Year After Henry (6 page)

“Nice hat,” said Evie. “Where'd you get it?”

“Birthday gift,” said Chad. He put a dollar down so that Evie would give him quarters for the pinball machine.

“Isn't it kind of warm for a woolen hat?” She put the four quarters on his open palm.

“When you're as cool as I am,” said Chad, “you need a woolen hat or you'll freeze to death.” He flipped one quarter up into the air and caught it on its way down. He smiled at Evie, that same smile she'd seen a million times on Henry Munroe's face. And this was the thing that was so hard at first, the fact that looking at Chad was like looking at a young Henry. Larry had mentioned it, too.
It's like my brother is back, only it's the Henry I knew when we were boys. Henry is young again, and still in high school, and I'm just old.

“Well, Mr. Cool, I'd be careful if I were you,” said Evie. “It's Ladies' Night and I'm already out of patience. I catch you sneaking beers again, you're out the door for good. Got it?” But Chad was already headed for the pinball machine.

...

By the time Evie got home, she was too tired to shower or even eat. She rolled her last joint of the day and took it with her up the stairs. Lying back on her bed, pillows propping her head at the angle she liked, one that would help release the tension in her neck muscles, she watched the light from the street flicker across her ceiling. It always reminded her of the northern lights she saw as an eight-year-old child, that Christmas her parents had rented a small cabin in northern Vermont. A full, cold week of lights cutting up the night sky as she and her father stood outside, bundled in thick coats, noses cold at the tips, watching. She had been so overcome with emotion that it was difficult for her to put it into words. But she knew then, even so young, that she would always be a kind of replacement for Rosemary Ann, that little girl with the dark and perfect ringlets, the one who had been sitting on the plush seat of the Kaiser Manhattan just a year earlier. Evie had already figured it out. That week in Vermont had been like the week in Nova Scotia, just another attempt to make Evie happy, to pretend there was nothing missing from their lives but the seashells they might find along the beach. In fact, her mother had spent both of those weeks, and all the many other vacations over the years, inside whatever house or camp or cottage they had rented, in the shadows, as if Rosemary Ann might visit her there instead of in bright sunshine. Finally, just Evie's father kept up the charade of being a parent. That wintry night in Vermont, with strings of blue and white lights zigzagging the sky like lightning, Evie had stood close to him, grateful as a child is for any kindness from the adult world. She wanted desperately to tell him that she understood his grief, that it was all right if he couldn't give himself completely to her. It was okay if a good part of him, a big piece of his heart, would always belong to Rosemary Ann. But she couldn't. Instead, she had whispered, “I love you,” into the cold night. She had watched the warm puff of breath form in the chilly air and then drift away, taking those three words with it, taking them away from her father's ears. Over the years she had even wondered if the puff had come to earth somewhere. Perhaps it had floated out to sea. Maybe it was still drifting, waiting for someone to burst it with a pin so that ears could hear the frozen words.
I
love
you.
One thing was sure. Evie never spoke those words again until she finally said them to Larry Munroe, that night he got up out of her bed, put on his pants in a hurry, and left.
I
love
you
. Funny, but they are such tender, sweet words, bringing with them such promise. And yet, they can cause so much damage. Or, in Larry's case, fear.

Evie released her breath and let the last of the joint out in a thin stream of smoke. She put the small butt into the bowl she kept up by her bed, next to the other roaches that were already there. The Roach Garden, she called it. She sat up and took off her blouse, then threw it onto a chair by the side of her bed. She unhooked her bra but left it on. She wanted to loosen the thing so that her breasts could fall free. “My breasts need to breathe,” she liked to say. If it weren't for the looks she was always getting at the tavern, she would never wear a bra to work. On impulse, which was now part of her life, she turned to look at herself in the mirror. But all she saw was what she always saw: an older woman who looked like the young woman she knew herself to still be. An older Evie with thick brown hair trickling down her back. An Evie tired from a long day and a long night's work. Tired of wondering where it was that Larry Munroe had gone. Where, and
why.
That's all she saw, a woman almost fifty and still pretty enough to turn a head here and there, now and then. But there was no kind father peering over her shoulder, no mother, no sister, no old friend from school days, no distant cousin, no loving grandmother. And there was certainly no Henry Munroe. The truth was that Evie was gifted enough to see the faces of everyone else's dead, but she could never see her own, not since that first and last visit from Rosemary Ann. This was why, from the time she woke in the morning until she smoked her last joint of the night, Evie Cooper knew with certainty that she lived her life alone.

