The View from Mount Joy (24 page)

It was only when Flora became affected, when she’d take turns clinging to her mother or clinging to me, when she left a note on my pillow asking why I was so mad at Maman and when she left a note on Darva’s asking why she was so mad at
mon
Joe, that we both came to the conclusion that it’s all right to act like children only if no
real
children are affected by the behavior. So we took Flora out for ice cream and explained that both of us had been under a lot of pressure lately and it had made us crabby, but we both were going to try to act better.

“Why
are
you so crabby?” Flora asked me between solemn licks of her rocky road ice cream cone.

The chocolate malt I had swallowed flash-froze in my throat. I shrugged, and when the cold lump finally melted, I said, “Sometimes people get crabby when they’re sad.”

“Are you sad because we’re moving to France?”

I nodded.

“But Maman says it will be a wonderful learning experience.”

“I’m sure it will be.”

Flora squinted her deep brown eyes at her mother. “I go to school,” she said. “I don’t need any more wonderful learning experiences.”

My ally!
I thought, and I couldn’t help laughing, and then we all had a good laugh, sitting around that sticky round marble table, and Flora was thrilled, not noticing that the dispenser napkins her mother pressed to her eyes were not dabbing away tears of happiness.

And then, oh happy day, Darva told me in late July that she and Bernard were having problems. The news kept getting better—by mid-August she had decided their problems were unsolvable ones and Bernard was going back home but
sans
her. While she still wanted to live in France, maybe it would be on a seasonal basis; maybe she and Flora would spend their summers there.

“I mean, it would work out school-wise,” she said, thinking aloud. “Although I do hate to be there during tourist season.”

“Well, tourists don’t go there in the summer for no reason,” I said. “I’ll bet it’s the most spectacular time of the year there.”

Darva raised one eyebrow in a look of bemused pity, and I grabbed her face in my hands and kissed her full on those beautiful smirking lips.

It had been a hot humid week, but when we took our walk around the lake that morning, it was cool, still too early for the heavy stew the sun and the dew point average would mix up later. We held hands—not because we were lovers, but because we were friends again—and as we were about to pass the dock, we saw a man in a straw hat standing out on it, waving his fishing pole back and forth in the water. Suddenly, we both broke into the song “Draggin’ the Line.”

“I know great minds think alike,” I said, “but that was freaky.”

“I know,” said Darva. “I haven’t sung that song in years.”

Delighted in our synergy, we sang the chorus, swinging hands.

“It’s not really true what I said about my painting,” said Darva after we’d finished singing. “I thought if anything would suffer by my not going back to Paris, it would be my art. I mean,
mon Dieu,
it is
the
artists’ mecca, but then I looked at what I’ve gotten done here, up in my little attic studio.” She squeezed my hand. “Thank you for that, by the way.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I guess I was kind of a snob thinking my painting suffered because I wasn’t working in some garret on the rue d’Orsay, but now I think my work’s a little richer, because I painted here, at home.”

“I am so happy you’re not leaving.”

“For now,” reminded Darva. “Remember, I’m serious about spending summers there.”

“Summers I can handle.”

“But what about when you fall in love, Joe? And what about when I do?”

“I like how you say
when
instead of
if.
”

“You don’t think it’ll happen for you?”

We were still holding hands, and I held them up and looked at our entwined fingers.

“Sure I do,” I said after a long moment. “In fact, I bet we’ll both be married by next Friday.”

“Whew,” said Darva, laughing. “That’s
fast.
I wonder where I’ll meet my husband?”

“Don’t get too excited,” I said as a man on roller skates staggered toward us, “but I think that’s him.”

He had squeezed a big belly into a tank top with a picture of the band ZZ Top on it, and what hair he had was pulled back into a limp ponytail.

“All right,”
said Darva, and after he lurched by, she made a motion as if to follow him. “But what about you?”

“Well, Miss Dawson’s been making overtures in the store,” I said, referring to the eighty-year-old retired gym teacher. “Why, just yesterday she asked me to get her a can of tomatoes she couldn’t reach, and when I did, she said I had awfully nice upper body musculature.”

