
“Where are they?”
“In my truck. I can’t leave them for long. I think I’ll take off now, too.”
“Mary Alice just left a few minutes ago,” Candy said. “We had a nice talk. I can see why you like her, Lester. I’m crazy about her. I asked her to come and visit me in Boston.”
“Uh-huh, good for you.” He keeps his face carefully neutral. He doesn’t ask any questions about Mary Alice. He doesn’t know, suddenly, if he wants to ask anything about her. On the drive over, with Lady curled up beside him and occasionally wagging her tail, apropos of nothing (though it was possible, he guessed, that she sensed she was now free from Alan Heck), Lester was thinking about what he’d say to Mary Alice when he saw her. Invite her to get together for dinner? Take in a show, a concert in the city? Oh, it was wearying, really, to even contemplate. He honestly didn’t have time for a relationship, nor did he have the need for one, Jeanine’s thoughts to the contrary notwithstanding. Good old Jeanine. He wants to give her another raise, but she won’t let him. She says he has to wait at least six months because he just gave her a raise. She said, “Pretty soon, I’m going to be making more than you!” And he said, “You should!” Why not? His expenses are minuscule compared to hers. He doesn’t need much money. He doesn’t want much money. He was lucky to find a wife who felt that same way.
When he and his wife had just started dating, they’d been talking one day about money because Kathleen’s brother’s wife had just left him, saying he was never going to amount to anything, i.e., not provide her with the material things to which she felt entitled. And Lester asked Kathleen how much a man would need to have so that a woman like her would feel secure. They were sitting in a booth at Sunday’s, eating chicken-fried steak with milk gravy and mashed potatoes and collard greens, which they did on the first of the month, every month, and which he continues to do. Kathleen had just untucked her napkin from around her neck when he asked her this, saying she couldn’t eat one more bite, not one more, nothing, unless maybe he’d like to share some lemon meringue pie. But when he asked her that question about income, she settled back in the booth and looked over at him, her arms crossed, her expression grave. And he silently cursed himself, thinking he’d blown it now, he’d asked too soon, and besides, the look on her face made him think she was going to quote an amount that ultimately would be beyond him. She was a direct and unfailingly honest person. She took in a breath and pooched out her lips. “Hmmm. How much would you need to have. Well, let’s see.” She searched the ceiling, as though using it for her calculations. Then she said, “Don’t you have a bunch of lilacs on the hill behind your house?”
“I do,” he said. “I have many lilacs. Acres. A small state, if not a veritable nation of lilacs.”
“Well, that’s enough,” she said. “That and this here chicken-fried steak once a month.”
He swallowed, then put his hands around his coffee cup and gripped hard. “This is too soon, I know, but would you—”
“Yes,” she said. “A small wedding. Amid the nation of lilacs.”
Ah, who could come close to her? That’s what Jeanine didn’t understand. Besides, he was busy. He was perfectly content. He was a fifty-nine-year-old man who had grown at least a little set in his ways, and he didn’t mind, he liked it. Why set himself up for a life of compromise—and make no mistake about it, a relationship was all about compromise—when what he really wanted now was something he’d solemnly declared to his mother as a seven-year-old: “I want to do whatever I want whenever I want to, forever.” To which she’d responded, “Oh my. Good luck, honey.”
Still, that pretty much was his life, now: he did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. His work was his passion: there wasn’t a day he wasn’t eager to get to the clinic. His free time was spent in ways he wanted to spend it, whether it was mountain climbing in Peru or bass fishing in Montana or sitting on the front porch with a glass of raspberry lemonade and doing nothing but watching the liftoff and descent of butterflies on his front yard bushes. The relationship he’d had with his wife was one that poets dream about, and he did not ever expect to have such a partnership, such a love, again. How much is one supposed to ask
from life, anyway? He knows his own luck. He knows he’s had more than his share.
When they reach his truck, Candy pets the dogs, especially Lady, especially after Lester tells Candy about the dog’s circumstances. “But she’s going to live with you now, right?” she says, and Lester says, “Yup. In style.”
Candy stands with her arms crossed, smiling at Lady. Then she sighs and says, “Well, I’ve got to go and get my own dog and then get a cab for the airport.”
