The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World

  The kitchen itself was a time capsule. The counters were edged in ribbed chrome and topped with pink patterned Formica that was peeling at the seams. Near the sink sat a set of metal cylinders labeled FLOUR, SUGAR, COFFEE. There was a toaster oven, but no microwave. The stove was the width of two regular stoves, eight burners, two regular ovens, and a warming oven. It was gleaming bright, clean, and obviously had not been used in a very long time. It would take courage to turn it on. Cold cereal and vichyssoise would be better menu choices.

  On the countertop in the corner of the kitchen near the dining alcove, there was a small telephone. Turquoise. Rotary dial. Not touch-tone. Amedeo had seen people in the movies use a rotary phone, and he knew the phrase “dial a number,” but he had never done it.

  Mrs. Zender said, “That’s a princess phone.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Of course it works. Except for my cleaning service, which is not here today, everything in this house works.”

  Amedeo lifted the receiver. The part of the phone he held to his ear had yellowed from turquoise to a shade of institutional green.

  Mrs. Zender sat at the kitchen table. Amedeo felt he was being watched. He turned to face the wall of cabinets.

  The cabinets reached to the ceiling. It would take a ladder to reach the top shelves. The cabinet doors were glass, and Amedeo could see stacks and stacks of dishes and matching cups hanging from hooks. Behind other glass doors there were platoons of canned soups—mostly tomato—and a regiment of cereal boxes—mostly bran. Everything was orderly, but the dishes on the topmost shelves were dusty, and the stemware was cloudy, settled in rows like stalagmites.

  Finally, he heard, “Your call may be monitored for quality assurance,” and was told to listen carefully “to the following options.” He realized that he could not exercise any of the “following options.” He could hardly press one or two when there were no buttons to press. He held his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “I’m supposed to push one for English.”

  Mrs. Zender smiled wide. The last of the red runes had been washed away. “Do nothing,” she said. “Just hang on. When you have a dial phone, they have to do the work for you.” She threw her head back and laughed.

  Amedeo didn’t turn his back on her again.

  As soon as the call was finished, they returned to the long, dark hall, where the heat and the music swallowed them. Mrs. Zender paused to say, “I suppose you put central air-conditioning into your place.”

  Amedeo hesitated. Until that moment, he had never thought of central air-conditioning as something a person put in. He thought it came with the walls and roof. “I suppose so,” he said.

  “Sissies,” Mrs. Zender said. Then she laughed again. She had a musical laugh. “I chose a sound system over air-conditioning.”

  “But,” Amedeo replied, “I think you’re allowed to have both.”

  “No,” she said crisply. “Karl Eisenhuth is as dead as my husband.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, a pity. There never will be another sound system like this one.”

  Reluctantly, Amedeo left Mrs. Zender, her veils, her house.

  Now, Amedeo watched William walk through that peeling, painted front door without stopping or knocking and enter Mrs. Zender’s world of sound and shadow.

  PETER VANDERWAAL WAS STAYING LATE at the office. He was hoping to get a great deal accomplished in this uninterrupted time after hours. He was clearing his desk to start preparing for an important exhibition that was coming to the Sheboygan Art Center. The show was scheduled for the first weekend in November, and it was already the second Friday in September. School had started and museum activity always picked up with the start of the school year. There was a lot of routine museum business he wanted to get out of the way.

  Like most people who consider themselves more creative than organized, Peter had allowed himself a generous dose of self-satisfaction at having sorted his papers and laid them out in (five) neat stacks on his desk.

  The phone rang.

  Peter would later tell people that he could tell by the ring alone that it was an emergency.

  And it was.

  It was his mother.

  His mother would never call him at the office unless there was an emergency. Her message was softly spoken, but urgent. His father, who had been on kidney dialysis for years, had taken a bad fall. He was in intensive care at the hospital. His condition was critical.

  As soon as he hung up, Peter booked a flight to Epiphany, New York.

  He checked his watch and knew that he had just enough time to get home, throw some clothes into an overnight bag, and call a cab to get him to the airport. If he packed lightly, he could carry his one bag as well as his briefcase onto the plane with him. He looked at the (five) stacks of papers on his desk and stuffed them into his briefcase, one at a time and in no particular order.

