A Flash of Green (42 page)

The phone awakened him at seven. He had the feeling it had been ringing for a long time. He could not comprehend who was speaking to him for several moments, and then he realized it was
Dr. Freese phoning from Oklawaha to tell him that Mrs. Wing had passed away at 5:25
A.M.

“Are you there, Mr. Wing?”

“Yes. I’m here.”

“We have an autopsy permission in the file. We’d like to release the body to whomever you designate no sooner than tomorrow afternoon, say by four o’clock.”

“What’s today?”

“Sunday the sixteenth, Mr. Wing.”

“Tomorrow, eh. Well. Okay. There’s stuff of hers there.”

“It will be packed and ready, of course.”

“I … I just can’t think of anything to ask you or tell you, Doctor.”

“There isn’t much to say, actually.”

“I should say thanks for all you’ve done for her.”

“There wasn’t much anybody could do, Mr. Wing.”

He sat by the phone in the early-morning living room for several minutes. He rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter and wrote: “Gloria Maria Mendez Wing—Born May 1, 1931—Married to James Warren Wing June 20, 1950. Died July 15, 1961, at Oklawaha State Hospital after a long illness. Mrs. Wing was born in Tampa and educated in the public schools of that city. She is survived by her husband, employed by the Palm City
Record-Journal
, and by her sister, Mrs. Andrew McGavern of Toronto, Canada. She was O God such a beauty at nineteen she could spin your heart with a glance.…”

He went back and x’ed out the last sentence, left the paper in the machine and took a long cool shower, shaved, dressed, put coffee on and started making phone calls. To his sister, to the newsroom, to Toronto.

Teresa, Gloria’s elder sister, understood at once. Grief thickened her voice. “Ah, the poor thing. The poor damn lost thing.”

“Are you going to want to come down? I haven’t made any arrangements yet.”

“Down? How could I get down there? Are you out of your mind?”

“I had to ask you. I had to know.”

“I said goodbye to my sister two years ago. She looked at me just once, and called me mama. I can’t come way down there.”

“Teresa, there’s people in Ybor City who should know, aren’t there? I don’t know who they are. Can you let them know?”

“I can do that, yes. But when I let them know, I should tell them about the burial. What do you plan?”

“Should it be in Ybor City?”

“For what? She can’t be buried from the church. You know that. She gave up the church for you. She gave up a lot of things for you, Jeemy.”

“Look. Let’s not get into that kind of stuff.”

“It doesn’t bother you. No. Nothing bothers you. The way you treated her when she was sick.”

“Nobody knew she was sick then, damn it!”

“Poor little thing. She didn’t know what was happening.”

“Cut it out, Teresa!”

“So bury her down there. Why not? What difference does it make? You have a place in a cemetery?”

“Yes. Look, Teresa. I’ll phone you again about time and place and so on when I get things arranged.”

“Yes, you do that, Jeemy. And you make me one promise. When you call me again, it’s the last time forever. Okay? I want to forget you’re alive on the same earth. Now she’s gone, you’re nothing to me.
Claro?
”

“Si, seguro. Muchissima’ gracia’.”

The good connection faded suddenly. Her voice was frail and
remote. “But I want the pin. You hear me? I want the pin with the pearls. It was never yours. You hear me?”

He hung up. It was eight-thirty. The coffee was tepid. He poured it back into the pot. He looked up the number for the Shackley Funeral Home and asked for Vern, Junior. The man said young Vern was at home, but he might not be up yet. Wing decided there was no special rush. He could phone later. He drank more coffee. He began to pace the length of the cottage, from the front door to the back. He tried to think of all the tender touching things he could remember of his marriage, feeling an obligation for tears, but he could not find anything to bring them on. He went out and got the Sunday paper and tried to look at it. He dropped it and began pacing again. He had the curious feeling his skin might split. He could feel exactly where it would split, down the insides of his arms, down the backs of his legs, and from the crown of his head all the way down the crease of his back, coming open with a gritty noise and peeling back, dry, ready to step out of. As he paced he kept thinking he could hear music and voices, but when he stopped, all he could hear was a slap and suck of water around the pilings of the old dock. He checked the radio to make sure it was turned off. He found he was carrying his head a little bit to the side, and realized he was tensed for some very loud and unexpected noise. He had no idea what it would be. The faint hallucinations of a hangover seemed mingled with the jittery results of too much strong coffee.

