The House (18 page)

Anna smoothed back tears, left the cushioned patio chair, and walked to the pool. Crouching at the edge, she lowered her fingers into water and considered going for a swim, one from which she would not return. The water would have transformed her through a baptismal of sorts. Arising from the waves she would experience resurrection with Edward.

Linda emerged from around the corner of the house.

“There’s someone here to see you.”

Brad accompanied her as they both approached Anna. Behind him came Inman. Anna’s heart raced. Linda’s eyes sparkled the same as when Brad, Theo, and she had led Matt onto the patio. Anna calmly stood and walked to Inman.

“It’s nice to see you,” she said.

Inman did not move to kiss her cheek. She smiled in thanks. “Linda, this is a friend of mine, Inman Hayes. Inman, this is my daughter, Linda, and her husband, Brad Oliver.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Inman smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Linda and Brad took turns shaking Inman’s hand. Anna had never spoken to her children of Inman. She mused on her future, the possibilities that stood distinct from probabilities, the hopes that she was frightened of holding.

“Can we offer you something,” Linda said, “Iced tea? Water?”

“Thanks. But, I’m fine.” Inman gave a slight wave.

Linda and Brad went through the open sliding glass door into the kitchen.

Inman’s gaze then slipped toward the house and settled upon a place that had become familiar to him over the past year. He had often met Anna there on Friday afternoons before or after she met with Elise when trying to sell the house. One time, he had asked Anna why she was in such a rush to sell the house. She explained that she needed money and that even though Edward had offered to pay alimony, the paperwork would take time. She wanted her freedom so she could move to France.

Inman had asked, “Is this your way of letting me down easy?”

“You can join me,” Anna had retorted.

“I’d love to.” Inman’s quick answer had surprised and frightened Anna. She had interpreted Edward’s absences and self-absorption as evidence of her flaws, that she was damaged goods. But things had changed. I was scared, Anna. I am scared. Never had she considered that like her, Edward held his own demons of self-loathing.

Elena’s words haunted Anna.
Everyone needs affection. A show of love
.

She loosened up on her walk toward the house with Inman. “I’m glad you came,” Anna said. He followed her inside to the kitchen.

“So this is how it was before.” Inman remarked on the old furniture replacing the rental pieces. The wonderment held upon his face seemed to ask if there was a place for him in Anna’s life, or if she was just using him to reach a more desirable destination.

Anna removed a pitcher from the refrigerator and poured him a glass of water. She put it on the counter near where he sat.

“I started to call,” Inman said. “And then, I thought someone might—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Anna said. Inman’s presence brought to light how much she had missed him and the person she became when in his presence. She rested her attention upon his eyes.

“How’s Edward doing?”

“It’s only been three weeks. Now, he’s upstairs talking with a hospice worker.”

“Death condenses time.” Inman sat his glass upon the table.

A sheath of guilt cascaded Anna. “I thought we’d have more.”

Inman’s lips parted. He was about to speak when Theo, followed by David, entered the kitchen. Inman stood. Again Anna made introductions. The differences lay stark between the way Theo and David greeted Inman.

Reserved and wary, David offered a light grip, while Theo, open and eager, gripped Inman’s palm between both hands. Unlike with Linda, Inman said nothing of having heard about them. Anna had spoken about her children to Inman. And he had talked of his daughter to Anna.

Inman glanced at his glass of water standing on the marble counter, then said, “I only wanted to check on you to see how all was going. Now that I’ve done that, I should let you go.”

Lightly, he kissed Anna’s cheek then hugged her, a fearful, yet welcomed surprise. Anna lost her breath on letting go. Inman’s cologne, a mixture of Japanese cherry blossom and spice had en livened her senses. Her breast tingled against his chest. She grew wet. The children, most specifically, David, would never understand.

Anna saw Inman to the door. On returning to the kitchen, she stepped through the sliding glass door and saw Theo and David sitting at one of the tables shaded by the awning. Both moved to stand on her approach. Their father taught them their manners. She waved her hand indicating for them to remain seated. Anna sat.

“I was saying to Theo,” David started, “—that since Dad is making plans with hospice, perhaps you need to speak with him about finances.”

“I’m sure your father’s insurance covers this sort of care. If not, then I know he has—” Anna said.

“We’re not talking about the cost of hospice. Somebody’s got to pay for the running of the house.” David surveyed the patio, the pool, and the house.

“There’s no mortgage,” Theo interjected as if to prove a point he had raised during their private discussion in the study.

“But I’m sure you incurred some costs with Elise trying to sell the house,” David said to Anna.

The house. The words filtered through Anna’s mind as she eyed Theo.

“We were just thinking,” David started again. Theo looked to Anna as if recalling what she had told him.
I haven’t divorced your father. No one knows but you
.

“I know what you were thinking,” Anna spoke. “But, I’m still married to your father. I haven’t divorced him.”

“I thought—” David started.

“I know what you thought. Perhaps more consideration toward your own marriage might help your cause. She stood and left. Anna was angry. But at what? She couldn’t quite decipher. It didn’t matter. Inman’s presence had renewed in her what the last few days with Edward and her children had drenched. Some parts of Anna were dying. Others were coming to life.?

Chapter 23

Days passed. The week ended and a new one began with David, Theo, Linda, with Brad hovering around Edward, seeing to his every need and allowing him, at least from Anna’s perspective, little time alone to contemplate his approaching death. While thankful for the children’s presence, she wondered how Edward might handle their leaving. David needed to get back to his law firm in Detroit.