“Well, you do,” agreed Darva.

“Bodybuilders and grocers,” I said, “best bodies in the world. From all the heavy lifting.”

“You know, Bernard was jealous of you. He was sure we had had an affair.”

“It’s never too late.”

“He couldn’t understand how we could be smart enough to always know we’d make better friends than lovers.”

“How did we ever get that smart?”

“Well, you always liked big breasts, Joe, and I’m never going to have those.”

“True,” I said, pointedly looking at her modest chest. “And you always liked guys with small…feet.”

“Well, you know what they say: small feet, deep intellect.”

“So now you’re calling me stupid?”

So besides good exercise (we clipped along), our walk around the lake was full of teasing, some singing, some laughs. Our usual good time—only what would make this so unusual was that it was our last.

Nineteen

Good evening, you’re on the air with God.

You’re a maniac! You’re nuts! You’re—

(Sound of phone hanging up)

God loves you, caller, but then God’s a lot more patient than me. Now, everyone knows I don’t screen my calls because, after all, God never screened anyone. And if He could handle lepers and prostitutes and sinners, surely I can handle the occasional unhinged caller.
But
that doesn’t mean I have to waste valuable airtime with people whose brains are large enough only to hold the naughty words they learned in junior high.

The radio was always on. I might turn it up if I wanted to listen to Kristi’s show, but otherwise it played softly, like parents murmuring in the other room. I remember when I was in my bed, ready to go to sleep, my parents’ conversation in the living room was a lullaby; that’s how safe their voices made me feel. But no DJ, no song, no evangelist could ever be Rolf and Carole Andreson talking about how much to contribute to the library fund, or what a dumb show
Green Acres
was, or whether or not to remodel the kitchen. Still, I couldn’t turn it off; to be in silence was to know I wouldn’t hear Darva calling down from her studio for me to come up and look at her new painting, wouldn’t hear her chattering to Flora in French, wouldn’t hear her talk back to the TV when she watched the news. The trouble was, sometimes the radio played songs that punched you in the gut, that brought you to your knees.

When I heard the Bee Gees song that asked how could you mend a broken heart, I screamed back, “You don’t, you fucking idiots!” and when I heard “You’ve Got a Friend,” I knew the DJ was out to get me, playing all these songs from when I first met Darva, and when Billy Joel sang “Piano Man” I had to lay my head down and cry, because I hated the song and Darva loved it, saying it reminded her of a French bar song.

“Why is the radio always on?” Flora asked me, a week or so after her mother died.

“Does it bother you?”

“If you like it,” she said carefully, “I like it.”

She was my charge now, not just emotionally but legally, thanks to Darva’s responsible nature. When she and Flora had moved in with me, Darva had asked if I would be Flora’s guardian “in the event of my death.”

“So your death’s going to be an event?” I’d said, laughing, “like a birthday party or a fish fry?”

“S’il te plaît,”
Darva had said, papers spread out in front of her on the coffee table. “Just for my piece of mind, say yes.”

“Yes,” I’d told her. “But only if you leave me all your worldly possessions.”

“Flora’s not really a
possession,
” Darva had said, “but she’s the most valuable thing in my life. That’s why you’ll have to take such good care of her.”

“I will,” I had said, feeling uncomfortable, “but don’t die.”

Darva had looked up from her papers and made a
tuh
sound. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

But she did.

My mother and I drove home from the hospital in that state of disbelief that erases all memory of motion, so when you turn the key in the lock of your front door, you wonder:
How did I get here?

Len and Flora were sitting at the kitchen table, putting together a puzzle, and when he looked at us, his features sagged. Flora immediately burst into tears.

“Hey,” I said, taking her in my arms, but anything else I’d planned to say to her was gobbled up by the black monster that was grief.

After the funeral, there had been a reception at my house, arranged by my mom and Len and Beth and Linda, who were doing everything I couldn’t do. In this case, everything was
everything.

Kirk had flown in, leaving behind Nance, who was about to deliver their first child.

“I can’t believe how glad I am to see you,” I said as we swayed together in a bear hug.

“I can’t believe how much this sucks,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m…just…having a hard time taking it all in.”

