“I’m kidding!” he says. “I can’t, Lucille. I had a prostatectomy, and I can’t. And I might as well dump the rest on you: I have to get a carotid endarterectomy.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, soon. I keep putting it off.”
Lucille puts her head on his chest. “Oh, my beautiful wounded Frank.”
He kisses the top of her head. “Oh, my long-lost Lucille. Found.”
Lucille turns out the light, tenderly. But then she whispers, “Frank?”
“Yes?”
“I hope we get to be together for a long time.”
“So do I.”
“And I hope we get to be together in heaven, too.” She doesn’t want to say that that damn Sue might try to interfere. Again. But this time, he’ll push her away in a nice, heavenly way. “No thanks,” he’ll say. “I’ve got what I always wanted.”
Frank says, “You know, Lucille, when I was a little kid, I used to try to imagine heaven, and it just seemed boring to me. The idea of living forever, it seemed boring. I preferred the way things happened here. Beginnings and endings. Starts and finishes. Risks. Uncertainties. I even liked the mysteries, the ever-unknowns. I mean, we don’t know where we come from, really; and when we die, we don’t know where we go.”
“Heaven,” Lucille insists. “Or, you know, pitchfork city.”
“Well, that’s what a lot of people say. But we don’t know. My way of looking at it is, who cares what happens before we’re born and after we die? The question that has become increasingly important to me is, what do we do in the meantime?”
“That’s my question, too,” Lucille says. “Now.”
Frank leans up on one elbow to look down at her. His eyes are still so pretty. Royal blue. “I just want you to know that I only asked if you had anything wrong because I was curious. Nothing would drive me away again, unless it was you telling me to get lost.”
“I’m not going to do that. I’m going to ask you to move in with me.”
He smiles. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Okay.” He lies back down. “Okay then.”
They sleep spoons. That’s all they do. After a while, he snores, a very polite snore, she thinks. She is so happy it hurts a little.
—
“Aw, Jesus, Maddy,” her father says, rubbing his forehead. “Are you sure?” They have just finished dinner; the dishes aren’t even cleared. Maddy’s napkin is still in her lap.
“Yes,” she says. “I did the test. Twice.”
“But have you gone to a medical clinic?”
“No.”
“How far along are you?”
“Almost three months, I think.”
“All right.” He looks at his watch, pushes back from the table, and stands. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” The absurd thought comes to her that she has a lot of homework, she can’t go anywhere. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t care, but she’s behind in Mr. Lyons’s class, and she doesn’t want to disappoint him. She’s got almost a hundred pages of reading to do, then a paper to write. She will not disappoint him.
“To an urgent-care clinic. They’re open twenty-four hours, and you can just walk in. There’s one out on 45, in Nolan. Let’s make sure you’re pregnant, and then…and then we’ll see.”
“There’s one right here. We don’t have to go all the way to Nolan.”
“We’re going to Nolan.”
“But the one right here is the same—”
“I said we’re going to Nolan!”
Oh, Maddy thinks. He’s ashamed. She doesn’t blame him.
“I can’t go now,” she says. “I have too much homework.”
Her father turns around. “Well, that’s rich. I’d say if you’d been doing your ‘homework,’ you wouldn’t have gotten yourself in this situation, would you? I cannot believe you were so stupid. Who’s the father, anyway?”
She swallows. “I don’t know.” She won’t have him contacting Anderson. She won’t.
Her father’s face drains of any feeling she might read. “Get in the car. Right now.”
“Dad.”
“What, Maddy? What? What do you want me to do? We’ve got to take care of this! Now! Every day that goes by that thing gets bigger!”
That thing.
“But I…I might want to keep it.”
“What?”
She looks up at him. “I want to keep it.”
“You’re not keeping it. You are not keeping it. You are not going to ruin your life by having a baby at eighteen. No.”
“You can’t make me have an abortion, Dad.”
“I can and I will.”
“I’m eighteen.”
“You know nothing! Get in the goddamn car, Maddy.”
She sits there. Then she says, “I have to get my purse.”
