Year After Henry (8 page)

“I told you,” said Chad. “Uncle Larry is hiding out in his old bedroom, afraid the bedbugs will bite.”

A night owl gave its low and mournful
hoo
hoo
hoot
from beyond the crest of trees behind the cemetery. Evie sighed, giving in, giving up, maybe. She knew the boy wanted to talk hard and deep. He was a smart boy, and he was certain she had some kind of connection to his father, some kind of lifeline, a bungee cord, maybe, that Evie Cooper could pull and it would bring Henry Munroe bouncing back to Bixley.

“I know you're hurting, Chad,” said Evie. Again, she pushed away his offer of the joint that came toward her in the darkness, its orange glow so tempting. “I can see your pain every time you come into the tavern.”

For a long time Chad said nothing. Instead, he rocked in that same way, down on his haunches, as if maybe he was about to learn something that would make him want to spring up and run for his life. As Evie waited for him to respond, more bats swooped down under the pole light. More moths disappeared into their bellies. A car passed the cemetery, loud music booming from its radio, the glassed-in sound of laughter beating around inside the interior. Teenagers, coming home from some late party, no doubt. Chad reached into his jacket pocket. She heard a tinny
pop!
as the tab of a beer can was pulled off. She saw him tilt the thing and drink.

“Sometimes,” said Chad, his voice so low Evie almost couldn't hear him, “sometimes, I don't think I can get through the day. Other times, I'm so mad at him that I'm glad I got another day to live that he don't.”

“It's not easy losing a parent,” said Evie. “I know.” She wanted to reach out and hold him to her, the son she never had. She wanted to comfort him with the strength she knew came from the circle of her own arms. She had that kind of power over people, the kind they want to sink down into and finally feel safe, the kind of sinking she, herself, would love to do in someone else's arms. But she knew she couldn't. She had made enough of a mess in this boy's life without his even knowing it, at least not yet.

“Does my dad, you know?” Chad stopped. He took the last draw of the roach and then snapped what was left down onto the ground, at the end of Henry's grave. He let the smoke out in a warm stream that soon made its way to Evie on the wind. “Does my father
appear
to you? Do you ever see him around
me,
like when I come into the tavern? Is that how it works? I mean, maybe a ghost don't want to come into a place like Murphy's.” He laughed then, a laugh that turned into a giggle. It was the tingle of the pot that had made this seem funny to him, and now Evie was thankful. She was afraid she might say the wrong thing.

“Come on,” Evie said, and stood. She reached down one hand until it touched his shoulder. Funny, but he seemed so small beneath that big jacket he liked to wear, even in the summer, so thin and innocent inside it. But a jacket is sometimes a good place to hide, especially if you're right out in the open. A jacket, topped off by an orange bonnet, and a boy could almost disappear, if he wanted to. “Let's walk on back,” Evie said. “It's getting late.”

Dear Jeanie,

I am so very sorry for your sadness. I have seen your car outside my house on many nights. Would you like to come inside and talk sometime? I would then have the chance to apologize to you in person, for I owe you that. I realize we will never be friends, but life is too short for us to be enemies.

Evie Cooper

Larry stared at the letter a long time before he folded it again. He put it in what he was considering the “still to deliver” pile. At least, he put it there until he could decide what he should do with it. All other letters were being tossed into a clothes basket, which he could quickly cover with a towel in case his mother came patrolling. It hurt him to see Evie's name, written in a dark blue ink, a flourish to the capital
E,
as if wind were carrying the fluid that had created it. He missed her. He missed so much about her that now he tried to forget he'd even seen the damn letter. It hadn't said who it was from on the envelope, just that it was for
Ms. Jeanie Munroe.
Larry's territory all lay west of the high school and that was where Jeanie lived, several streets over from Thorncliffe, where Stella Peabody lived, Stella, the sixtysomething librarian with the silver-gray hair and yet no husband in sight. Now, Larry knew why. He had not one but two lilac-scented letters from Sheila Dewberry of Sioux City, Iowa, in the “still to deliver” pile. How could he not deliver them? Love letters were so important to human beings. They were so much more important than pleas to colleges for admittance, such as were Andy Southby's letters. Or the angry letters that Peter Finn was sending to Mack Phillips, who owed him four hundred dollars for a stereo. Or the many credit card bills folks all over town were receiving for the tons of junk they bought themselves, from snowmobiles and six-day cruises to electronic gadgets that Larry didn't know existed. He now felt that he'd accidentally stumbled upon a plan that could revitalize the United States Postal Service at a time when it needed a good attic cleaning, what with email breathing down its neck. How about if a select group of mail carriers were chosen to
read
the mail before it's allowed to be delivered? Letter writers would have to compete with each other in order to get their letter delivered. Therefore, they'd write a letter as letters were meant to be written, wonderful epistles as in those days of yore, with thought and passion and intelligence. Maybe they'd be expected to seal the envelope with a glob of dark red wax, like a huge drop of blood. There should be more to the art than jotting some shit down on paper and quickly licking a stamp with Elvis's face on it. Those letters that weren't chosen, the meaningless bunk, would be tossed into wastebaskets, such as Larry was now doing. And the good stuff, the winners, could even be hand-delivered, adding a personal touch that not even the Internet, with its dumb yellow smiley faces and inserts of flower bouquets, could compete with.

