Porch Lights

  “You’re right. May I ask you something that’s really none of my business?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why on earth are you going back to New York?”

  “Miss Deb, all due respect, I belong in New York. I have a house and a job waiting for me at the VA hospital there.”

  “I don’t know about all that. Let me show you something.”

  She got up and went to her desk where all her papers were. Then she put a pile of sympathy cards in front of me. They were all from Charlie. I looked at them. One had a huge cross on the front, another had a flying seagull . . . he had drawn, colored, and signed them. I didn’t know what to make of them.

  “I cannot fathom how deeply he must still be grieving for his father. If he had made one card, I would’ve said, Okay, isn’t that sweet. But eight? It’s too much, Jackie. He hardly knew Vernon. This isn’t normal.”

  “No, it can’t be.”

  “That boy needs to be with family, your parents especially, and all of us.”

  “Jesus God, what do I do about this?”

  “Talk to him. And, you know what else, Jackie?”

  “What?”

  “You need to think about your future, maybe getting married again, for your sake and for Charlie’s sake too.”

  “Oh, please! I’m not ready for anything like that.”

  “I’ll admit it’s a little soon, but don’t rule it out.”

  “And what about you? Have you thought about getting married again?”

  “Oh, honey, nobody wants a woman my age.”

  “Don’t say that! That’s terrible. You’re an amazing vibrant woman!”

  “Yes, I am, and I don’t like it, but the odds are simply not in my favor. But you’re young enough to have more children and have a whole family again. Don’t be afraid of getting back in the saddle.”

  “Oh, Miss Deb, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

  “If you don’t know where to begin, where does that leave me? I was married to Vernon for over thirty years. Just like your mom and Buster. We used to double-date in high school.”

  We talked a little more, and then I went back to the Salty Dog. My heart was heavy over Charlie’s excessive acts of sympathy. He had unnerved Miss Deb, and I was unnerved too. Maybe he wasn’t doing as well as I’d thought.

  I found him on the floor of the porch, wrestling with the dogs and laughing. It even seemed like the dogs were laughing. And for some reason it all seemed mentally healthy enough to me.

  “You ready for some lunch?” I asked.

  He stopped and sat up. Stella and Stanley continued to lick his face and hands. Maybe I’d break down and get him a puppy when we got home.

  “Yeah! I’m starving!”

  “You want to make a tomato sandwich, or what do you feel like?”

  “I feel like a taco! Can we go to Taco Bell?”

  “No, but we can go to Juanita Greenberg’s!”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s good. Trust me. They have tacos.”

  “Olé! Ándale, ándale! Arriba, arriba!”

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “On Sesame Street when I was about three.”

  “Go wash your hands ten times and let’s go. And be sure to use soap!”

  I had a taco salad with shrimp, and Charlie had traditional tacos. Of course we shared guacamole and chips.

  “It’s not raining,” Charlie observed.

  “Surely the skies are out of water for the day. What do you think?”

  “Hope so. That was so good, Mom,” Charlie said on the way home. “Thanks!”

  “You’re welcome!” I said. “I enjoyed it too.”

  “Hey, you know what? I have to buy stuff for the treasure chest. Where should we go for that?”

  “CVS? They have everything else in the world.”

  We turned into the parking lot at the CVS on Coleman Boulevard, went inside, and began digging around in the toy aisle.

  “What about yo-yos?”

  “Yo-yos suck,” he said with all the gravity of an old man commenting on his own fatal illness. “Maybe Guster can make them work, but I sure can’t.”

  “Please don’t say suck. Or those bounce-back paddle balls?” I said. “That could be fun, you know, have a contest to see who can whack it the most times in a row?”

  “Yeah, plus they won’t melt in the ground. And maybe some comic books? And, I don’t know, some packs of gum?”

  “How come we have to do a triple chest and they only have to do a single?”

  “I know. I thought about that. Good thing I have a job.”