A lot of people from high school showed up; people I saw in the store and people I hadn’t seen for years.

“She was one of the most talented students I ever had,” said Mr. Eggert, our old art teacher, his artist’s hands now shaky with Parkinson’s. “Did you know she sent me little drawings from Paris? Sketches of a waiter, the Tuileries, those little boys she babysat for a while…”

His voice trailed off, and he stared at me, his expression half angry and half pained.

“She was so nice to me,” said Shannon Saxon, her former lushness replaced by a thin brittleness. “When I was having all those problems with Don, I’d bring my kids to the park, because I knew Darva would be there. I’d talk for hours and she’d sit there, sometimes holding my hand, listening to me.”

“Did I hear right that you guys never got it on?” said Todd Randolph, who was now a city councilman (even if he’d run in my district, I never would have voted for him).

I hoped he could see that the look I gave him contained all the scorn I had ever felt for him.

“Just wondering,” he said with a shrug of his meaty shoulders. “Either way, I am sorry for your loss.”

It was after everyone had gone, when Kirk was helping Len pick up dirty plates in the living room and my mom was scraping leftovers into a plastic dish and Beth and Linda were wrapping up the brownies and cookies that hadn’t been eaten, that Flora took my hand and led me to the backyard, to the swing set I had installed when she was two.

“Do you want me to push you?” I asked, confused, as she sat on the swing.

“No.” She sat looking at her feet. “I just wanted to tell you something…and this is the only place where it’s not loud.”

The other swing was too small for me to sit on, so I sat sideways on the bottom of the slide. Looking at my feet, I noticed how the lawn seemed more clover than grass.

“The thing I wanted to tell you,” she said, and I forced myself to look up at her, even though it was easier to inspect the clover, “is Mme. Chou Chou is dead too.”

The manly stoicism I had managed to spackle together for the funeral service and reception crumbled like the inferior plaster it was.

“Oh, Flora,” I said, my voice catching on the trip wire of my emotion. “Oh, Flora.”

“I’m eight years old now,” said Flora. “And Mme. Chou Chou knew I was getting too old to have her hanging around anymore.”

My arms were wrapped around my legs, and I had leaned so far forward that I felt my cheek on my knees. I wanted to say something soothing, but my throat was a dry well.

“She’s with Maman now,” said Flora. Drawing herself back on her tiptoes, she pushed forward and began to swing. “They’re in Paris.”

I felt a curtain of sadness being pulled over me, but I resisted—I had to resist—and pulled it back.

“Flora,” I said, trying not to let my voice crack, “you know they’re not really in Paris, don’t you?”

“Not
Paris
Paris,” said Flora, stiffening her legs as she swung forward. “A different Paris. A better Paris.

“Paris Heaven,” I suggested.

“Mais oui,”
she said as tears began to stream down her face.
“Maman et Mme. Chou Chou sont à Paris et au ciel.”

The business of life forces you to stay afloat when grief would just as soon as let you drown. Flora was going to start the third grade, and I was plunged into a world of meetings with her teacher, the school nurse, and the principal, all people who assured me their goal was to create, under the circumstances, the safest, happiest environment they could for her.

I walked Flora to school the first day, and when I picked her up in the afternoon, she raced to me as if I was home plate and she was being chased by the third baseman. I carried her for a block and a half, until she stopped crying.

When she lifted her head from the crook in my shoulder, she looked around, dazed.

“Wow,” she said in a small voice, “you got far.” She rubbed her face against my shirt, and I managed a laugh, knowing I was being used as a human tissue.

“I can walk now,” said Flora.

“I can still carry you,” I said.

“That’s okay, I’ll walk.”

My biceps said
thank you
as I set her on the sidewalk, and she smoothed the skirt of her dress and adjusted the straps of her backpack, which were draped halfway down her arms. She reached out for my hand, and I took it. As we proceeded to walk home, she told me, in a voice occasionally broken by gasps, about her day.

“Miss Englund is real nice,” she said, and I saw that as she looked ahead she squinted, just as Darva had done when she was trying to concentrate. “I saw her eating Life Savers when we were practicing our letters.”