Larry quickly tore open the next letter since he could see it wasn't personal. Jimmy Thompson owed Liman's Hardware almost eighteen hundred dollars for a sofa and a reclining chair. Larry could almost see Jimmy's fat ass sinking down into the cushions, the springs and coils whining beneath the weight of him as he flicked TV channels with the remote control. If there was no such thing as the remote, Jimmy Thompson would probably weigh at least fifty less pounds. Larry tossed the bill into the clothes basket. Jimmy had all those kids, so he didn't need another bill. Debbi Sutton was sending out her wedding invitations. Larry had already found two others. The real purpose behind the wedding invitation, in general, or so Larry had come to believe after his weeks of delivering them, was to ask for a wedding gift.

Nevertheless, Larry put Debbi Sutton's three invitations in the delivery pile. He liked Debbi, had seen her blossom into a fine young lady during the year he taught her history. It seemed as if she'd grown a foot from early September to late May, her breasts getting larger, too, looking more round, like a woman's, rather than those perky, peaked things that teenaged schoolgirls like to point at every boy they meet in the hallways. And Debbi's personality had changed, too, with her interests becoming a bit more cerebral. She had been talking about universities and careers more and more as the days went by, and less and less about boys. And then, just as she should have been packing up for some good school out in Arizona or Illinois, she and Bruce Finney had decided to get married. Who knows why? A baby on the way, maybe. Time would tell. Larry knew a lot about this phase in a young person's life, this “edge of the cliff” phase where they would either jump or get a plan for themselves. Having taught so many high school kids, he had a ringside seat for watching as nature, with the silent help of estrogen and testosterone, molded these young people, some for the better, some for the worse. Andy Southby being one of the latter. Here was yet another rejection letter for the little bastard, this time from a school in Kansas City that didn't have any interest in teaching Andy how to succeed at Restaurant Chain Management.
Perhaps
your
services
would
be
put
to
better
use
in
some
other
industry.
Larry put the rejection letter on the top of his delivery pile, where already rested the other rejection letter for Andy, from the Howard F. Honig College of Nebraska. Sometimes, it was important for a person to know how much the world didn't want them.

“Larry?”

He froze, his hands still holding the letter he'd just opened, yet another from Sheila to Stella. But what else did two horny old maids, hundreds of miles apart, have to do with their time but write perfume-scented letters? And this one had started with a bang, too.

Darling, I hope I don't smother you with letters since I cannot smother you with kisses, but a rainstorm woke me in the night. Such thunder and lightning! Pussy and I then lay awake, thinking of you.

Larry had been trying to decide if Sheila were talking about an actual house cat, or being metaphorical, when the knock came.

“Would you open the door, please?” Jeanie asked. “I'd like to talk to you.”

Larry rapidly shoved letters to and fro, under things, on top of things, between things. He would soon need to develop a kind of method, something akin to the Dewey decimal system, whereby he could hide letters quickly, perhaps in order of their street numbers, since that's how he'd come to think of the residents of Bixley who lived in his territory. He thought of them as addresses now, and not by their last names. When he saw Stella Peabody, for instance, he immediately thought,
215 Thorncliffe.
If he had no choice but to see Andy Southby being obnoxious at Murphy's Tavern, he didn't see Andy. He saw
566 Gray Lane
. Marshall Thompson wasn't Marshall Thompson, former football player and ex-husband who was making Paula Thompson miserable. He had become nothing more than
45 Oakwood Street
. And now, now, here was
39 Hurley Avenue,
banging on his door.
Jeanie.

Larry had hidden all the letters and pulled on a gray sweatshirt before he opened the door. Jeanie looked sadder than he remembered her. Rarely had he seen her when he was delivering mail to her box, and he preferred it that way. He knew she did, too. Not that they didn't like each other. They did. Jeanie had been the sister he never had. She had been the one to sit quietly on the sofa next to him and listen while Henry paced the room, all other eyes upon him, as he told a joke. Henry was one of those men who needed to stand up and use his hands and his whole body when he had a story to tell. Larry knew the truth about such men, and he suspected Jeanie did too. They are men who need to be watched, who ache to be adored. So they stand to tell their jokes or their fishing tales, as if to say to the listeners, “Look, here is all of me standing before you, so please notice and love every inch of me.” Instead of resenting Henry's large personality, as he had done now and then back in those high school years, especially where girls were concerned, Larry had come to feel a certain measure of sorrow for his little brother. He often saw a panic in Henry's eyes, as if he were alarmed to find himself the center of attraction, as if Henry were saying, “Look where I am again, Larry, right here in the middle of the fucking ring.” Henry was addicted to being onstage, long after the narcotic of it, the
adrenaline,
had worn off.