“I’ll be in the car.”
Maddy goes in her room, packs up her English homework, leaves the rest of her books, and grabs her purse. She goes quietly out the back door and crosses the neighbor’s lawn until she is on the next street over. Then she walks toward the little strip mall where the bus stops.
She’s almost there when she hears a car honking. It’s her father, and, seeing her, he pulls over, leaps out, and runs to grab her arm before she can even think about running. His grip is tight, he’s hurting her, and she tells him so. He doesn’t react at all, just keeps pulling her toward the car. He’s breathing fast; his face is red; she’s never seen him this way. She drops her book, the book for Mr. Lyons, and he keeps pulling.
“Wait,” she says. “I dropped my book!”
He ignores her, and she wrenches free from him to go back. She grabs the book and then stands unmoving in the middle of the road, weeping.
He comes to stand beside her and speaks in a low voice from between clenched teeth. “Stop it! Get in the car.”
“I’m going!”
Once she’s seated, she stops crying, but oh, it hurts in her heart more than it ever has. There is a buzz saw turning round and round in there. There is a fire. There is something falling, like a pendulum on a long, long string has been cut loose. Something rubs against something else. Something bleeds. She looks out the window. It grows. It grows. She looks at her knees. It grows. She buries her nails deep into her upper arms, and, with the shock of this pain, the other pain lessens somewhat. That still works. She digs her nails in deeper until she can breathe.
“Dad—”
“I don’t want to talk now. We’ll talk at home.”
They drive home and go into the house, but they do not talk there, either. Instead, her father sends her to her room. She sits there for a while, then begins to read the book for Mr. Lyons. Royal Lyons: It’ll get better.
She closes the book, her finger marking the place, and tells herself, Decide. And just like that, she does.
The door opens and her father sticks his head in. “Tomorrow at nine A.M., I’m taking you in.”
“I have school.”
“Nine.”
“I’m not going, Dad. I’m sorry, but I’m having the baby and I’m going to keep it.”
“The appointment is not for an abortion, Maddy. The appointment is for an exam.”
An exam, after which he’ll make her make another appointment to get that thing out of there. “I’ll make my own appointment.”
“You have no idea how to handle this, Maddy! And you will go with me tomorrow.”
“I will not.”
He comes to stand before her and shakes his head. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “She died for this? For this life you’re living? You’re killing her twice.”
He walks out of her room, slamming the door behind him. She hears him leave the house, slamming that door, too, and then there is the sound of his car, driving away.
She sits hunched over, her eyes wide and staring. Hey, we have a new first name for you, wanna hear it? She didn’t answer. A group of girls, Krissi Berman and her squad. Hey, better listen to
your new name. It’s Saddy. Do you like it?
She goes to the window to look out at the wind moving the tops of the trees. First forward, then back, then side to side, as though they’re following orders. And then still. Then perfectly still. She presses her forehead against the glass. Closes her eyes. They’re right. She is sad. Always. Even in joy, a downward pull will come: Don’t forget.
She could go into the bathroom and fill the tub. Slice both wrists up and down, not across. It wouldn’t take that long. It wouldn’t hurt that much.
She goes into the bathroom and closes the door behind her. Stares at the tub. Then she goes back into her room and finds the book she is going to read for Mr. Lyons. She feels as though a hand has come to rest on her shoulder. Look for the helpers.
If it had been her mother she’d told she was pregnant. If her mother had been there and listened, then nodded and said, “Let’s talk about what our options are here.” If, that night, before Maddy went to sleep, her mother had come to sit at the side of her bed and kissed her forehead and pushed her hair back from her face and said, “I know it seems impossible now. But things have a way of working out. I’m here and I love you.”
She feels the hand move from her shoulder, and an arm come around her. A squeeze. And then: gone.
Maddy reads like a man rescued from the desert drinks a glass of water. She puts her own hand on her shoulder.
