“Okay.”
“And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t try to second-guess my motives. You told me not to psychoanalyze you, so I’d—appreciate—”
“Okay.” He wobbled slightly when he got up. “You’re right, it’s no big deal. Sorry I nagged you.” He made a bow—she hated it; he probably meant it kindly, but to her it looked ironic and horribly final—and left her by herself.
She must’ve looked pitiful. Thea came over and sat down on the arm of her chair. “Happy birthday,” she said, and pulled her in for a kiss on top of the head. Wouldn’t it be nice to lay her head on Thea’s lap just for a minute, Caddie thought. It wouldn’t cure her of anything, but it would make her feel better. “Sorry I’m such a jerk,” she mumbled.
“Oh, hush.”
“I am, though. I can’t do anything. Can’t sing a song, I can’t even decide on a family for this baby. I can’t pick up the phone and call…some man.” Who might turn out to be her father.
“Everything in good time.”
She let out a heavy sigh. “What does that mean?”
“Mmm.” Thea patted her lips, thinking. “I guess it means you and I are on different schedules.” She looked tired and dreamy, as if Caddie’s troubles weren’t particularly important to her at this moment. “I’m going to have to learn a new song, aren’t I? What should it be? Chopin? You could simplify one of the preludes for me.” Caddie couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not. Probably not. Thea smoothed her skirt over her knee with a pink-nailed hand. She had small hands, veiny with age; the pretty wedding ring Will had made for her was too big for them. “I’m sorry I’m having a better time at your party than you are.”
“Me, too.” Thea’s light laugh made Caddie smile. “You always cheer me up.”
“That’s funny,” Thea said, “you always cheer me up.” She stood. “I’m going outside and watch the sun go down.”
“Okay. Magill’s mad at me.”
Thea rolled her eyes.
“Okay, disillusioned, not mad.”
“So?”
“So. I hate that.”
“Fix it, then.” She started away.
“Fix it, then,” Caddie mimicked.
Thea heard, but she only laughed and kept going.
People stopped asking her to sing. She should’ve felt relieved, but instead she felt finished, as if there were no more hope for her and finally they all knew it. It was bad enough to be a flop in private, but much worse to be a public one, in front of so many people you’d learned to care for.
Magill, who had disappeared for a while, was back. He’d put on one clip-on earring, a gold hoop—it looked like Doré’s—and twisted a blue-and-white handkerchief into a headband around his forehead. Shoeless, wearing the same holey jeans and loud Hawaiian shirt he’d had on all afternoon, he commandeered the karaoke machine and broke into a very realistic cover of “Lively Up Yourself.” He managed to keep his balance while he did deep knee bobs to the reggae beat, really nailing the Jamaican accent. Caddie had to laugh along with the others, filled with the same fondness and affection for him. And something else, too, a pang of pain or pleasure, she couldn’t quite tell which.
Do you know why Henry took up skydiving? Thea had asked her once. Because he was afraid of heights.
Magill had gone on to “I Shot the Sheriff,” but Caddie felt his eyes on her when she crossed in front of him and began to pick over the karaoke CD collection. The artists weren’t really the artists, they were sound-alikes, she’d figured out earlier, but as Maxine Harris said, “They’re close enough for us!” A CD called Pop Duets by Your Favorites was exactly what Caddie was looking for. The Bob Marley song ended; she exchanged it for her CD.
“How does this work?” she asked Magill. “How do you make it play number seven?”
He frowned at her suspiciously. “Like this.” He pressed two buttons on the remote control.
Sonny and Cher began to sing “Baby Don’t Go.”
Caddie put out her hand.
Magill grinned, looking tickled but not astounded—and it struck her that Thea had reacted just that way the night Caddie had whipped off her T-shirt and they’d gotten soaked together on the roof: glad but not incredulous. So. Her friends had more confidence in her derring-do than she had.
Magill handed her the second microphone. “Baby, don’t gooooo,” they crooned in nasal, effortless harmony, mimicking the originals as if they’d been practicing all day. They held hands and stared into each other’s eyes, Magill arching his black eyebrows soulfully, Caddie trying to resemble Cher by keeping her face a perfect blank. It wasn’t easy, because what she was dying to do was burst out laughing.
