The Walking People (44 page)

"That sounds like everybody," Julia said, swatting at a tendril of hair that had gotten stuck in her lip gloss, swerving right to the ramp that led to the Palisades. She eased her foot off the gas as all three of them leaned into the curve. Her friends Bernadette and Mary had planned on coming to see them off as well. Earlier in the week, Julia had picked up two crisp copies of the Red & Tan bus schedule, stuck old Christmas bows on top, and planned on giving one to each of the girls. But after getting through more than half the letters in the red tin
box before hearing Greta's key in the door, and then sitting through pizza and ice cream that the rest of them ate with plastic forks while Julia looked on in silence, she'd called her friends and told them not to bother, they were leaving earlier than expected. They had all summer to see each other and would see each other, Julia had insisted. Definitely. Lots of people commuted into the city from Recess every single day. Upon being uninvited, each had asked, "You okay, Jules?" Julia said she was just sad about leaving all of a sudden.

After pizza Greta had to go out a second time for more packing tape, another box of plastic bags. When she went out the second time, Julia was tempted to go back to the box and finish what she'd started, but she stopped herself and plopped down with the others in front of the TV. Since then she'd felt in a daze, as if she were hung over, not sure if what she'd read meant what she thought it meant. How could it? Not possible. She'd misunderstood. There were other Julias in the family. Her paternal grandmother. A cousin, maybe. But the thought felt feeble upon arrival, and she'd felt dizzy all night and all morning.

"It was lovely, really, for them to come," Greta said.

"What?" Julia shouted, tilting her head to the right.

"Lovely!" Greta shouted back, cupping her hands around her mouth as if shouting across a field.

Julia reached down and turned the knob that brought up the window. "What?" she said again, quieter.

Greta rolled up her window as well. "I said it was nice of them, wasn't it? For everyone to see us off?"

"Oh," Julia said in the abrupt quiet, the trees outside rushing by silently now, the blue twinkle of the Hudson glimpsed between the branches somehow more removed without the roar of the wind.

"Mom," Eavan said after a moment, her voice husky and miserable. She tried to lean forward to present her head between the two front seats, but her belt stopped her. "Look what happened." She took her hands away from her head and her hair fell in limp tendrils around her cheeks and neck. "I tried to tell you," she began bravely, but found she could go no further, and instead dipped her chin toward her chest and let the tears flow once more.

"What's the matter with you,
mo ghrá?,
" Greta said, turning as
far as possible in her seat without taking off her belt. "Julia will do it again. It's not a tragedy. It's nothing to cry about. Isn't that right, Julia? Won't you do it again?"

"Sure," Julia said, searching for the top of Eavan's head in the rearview mirror. "But why didn't you kick the seat or something? Why'd you let it get so bad?"

 

In Recess, outside the white shingled house with black shutters, the medium-sized U-Haul was parked in the driveway with its nose facing the street. Ned and James were sitting on the step outside, and Greta wondered for the first time if people did that in Recess, if they sat on their front step like it was a stoop, like there would be people passing to whom they could say Good morning, and Hot one, isn't it?

Only thirty minutes north of the city, Recess was a kind of in-between world. In Manhattan they called it the country as often as they called it a suburb, but it was quieter than the country as far as Greta could tell. There were no animals to snuff and grunt and squawk and bellow into the wind. There was the occasional bark of a dog, the meow of a hungry cat, but together these calls only emphasized the silence that fell in between. All paths and hedges were neat and trim, and there was a general tidiness about the town that had no relation to the shaggy, overgrown, rock-strewn country in Greta's mind. But it was lovely in its own way, like a picture of America she might have seen at home, posted up in a shop or in the church hall, sent by someone who'd left a generation ago and wanted to keep in touch. She tried not to think about what it had cost, what it would continue to cost for the next thirty years. Michael hoped to pay it off in twenty years, citing all kinds of factors Greta didn't quite understand and didn't believe Michael completely understood either. "Look it," he'd said the morning they decided, running one of his chapped fingers down a column of numbers, and Greta had nodded, keeping her eyes on his cracked and blackened fingernail. "I see," she'd agreed.

