Mohawk (26 page)

Mrs. Grouse was unaware of her daughter’s presence on the back porch, where Anne was getting the garbage ready for the Thursday collection. The older woman, having thoroughly dried the breakfast dishes with her thin dish towel—she refused to use the plastic, drainboard contraption her daughter had bought for her at Woolworth’s, preferring to dry each teacup by hand— was engaged in setting the table for her noon meal, still several hours away. She had set two places, because Anne came home from work at noon to make sure the morning garbage collection had gone off without a hitch. Her mother’s fretting about the trash had intensified over the years and now occupied her thoughts out of all proportion. When the dogs got to it before the
garbage men, she’d regale her daughter with vivid descriptions of the mess while they ate their grilled-cheese sandwiches.

Mrs. Grouse was usually talkative during these Thursday lunches, because they were “like strangers, after all,” though they lived under the same roof. Anne had categorically refused to move downstairs when Randall went off to the university. Her daughter’s reasons for wanting to maintain a separate household were entirely unclear to Mrs. Grouse, who discussed this strange arrangement with her sister every time the old woman visited. “Queer” was the term Milly used. Anne was officially to blame, but she knew that her mother wouldn’t have things any other way and would not have allowed the introduction of her daughter’s things into the downstairs flat.

Mrs. Grouse carefully arranged the cups and plates as if the plastic placemats were printed with exact geometric designs that matched the dishes and silver. She lined up the plates first, adjusting and readjusting, an inch this way, then the opposite, until it felt exactly right. Anne watched from the porch, fighting the hardening she felt in her heart. Her mother’s face exhibited that faraway expression that always meant she was working out some thorny point of consequence only to herself, and possibly her sister.

Mather Grouse’s death had been the final link in the sisters’ symbiotic chain. Mrs. Grouse had been shaky and fearful, but began to rally once her daughter canceled her contract with the movers and found another job in Mohawk, this one paying far less. Of the two, Mrs. Grouse had adjusted far better. But then, the old woman had a blueprint to follow. Milly had suffered a similar loss, and accepted it with a stoic forebearance
only slightly diminished by the fact that in the decade before his death, she and her husband had not spoken a dozen words to each other. To hear her talk, as Dan Wood often remarked, anyone would’ve concluded that she’d lost her soul’s mate. In fact, burying her husband had given Milly something of an unfair advantage over Mrs. Grouse since both women derived great satisfaction from loading onto their slender shoulders every hardship life could impose. If anything, Mrs. Grouse now had the upper hand, having both a deceased husband and a divorced daughter to her credit. But she was too kind to press an unfair advantage, and the two agreed that each had leaden crosses to bear.

Mrs. Grouse did not stray from the kitchen table. She would stop inching the silver once she’d resolved whatever problem absorbed her. Only then would the table be set correctly, the knives and forks resting in their proper slots. Anne came inside just as her mother reached her conclusion. “Goobies,” Mrs. Grouse said.

“What?”

Mrs. Grouse started, not expecting to see her daughter in the doorway. “Some goobies,” she elaborated. “You know. Chocolate-covered cherries. Peanut brittle. Will you ever forget how he loved peanut brittle?”

“Dad refused to eat peanut brittle. You’re confusing him with yourself.”

Mrs. Grouse, suddenly perceiving another flaw in the arrangement of the cutlery, began maneuvering a fork. “I should think I’d know whether he liked peanut brittle or not. After all, I lived with him for over forty years … I sat up with him all night long when he couldn’t catch a breath … I—”

“You’re right, Mother. I’m sorry. I’ll pick up some peanut brittle on the way home from work if you like.”

“Whatever for? I’m not able to walk a few short blocks?”

“Fine, Mother. Walk, by all means.”

Anne went upstairs to finish getting ready for work. She particularly hated Thursdays. She didn’t go in until late morning, but didn’t get home until well after the nine o’clock closing. Then she had to open the store the next morning. Sixty hours a week at roughly minimum wage. And that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was remembering that staying in Mohawk was her choice.

She was pulling on her coat when Mrs. Grouse’s voice floated up hallway. “There’s someone at the door, dear.”

The bell hadn’t rung and Anne had heard no knock. “Mine?”