They were a huge hit. “More!” people called out. “Encore!” Tune number eight from Pop Duets by Your Favorites came on: “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart.”
“Wait, it’s too high,” Caddie said, breaking off before the chorus. “This one’s no good for me.”
“That’s okay. Switch.”
“Switch?”
“You be Elton John.” Magill began to sing the Kiki Dee part in a wonderful, ridiculous falsetto. They brought down the house, but Caddie ruined the end by getting the giggles. She laughed so hard her stomach hurt. She flung her arms around Magill’s thin waist and swayed with him for a long, sweet, satisfying hug while their good-natured audience clapped and cheered. Oh, maybe we should just get married, she thought, drunk on success. He’d make us laugh all the time. The baby and me.
He was raking through the karaoke CDs, searching for something. There were so many; he must’ve paid a fortune for them, and she couldn’t imagine him taking up a Wake House collection. No, he’d bought them himself. For her.
She recognized the song he put on after the first bar: “I’ll Be Seeing You,” very close to the old Jo Stafford recording. She had it; she liked to sing along with it at home.
Magill handed her Doré’s scarf. “You know this one, Caddie, I saw it. Sing,” he commanded.
“By myself? I didn’t promise that!” Butterflies she hoped had flown away for good fluttered in her diaphragm.
Magill sat down in a chair next to Mr. Lorton and folded his arms, smiling up at her sweetly, expectantly. Everybody was smiling. Ready to like the music, ready to like her. Mr. Lorton thunked his cane on the floor in sudden recognition. “This was our song,” he said wonderingly, “Sarah and me. She dearly loved this song. Oh, my goodness.”
Caddie began to sing.
She and Jo Stafford didn’t sing in the same key, but Magill had done something to the machine, turned the whole thing down so it played lower and slower. But still such a beautiful song, full of loss and longing and fine romantic yearning. She did her best by it. Halfway through, it came to her that she wasn’t nervous. That was such a shock, it almost made her nervous. But the deliberate, melancholy phrasing carried her through, and in the end she wasn’t thinking about anything except the music.
After that it was the Caddie Winger show. She sang “What’ll I Do?” like Rosemary Clooney, “Night and Day” like Keely Smith. She sang “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” and “I’ll Get By,” and she sang “You’ve Got to See Mamma Ev’ry Night (Or You Can’t See Mamma at All).” She stuck with the standards until Magill put on “Any Old Time,” and she sang that one like Maria Muldaur. Mrs. Brill couldn’t contain herself; she got up and danced a dreamy jitterbug, bad hip and all, by herself until Bernie trotted over and joined her.
“No more,” Caddie told Magill after “Georgia on My Mind,” Anita O’Day–style, and everybody said “Awwww.” But it was time to quit. She was exhausted, for one thing, still high on the thrill of success but emotionally wrung out, and for another, a smart performer always left her audience wanting a little more. She told her students that before recitals, so it must be true.
Nana brought her a blown pink rose from the dining room table centerpiece. “Caddie, honey,” she said, putting it in her hand, squeezing her fingers around the thornless stem. “Caddie, honey, I
don’t even know what to say.” Her faded eyes were wet. “I’m sorry about that crack. ‘Scaredy-cat’ crack. You know what, I think there’s a little bit of me in you after all. Not that that’s the world’s biggest compliment.”
“Yes, it is,” Caddie said, and kissed her on both cheeks.
Across the room, Magill caught Caddie’s eye. He looked worn out, too, sagging in the doorway, waiting for her to see him. When she did, he straightened up and waved, and she blew him a goodbye kiss with both hands. She’d thank him later, try to explain what this day had meant to her. He probably knew, though. Maybe she’d call him tonight. Maybe she’d propose to him.
“Where’s Thea?” Cornel asked her. He was looking very spiffy these days, no more ancient golf shirts with saggy seersucker trousers. He’d put on a bow tie for the party, and new khaki pants, and slicked his shock of platinum hair back with oil. He took a lot of ribbing for these improvements, especially from Bernie, but it didn’t bother him. “Some people take pride in their appearance,” he’d say, “and some people let themselves go. To the dogs.”