  “I think I can cover this, Charlie. You save your money for college or something.”

  We loaded up the basket with what Charlie wanted to buy and stood on line waiting to pay. There was a jar of single long-stemmed red silk roses wrapped in cellophane on the counter. Charlie took one out and put it in his basket.

  “Who’s that for? Glam?”

  “Oh, no. It’s for Miss Deb. You know, to let her know we love her?”

  “Put it back,” I said. “Right now.”

  “But I have my own mon—”

  “Did you hear what I said? Put it back.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ll discuss it in the car.” I could feel my pulse starting to go out of control, another sign of The Reincarnation of Annie Britt’s Nervous System.

  We paid the cashier and left. We got into the car, and I started the engine. Charlie wasn’t speaking to me. He was staring out the window.

  “Listen to me. When I was over at Miss Deb’s this morning, she showed me all the sympathy cards you made for her. I’d like for you to explain to me why you thought it was necessary to make eight sympathy cards. Look at me when I’m talking to you, young man!”

  He turned to face me, and tears were streaming down his face. His jaw was as tight as a New England clam. He was plenty pissed.

  “When Dad died? You got a billion cards! I just wanted to make sure she got enough. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yeah, that’s all.”

  I yanked two tissues from the box I kept in the car and handed them to him.

  “Wipe and blow,” I said. “I’m a terrible mother. I apologize. I hadn’t thought of that.” I choked up, and a few tears spilled over. I pulled a tissue from the box for myself.

  “It’s okay. You’re not a terrible mother. You’re a great mother.” He blew his nose and looked at me. “Does Miss Deb think I’m weird?”

  “No. She thinks you’re a sensitive and caring young man. For the record, so do I. And so does everyone else. We’re all just a little concerned about how you’re adjusting to life without your dad.”

  “It sucks. Sorry, but it does.”

  “You know what? You’re right. It sucks.”

  “Don’t you miss him?”

  “Not an hour passes that I don’t think of him, Charlie.”

  “But being here makes it easier, doesn’t it?”

  It was the continuing campaign to stay rearing its impossible head.

  “I think this has been a great getaway for both of us,” I said, hoping he’d realize we were headed back to New York very soon.

  Later I thought about that conversation over and over and came to believe a couple of things were happening. First, Charlie realized his dad wasn’t coming back, and that alone was a horrible truth. And second, though it was an awful struggle for him, he was dealing with it as a ten-year-old boy might. An adult would never jam another adult’s mailbox with sympathy cards, but a child might. Maybe he was doing better than I thought, certainly better than I’d thought before I talked to him.

  When we got home, Mom and Dad were there. Mom found Charlie a big shoe box to use for a treasure chest, and they covered it in aluminum foil. They put all the surprises inside and rewrapped the entire thing in plastic wrap.

  “There’s booty in there!” Mom said to him and wiggled her eyebrows.


  “Glam! You know what booty means, don’t you?”

  “Don’t you?” she said, and I swear to you, her eyes twinkled as she watched him make a horrified face, loving the fact that she could make him laugh, that they had a secret joke. “Now let’s finish that cryptogram.”

  “And I’ll help you finish that map,” Dad said, from his rocker, where he had been absorbed by a sports magazine.

  It’s a funny thing about a good porch overlooking the ocean. It was great in hot weather when you needed shade. It was good when it rained to be close to nature but stay dry and safe. It was soothing in the dark, or it could be a place to whisper secrets late at night. So the proximity to the ocean meant we should wipe down the windows every day—so what? The truth was that we didn’t do it on a daily basis. And since I’d been home we’d cleaned the windows only when company was coming or when we noticed the windows were streaked with salt. We’d been so busy with one another and every other thing that we had ignored them. And Mom, who had always been a stickler for the cause of their cleanliness, hardly seemed to care. The rest of us didn’t care either. What had come over us? It had to be something good.