Jeanie sat before the psychologist as she had been doing for two months now, each woman waiting, Jeanie for the hour to pass, the psychologist for Jeanie to say something. This had been her friend Mona's idea, when the grief counseling sessions Jeanie had been to hadn't seemed to help. “It's been ten months,” Mona had said, “and you've not moved ahead as you should have.” Apparently, there was some schedule tacked up on some giant bulletin board that told people how long they had to mend themselves after losing a loved one, and Jeanie Munroe was way behind. A clock ticked somewhere—at least Jeanie thought she heard one. Maybe it was
time
she could now hear, ticking away, second by second, reminding her that life was passing by while she was still floating in some dark cloud. Life was leaking away from her, in drips and drops, while she kept herself at a safe distance. Her biggest thought these days had been for the children, for Lisa delivering a healthy new baby, for Chad living one full day in which all he did was smile, as he used to. For Jeanie herself to get through the hours to that four-pack of margarita wine coolers.

“Do you sleep well?” the psychologist asked. There was a ring of impatience in her voice.

“Not really,” said Jeanie. “Do you?”

The psychologist said nothing. More time passed.

“Well, that's all for this week,” she announced, a quick glance at the tiny box clock on her desk. “Maybe next week you'll feel more like talking.”

“Maybe,” said Jeanie. She smiled at the woman, the smile she had manufactured for occasions such as this, the one she shuffled out on cue. She reached for her purse on a chair by the door and left without looking back. She heard the soft
click
behind her, the door's latch catching, and that's when she finally felt free. She had come to think of this sound as a soothing lullaby. When she felt it was necessary to visit Frances and Lawrence, she did so, still being the dutiful daughter-in-law. But when she heard that soft
click
at the end of an hour, signifying she was free again and could now be on her way home, she knew she'd just gotten past another hurdle and had lived to tell of it. The
click
at the library, when she returned all those books on
How
to
Grieve.
The
click
at the drugstore, each time she refilled her sleeping pill prescription. The
click
at Mona's house, after she said good-bye, was a sweet sound because it meant that Jeanie could finally be alone, could nurse her sorrow in the way she saw fit. She had grown to yearn for the last
click
of the day, the sound of her bedroom door closing, locking out the world, locking out Chad's sad face that had disappeared down the hallway to his own room, allowing Jeanie to fall into the pieces she had held together all day.

Out in the parking lot Jeanie could hear children at play in the Bixley pool across the street. She stood for some time and listened, remembering the aboveground pool Henry had bought for the kids one summer when they were little. It was blue and not the sturdiest thing in town. Showing off for the kids, he had dive-bombed into it, cracking the plastic of one side and releasing all the water they had fed it with the garden hose. A full day's work, and now the pool was busted and unusable. The children, however, had thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen. They had clapped their hands and sang out, “Daddy broke the pool! Daddy broke the pool!” And so Henry had packed them all into the tan Buick he owned back then and drove them over to the new community pool, one he couldn't break for it was made of concrete. Afterward, red-faced with sun and tired from swimming, the whole family had gone to the town's new McDonald's for burgers and vanilla shakes.