“She was listening through the window, I think,” Caddie told him. “She went outside to watch the sun go down. I’ll go with you,” she decided when he turned around and shuffled toward the door. In spite of the new attention to his dress, he still wore running shoes for every occasion. Bunions.
A breeze had come up among the tired trees, making a dry, scratchy background for the drone of cicadas. Thea might’ve missed Caddie’s concert, but she had the right idea; it was much cooler out here than in the house, and now that the sun was down, layers of scarlet and pink flamed in the sky through the tree leaves. Lightning bugs winked and swooped; crickets chirped.
Thea had stretched out on the glider and fallen asleep, one arm across her waist, the other flung out. “Oh,” Caddie said, indecisive, softening her footsteps. “Should we wake her—” She collided with Cornel’s back, stepped on the heel of his shoe when he stopped short. “Oops. Sorry—”
He put his arms out. He made a sound, indescribable.
Caddie gasped. She looked over his shoulder. Thea was fine! She’d expected to see something hurting her, a snake, an animal—but she was fine! She’d pulled a cushion from the back of the glider and tilted it up against the metal arm to pillow her head. She’d taken her shoes off; they peeked out from the bottom of the glider, neat, the toes together. She…she looked girlish in her white blouse, her hip a soft curve under her skirt. “What is it?” Caddie whispered, fearful.
“Get Brenda.”
“Thea?”
“Tell her to call the ambulance.”
“Why?”
Cornel grabbed her arm and shook it. “Go.”
She ran in the house. Brenda wasn’t in either parlor. People took one look at Caddie and alarm replaced whatever had been in their faces. She raced down the hall to the back of the house, burst into Brenda’s office.
She was on the phone, smiling, saying, “I know,” but when she saw Caddie, she took the receiver from her ear and stood up.
“Something’s wrong with Thea. She won’t wake up. Cornel says call an ambulance.”
“Oh, God.” She threw the phone down and bolted around the desk, around Caddie. She ran out the door.
“Wait!” Caddie picked up the receiver on the desk. Somebody said “Hello?” “Hang up,” Caddie said, but the person on the other end of the line, a man, was confused; he kept saying, “Brenda? Hello?” She punched the button for the second line, and when a dial tone came on she pressed 911.
A lady wouldn’t wake up, she told the dispatcher. She was out on the porch, she was at Wake House on Calvert Street—“I can’t remember the number! It’s on the corner of Calvert and Ross, and it’s got a sign in front, Wake House.” That’s fine, an ambulance would be on its way very shortly. Was the lady conscious? Was she breathing? Caddie didn’t know, she didn’t know anything. “That’s okay, ma’am, you just stay calm, we have a team out that way right now.”
“I’m hanging up,” she warned, “I can’t do anything in here!” and the dispatcher said all right, okay, just try to stay—
She hung up.
People had gathered around the divan in a tight half circle, but at a distance, and the women had their heads turned away. Doré Harris was crying into her hands. Caddie pushed between the lumpen bodies of Mr. Lorton and Mrs. Brill. “I called the ambulance, it’s on the way. What are you doing? What are you doing?” Brenda—she was putting Doré’s scarf over Thea’s face. “Don’t!” Caddie went down on her knees and snatched the scarf away.
“Honey,” Brenda said, “she’s gone.”
“No. We have to do CPR till they come. Who can do it?” She looked around, frantic. “Who knows it? Brenda, help. Is it a heart attack?” Thea’s face was slack but warm, not cold—whatever had happened to her had just happened. “You have one of those machines, those defibrillators, I’ve seen it—”
“She signed a DNR.”
“DNR—”
“Do not resuscitate.”
“No. Why?”
“Because she had a bad heart.”
“No, she doesn’t, she has a bad toe.”
Brenda just shook her head.
“She’d have told me.”
“She didn’t tell anyone. But she knew it wouldn’t be long.”
