Year After Henry (11 page)

It wasn't until Henry Munroe disappeared that Larry realized how quiet the world had grown without his little brother there to stir it up.

Jeanie waited as Mona Prescott read the day's lunch specials from the menu. This had been their ritual, to meet at the Silver Lady Café once a month. Soup of the day, a nice salad, and a soothing glass of white wine. Every month after Henry died, Mona had faithfully phoned Jeanie up and said, “Well, what about tomorrow? It's probably the last month we can still eat on the outdoor patio before they close it for winter.” And Jeanie had said
no, not yet, it's too soon
. But Mona never missed that monthly call. She and Jeanie had been meeting once a month for lunch ever since their senior year at Bixley High. They had been the two most popular cheerleaders and their soon-to-be husbands were the football stars. It doesn't get any sweeter than that in a small town. Through babies, and mortgages, and weight gain, and family crises, they had kept up that promise to get together once a month. Otherwise, they would become old friends who drifted apart. The monthly meetings had moved over to the Silver Lady ten years earlier, when Mom's Diner finally closed its door and the Lady opened with a trendy lunch menu and a nice selection of wines. Over the past year, Mona's messages had changed monthly. “I bet they've got a fire in the fireplace since the cold weather has arrived” had slowly faded into “They must be just opening the outdoor patio again, what with the flowers all in bloom” and then to “We can reserve that table in the back, to get away from the summer heat.” Mona would soon be back to “This will be the last month before they close the outdoor patio for winter.” So Jeanie had given in. And with the memorial service only days away, maybe it was time.

As they waited for their bowls of soup and salads, they sipped at their white wines and tried to appear casual, as if it had not been a full year since they'd had lunch at the Silver Lady. Jeanie had dropped by Mona's house several times, for those occasions she couldn't avoid and still feel like a best friend. Mona's birthday party was one of them, in October of the previous year, just three months after Henry had died. Henry's own birthday would be coming up again that November, and so Jeanie knew she had to start taking part again. When the tenth of November rolled around the previous year, she did what the grief therapy class had taught her: she changed the routine of Henry's birthday. Instead of baking a cake, as she would have done if Henry had been alive to celebrate, Jeanie had asked Mona to do so instead.
Rule
Number
One: Break the routine. Don't expect your life and special occasions to be the same as before.
But how could they? Sometimes those therapy sessions were just plain stupid. People had been grieving for thousands of years. They know how to do it. It's like learning to walk, or having sex. It's instinctive. People figure it out as they go, even if they might stumble a few times in the process. But Mona, bless her, had baked the cake. And everyone had gathered and did their best to eat and enjoy it: Chad, Larry, Lawrence, Frances, Jeanie, and Mona. Mona's husband, Paul, wasn't there. He had moved out the month before, deciding that his new secretary with the long legs and Hollywood-style hairdo was the best step he could take now that he was forty years old. In comforting Mona, Jeanie had helped to heal herself a bit. But everywhere she looked these days, she saw people with cracks in them, people hurting, people unable to cope. Why hadn't she seen it before since it was probably always that way? The world had become like the House of Mirrors at the carnival, everyone distorted and only resembling the happy people they'd once been. Or, at least, the happy people their
neighbors
thought them to be. Maybe even the people they thought
themselves
to be.

“High school should last forever,” Jeanie said, as Mona ordered a second wine. She was drinking more these days, too, Jeanie had noticed. One glass of wine with lunch had always been more than enough in the old days. “Why didn't we know how lucky we were? Why were we so anxious to grow up?”

“It's nature's fault,” said Mona. “Nature doesn't want us women having kids in our forties.”

“And you and I sure didn't disappoint nature,” Jeanie said.

Mona ran a hand through the short hair she'd turned up with just two weeks earlier. She had decided a new hairdo, something more modern, would be a great idea, a new boost. And she had signed up for Weight Watchers, determined to take off that extra twenty-five pounds. Jeanie was relieved to see the change. For a time it seemed as if losing a husband to his secretary was far worse than losing him to death.

“The Japanese have invented a new watermelon,” Mona said. “It's square so that it can sit in the fridge without rolling around.”

“That ought to help civilization,” said Jeanie.