Jeanie got into her car and cracked the windows, letting out the heat of the day. She drove toward home at first and then, at the last second, turned down Market Avenue and cruised by the Days Inn. She had done this so many times in the past that it was more a habit now than a deliberate decision. Several cars sat in the parking lot, many of them with out-of-state plates, most likely tourists and salespeople. Jeanie used to do this when Henry was still alive and his Jeep would be parked around at the back, hidden, or so he thought, behind the Dempsey dumpster and a thick hedge of box elders. These were the nights he claimed to be at Murphy's Tavern with Larry, watching sports on TV and drinking a couple beers. Jeanie knew why Henry would ask for room 9. It was the number Ted Williams had on his uniform before the Boston Red Sox retired it for good. Nine had become Henry's lucky number. But it hadn't been so lucky for Jeanie, for in another parking space she always saw the blue Mazda that Evie Cooper still drove to this day, the fenders rattling a bit and a thin crack in the windshield. Then, for weeks, it had been just Henry's black Jeep back there. She had found the Mazda parked out behind Murphy's Tavern, so she assumed Evie had left it there and ridden to the Days Inn in Henry's Jeep. So why hadn't Jeanie parked next to the Jeep, marched over to the door with the number 9 glued to it, and banged her fist like a crazy woman? For one thing, what if Henry hadn't been able to get number 9 that night? What if someone else had rented it first? This would mean that he was in one of five other rooms, but it was a crapshoot as to which one. He could be in number 8, which was Carl Yastrzemski's number before they retired it. Or in number 1, or number 27, or even number 4, which were the retired numbers for Bobby Doerr, Carlton Fisk, and Joe Cronin. But if he wasn't in any of those rooms, then chances were he was in number 42, since that was Jackie Robinson's number, which had long been retired by Major League Baseball. Jeanie knew all six of Henry's lucky numbers since he played them in the lottery every Wednesday and Saturday for years. He was always telling folks his lucky numbers and why they were so. But the real truth was larger than numbers and much more indefinable. There was some kind of power in collecting this evidence against Henry Munroe. Nights when Jeanie had driven home to lie awake on the sofa, watching David Letterman and waiting for Henry to shuffle in, she would plan the day of the Big Showdown. She would imagine Henry's face when the time came to shovel out the receipts, to mention where he always parked the Jeep, the color of Evie's car. She would imagine the shock on his face, especially when she told him she wanted a divorce. She'd triumph, is what she'd do. And she was right on the cusp of shouting, “Aha!” when Henry died. And now, it had been a year since the parking spaces at the Days Inn had seen either the black Jeep or the blue Mazda.

At the end of Market Avenue, Jeanie turned right onto Hayes Drive, and again onto Ezell Street, which she followed down until she saw the sign in the front yard:
Spiritual
Portraitist
. She pulled the car up to the curb and sat there, waiting, until the lacy curtain in the downstairs window moved, ghostlike, as if a wind had rippled through it. She knew then that Evie was home, peering out at the Buick. The woman didn't need to be a spiritual psychic to know that this was the Munroe family car. Henry had sometimes driven the LeSabre down to Murphy's Tavern on those nights when Chad had run off with the Jeep. And Evie Cooper didn't have to be a rocket scientist to know that it wasn't Henry behind the wheel but his wife. Jeanie wanted to make her presence known, that's all. She wanted to make that stand she'd been preparing to make just before Henry died. She wanted to
haunt
Evie Cooper, a ghost from among the living that had a few things to say for itself.

When the curtains fell back into place, Jeanie put the car in gear. Now, as on all the other occasions, she would be able to drive home. As she was about to turn the corner of Oakwood and Hurley, Jeanie slowed the car. Something had caught her attention at the local 7-Eleven: an orange wool bonnet. It was Chad all right, leaning up against the building, one leg kicked back behind him as he rested his foot on the wall. He was looking down the street to where construction men were tarring the road and didn't see the Buick pull in and park behind a U-Haul truck with Texas plates. Jeanie sat waiting and watching until, finally, a boy older than Chad left the store, carrying a brown sack. Chad saw him coming and straightened, a smile on his face, Henry's old smile that caused pain in Jeanie's heart every time she saw it. Now, seeing it again, she realized that perhaps Chad wasn't smiling in her presence for that very reason. Perhaps he saw the pain it brought to his mother's face. But he was smiling now as he accepted the six-pack of beer from the older boy, a boy Jeanie knew very well to be Milos Baxter. As she watched, Chad passed a couple bills to Milos, who quickly bunched them up and shoved them into his pocket. Milos went then to his car, got in, and spun it out of the parking lot. Chad took the six-pack over to his bike and fitted it into the saddlebag on the side. Then he jumped behind the wheel, kick-started the thing, and in seconds was gone. Jeanie had to wonder if she saw this scene unwind or had imagined it, so quickly had the film of it run. She sat there in the heat of the parking lot for another ten minutes thinking of Chad, of that sweet boy who wanted to be a professional bass fisherman when he grew up. Jeanie sat there at the 7-Eleven and thought about her old life that was now gone.