—
Robert Emmet Kelly. Born on Valentine’s Day in 1953. Died June 14, 2015. Sixty-two. Too young! Newish grave, really; the man is still settling in. Still, Arthur steps closer and closes his eyes. A problem with weight all his life, he told people he was even a fat baby, and he was. Liked to put sauerkraut on every meat sandwich he made. The right song could make him cry and cry. A football star, yet still not that popular with the girls. Liked model trains, had an elaborate layout in a basement where there was a constant drip he never did fix.
That’s all. It’s enough, though. He doesn’t need any— Wait. He got a red robe for Christmas one year and put it right on, stepped back for a photo, and it caught on fire. Caught on fire? From what? A candle burning on the coffee table caught the hem. He whipped the robe off and stomped on it, put the fire out. Everyone had been hollering bloody murder, but Bob held up his hand and said very calmly, “It’s out, Merry Christmas, let’s eat,” and everyone laughed.
Arthur looks around for Maddy. No sign of her. He hasn’t seen her for…a week? Longer. After skipping that one day, Arthur has come out to the cemetery every day and he has not seen Maddy one time. Yesterday, he went to the library and got some help on the computer to try that Facebook, to see if he could find her there. Nope. “Have you tried Twitter?” the librarian asked. “Instagram? Snapchat?” Arthur stared at her, then thanked her and went home to lie down. Libraries used to be sanctuaries. Quiet places, with shafts of sunlight falling on rows and rows of books. Stories seeming to beckon. Now there is too much to do there, too much to see. He doesn’t do well with such stimulation. He’s more of a one-thing-at-a-time man.
A breeze rises up and Arthur shivers. His cold is better, though he still feels punk. But he had to see Nola and he hoped he’d see Maddy. He’s brought her birthday gift every day, and the wrapping is beginning to look a little tatty. A hole in one corner. He supposes he should rewrap it, but he hasn’t yet.
He opens his chair at the foot of Nola’s grave, puts the present down, and takes his sandwich out of the bread bag he used for a lunchbox. Baloney and mustard, you can’t beat that. Some potato chips. A big fat dill pickle. A little box of apple juice. And some molasses cookies that Lucille gave him that practically lift him up in the air, they’re so delicious, and he told her so. She accepted the compliment with an outsize gaiety. She’s almost reeling, she’s so happy lately. Something’s going on, but she hasn’t told him what yet.
Arthur takes a bite of his sandwich and looks around. No one is out here today, so far as he can see. Once again he is alone, yet feeling that he is in good company.
He leans over to pat Nola’s headstone. “I miss you,” he says. “I still miss you, sweetheart. Every day is like the first day I lost you. Now don’t feel bad, I get by, you can see I get by. You’ve seen my new friend, Maddy. She’s got that ring in her nose, but she’s a nice kid. Lucille and I are getting friendly. And I take care of things. I make it through. I even whistle sometimes, but, Nola, I miss you so much. We used to talk about who would go first, and I always wished it would be me.” He takes another bite of his sandwich.
After he has eaten and is about ready to leave, he stands and takes one last look around the cemetery. “Maddy?” he calls, toward a distant line of trees. He turns to face the opposite direction. “Maddy?” Then he stops. Shouldn’t be yelling in a cemetery.
Well, the kid’s lost interest. Not so unusual. He won’t be giving her a birthday gift after all. He hopes she had a nice birthday. He’s guessing it was a quiet one.
“Hey, Nola,” he says suddenly. “I brought you a present.” Of course she’ll know he brought it for Maddy, she knows everything now. But she won’t mind. She was ever generous-hearted, was Nola Corrine.
He unwraps Mr. and Mrs. Hamburger and rests it at the base of Nola’s headstone. It looks good there. It looks absurd, but it looks good. “Remember?” he says, and then an awful load of sorrow comes to sit on his chest. He folds up his chair and walks slowly to the bus stop. No Nola. No Maddy. At least there’s that ingrate Gordon. And Lucille. He might ask her to dinner again. They didn’t have such a bad time, last time. Couple of laughs. And a bit of comfort. He’d confessed that the other day he couldn’t find his wallet and then he found it in the refrigerator. She’d said, “Oh, pooh, I do that kind of thing all the time. Last week I found my rolling pin in the laundry hamper.” It made him feel better.