  Later on that afternoon, when the cocktail hour was nearly upon us, I had completed my most important task of the day. The lights were restrung, the serape spread across the trestle table. Bottles, glasses, ice, and garnishes were in place to begin another night of family festivities. Instead of a cheese ball we had a bowl of boiled peanuts.

  Mom had made a huge pot roast with potatoes and carrots. It was resting in her Dutch oven on top of the stove, and the aroma from it made my mouth water. Of course there was a steamer of rice. My folks had to have rice for gravy. The kitchen table was set. We’d eat when we felt like it. There was no reason to rush.

  I was waiting for Mom to return from Miss Deb’s. She’d gone over under the guise of discussing her Poe lecture, but the real reason was to check on how Miss Deb was doing. Dad and Charlie had gone down to the area of General William Moultrie’s grave site to bury the treasure.

  I was going onto the porch when I heard Steve’s car pull up. He was probably going to come over to get his dogs. I had come to like Steve. Actually, I should say that I had come to hold him in some esteem. I admired the regard he had for Charlie and the fact that he had been such a rock for Miss Deb in the minutes following Vernon’s death. And he had been a pallbearer, which seemed to me to be an awfully difficult role to perform. He was really nice to my parents. And he was good with his dogs, kind and affectionate. Funny, I had not wanted to be his friend, and I wondered then if I’d ever had a friend who had more to offer than he did. I could not recall the name of a single one. And he was a doctor. We shared a passion for lessening the suffering of others.

  “Hi!” I called out to him as he approached our front steps. “How was your day? Come to liberate the kids?”

  “Good! Thanks. Yeah, my hairy kids. Did they behave themselves today?”

  I held the screen door open for him, and he came onto the porch. Stella and Stanley jumped up and ran to him. He leaned down, talked some baby talk to them, and scratched their ears. They sank to the floor, and he rubbed their tummies simultaneously. They were overcome with happiness to have him back home.

  “They’re such great dogs it’s ridiculous. I was even thinking I might get a dog for Charlie when we go home. He’s so attached to yours. So am I, sort of.”

  “Good dogs make a house happy. Hey! The house is awfully quiet. Where’d everybody go?”

  I told him and added, “They’ll be back soon. Would you like a glass of vino? Or a beer or something else? A vodka gimlet?”

  “A gimlet? Really?”

  “No? Don’t like gimlets?”

  “Um, it’s not that. It’s the onions. They’re sort of gross.”

  “Yeah, they are.” Why had I suggested a gimlet? I hated those sour little onions too.

  “I think a glass of wine would be just the thing. Can I open the bottle?”

  “Sure! Thanks. Ever since that night when Mom got busted by Miss Deb for drinking wine from a box, we’ve had bottles. Not award-winning bottles, you can be sure, but bottles with corks.”

  “Well, that’s a step up for sure.” He smiled at me, and I smiled right back. “So I understand you’ve been taking shifts at the VA. How’s that going?”

  “Really good. Really good. I just wanted to check it out, you know?”

  “And I’m sure they need the help.”

  “Well, I have this small advantage of having seen what happens over there—in Afghanistan, I mean. So when these guys are a bit messed up emotionally in addition to their physical injuries, I know why.”

  “Here you go. Cheers!”

  “To Stella and Stanley!” I said and thought, Well, that was a pretty idiotic thing to say. Toasting dogs? Really? “Steve? May I tell you something personal? I’d like your opinion.”

  “Of course. Shall we sit?”

  “Let’s.” We sat in two rockers, and I took a deep breath. “So today . . .” I told him about the cards at Miss Deb’s and the rose, and he was quiet for a few minutes. “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s telling you the truth about why he made so many cards. Charlie’s an extremely honest and well-intentioned kid. Child psychiatry isn’t my specialty, as you know. I have a friend who’s a pediatric shrink who I like a lot. I could run it by him to see what he thinks. But my guess is that he just needs more time to pass. You know, that first birthday without him, the first Christmas, and so on.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “I think the accepted wisdom is that most times a child will heal on roughly the same timetable as the adults around them because they take their lead from their parents. My best advice is to keep him talking about it. You know?”