Or, he thought, I’m losing my mind. He had an impulse to turn that thought into a solitary joke. He made bulging, grotesque faces and went into a wild prancing dance, stamping his feet hard, and on the final whirl, hit his forehead against the front door jamb. He leaned against it, his eyes closed, saying in a small random voice, “Yippee-i-ay, yippee-i-ay.” Then he could not remember
or decide whether the faces and the dance were something he had willed himself to do, or something he could not help. A complete terror stopped his breath and soaked his body. He went feebly to a chair and sat down. He looked out the window and saw a dark red dog trot diagonally across his small yard, an exceptional length of wet pink tongue dangling. He felt an almost tearful gratitude toward the dog. The dog was like a hand on his shoulder, stirring him awake from a dream.

He called Vern at his home. Vern was having breakfast. His voice deepened slightly and slowed to a careful professional cadence as soon as he realized what Jimmy was calling him about.

A time was decided. Two o’clock Wednesday at the funeral home. Form to be filled out. Freese would have certificate. Sister Laura had suggested Reverend Kennan Blue, said she was sure he would do it. Notice in paper. Arrange to select casket. Calling hours? No, and best to have closed casket. Pickup Monday between four and five, Oklawaha, right. Bearers? No, it isn’t required. Committal service at grave. Limousines? Decide later.

He sent Teresa a wire containing the information she had requested.

Twenty

ALL THROUGH THE SHORT SERVICE
at the graveside, Kat had been certain it would rain. More than half the sky had gone black and the thunder obscured the rather nasal voice of Reverend Blue. Jimmy looked so odd standing on the grass in the daylight in a dark suit. Beyond a row of pines she could see the pastel colors of the traffic on the Bay Highway.

There was that awkward pause when it was over, when nobody was entirely certain it actually was over. And then they began to move quietly to their cars. Engines began to start, doors chunked shut, the first cars began to move away. Jimmy moved back a little way. A few people spoke to him in low tones. To each he responded with a small stiff smile, a quick nod of his head.

At last there was no one left but Vern and some of his people. She hesitated, and then walked over to where Jimmy stood talking to Vern.

“Glad that rain held off,” Vern said. “But it looks like that’s it
coming right now.” They turned and saw the grayness slanting toward them, blotting out the distant trees and traffic and the buildings on Bay Highway.

“Come on,” she said to Jimmy. He looked blankly at her. “Your car’s at my house. Remember?” They ran to her Volkswagen and climbed in as the first fat drops began to fall. She sat behind the wheel and took her hat off. They rolled the windows up. The windshield steamed on the inside. The rain was a thousand small hammers on tin, roaring, surging and fading as gusts of wind rocked the car.

“I’ll wait’ll it lets up some,” she shouted. An almost simultaneous flash-click-bang of lightning and thunder made her start violently, and the fright made the backs of her hands and the back of her neck tingle. She thought he had said something about the lightning.

“What did you say?”

He turned toward her. “I had no idea so many people would come. Not here. Come to Shackley’s. I had no idea.”

“You have a lot of friends. What’s so surprising?”

“There weren’t enough seats.”

The intensity of the rain lessened. She wiped the steam off the windshield and started the car. By the time she made the turn onto Mangrove Road, the rain had stopped. They rolled the windows down. She drove cautiously through temporary lakes, and steered around the larger palm fronds and branches littering the road.

When they reached her house, he came in and took his jacket off and loosened his tie. “What would you like, Jimmy? Coffee? A drink?”

“I want to thank you for everything. You must have other things to do.”

“I have nothing to do except try to find out what you want.”

“Oh. Well. If it doesn’t sound weird and it isn’t a lot of trouble, I’m hungry. I couldn’t eat today. What I’d like, if you have it, is eggs. Scrambled.”

“About four eggs? Bacon? Toast? Coffee, tea or milk?”

“Wonderful. Tea, I guess.”

When she went back into the living room, he was at her desk, writing some sort of a list.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh. You can help, I guess. The people who were there. I’ve just been putting down last names. Killian, Borklund, Haas, Lesser, Jennings, Bliss, Halley, Shannard, Dayson, Sloan, Britt, Shilling, Cable, Tucker, Lime, Aigan, Lipe …”

“But, dear! There was a book to sign, near the entrance. Vern will turn it over to you.”