“Want a lift?” Lester asks. “I’d be glad to take you. Of course, you’d get dog hair all over your suit. Nice suit, by the way.”
“I like dog hair,” Candy says. “I’m tired of this suit. And I’d love a ride with you.”
Lester walks the dogs while he waits for Candy to come back. After she does, he drives slowly, because he is enjoying her company.
When they arrive at the airport, Lester gets out of the truck to open Candy’s door. He pulls a card from his wallet and gives it to her. “Let me know how you’re doing, would you?”
She nods, and tears come to her eyes, but she is smiling. Her phone rings, and she ignores it. “I want to thank you,” she says.
“And I you.”
She wheels her suitcase toward the terminal as he watches. Several other men watch, too. Candy Sullivan. He sighs.
He goes to the back of the truck and unhooks Mason from his harness so that he can move the dog into the front seat with Lady. After Mason hops in, he sees Lady and freezes. “It’s going to be a little different around here,” Lester tells the dog. “You might think at first that you won’t like it, but you will.”
TWENTY-ONE
“WELL, I TOLD YOU NOT TO GO,” SARAH JANE, MARY Alice’s sister, says. “Didn’t I? I told you. All it did is make you sad. I absolutely knew that would happen!” She shakes her head. “Why would you possibly want to go back to be among people who were nothing but cruel to you? What good could possibly come of it?”
“I’m not sad!” Mary Alice tells her sister. “And a lot of good came from it! I don’t know what you think you just heard, but what I said is that I had a really good time! Don’t forget your purse when you go,” she says, pointing to the little evening bag lying on the kitchen table.
“I see it. What, is this a hint? You want me to go now? Fine, I’ll go.”
“I don’t want you to go, Sarah Jane, but as it happens, I have an appointment to get to.”
“For what?”
“Just… a routine check. A Pap smear.”
Sarah Jane narrows her eyes at her sister.
“It’s true! I have an appointment in twenty minutes. Do you want to see the appointment card?” Oh, please don’t say yes.
Sarah Jane puts the evening bag inside her larger purse. “Well, call me later if you want. I hope you feel better.”
“I’m fine!” Mary Alice watches her sister pull out of the driveway, scraping against the bushes as she always does, then attempting to straighten the car and scraping against them even more. She can see her sister’s mouth moving, swearing, no doubt. And of course it is the bushes’ fault, which translates to Mary Alice’s fault.
She cleans up the lunch dishes and then goes up to her bedroom to lie down. It is Wednesday afternoon, chilly and gray, and she took off from work, a personal day. She never lies down in the middle of the day and so she admits at least to herself that perhaps her sister is a little bit right.
She puts her arms around David the pillow, closes her eyes, and reviews again the events of the reunion. She had enjoyed being around so many people, being so talkative for so long. She likes living alone, but the reunion sparked something inside her, brought forward a need she has long denied. Maybe she’ll ask Marion to take English classes and she’ll take Polish classes. Maybe that way they’ll be able to advance their relationship to a more satisfying level of intimacy. Maybe she’s ready for that. One needs, on occasion, to unpack one’s heart, to share observations riskier than those about the weather.
She wishes things hadn’t taken a nosedive with Lester. He saw her pulling out of the parking lot; he nearly crashed into her! He could have waved her over; they could have made some plans to get together. But he chose not to acknowledge her and instead drove on, intent, she supposed, on getting more time with Candy Sullivan. Clever of him to arrive just as everyone was leaving—that way, they could leave together. She wonders if they did leave together. Maybe she’ll call Candy later and ask; she and Candy had established a bit of a friendship that Mary Alice looks forward to deepening.
He drove a nice truck, Lester; it suited him. And had a glad-eyed dog in the back to boot. Mary Alice knows she shouldn’t, but she envisions herself riding in that truck beside Lester, on the way to… oh, anywhere. A ball game, the Cincinnati Reds against the St. Louis Cardinals. A picnic in the fall, the leaves drifting down onto the plaid blanket, cocoa and marshmallows in a thermos. A driving trip to Texas, to see the tumbleweed. She knows she shouldn’t do this, dip into such outlandish wishful thinking, but she does it anyway. She falls asleep holding David close up against her.