“There's a drawback,” said Mona. “It costs a hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

Jeanie shook her head. She had learned long ago not to be surprised by the world. A man came into the café with a young woman walking close to his side. The hostess seated them at a table by the window and gave them each a menu. Jeanie saw that Mona was watching the couple. She wondered if she should try to engage her in some conversation that would make her forget about Paul, some gossip maybe, even if she had to invent it. But she knew that grief has to be confronted the hard way. Grief is a train, meeting all travelers head-on. You stand there and wait for it. She'd learned that herself.

“At least he's not gay,” Mona said at last, her eyes still on the couple.

“Who?” Jeanie asked. Mona had three sons, all gone to college.

“Paul,” said Mona. “At least the bastard's not gay, which is what I thought for months. I'd catch him primping in the mirror, wearing bikini underwear.”

“Paul gay?” said Jeanie, and laughed. “I don't think so.”

“Football players can be gay,” said Mona. “Hockey players, too. I saw a race car driver on a talk show who likes to wear his wife's clothes. And she lets him.”

“That's where I would draw the line,” said Jeanie. “It was bad enough when Lisa wore my clothes.”

There was a patch of silence as they ate their salads. Mona kept her eyes on the couple at the other table.

“Lover or daughter?” she asked. Jeanie studied the two. They seemed polite on their opposite sides of the table. Almost distant. She was about to say “daughter” when the man reached over and covered the young woman's hand with his. It wasn't a fatherly squeeze, but a lingering squeeze. Then he ran his forefinger along the side of her hand and up her wrist, sensuously, delicately, as Jeanie and Mona watched.

“Lover,” said Jeanie.

“Bastard,” said Mona.

...

When Jeanie turned into her drive, she saw her mother-in-law waiting for her on the front steps. This time, Frances had a pot of beef stew and a baker sheet of homemade biscuits. Jeanie opened the front door and let the older woman go ahead of her into the cool house. When she had risen that morning, Jeanie decided to keep the window shades closed, knowing the weather report had predicted one of the hottest days of the summer. Now, she could tell by the look on her mother-in-law's face that the cool darkness seemed suspicious, more a state of mind than a logical act. Frances squinted her eyes as she peered toward the kitchen.

“I'll just open these shades,” Jeanie said, giving in. “They say it's going to be our hottest day, and I thought—” She stopped. Why was she still trying to please Henry's parents, as if she needed their approval? Who cared anymore? In truth, this need had evaporated years after their marriage. But people fall into habits, as if they are deep, dark pits. Jeanie had always felt in competition with Katherine, her sister-in-law, the smart one who taught English and watched those boring operas and ballets on the educational channel while the rest of the family was having a barbecue in the backyard. Jeanie had been the one to quickly clear away the dishes from the picnic table while the men sat in lawn chairs and smoked, or told a few stories about cars and sports, and waited for the rest of the day to unfurl. Jeanie had been the one to help Frances clean up the kitchen, the greasy pans, the flour on the counter, the mud tracked in upon the floor by grandkids. And Jeanie had liked the way Frances would peer into the living room at Katherine, who was pirouetting and doing whatever ballerinas do, along with the program on television, oblivious to any domestic work taking place in the kitchen. Frances would roll her eyes up to the ceiling, and Jeanie knew what it meant. It meant
us
against
her,
it meant
you're the perfect daughter-in-law, Jeanie
. How many years had it been that Jeanie quit caring about this? Many, and yet here she was, operating on a kind of automatic pilot, a lifetime of habit.

“Remember how much Henry loved my biscuits?” Frances asked, as she put the baker sheet on the counter. “Be sure to heat this stew on the stove. That's what I always do. I wish they'd never invented the microwave. It just spoils food is what it does.” She set the small pot of stew on a back burner of the stove.

Jeanie said nothing as she opened the refrigerator and got out a pitcher of lemonade she'd made that morning. She hadn't really wanted it, but she knew the lemons were in that bin opposite the one Chad was using. This seemed a good reason to go rummaging in the bottom of the fridge. And while she was down there, why not check to see what Chad was up to? The cans of beer were gone.