...

Dear Marshall,

I think you know by now that this is the end, and I mean it this time. If you bother me again I'll get a court order, so help me god. And I don't want you bugging Timmy at school like he says you been doing. Please respect my wishes this time around. If not, I'll have to take some action. So help me.

Paula Lynn Thompson

Larry folded the white sheet of typing paper in the same places Paula had used when she freshly creased it, put it into the envelope, and mailed it to Marshall Thompson, her ex-husband. The handwriting was in a purple ink and stood out nicely against the white, as if trying its best to be bold. Larry could almost smell food—eggs and bacon, maybe—wafting up from the fiber of the paper. He wondered if Paula had written it during her break at the diner, just after the breakfast crowd of truckers, farmers, and local businesspeople had paid their checks, taken the free toothpick, and left until lunchtime. They had places to go and things to do, but Larry always lingered over his cup of coffee. This was during those after-teaching and before-delivering-the-mail mornings when, jobless and having passed out all his résumés that day, he had nowhere else to be, what with Murphy's Tavern not yet open. This was before he came to realize that he had no choice but to accept his father's offer of a job at the post office. But until then, Larry had watched Paula watch those last customers out the door. That's when she had taken a few minutes to herself before preparing the cold luncheon plates, her own time to sit and smoke a quick cigarette, drink a small Coke with ice. As Larry read her letter to Marshall, he could almost see Paula in that booth by the window, head bent over the sheet of paper, curls on the nape of her neck in soft, damp spirals, the smoke from her cigarette corkscrewing up from the ashtray, her thin lips moving softly as she wrote each word.
If
you
bother
me
again
I'll get a court order, so help me god.
Larry had also seen the soft blue bruises, growing like grapes on Paula's arms. Once, he had seen a bruise on her cheek, an inch-wide scrape, as though perhaps the smooth skin had been pulled across something harsh. The floor carpet maybe. He had even considered asking Paula out on a date, but hesitated, knowing Marshall Thompson from the old high school football days, knowing the streak of violence that ran below his surface. Paula had a son, a boy about Jonathan's age, and Larry wondered if maybe it was missing Jonathan as he did that was pushing him to find another family, one ready-made. A take-out family, if you will. And why not? Everything seemed fast these days. Fast foods, fast deliveries, fast marriages, fast divorces.

Hearing a quick knock on his bedroom door, Larry scooped up the loose letters lying on his chest and shoved them back into the mailbag beneath his bed. He knew who it was. Who else but Frances Munroe, his mother.

“Larry, I want you to open this door,” she said. There was silence as Larry waited. He assumed that soon, very soon, his parents would find a screwdriver and take the door off its hinges. Like Gestapo they would storm in, wearing tall black-leather boots, helmets, leather jackets. They would take the mail pouch back by force. All he wanted to know was, “Is today the day?”

“Larry?” he heard Frances say now, and he caught what sounded like a different pain in her voice. This wasn't the Henry pain, but the Larry pain. He knew she loved him and cared about his welfare. She just didn't love him or care about him as much as she did Henry. But then, who could? Henry was that kind of guy, the kind of personality that demands attention when it enters a room.

“Yes?” he said. He couldn't bear to hurt her, not when he heard the Larry pain in her voice.

“I need to talk to you,” said Frances. She waited. Larry sat up in bed and let out a long breath of air. It felt good to do this, as if he were letting out sorrow. He went to the door and unlocked it. He saw the knob turn and the door open slowly. There stood Frances in a pink cotton house dress, her perfect gray curls smooth and shiny on her head. He liked the looks of her, it was true, that pure mother look she had. It used to make him feel comfortable, for in those days when Henry was around, there was enough mother in her for Larry, too. Now, it seemed all of them lived only to keep Henry's memory alive. This had become their new occupation while they went doggedly about their day, pretending those other occupations were important. They weren't, and Larry knew this now. Nothing meant anything to them anymore but Henry, that he had once lived, that he had once walked among them. They existed now only to serve his memory, and Larry had had enough of it. He wanted his old life back, the one before Jonathan disappeared, the one in which he taught history. He wanted to turn up at his parents' door and see in their eyes happiness that he was there. Now, as he looked down at his mother's face, all he saw was despair.