She is awakened by the phone ringing, and answers it like a teenage girl, hope in her throat. But it is not Lester. It is Marion, asking in his halting way if she would like to take a walk this evening. She turns onto her back and contemplates the ceiling. She thinks maybe she’ll find a church that has Evensong. A surprise about her is that she has a lovely voice: let someone hear it.
“Marion?” she says. “I was thinking. Would you like to go into the city with me tonight? Would you like to drive to Cincinnati and have dinner there?”
A moment, and then he laughs and “Ho! What would you think!”
She’ll wear her reunion dress. It wouldn’t be out of line. It might as well get used again, and even again.
She climbs out of bed and goes to look out the window.
“I’m not sad,” she says, but look at how she presses her hand flat against the glass.
TWENTY-TWO
EINER LOOKS OUT THE WINDOW AT THE FINE MORNING, REMEMBERING again the events of the reunion one week ago. To think that he might not have gone! Why, it took years off him, filled up his tank but good. When Rita comes up with his breakfast, he’ll tell her to take the night off. He’s going to invite Desiree over for dinner. He’ll order out Italian, and he’ll wait on her. She’ll come, he knows she will, she gets a kick out of him. She’s told him that: You old buzzard, you’re a gas, do you know that?
What a day! Not a cloud in the sky, the humidity lifted, the birds singing. He knows he’s developed a reputation for being a cantankerous old man, but today his heart is light, and if he could, he would stand on the rooftop and shout out glad tidings. “Blessings on the world!” he would say. “Blessings to us all!”
No bodily aches and pains today, either, it’s a miracle! He breathes in deeply, and then, as he draws his head back in through the window, he bangs it hard.
He cries out and puts his hand to the back of his head. He can feel the goose egg starting to form already; it’s going to be the size of Toledo. Well, isn’t that the way? Isn’t that life? Right when you’re on top of the world, something happens to take you down a notch. And vice versa, thank God.
He shuffles over the few steps to his chair and sits down. He presses again on the sore spot at the back of his head. He’ll endure the pain a bit longer—enjoy it, even, in the odd way people do, before he calls down to Rita to bring him some ice.
He stares at his pill bottles. He supposes he should get busy on doling them out. He picks up the first bottle and suddenly feels a crushing sensation on the right side of his head, nowhere near the bump he just got. Now what? It feels like a terrible, terrible headache, and it keeps getting worse. “Wait,” he whispers. “Wait a minute.” He lets go of the pill bottle, pushes it away from himself, as though it were the cause of his pain. The pressure increases even more, and he opens his mouth to breathe. He leans back in the chair and regards the ceiling, notices for the first time a cob
web at one corner. He opens his mouth to call Rita, but cannot speak.
Desiree, he thinks. Then, in his mind’s eye, he sees the yellow centers of the daisies he was just looking at, the ones that grow in his garden. His wife planted them there, she loved daisies, and he remembers her face now with a clarity he has not enjoyed for years.
His vision starts to fade, and then he is bombarded with memories: a dogfight in World War II, the ironed scent of his mother’s apron, a bakery screen door, the flash of tadpoles in a stream, sleeping on the porch in summer, a painting he once dared to straighten on a museum wall, the fedora he wore for so many years. Now the pain seems to lessen, but he remains powerless to move, to speak. He blinks, struggles to stay alert, aware. My name is Einer Olson. I live on… What street does he live on? He must remember!
He counts in his mind to five; then, less ably, to ten. He tries to recall one by one the people he saw at the reunion: Think! Stay alive! But it is unequivocally upon him, death; he knows it now, and suddenly he is not afraid. He relaxes; his hands loosen their grip on the arms of the chair, his face goes peaceful, and time seems to achieve a kind of elasticity that makes him feel he sees the future: someone over for Sunday dinner at his ex-wife’s house and shaking the hand of her new husband. A woman moving the last of her things into her new house, a place full of light and flowers. A couple seated on a blanket in a park. A woman bending over her granddaughter and guiding her along, helping her learn to walk. And now, look: here are his tomatoes, they have ripened to perfection and they are sliced and laid out on a green platter and ready to be eaten, every one.
There is one more thing, he’s got to do just one last thing, so important. He struggles to get up, then slumps to the side of the chair. Rita finds him there like that.