“Come on in,” said Larry. “I'd offer you a drink but my parents have locked their liquor cabinet.”

Jeanie smiled at this. This was the side of Larry she had come to love. At all those family functions over the years, it had seemed like the two of them had joined forces, a small army of two. They had watched Henry perform and had loved him in spite of it. They had watched Katherine keep a cold distance from the entire family, as if she were too good to be among them in the first place. They had watched their children play the backyard games of childhood. And then, they had watched Frances and Lawrence watch Henry. That was a job in itself. But through it all, she and Larry had passed a funny notion back and forth, so quietly, so un-Henry-like, that no one ever noticed but them.

“I see you haven't lost your sense of humor,” said Jeanie. She sat on the bottom bunk and crossed her legs. Then she looked around the room at all the photos of Larry and Henry in their football uniforms. But Larry could see that there was a vagueness to her eyes, as if a film were over them, as if maybe she had trained herself not to let the memories rush in if they should ever ambush her, catch her off guard. The sight of Henry Munroe in his old football uniform should be one big memory that could knock her down. But Jeanie might as well have been looking at some paintings in a museum.

“I'm not trying to be funny,” said Larry. “They really
did
lock the liquor cabinet. I went down to get a bottle of scotch yesterday, when the coast was clear. Someone put a padlock on the door.”

Jeanie laughed out loud this time. It surprised her to hear the sound of her own laughter again. But somehow, with the memorial service a few days away, there was a kind of electricity in the air that she could almost feel on her skin. There was now so much tension over the first anniversary of Henry's death that it was having a reverse affect on her. Since she couldn't cry anymore, it was possible that she would start laughing and not be able to stop. The way some people hiccup until they end up in the
Guinness
Book
of
World
Records
. She opened her purse and took out a pack of cigarettes. As Larry watched, she went to the window and eased it up. She lit a cigarette and stood smoking it there, letting the gray smoke meet the outside breeze and be carried off, down to the green lawn, and the potted geraniums on the front steps, and the pinkish walkway below.

“When did you start smoking?” Larry asked. Jeanie looked over at him. He was Henry's serious side, that's what she had always said. Larry was who Henry
might
have been had he known how to settle down to a small notion of life. She could see that he'd lost weight, too. They had become, unwittingly, one of those weight-loss plans that large businesses or whole communities set out to accomplish as a team. Jeanie had seen such things on TV.
A
few
dozen
workers
at
the
local
mattress
factory
have
decided
to
lose
two
thousand
pounds
in
six
months.
Or,
the
town
of
Collins, Missouri, has joined President Bush in his fitness awareness campaign by vowing to lose ten thousand pounds in a year.
The Munroe family was doing this, too. They just didn't know it. Jeanie took a deep breath.

“I started smoking when I first found out about Henry and Evie Cooper,” she said. This seemed to take some energy out of Larry. He sat down on the chair at his desk, but said nothing. Instead, he kept his eyes on his feet, on the gray slippers he had put on that morning. He didn't know what else to do. This statement ambushed him, the way Henry's old football picture should have caught Jeanie off guard. “It's okay,” Jeanie added, when she saw how uncomfortable her words had made him. “I'm used to the idea of it now. Trouble is, I don't know if I'm still hurting over
that,
or if I'm hurting over losing Henry. If I knew what was causing the most pain, then maybe I could finally heal.”

Larry heard birds outside the window, their songs clear and pure now that Jeanie had lifted the paned glass and let the notes inside. He heard the whine of traffic as Bixley went about its day. He knew that in an hour or so, he would hear the school bus coming up Hancock Street. A school bus has its own sounds, unique only to it, big gushes of air as its brakes go on, a
swish
as the door opens, another
swish
as it closes, and then the gushes again as it lurches forward. Sometimes, the two
swishes
are punctuated by a child's laugh. Larry had come to resent the very idea of the school bus for it reminded him of his teaching days and how they were now over. Mostly, it reminded him of Jonathan, who was going to school in some other life.

“How about some lunch?” Larry asked. “The special today is tuna fish and pickles.” Jeanie smiled. It seemed to her that it was a real smile, but she wasn't sure anymore, not since she had learned to crank out the fake one at a moment's notice.

“I'd love some lunch,” she told him.

Larry opened the top desk drawer and Jeanie saw that it was full of a variety of tinned goods. He took out a can of tuna and closed the drawer. He opened the middle drawer, which was crammed with pastries in sealed packages, a loaf of bread, even condiments. As Jeanie watched, Larry took four slices of bread from the wrapper and then found a jar of mayonnaise. He looked over at her.