He looked blankly at her, then snapped his fingers. “He told me about it, and I forgot. And I have a bunch of cards to send out to the people who came and sent flowers. I haven’t got them yet. I ordered them. Now I know I didn’t order enough of them.”

“I’ll take care of the cards for you. There’s no rush about it, you know.” She stood beside him and looked down at the list he had made. “Sort of a truce, wasn’t it?”

“What? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes. The Palmland and the S.O.B.’s, all united in the common cause.”

“I think you can come and sit down now, Jimmy.”

She brought him the food. She sat with him and had tea and watched him eat with obvious hunger.

“Good eggs. Where are the kids?”

“At the Sinnats, as usual.”

He finished and sighed. She refilled his cup. He smiled at her and the smile turned into an aching yawn.

“You didn’t eat and you didn’t sleep.”

“Not very much,” he admitted. “It’s a strange thing. I knew it
was going to happen. But I had my own reaction figured out wrong, all the way. I feel what I shouldn’t be feeling, and I don’t feel what I should be feeling. Do you know?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve felt all day like a dummy, a black stork. I was afraid I’d either cry and couldn’t stop, or laugh and not be able to stop, but I didn’t do either. And either way, it wouldn’t have been for her, somehow. It would have been for … for kind of the general idea of death. I can’t even be sure I’m human.”

“You are, Jimmy. Completely. Every kind of grief is ambivalent, because it’s full of different kinds of emotion nobody can sustain. There isn’t anything consistent about it.”

“But is it grief, even?”

She put her hand on his wrist. “Jimmy, the most wonderful thing you did for me a year ago was let me talk and talk and talk. I said some very wild things, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but …”

“And I’ll listen to all the wild things you want to say, but not right now, because you’re dead on your feet. The guest room is cool and ready and waiting, clean sheets all turned down for you, private bath with towels laid out. Now scoot.”

As she was rinsing the dishes and stowing them in the dishwasher, she heard the sound of the shower. About fifteen minutes later she tiptoed down the corridor. His room door was ajar. She said his name softly. There was no answer. She looked in. He was on his side, breathing deeply and heavily. She tiptoed into the room and closed the draperies. She stood in the shadows and looked down at him for a little while, then tiptoed out.

She was doing some stealthy varieties of housework when Natalie came over. “He’s having a nap,” Kat said in a low tone.

“Oh. How about at the cemetery? Did the rain ruin it?”

“Let’s go out on the patio and have a Coke or something. The rain held off just long enough.”

Out on the screened part of the patio beyond the glass doors they could talk in normal tones. Natalie wore a swimsuit patterned in dull shades of orange and yellow, straw slippers with thick cork soles. She seemed much less guarded, less constrained and tense than when she had first arrived in Florida. She seemed cherished and content, her small face less drawn, her movements more fluid, her spare body a little more mature. That unmistakable look of being loved gave Kat a little antagonistic feeling which she immediately identified for what it was and discarded as being a most narrow and unworthy emotion.

“Won’t the phone bother him?” Natalie asked.

“I had it put on temporary disconnect yesterday, before I knew he was coming here.”

“Jigger is child-watching. He’s really very reliable. He counts heads constantly. Kat, about Jigger and me …”

“Don’t feel you have to tell me anything.”

“Suppose I want to? Would you mind?”

“Of course not.”

“I dumped the whole thing in your lap, so you have a right to know. And the way my father went off, it sort of left everything entirely up to us. We spend every possible minute together. I guess you couldn’t help noticing that. Anyhow, what happened made it all kind of dirty and uncomfortable. We tried to tell each other it didn’t, but it did. So we’re being distinctly moral. I guess it’s sort of a tantalizing game, after … knowing each other, but it’s more than that, too. We slipped once, but we won’t again. I’m finding out how much of a man he is, and I think I’m more than half in love with him.” A blush darkened her small tanned face. “Isn’t it absurd? He’s seventeen years old! But I keep forgetting he
is. He’s found a summer job, starting next Monday. We think it will be better for both of us for him to have a job too. I know it’s … really kind of egotistical for me to think you’d be interested when there’s so much going on for you and people are giving you such a hard time and all, but I thought maybe you’d like to know that one … pretty good thing has come out of all this bay-filling war.”