“No.” Thea gone? Nobody looked surprised. Except for Cornel, hunched in the porch swing with his head in his hands, they looked resigned but not shocked. Nobody argued or tried to stay when Brenda asked if they would please go inside. How could they go like that, like sheep, how could they give up without even trying?
Thea lay on her side as if she were about to get up, her face turned toward the floor; she was looking down through half-closed eyelids at her shoes. It was too soon, she was still recoverable, she couldn’t be lost. “Thea,” Caddie murmured, bending low to see into her blind eyes. She could wake her up—that wouldn’t be artificial means or heroic measures, just Caddie’s voice calling to her, calling her back. “Thea?” She touched her cheek with light, respectful fingers. “Thea?”
A hand touched her on the shoulder. She reached for it automatically. Tough, gnarled, knuckly old hand—not Brenda’s. Nana’s.
“I’m so sorry, honey. At least you can see she didn’t suffer one bit.”
Caddie nodded. A siren wailed. An ambulance stopped in front of the house. Lights kept flashing, but the siren went off in a dramatic last whoop. Brenda walked down the steps to meet the hurrying paramedics.
Caddie took hold of Thea’s outflung hand. Time was running out, they’d be here in a second. But she couldn’t form “goodbye” in her mind, and Nana was saying something to her. “What?”
“I’ll try to do better. I can’t be her, I know.”
Caddie looked up, her grandmother a blur through her tears. Nana put out her hand, and Caddie took it in her other one. Now she was in the middle, the child between her two mothers, but neither of them could comfort her.
Footsteps on the porch stairs. She pressed Thea’s fingers to her cheek. They felt cool and light, already disembodied. Did you finish everything on your list? I love you.
She rose and drew Nana over to the porch swing. “Cornel? Do you want to see her or—”
“No.”
“Let’s go over here, then. Let’s sit on the side porch, Cornel. Come on.” She had to help him straighten up when he got to his feet. She led him around the corner, Nana in their wake. No one ever sat here, it was airless and there was no view, only dusty, gangly hydrangea bushes and rhododendrons hanging over the porch rail, staining the floor with their rotting leaves. Cornel sat down in a wooden rocker, Nana in one next to it.
Caddie tried to close her ears to the sounds and low voices coming from around the corner. This is what happens, she thought. She’d mistaken Wake House for a glad place, a pleasant substitute for home, a funky old boarding-house for interesting old people. How naive. Look at Nana and Cornel, she thought. Look at t
heir frail, blue-veined, hollowed-out hands, that useless dent between the thumb and index finger, like a purple pit. Their croaky voices. Why did old people lose their voices? They lost everything, one ability after another, and then the muscle and flesh melted off their bones. Look at Cornel’s thighs, just horizontal sticks holding up his pants, look at the heavy, indistinct bag between his legs that used to be his testicles. His life force. I don’t love these people, Caddie thought. I hate them.
That passed, the passionate revulsion passed, dissolved as fast as it had formed. Cornel’s and her grandmother’s bodies became themselves again. She loved them again. Her old world righted itself, and all she had to do was learn to live in it without her friend.
22
Dearest Caddie,
If you’re reading this now, it must mean events have overtaken me. Oh, my, what a euphemism! It means things have happened a bit faster than the doctor suggested they would. Doctors never say this sort of thing directly, you know, they only suggest. Mine suggests I can “go at any time,” but it’s most likely in nine to twelve months from now.
(Should I have told you this before? I ponder that question from time to time, and the answer is always no, absolutely not. It would only churn up a great deal of mud and smoke and clouds, and I prefer things clean and clear. Anyway, what difference does it make? We’re all suffering from a terminal disease—I said that to you tonight during that flurry of unsolicited advice on the roof—so what does it matter that mine is a little more advanced than most people’s?)
It does seem as if I’ve done an inordinate amount of lecturing and advice-giving to poor you. You say no, but I think it’s true. I’m not sure why I love you so dearly, Caddie, I mean beyond the obvious fact that you’re lovable. You don’t remind me of myself when I was your age or anything of that sort. That first day when your moronic dog bit me, I liked you so much. You were so very sweet, so appalled and solicitous. Here is a gentle spirit, I thought, here is a very good person I would love to know.