  As he left his office Peter thought that efficiency and emergency have nothing in common except that they both begin with the letter e.

  AMEDEO HESITATED BEFORE WALKING FARTHER down the driveway, but he was pulled toward the station wagon and the door beyond it.

  He stopped at the station wagon and cleared the love-bugs from the window. They crumbled softly and smeared the glass. “Sorry,” he said as he spit on a piece of notebook paper and wiped clean a sizable porthole. He saw a pile of towels, a pile of bedsheets, and twelve (he counted) heavy-looking large aluminum cooking pots that were darkened with pockmarks up to their handles.

  Amedeo reluctantly turned away from the car and made his way to Mrs. Zender’s front door. He raised his hand to ring the bell, lowered it, raised it, lowered it, raised it, and rang the bell.

  The door swung wide, and a tiny woman—not Mrs. Zender—opened the door.

  “You’re not Mrs. Zender,” he said.

  “No, dear, I’m not. Would you like to speak to her?”

  Before he could answer, he heard footsteps beating a staccato on the hallway floor. The hall carpet had been rolled. Lying against the back wall, end-on, it looked like an Escher drawing. “Please keep the door closed, Mrs. Wilcox. You’ll let the lovebugs in.” Then Mrs. Zender spotted Amedeo. “It’s all right, Mrs. Wilcox. It’s the boy from next door.” Turning to Amedeo she asked, “Is your phone connected now?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Touch-tone?”

  “It is.”

  “A pity,” Mrs. Zender replied.

  She turned to the woman beside her. “This is Amedeo Kaplan, my neighbor.”

  He was pleased that she remembered his name. It had been weeks.

  Mrs. Wilcox stepped forward. “Amedeo? I’m Dora Ellen Wilcox, William’s mother.”

  William emerged from the gloom of a back room. He was now dressed in worn jeans and an old T-shirt.

  “So that makes you William Wilcox,” Amedeo said.

  William squinted before looking left and right with mock concentration. “I guess so,” he said. “I don’t see anyone else that name might could apply to.”

  Amedeo said, “My last name is not the same as my mother’s. My mother uses her maiden name professionally.”

  “So how do you know my mother doesn’t do the same? She’s a professional too.”

  “I heard you just say that you don’t see anyone else—”

  Mrs. Zender interrupted. “If you two have a quarrel, please carry on with the door shut. It’s lovebug season, Mrs. Wilcox. Close the door!”

  Mrs. Wilcox took a quiet half step forward, just enough to shoulder herself between Mrs. Zender and the door. “Sorry, dear,” she said as she closed the door, leaving William and Amedeo on one side and Mrs. Zender and herself on the other.

  As soon as the door closed, Amedeo said, “I know another mother who does that.”

  “Does what?”

  “Turns away anger.”

  “Your mother?”

  “No, not my mother. My mother is more the outspoken type.” Amedeo quickly added, ?
??No, I was thinking of someone else’s mother. Her name is Mrs. Vanderwaal. She’s the mother of a guy I know. His name is Peter Vanderwaal. He’s a grown-up. Actually, he’s a friend of my father’s.” William said nothing, and Amedeo felt compelled to continue. “Well, actually, I consider Peter Vanderwaal my friend too.” William still said nothing, which made Amedeo speak with greater urgency. “Peter Vanderwaal is definitely my friend. It’s his mother, Mrs. Vanderwaal, I was referring to.”

  Then William asked, “How do you know my mother does that?”

  Amedeo swallowed. “Does what?”

  “Turns away anger. How do you know that?”

  “She calls everyone ‘dear.’ Just like Mrs. Vanderwaal, Peter’s mother.”

  “Yeah,” William said. He smiled. This time, it was an open smile, congratulatory, like a horseshoe of roses. “Yeah, Ma does that. It’s part of her nature, and it’s good for her profession.”

  “What is your mother’s profession, anyway?”

  “She’s a liquidator.”