But now, considering the house from the curb, she wondered if there had been anything in that long contract with the teeny print about a person getting laid up for weeks without pay. Though Greta put in as many hours per week as Michael, when they put their two paychecks
together every other Friday and walked them up to the bank, hers came to only a third of his. He made a good salary when there was work, but when he was sick or when the equipment failed or when there was a layoff, he got nothing. And a man couldn't do that kind of work forever. It was a young man's job.

"Michael's set up in the back," Ned said as he stood to greet them, and Greta got up close to him, pretending to peer at some part of the house glimpsed over his shoulder as she sniffed the air around him, inhaled the wake he'd left after him in his short walk over to where they now stood. To Julia, who took it all in from the driveway, it looked as if Ned had let himself be sniffed, had actually stood still for it, waited for the inspection to wrap up before moving forward. That morning Greta had been even more obvious about it, standing behind his chair as he sipped his tea and moving her head in a circle behind him as she filled her lungs with his scent. She'd watched with a grave expression as he poured the milk, dumped in two spoons of sugar, brought the paper cup to his lips and sipped.

"You can handle the truck?" she'd asked.

"No problem."

"And don't forget James is going with you."

"Aye-aye, Captain."

Greta didn't smile, and later, after bringing out some of the heaviest boxes, Ned had peeled off his sweat-soaked shirt to work in his undershirt, and Julia had caught her mother plucking the shirt from the wood floor of the apartment and burying her face in its folds. When Greta saw that she'd been observed, she offered the shirt to Julia for a second opinion. Julia refused. "He's fine," Julia had said. "It's working its way out of his system."

Greta still looked skeptical, but when the time came for the men and women to part for their separate vehicles on Eighty-fourth Street, Michael had put one hand on James's shoulder, the other on Greta's, and assured her they'd be fine.

"Okay," Greta said now, clapping her hands, the inspection over. "Where do we start?"

"A tour," Julia suggested. She had seen the house only once, a week after Michael's accident, when she'd driven Greta up to Recess
to pick up papers and drop off something from their bank. The previous owners had invited them in, urged Julia to look around, but the house was full with their things, their kitchen table laid out with their place mats and cutlery. There were strangers smiling out from frames on the wall, and the smell of something sweet mingled with steam issuing from a pot boiling on the stove settled on her skin like a baby's faint breath.

"Come on," Greta had urged, pulling Julia downstairs to see what would be her bedroom, her separate entrance.

"Next time," Julia had said, turning her body into a statue Greta couldn't budge.

Inside, after greeting Michael, who was settled in a lawn chair the previous owners had left on the deck, Greta led the group from room to room, announced which of them would sleep where, opened closet doors, lifted and lowered windows, pulled the string that brought down the folded ladder that led to the attic. First Eavan dropped off the tour to examine her bare room from corner to corner, then James went outside in search of caterpillars.

"How will we do this?" Greta asked, back out on the driveway, as she, Julia, and Ned stared into the dark mouth of the truck.

When they'd loaded the truck in the city, the men who'd gathered to see them off had all pitched in, taking an arm of the sofa, one side of a dresser. Here, it was just the three of them. They took all the small boxes out first, Greta inside the truck handing boxes to Julia, and Julia hurrying back and forth between the truck and the garage. The plan for bigger, heavier things was that Greta and Julia would take one end while Ned handled the other. In theory, the plan was perfect. Two women, Ned estimated, equaled the strength of one man. In practice, the plan was a failure. Two bodies couldn't carry the same end around corners, through doors. Greta couldn't find a good grip. She nearly fell down the steps and had a bookcase land on top of her.

When only the heaviest pieces remained, they convened again at the mouth of the truck and stared inside. All three of them were soaked through, and dark streaks of dust and grit smudged Greta's face where she'd pushed her hair out of the way. Of the three, Greta appeared the most spent, and she sagged against the side of the truck so completely
that she had to stop herself from sliding to the ground. "If I sit down," she said to Julia, "I'll never get up again." Then she slid down, her back against the wall of truck, until her legs folded and her backside hit the black tarmac of the driveway.

"Will we knock?" Ned asked, nodding toward the house next door and then the one across the street. From the back of the house came James's voice shouting, "Dad! Dad, look at me!"

"Will we?" Greta repeated, staring hard at her new neighbors' houses, their windowed, perfectly proportioned faces impassive in the early summer sun. None of them had seen any signs of life in these houses, not even a passing car.

