After Visiting Friends (27 page)

“How?” she asks.

“Drive. Three days, round-trip. A day there, a day in town, a day back. I did it all
the time in college.”

“No, I mean, how are you going to explain me.”

“I won’t. There’s a motel on the edge of town.”

It’s morning when they cross the Mississippi. His LeSabre gleams. She looks out her
window, can see shoots on trees. Bright green. She rolls the window all the way down,
lets her hand loll up and down.

They play games to pass the time.

“Who’s the most famous person to come out of Nebraska?” she asks.

“Besides me? Johnny Carson. Fred Astaire. Maybe Brando. Willa Cather.”

She laughs.

“What’s so funny?”

“Ohio has more. Cradle of presidents. Eight presidents were born in Ohio.”

“Name ’em.”

“James Garfield, Ulysses Grant, Warren Harding, the Harrisons
—
that’s Benjamin and William Henry
—
Rutherford B. Hayes, McKinley, Taft.”

“The only good one among ’em all is Grant. And he’s buried in New York. Couldn’t bear
to go back, clearly.”

“And now we have astronauts, too. John Glenn? Cambridge,
Ohio. Neil Armstrong? Wapakoneta. Tell me who McCook has.”

“Perry Smith. The guy from
In Cold Blood
? He came through McCook. Just after he broke out of some small jail in Kansas. Before
he found Hickock. A famous killer. That’s what we have.”

“It’s not like he was born there.”

“What does Tiffin have?”

She laughs. “Flush toilets?”

“I’ll give you that.”

#

Bobbie, barefoot, opens her baggage on the foldout stand, the TV soundless and snowy
on the dresser. The only light in the room. He is in the bathroom, leaning over the
pink sink, pushing cold water onto his face. He keeps the light off. There is a small
window over the sink, and when he towels his face he can see the cornfield just as
he remembered it. It comes all the way from the horizon and runs right up to the back
edge of the motel, just beneath the window. Black and empty, the field waits. Here
and there he can see the remains of last year’s crop. Stalks shorn. Plowed under.
Shards jut from the earth like broken bones, blackened by winter’s brutality.

He touches her as he passes, rubs his hand over the back of his neck, like a man trying
to wipe something off. He opens the door. He breathes in the sweet spring air. It
takes him back. Full of promise. Rich. Latent.

Is that the word? he wonders.

“Here.”

She presses a bottle into his hand. Schlitz.

“It’s 2 a.m.,” she says. “In Chicago, you’d just be getting off.”

She knocks his bottle.

#

The next morning. He finds her by the empty pool, sitting on a lounge chair, smoking
a cigarette, and hugging her knees.

“How long have you been here?” He looks into the pit. Some tumbleweeds trapped in
the deep end.

“Maybe an hour? I didn’t want to wake you.”

The sky is pink on one side, dark blue on the other.

“Somebody might see us out here.”

#

She had fallen asleep. The sound of him keying the door jolts her.

“What time is it?” she asks.

“Six. Hungry?”

They drive east toward Red Willow, to a diner he knows on 34. Figures less chance
of being made there, next town over. She sits close to him in the Buick. Her arm around
his shoulder. To her right she sees railroad tracks running in line with a ditch.

“Those go to Chicago?”

He nods.

#

That night, he drives her through town.

The streets are empty and only a few lights burn in curtained front rooms.

He stops the car before a house. Keeps it idling.

“That’s it.”

“Just like you described it. I can see you there on the porch with Lolly. Rubbing
her on the head, combing her black coat.”

He checks his rearview. Nothing. She flicks her cigarette. Sparks, orange, on the
pavement. Like a welder’s castoffs.

“I still have to show you where I went to school.”

#

They hit Iowa, western edge, by noon. Chicago seems forever away to him.

“I’m hungry,” she says.

They find a greasy spoon off I-80 in a jerkwater town he used
to stop in when driving back and forth to Northwestern. They buy sandwiches wrapped
in wax paper, two bottles of Coke. Cigarettes. In the parking lot he leans against
the car, both palms on the hot, ticking hood, head hung down.

“Do you want me to drive?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Why don’t we get a room? Somewhere you can take a nap for an hour.”

“Because I don’t want to die in some strange motel room in the middle of Iowa.”

#  #  #

San Francisco. I don’t know why I am here. Other than to try to understand who she
was. I want to see, too, the place where it ended for her. I need to witness it. Another
spot to be marked. Shrined. I feel a bit like Scottie Ferguson in
Vertigo
. Looking for a ghost of a woman.

1207 Chestnut Street

Apartment #12

It was the only place she lived here, three-story taupe concrete, on the corner of
Polk.

A woman approaches, asks if I’m from the tax collector’s office. She says, “I’ve been
watching you from inside.”

She tries to look at my notebook, see what I’ve been writing. I close my pages.

“For real,” she says. “What are you doing?”

“My father was involved with a woman who used to live here. Bobbie Hess?”

“That woman didn’t have the easiest life. She died up there, you know.”

She nods toward the building.

“I was here when the fire department broke through the window to get her body out.
Third floor.”

I look up, imagine I am in Bobbie’s place. If she leaned out her window, she would
be able to see the bay, maybe hear the moan of foghorns, calling out, over and over.
See a sailboat through the mist.

“Bobbie always wore an old red trench coat,” the woman says. “I’d run into her most
mornings, and her cheeks were the color of that coat. Sometimes I could smell alcohol.
She’d be carrying the empty to the trash. Did you see that photo they ran with her
obituary? Very young.”