He coughs, coughs, coughs, all the way to the bus stop. He’s going to have to go to see that robber, Dr. Greenbaum. Get some antibiotics. Something. Sometimes Arthur forgets how old he is. Sometimes he remembers all too well.
When Arthur is walking down his sidewalk, almost home, he sees Lucille climbing up her front steps. “Lucille!” he calls out.
She turns around expectantly and he realizes he has nothing to say. When he gets up to her, he says, “Well!”
“Hello, Arthur,” she says. The keys are in her hand. She wants to go inside.
But he wants some company and so he says, “What have you been up to?”
She looks at him in a kind of sideways way, as though considering something. Then she says, “Come and sit with me. I’ll tell you.”
Arthur comes onto the porch and settles himself into what he thinks of as his chair. Lucille sits beside him and smiles.
“You look different,” he tells her.
“Well, I stopped wearing my wig. Did you know I used to wear a wig?”
He’s not sure how to answer and so he makes a kind of grunting sound that could mean yes or no.
“I used to wear a wig but someone talked me out of it. ‘You don’t need a wig!’ he said. ‘It’s no sin to have thinning hair!’ And you know what? He’s right. So I have gone natural. And I lost a little weight.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes! I wanted to lose some.”
“Oh.” He feels something else is required here, so he says, “Well, you look good.”
“Thank you. Did you go and visit Nola today?”
“I did.”
She sighs. “I suppose it brings you comfort.”
“It does.” He stares out at the Miss Kim lilacs that grow in front of Lucille’s house. That scent! Every spring, Nola used to fill the house with lilacs from their tree in the backyard. Even the bathroom had a bouquet. Even the laundry room. She would sprinkle blossoms in her hair, she would make a pin out of a sprig of lilac and put it on her dress. Her favorite flower.
He tells Lucille, “I loved Nola an awful lot.”
“I know you did, Arthur.”
“You never really kne
w her.”
“You kept to yourselves, you two.”
“We did. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for. I know the feeling. I know the feeling now, because I have reconnected with my old boyfriend from high school.”
“Really!” Arthur sneezes, then apologizes. “Getting me all excited here,” he says.
“Yes, his name is Frank Pearson and he’s the loveliest man. He was the loveliest boy and now he’s the loveliest man.”
“He lives here?”
“No, he lives in San Diego. He came here after he wrote me a letter and…Oh, all right, I’ll just tell you, Arthur, that I am in love. Isn’t it something? Maybe it’s foolish. But I’m in love. We both are. With each other.”
“I don’t think it’s foolish. I don’t think love is ever foolish.”
“Well, but you and I are old-fashioned.” She starts to move back and forth in her chair. “Look at us old people, out here in our rocking chairs.”
Arthur starts rocking, too. “I suppose we might be old-fashioned, but I don’t think love is. Who doesn’t need it? We all of us need it, especially those who say they don’t. It’s like oil in the crankcase, we can’t run without it.”
Quiet, and then Lucille asks, “What is a crankcase, anyway?”
Arthur thinks for a minute, then says, “I don’t know. I have no idea. If I were a young man, I would probably make something up. But now that I’m old, well, I will just flat-out say I don’t know. That, or I don’t remember. Either way, I don’t really care.”
“Might as well be honest, at this point in our lives,” Lucille says.
Arthur nods. “No time to waste on pretending.”
“That’s right. No time to waste. And that’s why I asked Frank to move in with me.”
Arthur turns around to look at Lucille’s door. “He’s in there?”
“No, not now. He’s at his daughter’s house, giving her the news. He didn’t want me to be there. I don’t think it’s going to go well. He told me that his daughter is a real pill.”
“He called his daughter a pill?”
Lucille shrugs. “Not in so many words. But it’s what he meant. I’m going to pick him up later. Say, would you like to meet him? Would you like to have dinner with us tonight?”