Year After Henry (16 page)

Larry felt a deep respect for the letters addressed to 215 Thorncliffe. In his hand, he could almost feel them beating, the words so heartfelt and filled with love. Stella Peabody had been the same age as Larry's mother and even shared the same classes. She and Frances graduated from high school together, tassel to tassel, one day back in the summer of 1954. Larry wasn't told this information by his mother, since she wasn't the talkative kind who loves the history of towns and old houses. It was Stella Peabody herself who regaled him with stories, sitting out under her low-hanging roof just behind the large, white columns, enjoying a glass of cold lemonade. When she saw Larry come ambling up her walk with the mailbag on his shoulder, Stella would insist on pouring him a glass, too. And he would sit for a while to
rest
his
feet,
as Stella called it. That's when she would teach him interesting things, like how the word
bungalow
originated in the Bengal region of India, becoming popular first in California as a cottage house. “Where else but California?” Stella would say, with that nice smile of hers. And she'd warn Larry to watch out for heat stroke if it happened to be a sweltering day. Sometimes, she'd make mention of a special occasion, as in how many years her mother had been dead on that day. Or that it was her parents' anniversary. One day, back in June, it was her brother's birthday, George Peabody, who had ended up one of the twenty thousand prisoners who would die, beaten and malnourished, on the horrendous march from Mariveles on the Bataan Peninsula, in April of 1942. “I was only six years old when Georgie left,” Stella once noted. “He just went strolling down that front walk right there as if he owned the world. At the corner, he turned and waved good-bye to Father and Mother and me. That was the last time we would ever see him.”

Larry needed Stella in his life because of her respect for the past, a place he mourned for daily. He stood now on the street and waited for the small yellow light in the upstairs dormer window to go out. When it finally did, he knew she had turned in for the night. She would have long hours at the library the next day, it being Saturday, and Stella being no spring chicken, as she liked to remind him. Life had been tough on her lately, now that 213 Thorncliffe, the lot next door to her tiny house, had been plowed under and a sign announcing a new McDonald's was standing where once old Mr. Hart's elm tree stood. “Trapped in the path of progress,” Stella herself called it, since that older part of town, with ancient buildings better off being torn down than repaired, at least according to the town's ambitious planners, had been designated as commercial zoning.

My own darling. How I have missed the soft velvet of your sweet mouth, the silk of your nape, the tender arch of your back, the hills of your snow-white breasts, which my lips have climbed so many times in the past.

What Larry couldn't figure out, and what he would never ask her, is where and when and how she had met a Sheila Dewberry, from Sioux City, Iowa. Had it been years ago, at some convention for librarians, one so far from Bixley that Stella Peabody felt free of her shyness? Had their hands touched one day, in some library in a large city where they had both gone for a needed vacation? Where they had both ventured in the hopes of finally,
finally,
meeting someone who felt the same desires as they did? Had they both reached for a book on the same shelf at the same time—Jane Austen no doubt—their lives touching, light as butterfly wings, but with enough meaning that from that moment on, they knew:
This
is
the
love
of
my
life.

Larry lifted the heavy lid of the old-fashioned mailbox that no doubt had been placed there when Stella's parents first moved in. It was dignified, a polished brass, with the name Peabody engraved stylishly across the front. Sturdy, the way lives once were. Dependable, the way people were expected to be. Once.

Please don't keep me from you, nor you from me, for too much longer. My heart, no, my body, needs you and needs you now. I am all fire as I write.

Larry dropped the two letters, resealed and good as new, into the brass box.

He walked down Mason Court and from there, cut over to Dunbar, which led him back to the childhood street where he and Henry had ridden their first bikes. The old neighborhood always seemed to welcome him home, as if the past were a warm blanket you can wrap yourself up in when the present grows bitterly cold. Larry could have gone to Evie Cooper's house, even though it was a half-hour walk. But he didn't know what he'd say to her. Or if he was ready to say anything at all. Or if she would even want to see him now that he'd jumped ship on the world. Some folks saw that as a sign of weakness, and a strong woman like Evie was bound to be among the skeptics. Call him chicken, but he wasn't ready to face her.