“Newspapers do that,” I say.

“Do what?”

“Take care of their own.”

#

They didn’t find her body for a few days. It was a Monday.

The Thursday before, she’d left work early. “Not feeling well,” she told the desk.

Friday she was still sick. But they were used to her missing a day here or there.
Everyone would leave it at that.

Monday, someone from the desk thought to call.

No answer.

#

On my way out of town, I stop at the medical examiner’s office and pull a copy of
Bobbie’s file. Case #2003–1219. In the Investigator’s Report, James Fiorica and Tim
Hellman tell the tale:

The subject, a 58-year-old female, resided alone at 1207 Chestnut Street #12. She
was found deceased within her secured apartment during a well-being check.

According to information received from Pat Luchak and Alan Saracevic, co-workers;
and San Francisco Police Officer Boyle, submitting Incident Report #031
–
294
–
418, the subject was employed by the
San Francisco Chronicle.
On 10/30/03, she left work early complaining of flu-like symptoms. She was last spoken
to by a co-worker on 10/31/03 at approximately 1730 hours, at which time she reportedly
stated that she was still feeling ill. On 11/3/03 at approximately 1700 hours, several
co-workers became concerned, as the subject had not shown up for work and had missed
a pre-arranged meeting. Several co-workers responded to the residence to check on
the subject’s well-being. After receiving no answer to knocks on the subject’s secured
apartment door, the co-workers contacted San Francisco Police for assistance. Officer
Boyle arrived at approximately 1800 hours, and summoned the San Francisco Fire Department
for additional assistance. Fire Fighters gained entry through an unlocked third story
window. Once inside, the subject was found obviously deceased. Rescue Captain Storey
responded and confirmed death at 1902 hours.

Investigation at the scene revealed the subject lying in a semi-prone position, recumbent
on her left side, on the bathroom floor. She was unclothed. Evidence of alcohol and
tobacco use was noted. There were no signs of illicit drug abuse. No medication containers
were found.

External examination revealed no obvious signs of trauma. Rigor mortis was present
and lividity was consistent with her position.

A medical record card for Kaiser Permanente Medical Center was found. That facility
was contacted and stated that the subject’s chart had been retired for several years.

Dr. Boyd G. Stephens performs an autopsy and concludes:

Cause of Death: Subacute Lobar Pneumonia.

#  #  #

All these years, I’ve been desperate to know my father’s last hours, and now I’m thinking
about hers, too. At least she was there for him. But who was there for her?

No one. No one to telephone her brother. No one to square her reputation with the
police. No one to protect her.

Part of me just can’t make sense of it. Fifty-eight years old, and she goes home from
work with a touch of the flu. Couple of days later, she’s dead. Maybe she just gave
up?

I wish I’d found Bobbie earlier. I wish I could have helped her find what she was
looking for. Maybe that’s impossible. But I can’t help thinking she died of a broken
heart. I’m not saying I could have fixed it. But maybe she needed some kind of forgiveness,
healing. Maybe Natty Bumppo was right—she and I are family.

Waiting made me miss the chance to ask her questions. To get what I needed from her.
Maybe I could have given something to her, and not just taken.

I keep thinking about something Paul Berning said: “My sense is that deep inside,
she was heartbroken.”

I cannot stop thinking of what might have been. If I had gotten there earlier, might
there have been the chance for understanding? And in understanding, healing?

REUNION

I make plans to see Bobbie’s brother, but I wait until my grandmother gets settled
again. Just about every day, my mother is calling with updates. They’re kind of micro-updates
that don’t tell me anything big. But I know she has to talk to me about things because
it’s the only way she doesn’t feel lost in it all, overwhelmed. I don’t blame her.

One morning a few weeks after my grandmother’s last trip to the hospital, my mother
tells me that my grandmother’s not eating. “She only nibbles at things. Maybe you
can come in and cheer her up.”

#

Central Baptist has moved her to a smaller room in the Special Care Unit. Beneath
the resident’s nameplate outside each room on this hallway is a photograph from a
long-vanished Chicago. “It’s easier for the residents this way,” a nurse tells me.
“Numbers and names? Those are just things they forget. But people can always recall
a
happy image from long ago.” Beneath my grandmother’s name is a sepia photo of the
first Ferris wheel, frozen in time. 1893.

She’s in bed, asleep. I take her hand. Her fingers wrap around my fingers. But she
doesn’t wake up. Even though she is asleep, even though she has lost weight, even
though she is almost now, as my mother says, “nothing but skin and bones,” her grip
is strong as ever.

We sit like this for a long time.

Her grip.

When she opens her eyes, they are wet and cloudy.

“I wish my momma had lived,” she says. “To see how I turned out.”

She stares at me and after a moment asks, “Do you still love me?”

“Always, Gramma. Forever.”

She closes her eyes.

I am not sure she even knows who I am. Does it matter? In the end, don’t we all just
want to hear someone tell us we are loved, always and forever?

I watch her frail chest rise and fall.

When I was a boy, six or seven years old, at family gatherings or holidays, my mother
would always tell me I could not have any of the pies my grandmother had baked until
my plate was clean. I’d be made to sit there, long after everyone else had left the
table. But my grandmother would sit with me. And when my mother was in the kitchen,
clearing plates, my grandmother would sneak bites off my plate.