Greta struggled to her feet, peered once more into the darkness of the truck, and considered how many things were still left to go. Her shoulders were drawn up in an exaggeration of the posture she had whenever she came home from a double shift. Her thin limbs appeared even thinner against the bulky load that remained.

"No," Julia said, turning her back on the other houses and pushing up her sleeves. "We'll do it. Ned and I. You go in and check on Dad."

Ned raised his eyebrows, sized her up from head to toe. "I better knock," he said to Greta.

"I said I can do it," Julia said, squatting beside Greta and Michael's dresser and feeling along the base for a good grip. When they lifted it, Ned brought his side up faster, and the lion's share of the weight tipped toward Julia. She let go, and the dresser fell the two inches she'd gotten it above the floor of the truck, landed with a thud, and missed her fingers by a hair. "Again," she said, this time using her legs, the length of her back, locking her arms in position and willing herself to step outside her body, think of something else, anything else, while every muscle from her calves to her neck burned and strained.

"Do you have it?" Greta asked, hovering around Julia as they moved slowly down the ramp of the truck, Ned walking backward, Julia forward. "Don't hurt yourself. It's only a dresser. Don't hurt your back. Let go if—"

"The door," Ned said, and Greta rushed forward to open the screen door of the house.

***

Two hours later, all six of them were on the deck eating the ham sandwiches Greta had bought that morning on the corner of Eighty-fourth and Second. Michael gobbled his down as if he'd been lifting all day, while next to him, Ned picked and nibbled, turning the food around in his mouth and forcing himself to swallow. Julia's legs and arms were trembling, a detail James found hysterical as she tried to bring her soda to her lips. "You've got a workhorse here," Ned said, clapping Julia on the back as if she were a man his own size. He pushed his sandwich away, and Michael eyed it as he brushed crumbs from his lap.

"Fair play to you, girl," Michael said, squeezing Julia's aching shoulder with all the strength in his good arm.

"Who wants an ice cream?" Ned asked when the rest of them had finished their sandwiches. He feigned weakness when James and Eavan threw themselves on him, pulled him by his thick arms, shouted their requests.

"I guess I should run up to the shop to get a few things, but I thought I'd wait until tomorrow," Greta said.

"I'll run up," Ned volunteered. "I'm sure there's a market up on the main street."

"Oh no," Greta said, looking pointedly at Michael. "They don't need ice cream. They had ice cream last night."

"Yessssss," James cried. "Yes I do need it. I really neeeeed it, Mom."

Michael shifted on the lawn chair, answered Greta's look with one Julia couldn't quite read. More secrets, she guessed. They seemed capable of anything now. Come to think of it, they were always asking and answering questions of each other with looks thrown across tables and rooms. Theirs was a language of facial expressions and widened eyes. She wished she'd read the rest of those letters. Maybe her memory had embellished what she'd read, blown it all out of proportion. She tried to remember portions of the letters word for word but suspected herself of adding words and sentences—sometimes to make things better and sometimes to make things worse. She probably misunderstood.

"You see?" Ned said, and turned to Julia to ask where she had put the keys to Michael's car.

***

Greta was silent for a full hour after Ned drove away. No, he hadn't smelled of drink or had the look of drink in his face, but a drinker was a drinker. And she'd let James ride with him that morning. Jesus. Michael had said that Ned was fine to drive and he'd never put one of his own in danger, but Michael had some strange liking for the man and maybe didn't want to insult him by questioning him behind the wheel. Travellers had a casual attitude toward drinking anyway, or at least that's what Big Tom used to say. Wouldn't be the least bit ashamed to be caught drinking at twelve in the day. Earlier. And sitting above on the stone wall that led to town, where everyone would pass them. Maybe Michael didn't realize the danger. Not to mention the talking the man got up to when he was drinking. He talked enough the rest of the time, but with a few in him he got weepy on top of it and talked about the old days when Kate was still in New York, before they had any babies, and meeting up with Michael and Greta, and the occasional dance or two, not that Greta and Michael went in much for the Irish dances. Once, at the apartment, late on a Friday night, after listening to him pour himself another from the brown bottle he'd brought with him—still in the paper bag, as if she couldn't tell what was inside—Greta heard him reminiscing about the days when he first met Michael, when they were still movers. That night, with Greta in kitchen fetching ice, he'd asked Michael loud and clear whatever happened to that sister of Greta's who used to live with them?