When Larry got home, the house key was gone from beneath the cast-iron pot. He had no idea how his mother knew he was going out. Did she have spies everywhere? Did she have large, flylike eyes on the back of her head? He wondered what he would do now, since this time she was not in the kitchen, light burning, practicing her speech. Would he be grounded for a month this time, no television or bathroom privileges? On an impulse, Larry reached out and touched the doorknob. It turned easily in his hand, the door not locked. So what kind of game might this be? Were they waiting inside to spank him? Would the old man take him across his knee, reaching for the silver letter opener, which his mother would produce? He didn't blame them. He didn't blame them for anything they might do to him from here on. They knew now he had tampered with the mail. He was certain of it. And they would come for the mailbag, as they should. He was a failure as a son, and maybe if he could just admit that to himself, he could go on about his life being a failure. He didn't blame
them,
but he did blame
himself.

At the top of the stairs, Larry heard the step squeak loudly. How could he have forgotten it? He had been thrown off guard by the key incident was how. He froze, waiting for the sound of her door opening, her footfalls, as in all those years gone by. But there was nothing. He could hear the distant rolls of his father's snores, loud now that he was in his own bed and deep into sleep. But that was all. It made sense, once Larry had a moment to think about it. Why should his mother care? Why should she rise in the night from her warm and peaceful blankets if Henry Munroe wasn't standing on the stairs? After all, it was only her oldest son, Larry.

...

It was almost midnight when Jeanie woke in her chair on the patio and sat up. The full moon had crested the top of Mrs. Flaver's roof and was now on its way out of sight. At first, she didn't know where she was. The candle she had lit earlier had burned out and now, with all the neighboring porch lights out for the night, the world was too dark. She'd had an awful dream. As usual, she had been looking for Henry. In all those months since he'd been gone, he had not appeared to Jeanie in a single dream. The grief people said it was her own subconscious mind protecting her, that people seem too real and alive in dreams. You wake, reaching for them, still feeling the warmth of their breath, their kiss, their touch. You wake and realize that person is dead. And that there
was
no warm breath, no kiss, no touch. So, it's better not to dream of those you love and miss. Not until you're ready. And so Jeanie assumed that was why she didn't dream of Henry.

But she looked for him. Night after night, she searched for that man the way some people search for lost treasure. She hunted everywhere for Henry Munroe. Sometimes, it was in their own house and Jeanie would go from room to room, calling his name, looking in the basement, the attic, his workshop in the garage. Other times, she would be reaching for the key that Frances kept beneath the pot of red geraniums, and she would take it and open up the house where Henry had grown into a man. She would search each nook, each cranny, lift each dust ball, trying with all her heart to find the man she had married. Other times, Jeanie was just driving, the way she used to on those nights when Henry didn't come home until late. And there had been many of those nights. What she
thought
Larry was going to tell her the night before, as they sat over his spaghetti dinner, was that Evie Cooper was not the only woman Henry had taken the time to know well, after he married Jeanie. But Larry didn't tell her that, and now Jeanie wondered if he even knew that Henry had had affairs with several women
before
Evie Cooper, and even a couple
after
Evie Cooper. Did Larry know that if his brother hadn't died, he'd still be having affairs? Jeanie knew. She had turned in her badge as housewife and put on a new badge: Marriage Detective. She had learned to phone up motel clerks and ask for receipts, to use redial to its max, especially after Henry got his cell phone. She had known every illicit move her husband made, even finding phone numbers from his girlfriends tucked away beneath the velvet padding of the box his electric shaver sat in. Jeanie had become a female Sherlock Holmes, able to sniff the air for a smell of deceit. Evie Cooper was a tiny part of a very big problem. And now, having searched for Henry all these months in her dreams and failing to find him, Jeanie had to admit that maybe it wasn't to tell Henry
off
that she was looking for him. Maybe it was just to tell him
good-bye
.