  “Mrs. Vanderwaal, the other mother I was talking about, is the mother of my godfather. Peter Vanderwaal. He’s a godfather. A real godfather. Actually, he’s my godfather. And we’re friends.” Nervous that he had inadvertently given offense, Amedeo persevered. “Peter is my godfather and a friend. Or a friend and a godfather. Whichever way you look at it, he’s both. Mostly friend, though.”

  William smiled a half-measure. “I guess you think that because my ma’s a liquidator, you’ll find a dead body under that stuff in the station wagon?”

  “Will I?”

  “My ma’s the kind of liquidator who helps people settle their affairs.”

  Amedeo said, “And is that supposed to be less scary?”

  William laughed. He got the joke, and Amedeo felt a sense of pride and relief. “Actually,” Amedeo said, “my godfather, Peter Vanderwaal, is probably settling some affairs right now. His father just died, and he is with his mother, helping her. Did someone at Mrs. Zender’s die?”

  “No. Mrs. Zender’s going to Waldorf Court.”

  “I guess Waldorf Court would be a place to settle affairs. Is that something like family court?”

  “Waldorf Court is a retirement community.” William hesitated and then added, “She’s moving there. I guess you noticed, she’s right cranky about it.”

  Amedeo nodded. “Cranky. Definitely cranky.”

  “Ma will calm her down.”

  “Yeah, like Mrs. Vanderwaal. I guess everything will be all right.” Amedeo started to leave, but he didn’t really want to. He pointed to the station wagon. “So I guess all that stuff is going to Waldorf Court.”

  “That’s the stuff Mrs. Zender’s donating to Emerson House.”

  “Emerson House? Is that the local Goodwill?”

  William hesitated again. “No, it’s . . . No. Emerson House is . . .”William took a deep breath before continuing. “Emerson House is a shelter for victims of domestic abuse. They have a thrift shop there, and that’s where Ma carries the donated stuff. Even before she starts a house sale, Ma knows what will sell and how much the other stuff won’t sell for. That way a client, like Mrs. Zender, can take it as a charity tax deduction.”

  “Like Goodwill.”

  “Yeah, like Goodwill. But Ma . . . likes Emerson House better.”

  “Because her client gets a better tax deduction?”

  “No. No. The deduction is the same.” William hesitated before repeating, “Ma just likes Emerson House better.”

  Amedeo knew there was more to the answer, and he knew it would be pushy of him to ask, but he did anyway. “Why?”

  “It’s the women. Ma cares a lot about those women. They get beat up at home, and they run away with nothing except the clothes they have on their backs. Sometimes they have kids with them. Emerson House hides them and then helps them start a new life. They get to shop at the thrift shop for free.”

  “How did you find out about Emerson House?”

  William again didn’t answer immediately. Amedeo waited. There was a history in this silence, but William was not yet ready to let it go. Finally, William answered a different question. “Ma found out about it a while ago.”

  William was holding back, but Amedeo didn’t want the conversation to end. “So, like, what doesn’t sell?” he asked.

  Tilting his chin in the direction of the station wagon, William answered, “Old pockmarked aluminum cookware.”

  “What else?”

  “Tablecloths that need to be ironed. Ironing boards. Ma thinks ironing boards will become artifacts of a pre-permanent-press civilization.”

  “What else?”

  “Pressure cookers.”

  “What’s a pressure cooker?”

  “It’s a heavy metal pot with a swivel top that locks. It uses steam under pressure and at a high temperature to cook food fast. They went out of style when microwaves came in.”

  And that is when Amedeo asked, “Can I help?”

  “Nah,” William said. “That won’t be necessary. Ma’ll have Mrs. Zender cheerful in no time. She can’t stand anybody being mad, or hurt, or the least little bit upset. Ma does turn away anger. Just like you said that Mrs. Vanderwaal does.”

  “Actually, what I meant was, can I help with the sorting and stuff?”

  William asked, “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Amedeo said. “I just would.”

  William fanned a few lovebugs from the front of his face and then flicked off the ones that had landed on the back of his hand. He looked Amedeo straight in the eye and asked, “Does this kind of work interest you?”