  “Yeah, we talk a lot. It’s been rough for both of us.”

  “I know that. I could see it from the first moment I met you. It probably doesn’t help to say this, but I went through all of this when I lost Catherine.”

  “So that’s her name! I keep meaning to ask you. She was so beautiful!”

  “Now, how would you know that?”

  “Because the first few mornings Charlie came over to get your dogs, I went with him. He was a little nervous. I saw all the pictures on the wall and assumed it was her. How did you get through it? The grieving, I mean.”

  “Well, the normal ways. I buried myself in work. I ran a marathon. I went to every movie that came out. I did everything I could to keep her out of my head.”

  “Yeah, that’s one reason I’m working over at the VA.”

  “I figured as much. And then I kept going to the cemetery, even though I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I’d go there anyway and talk to her and cry like an idiot.”

  “Crying doesn’t make you an idiot,” I said.

  “I know that, but anyway, one day I woke up and decided my tears weren’t going to bring her back and it was time for me to start living again because that was what she would want me to do. So now I live for her and for me. Every day. That’s what I do. I live for two.”

  “That’s really a completely brilliant idea.”

  “Well, I don’t know how brilliant it is, but it seemed to make me feel a lot better. By the way, I’ve got the mug you left in my bedroom.”

  I knew my face turned scarlet because I could feel the heat.

  “I won’t ask why you were in there.” He waited for me to offer some response, and I didn’t say one word. So he cleared his throat and smiled. “Look, I don’t know. Maybe you should tell Charlie to imagine that he’s living for his dad too?”

  “I will sure think about that.” In the next breath I let my shields down and asked him about that slut I’d seen him with. “So you can tell me to mind my own grits, but who was that girl I saw you with on your deck a few nights ago, right before Vernon died? Is she someone important?”

  “Who? You mean that crazy blonde?”

  “Yep, the nice lady who wra
pped her leg around your waist.” I giggled.

  He started to laugh. “You’re funny. Do you know that?”

  “On occasion. But you didn’t answer my question, did you?”

  “She’s this girl I dated once or twice who’s calling me all the time. She just broke up with her boyfriend, and she wanted some company. I was just trying to be nice. That’s all.”

  “Really?” I was on my second glass of wine, and my tongue was as loose as an overdone lasagna noodle. “You sure looked like you were being awfully nice! From where I stood, that is.”

  “What are you saying, Mrs. McMullen? Are you maybe a little jealous of her?”

  “Don’t be absurd. That kind of cavorting in the moonlight isn’t my thing!”

  “I’ll bet it is. I’ll bet you can cavort with the best of them. Not today and not tomorrow, but soon, cavort again you will. Yoda sees all and knows all.”

  “Yoda. Tell Yoda to kiss it.”

  “Yoda would love to.”

  Chapter 14

  Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example, thus: When I grew the scar-abœus, there was no skull apparent on the parchment. When I had completed the drawing, I gave it to you, and observed you narrowly until you returned it. You, therefore, did not design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was not done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done.

  —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Gold-Bug”

  Annie

  Since Jackie went to work so early, I got up Sunday morning with the birds to make her an egg and some toast. I walked her down the back steps and picked up the newspaper at the bottom of our driveway as she backed out. I waved good-bye, and she waved back to me and I thought, Lord, please bring my daughter and my sweet Charlie home to me permanently. Then I thought, Well, hells bells, as long as I’m praying I may as well go to church. I had this theory that praying in church sort of put your petitions on a scud missile to Heaven, like giving them a priority delivery. I certainly did not agree with everything about my church these days, but I still believed in its basic tenets. So I went inside, poured myself another cup of coffee, and went to my bathroom to fix my face.