“Mom?” The voice was so like Henry's that it startled her. Her foot kicked one of the empty wine coolers and she heard the bottle roll, clinking all the way across the patio. And then she knew. She remembered.

“Chad?” she said. “Is that you, honey?” She reached a hand out in the dark, hoping to touch the boy, his flesh and blood, to touch someone real and not someone dead, not someone from the land of dreams. If she and Chad didn't start touching soon, start living soon, they might as well give up on life altogether.

“I'm right here,” said Chad. And she felt his hand take hers and squeeze it. Warmth ran into her from his touch. She could feel it. She could feel herself pulling the sadness out of him and she wanted to do that. She was the older one, the parent. She could handle his share of grief if he'd just give it to her.

“Here are some matches,” Jeanie said, her other hand reaching down where she'd left the pack of cigarettes. “Can you light the candle?”

Chad took the matches from her hand, but he kept her other one tight in his.

“I don't want any light,” he said. Jeanie understood. She hoped he could tell just by her touch that she understood. “I miss him, Mom.”

“I know, son,” she answered. “I know.”

For a few minutes, there was no talking. There was just the power of their hands, touching in the night. And it was enough. Then Chad pulled his hand away. A car turned the corner of Hurley and its lights cut across his face, his dark good looks, his sad eyes. Her son. Maybe they would be okay after all.

“Guess what?” Chad said.

“What?” asked Jeanie.

“I'm starving,” he told her.

...

Evie had just stepped naked out of the shower and looked at the clock. Midnight. She was hoping a cool shower might be the best way to help her fall asleep. Her mind was in too much of a mess to do any reading. Not only was there the question of Larry Munroe, but she had found that shard of letter lying on her front porch. Ripped to shreds. This meant Jeanie had done it. And then, it had been a long night at the tavern, with Andy Southby and his knuckles and too many drunks for any sober person to have to listen to in a single night. Evie pulled on the big baggy T-shirt she liked to sleep in and turned back the sheets on her bed. She fluffed the pillow up against the headboard. If she couldn't concentrate long enough to read, or even watch television, she'd smoke the last of the joint. That's when she heard a knock on the door, soft at first and then louder, with sudden urgency.

Evie pulled on her jeans and hurried down the stairs. The small lamp that she left on all night in the front room cast its dull orange glow. Outside, on the porch, she could see the silhouette of what was undoubtedly a woman. She felt her heart beating, a wave of disappointment since she had hoped it was Larry Munroe. He had often caught up with her late, after she'd left the bar and headed home to unwind. A woman. A thought flashed through Evie's mind that it might not be safe to open the door. If Jeanie Munroe was so angry she had ripped up the letter of apology, what else might she do?

This was when Evie Cooper realized she didn't care. Let it come. Such was fate. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door. Gail Ferguson was sitting on the porch swing, her head down, her arms lifeless on her lap, as if the heavy brown coat with all its long fringes was pulling her down, pulling her under where she would surely drown. Gail's little red car was sitting in the drive, the one she had left at Murphy's for the weekend.

“Gail?” Evie said. She stepped out onto the porch. “Sweetheart, what's wrong?” Gail lifted her head and looked up at Evie. The bruise around her left eye was so violent that already the eye was swelling shut. The skin on the cheekbone, that high and nicely defined area that Gail was so proud of, had been scraped red and was now turning a dark blue. Blood had dried in the corner of her mouth, just below a wide split in her bottom lip.

“I swear to God I didn't do anything wrong,” Gail said, a tiny voice.

“The bastard,” said Evie. “I'm calling the cops!”

“No!” Gail pleaded. “Evie, I beg you.”

“Then I'm taking you to the hospital,” said Evie. Again, Gail shook her head. She looked at Evie with that sad, little-girl look. Most days, it was the only look Gail Ferguson had.

“Please,” she said. “I can't go to Margie's.” Gail didn't have to say why. Evie knew. Margie was awash in her own grief over losing Annie, her little girl. How could a sister who cared about her, as Gail surely did, knock on her door in the heart of night, in this condition?