  Amedeo knew that this was not the time to tell William that he was longing to get back inside Mrs. Zender’s house. Not yet. Not yet. So taking a cue from William’s measured, guarded responses to all direct questions, he brushed lovebugs—real and imaginary—from his shoulders before answering, “Something about it must.”

  The boys stood on either side of a pool of expectation. Both wanted to wade in. Both hesitated. William said, “We don’t have insurance.” Amedeo waited. “Like if you get cut on glass or fall over something, we don’t have insurance to cover you.”

  Amedeo said, “My mother has tons of insurance. My mother believes in insurance. We have insurance for everything. We have health insurance, life insurance, insurance for every body—human body, auto body.” William laughed out loud, and Amedeo felt a strange sense of victory. Something about William Wilcox made Amedeo eager to please him.

  William shrugged as if tipping his ear to an angel on his shoulder. At last, with a flicker of a smile, he said, “I guess you might could. Help, that is.”

  Amedeo didn’t want to, but he knew he had to ask, “Do you have to check with your mother?”

  “Nah,” William answered, and started to lift his shoulder to his earlobe again, but stopped and squared his shoulders instead. “Ma and me, we’re partners.”

  “When can I start?”

  “Soon’s you change your clothes.”

  PETER VANDERWAAL’S FATHER REMAINED CONSCIOUS long enough for Peter to say his good-byes and to reassure his father that he need not worry about Mother; that he, Peter, was there, ready to help.

  There were a lot of details to be taken care of. Besides arrangements for the funeral, there were piles of bureaucratic paperwork, but actually, there had been very little for Peter himself to do. His mother, Lelani (who had been born in Hawaii when her father was in the navy and whose first name never failed to lower people’s expectations of her), had worked for the city of Epiphany for years. She was extremely efficient, and all the arrangements that needed to be made, had been. Two days after the funeral, Peter was able to book a return flight.

  His mother knew that her son was anxious to get back. She knew that he had important work to do. He was director of the Sheboygan Art Center and had a major exhibit coming up.

  But as he was leaving for the airport, she handed him a gray metal lockbox
and asked him to take it back to Sheboygan with him.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “An archive of your father’s life. Take it, dear. It should go back to Wisconsin with you. On the plane.”

  Peter was dreading the two flights plus the hour-and-fifteen-minute layover in Detroit, and since he had carried on a briefcase in addition to his overnight bag, he would have to check his bag and be burdened with the care and keep of an awkward carry-on if he took the gray box. “Mother,” he said kindly, “can’t this wait? Please. Can’t you bring it up with you when you come to the opening?”

  “I would like you to take it with you, dear.”

  “Taking it will mean that I’ll have to check my suitcase.”

  “Yes, dear.” She held the box out to him.

  Peter took the box from her and felt its heft. “How will this ever get through security?” he asked.

  “That won’t be a problem, dear. When they open it, they’ll find nothing in there but papers. And the box will fit in the overhead or under your seat.”

  “I think this ought to wait until you come up for the opening of the new show.” Peter knew his mother hated to “bother him with things,” so he thought that his reluctance would be enough to make her reconsider. However, she was not to be put off.

  “Take it with you, dear,” she said. “I think you need to have it with you.”

  “I can provide archival storage if that’s what you mean.”

  “That, too, dear. But more than that. I think you need what is in there.”

  “Need, Mother?”

  “Yes, dear. Need.”

  Peter took the box.

  AMEDEO CUT ACROSS THE GROUNDS between his house and Mrs. Zender’s. He ran as fast as he could, but the property was dense with live oaks and pines, so the soil was spongy from fallen leaves and pine needles laid down in descending degrees of decay. On Mrs. Zender’s side of the line, fallen branches and ropey kudzu vines cluttered the way. On Amedeo’s side, the path was clear. The pines didn’t branch for miles up, and the bark on the long stilts of their trunks was loosely attached in patches of a sloppy collage. The live oaks were as old as history; their trunks were blotched with lichen, their branches draped with Spanish moss. The lichen and the moss were like barometers, inching from gray to green—dry to wet—and the sunlight that came through was refracted by air so moist it draped small rainbowed droplets on the horizontal limbs.