“Come down,” Mrs. Grouse said. Her voice was edgy, and when Anne came in she was standing next to her place setting wringing her hands nervously. “He has long hair,” Mrs. Grouse explained. “He doesn’t look right.”

She followed her daughter into the living room. The blinds were drawn, the room dark. When Anne opened them, the flat was flooded with light, and her mother shrunk back involuntarily, either from the light or the expression on her daughter’s face. “Who is it?” she said.

Out by the highway a cold rain was falling on the Mohawk Medical Services Center. The dampness found its way into the building, and the nurses scurrying among the corridors threw sweaters over their shoulders. Diana Wood, seated bare-armed outside Room 247, shivered and wished vaguely that she hadn’t made this particular visit, especially since there was no need to. This was the way it always turned out. Her mother had brightened up as soon as they pulled into the hospital drive and told the first doctor she saw that she hadn’t any idea what all the fuss was about. She’d never heard of such a thing. All this after her frantic ringing of the hand bell on the nightstand next to her bed, and the panic-stricken eyes. “I can’t breathe!” she had breathed, a mere whisper, frightening Diana terribly. Only Dan had taken it in stride. “Neither can I,” he remarked to his mummylike mother-in-law lost in a queen-size bed.

In a few minutes he wheeled around the corner and joined his wife in the bright corridor.

“That didn’t take long,” Diana said, trying to sound cheerful.

“They always have our file handy. I fill in ‘complaint’ and ‘date.’ They copy the rest.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You always are. That’s part of the ritual.”

“I always mean it,” Diana said. “Doesn’t
that
count?”

“Of course it counts. It’s the only thing that does. Just don’t try to talk me out of being angry. In fact, you ought to try getting bent out of shape yourself.”

“I’m bent enough, apparently.”

“Forget it. That kid was a jerk.”

On the way into the hospital, one of the young interns had asked if Milly and Diana were sisters. An honest mistake.

“I’m going home,” Dan said.

The lights in the corridor dimmed briefly, then came back again.

“Yes,” Diana said, blinking, “Go.”

“Come with me. We could both use a night without the bell.”

Diana hesitated, considering, but the struggle was brief. “No. I’ll try to get back in an hour or so.”

“Come now.”

“No.”

“All right, stay. Call if there’s any bad news.” He wheeled around and started for the exit.

“Don’t make me dislike you, Dan,” his wife said. They were the only two people in the corridor. “I don’t think I could stand disliking you.”

He stopped, turning the chair sideways. “It was a rotten crack. I apologize.”

“Get Fred to help you in. The lights were on in their living room when we left. They’ll still be up.”

“Sure,” Dan agreed.

“I mean it. You’re too tired.”

He wheeled out to the lobby. He was tired, but he had no intention of tooting outside his neighbor’s house. Not that Fred would mind. But for some reason, he
felt like risking something. Early in the day, he felt strong and had no problem pushing the chair out the passenger door, setting it up, then sliding himself into it. But when he was tired, things sometimes went wrong. Once he hadn’t secured the brake, and the chair had rolled down the sloping driveway and into Kings Road, riderless, leaving him clinging to the door handle with one hand and the roof of the Lincoln with the other until he was rescued an interminable five minutes later, the last strength ebbing out of his white fingers.

In the lobby near the door was a pay phone, and Dan slipped in a dime. “I could use a hand,” he said into the receiver. “I’ll be the one in the souped up Lincoln with the wheelchair on the license plate. Accept no substitutes.”

In the parking lot he chinned himself into the driver’s seat, surprised at how strong he suddenly felt. A passerby stopped to offer assistance with the chair. “Don’t bother,” he said. “Do I look helpless to you?”

Anne pulled in behind Dan’s Lincoln. It was late, and along Kings Road the Woods’ house was the only one with lights on. The rain had stopped but it was cold, and the shallow puddles Anne stepped around rippled in light cast by the streetlamp.

The chair, still collapsed, sat on the driveway. “Make sure the brake is on,” Dan said, and did the rest on his own. “Come in.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“I don’t see why not.”

They went in through the garage, Dan flipping the switch for the kitchen overhead.

“Guess who showed up today?” she said.

“Lyndon Johnson. How the hell should I know?”