“Did Lisa find out what the baby's going to be?” Frances asked. Jeanie smiled at the thought of Lisa becoming a mother, of a little baby smelling of talcum powder.

“She called last night,” said Jeanie. “It's going to be a girl.” Frances smiled, too, and it seemed an honest-to-God smile this time, genuine and pure.

“Do you know what Lawrence said?” she asked. She waited until Jeanie shook her head. “I told him that Lisa had decided to go ahead and find out what the baby was going to be. He said, if it's a girl, she might be the first female Munroe to work for the post office.”

“That's a long way in the future,” said Jeanie. “But it could happen.” Much had been made at family functions of how this particular line of Munroes seemed to produce all male descendants, at least until Lisa came along. It was as if something in the Munroe DNA understood that there was a great need for mailmen.

“My mother was good at telling what a baby would be,” said Frances. “She'd take a needle and thread out and dangle it over your wrist. If it went back and forth in a straight line, it was a boy. If it made circles, it was a girl. It worked pretty well, believe it or not.”

Jeanie put a glass of lemonade in front of Frances and then sat across the table from her. Sat, and waited. They had been doing this twice a week for the whole year that Henry had been gone. At times, Jeanie knew what prisoners feel like when they get visitors. They sit and stare, incapable of real communication, incapable sometimes of even
touch
. They sit and stare and wait for the visit to be over.

“Well?” Frances asked finally. Jeanie thought about what she was going to say. She wanted to be sure she worded it just so, knowing Frances was capable of reading volumes into a thin sentence.

“I think he's just going through a bad time,” said Jeanie. “He didn't say, but I think it's as much about Jonathan as it is about Henry. Have you seen the picture he's got on the dresser? It's of him holding Jon as a baby.”

Frances ran a forefinger around the rim of her glass. She dabbed at the beads of sweat on the side of it. Then she turned to watch chickadees as they flitted down to the feeder just outside the window. Finally, she put her gaze on the pot of beef stew sitting on the stove.

“If you're not going to have that until supper,” said Frances, “maybe you should stick it in the fridge.”

...

Larry poured from the plastic bottle of Coke until the paper cup on his desk was filled to the top. He opened the envelope, careful not to spill any of the drink on it. This one was special, too special to treat like ordinary mail.

Dear Aunt Jeanie,

Thank you for the birthday money. Grandma and Grandpa sent me money, too, and so did Dad. I used it to pay for my karate uniform. And I bought
Monsters, Inc.
It's my favorite movie. I miss my dad, but my mom says I can go home for Thanksgiving. How is Chad? School is okay if you like school which I don't. I have to go to karate class now.

Love, Jonathan

Larry put the single sheet of paper up to his nose and smelled it, hoping there was something of his son attached to it, something more than the mere shape of letters and words. He wanted to sense the flesh and blood of the boy. He wanted to hold him again in his arms, feel the small and sturdy bones pressed into his chest, the silky hair touching his face. They had been talking by phone twice a week, and that was good. But it was not enough. Larry had asked several times if he could drive to Portland for even a quick visit, but his request had been denied by Katherine and her team of lawyers—well, maybe she had just
one
lawyer, but he was a
high-powered
divorce lawyer, and from Larry's corner of the ring, Katherine and
any
lawyer would make a formidable team. Especially since Larry was alone in his corner. How could he afford a lawyer? After paying child support and the old bills he and Katherine had accrued in their marriage, and fifty dollars a week rent to his parents—who hadn't wanted it but Larry insisted—he couldn't afford to buy
Monsters, Inc.,
even if it had been his favorite movie too. The few dollars he had to spare went to the beers he drank at Murphy's and the modest tip he left for Evie. Larry considered Murphy's a cheap kind of grief counseling. But the old bills would soon be gone, all paid off, and he'd be able to get his own place again, start over, maybe even ask his parents if he could have permission to use the car. Katherine had gotten the
new
car in the divorce, and since the
old
car had waited for the ink to dry on the settlement papers before it fell apart, Larry had gone without one. But a few months before, Jeanie had surprised him by giving him Henry's black Jeep. “Chad has the motorbike and that's all he needs for now. I've read that Jeeps flip over easy. The bike worries me enough. I know Henry would want you to have his Jeep.”