“Did you ask if you could have one?”

Flora chuckled. “No. But I wanted to say,
I thought you said there was no eating in class!
”

“She said that?”

“Mmm-hmmm. Almost right after the bell rang, after she had everyone say who they were. She said, ‘These are the class rules and I expect you to follow them.’ And ‘no eating’ was on the list.”

“Maybe you should turn her in to the principal,” I suggested. “You can’t have a teacher breaking her own rules.”

Flora laughed again, a high note in a score full of bass ones.

“Caitlyn Anderson is my new friend and so is Erin…I forget her last name—it’s real long. I sit next to a boy named Tony who wears glasses, and another boy named Jason said he had four eyes at recess. What does that mean?”

It means Jason’s an asshole,
I thought, but instead I said, “It means Jason needs to learn better manners.”

“That’s what Miss Englund said when Caitlyn told on him. She said one of the most important rules of the class is to respect your neighbor.”

“That’s a good rule.”

“I think it’s funny that she says
neighbor,
though. Mr. and Mrs. O’Keefe are our neighbors. And Mr. and Mrs. Kingsbeck. But not the kids in my class.”

“Sometimes
neighbor
is a word for everyone around you.”

A young woman walked toward us, trying to reign in a golden retriever puppy with little success.

“Oh, can I pet him?” asked Flora, kneeling down on the sidewalk.

“Sure,” said the woman as the puppy leapt up on Flora, its tail moving like a propeller, its tongue slathering every inch of Flora’s face.

It was a real tonic; after the owner pulled her dog away, Flora got off the sidewalk. She was weak from laughter.

“I love your dog!” she called after the woman.

“Thanks!” she replied as the dog yanked her down the street.

Flora took my hand as we continued our walk home.

“Caitlyn has a dog. She says he’s really old, though, and not much fun. Caitlyn says her mom’s old too but pretty fun. Erin goes to day care after school, because her mom works. She’s a nurse.” Flora sighed. “I think I’m the only one in my class who doesn’t have a mom.”

It was a beautiful day; the afternoon sun was buttery, not bright, the sky was a pure deep blue, and the trace of melancholia that I’ve always felt was tucked under September’s balminess deepened.

“Do you want me to carry you again?” I asked.

“S’il te plaît,”
she said, and I gathered her up in my arms again and walked home.

Thank God for my tightly woven, extra-strength safety net. My mom and Len, Flora’s
grand-mère et grand-père,
and Tantes Beth and Linda were over so much that the surprise was when they
weren’t
in the kitchen cooking dinner or baking cookies, when they
weren’t
in the living room watching
MacGyver
or
Murder, She Wrote
with Flora or helping her with her spelling, when one or two of them
weren’t
there defrosting the refrigerator or doing my laundry when I got home from work.

Because I had to work, of course. Actually, I fled to the store like the lifeboat it was. It was the one place where things hadn’t changed. The cornflakes and oatmeal were still in the cereal aisle; the coffee and tea were still positioned next to the juices; the chips and snack food were still across from the candy. I could walk down any aisle, past any counter, and know exactly where everything was. And I knew my cashiers, my bag and stock boys, my butchers, and my assistant manager, and I knew my customers.

“Here, I made this for Flora,” said Eileen, my head cashier, giving me a quilt with a small French flag and an artist’s palette appliquéd on it. “It’s in memory of her mother and the things she loved.”

“Here,” said Mr. Snowbeck, giving me a package of Twinkies he had stolen just minutes earlier. “Give them to Flora.”

“Here,” said Millie Purcell, handing me a homemade sock monkey that smelled vaguely of cigarette smoke. “I made this for Flora.”

Most of the time I was touched by all the gestures of goodwill and thoughtfulness, but occasionally the kindness of my customers and staff was almost a burden, a weight I felt I couldn’t bear, and I’d race to my office and sit in my swivel chair, rocking until my composure returned.

I had done just that—run to the shelter of my office—after Mrs. Rog gave me yet another plate of her “world-famous fudge.” Both Flora and I, upon trying the first batch, decided it deserved its title, but it was the words that accompanied the gift that made me choke back tears.