“You could go along and guess wrong a few times so I could properly astonish you.”

“It
was
Lyndon Johnson?”

“No. Randall.”

Dan frowned. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Anne considered. “It’s hard to say. He’s always been such a strange boy.”

“Genetics.”

“Go to hell.”

“Actually, I was thinking of Mather and how the Grouse blood skipped a generation.”

“I’m very much like him.”

“You aren’t like anybody. And you’re even less like him than all the other people you don’t resemble.”

“I’ll have to think about that.”

“Let’s try the living room. You can build a fire if you want. We haven’t had one all winter. Her majesty doesn’t like the smell of burning wood.”

“Another false alarm?”

“Third one this month. They seem to coincide, more or less, with not getting her own way.”

“Tell me about it.”

“No. Let’s not talk about old women. Let’s drink. The liquor cabinet ought to have something in it.”

Fourteen or fifteen bottles was all. Bourbon, scotch, brandy. Backups for each. “What do you want?”

“Whatever,” he said. “You choose.”

“Brandy.”

“Only if you’ll build a fire.”

“I don’t know how, if you can believe it.”

“I’ll show you. People start them all the time and they don’t even mean to. Did he flunk out, or what?”

Anne opened the mesh with a poker, as if it might be hot already. “Dropped out, he says.”

“A euphemism, maybe. Put some kindling in first. Those skinny sticks. Jesus, you really haven’t built a fire, have you?”

“Where would I’ve built a fire in my father’s house?”

“Enough. Now some of the small logs. Separate’em a little so they can breathe.”

“I think he’s telling the truth. He’s always been a
pretty good kid that way. I’ve known him to lie, but never to make himself look good.”

“So why’d he drop out?”

“He wasn’t real clear about that. Something about the war.”

“Wad up some newspaper and push it under the grate.”

Anne did as she was told. The cool ashes from the last, long-forgotten fire felt soft as baby powder. Dan pitched a book of matches to her. “Now open the flue.”

“Speak English.”

“That brass handle right there by your skull. Turn it.”

The newspaper shriveled quickly and orange flames snaked up into the kindling, which began to glow. “He says he doesn’t think he’ll go if he’s drafted.”

“If he’d stay in school, he wouldn’t have to.”

“He doesn’t think that’s right, either. It’s so like him to force an issue.”

“He’ll go,” Dan said. “When push comes to shove, he’ll go.”

“You’re wrong.”

Dan lifted himself out of the chair, onto the sofa. Anne joined him and they touched, rang, their snifters. “I think my father enjoyed the war,” she said. “I don’t think he saw any actual killing, and he hated the violence. But the interruption was good for him. It made him see possibilities. It’s funny, but I think that’s what Randall came home for. Not to explain to me, but because he thought maybe I could tell him what his grandfather would’ve thought.” She paused. “I thought I knew my father pretty well, but I didn’t know what to say.”

“I’ll tell you, if you like.”

Anne frowned. “I don’t like. I get Mother’s version all day long. You give me yours and I’ll begin to doubt he ever existed.”

“Then you’ll be free.”

“Don’t want to be.”

“You’d be better off.”

“Why are you always compelled to play devil’s advocate?”

“Because you always benefit from reality therapy.”

Suddenly Anne was furious, as if a spark had leapt from the grate at his command and landed right above her heart. But she didn’t raise her voice. “I’m forty years old. I’ve got a nowhere job. I’ve missed all my chances and I’m not sure I’ll get any more. I’ve got a mother who’s pleased to remind me of all this, in case I ever forget. I’ve got no husband and I’m in love with a cripple who grows fonder of his wife every day and less fond of me.… Is there anything I’ve left out?”

“No,” he said. “You touched all the major bases.”

“Enjoy your fucking fire.”

Dan caught her by the wrist when she bolted up from the couch. His eyes were full. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t go.”

“I really should,” she said. “Besides, Di’s likely to be home soon.”

Dan drained the remainder of his brandy and poured himself another. “Morning’s my guess. The nurses will bring a chair from the lounge and she’ll sleep by the foot of the bed.”

Anne suddenly felt weak and sat down again. “God,” she said.

“Try and change her mind.”

“Randall’s probably wondering where I am.”