Anna worried that he had not said anything of delays for getting clients’ work done. She had not seen him make one phone call back to the firm. Then again, he had his cell phone. Neither has she seen him at the computer checking his e-mails, nor had he mentioned needing to do so. Of Heather and the children, Josh and Emily, David had spoken little except for snippets concerning the funeral for Heather’s father, and his forgone conclusion of Heather wanting to divorce him for Rob.

As for Theo, Anna concluded that Millicent would keep the household going whether he was present or not. Only God knew what Theo would find on his return to Chicago. Anna was beginning to consider that it was perhaps a good thing that Theo and Millicent had no children. Yet David and Heather had Emily and Josh, whom Anna had not seen in a little more than a year.

Six months in her battle for the divorce, matters had crested to a point that Anna almost relinquished the need to sell the house. The week following an especially heated meeting in Henderson’s office—Bryce had pulled Edward from trying to punch Henderson Edward had flown to Detroit, and visited David and Heather. Anna had learned of the trip a week later when she received a call from David, during which David describing how Edward had played with Emily and Josh. Anna now surmised that Heather’s father would have been sick during this time. Edward too would have been undergoing chemotherapy. Had David known of Edward’s illness? And if so, how much? Why had he not said anything to Anna?

Edward’s words returned.
I warned David not to sue Henderson. And trying to have you declared insane made it easier for me to give you what you wanted. I would never let him do that to you. David’s actions made me see who I was, what I had become.

Anna sighed as she pulled the sheets, towels, and pillowcases from the dryer. Two decades earlier, this kind of work had been one of the many banes of her existence, a necessary task for a mother of four. The amount of laundry dwindled as each child left for college. Anna’s loneliness rose with each departure.

She considered all that Serine had seen during those years while she had been the last at home; Linda was at Fresno State, and David and Theo were in graduate school. With Linda continually upon the edge of depression and anger, Anna had made constant trips to Fresno. During Linda’s junior year, Edward, having had enough of her outcries, removed Linda from school and brought her back to Oakland. Through some business connections he got her admitted into St. Mary’s College in Moraga. There on the campus of a college overseen by the 300-year-old Catholic order of the Christian Brothers, Linda had met Brad Oliver. He seemed to care little that depressive thoughts and a desire to commit suicide plagued her. In his mind, all Linda needed was love. And he would give it to her. Brad’s father, a psychiatrist, relished the idea of transferring to his soon-to-be daughter-in-law what he had for thirty years given his clients.

Linda’s voice pulled Anna from her tower of thoughts. “Mom.”

A familiar term, the word,
Mom
, had grown stale in Anna’s memory over the last decade. She both missed the nostalgia of hearing it, and experienced relief in the lack of its echo. At fifty-five, Anna Manning was growing old and selfish. Time for her, like Edward, was running out.

She turned to Linda. “How’s your father?”

“He’s resting. Theo’s with him.” Linda reached down for the basket of clothes. “I’ll help you fold them.”

The two went into Theo’s old room. Linda closed the door. The two sat on the bed. Anna started folding towels. Linda folded a pillowcase into a neat square and laid it upon the bed.

“Brad’s leaving day after tomorrow,” she said. “I thought I’d stay and help if that’s okay.”

“There’s hospice, you know. Your father arranged for a worker to begin coming next week.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“I’m fine.”

Linda folded a second pillowcase then gently lowered it on top of the first. She clasped her hands, laid them in her lap. “I’m pregnant, four months.”

Warm relief filled Anna’s body. She had sensed something about Linda’s quietness, the protectiveness and care she had shown her stomach. Brad, always loving, had been ever more affectionate.

“I’m so happy for you.” Anna reached across the pile of folded towels and pillowcases and hugged her elder daughter.

On seeing that Linda had yet to smile, Anna asked, “Are you afraid you’ll have to go back on the medication or that the pregnancy will take you into a depression?” At one point Linda and Brad had decided against having children due to the constant round of daily medication Linda took. That had been at the beginning of their marriage.

“No.” Linda shook her head. This was the first time since Linda and Brad’s arrival that Anna had witnessed or sensed any inkling of the melancholic and pessimistic Linda. “It’s just that I want Dad to see my child.”

Anna shuddered. In her joy, she had forgotten that Edward would most probably not be alive to witness the birth of his third grandchild. “Have you told your father?”

“No.”

Again Anna embraced Linda, this time shoving aside the folded towels and pillowcases. She held on tight to her daughter. What had once separated now bound them. Anna pulled Linda’s head onto her chest and stroked her cheek. She looked at the towels and pillowcases yet to be folded. They were laying beside the folded ones. By-products of family. Women’s work, she thought. What keeps the life force going, and maintains the cycle of humanity.

“Do you know what it is?” Anna asked of the child that Linda was carrying.

“A boy. We want to call him Edward. Edward Manning Oliver.”

“I think that would be a fine name.” Anna refused to allow her tears to intrude upon her daughter’s moment of joy.

Linda left Anna’s arms and wiped her face.

“Edward Manning Oliver,” Anna repeated. “It’s a lovely name.”

Linda beamed. Then for a third time Anna reached for her daughter.

Anna was sitting at the kitchen table and drinking tea when the phone rang. The joy and anticipation of Linda’s addition to the family juxtaposed to Edward’s terminal illness pulled at Anna’s extremes.

David came to her with the cordless phone in his hand.

“It’s for you. Inman.”

Anna took hold of the phone, missed the look of serious questioning on David’s face as she turned and headed toward the sliding glass door.

“How are you?” She stepped outside on the patio and slid closed the door.

“I called to ask you the same,” Inman said. Three days had elapsed since their last meeting.

Anna lost her smile. The warmth of hearing Inman’s voice faded.