“It’s not always a good idea, digging around in the past,” he said. “I done that once. I went to see the girl who got away. And I remembered real soon why I let her get away.”
“Well, then you knew,” I said. “Then you could put it to rest.”
He grabbed a toothpick from a ceramic cowboy-boot holder at the center of his table. It was on a lazy Susan, along with salt and pepper, soy sauce, honey, and many kinds of hot sauce, including one called Ass Whoopin’ Red Neck.
“I wouldn’t say I put it to rest,” he said. “Nope. Oh, I knew we’s never gon’ get together after all. But how she used to be in them days still comes along and snatches me up, now and then. And ever’ once in a while, I dream of her real strong. Suzanne.”
He’d been staring out the window, saying all this; his voice had lost some vitality. But then he looked at Joni and spoke so loudly I jumped. “I’ll tell you something. My wife was a better person by far. But I never did let my wife have all the real estate in my heart. And then after my wife died and I seen Suzanne, well, I learnt what a mistake I made, holding out from Estelle that way. She was a good and gentle soul, she deserved a far sight better’n I give her.”
I scraped the last of the pecan pie from my plate and said, “You can’t help loving who you love.”
He looked over at me, and in that instant I saw the man he used to be, saw that he must have been quite handsome in his day. “Well, that was my question, you see. I believe I done my wife wrong, being stingy that way, and maybe there was something I could have done about it, but ain’t nothing I can do about it now. Is the problem.”
He pushed himself away from the table and went into the living room. He came back with a photograph he dusted with his sleeve before he showed us. “This is her,” he said. “Long time ago.”
“Your wife?” I asked.
“No. Suzanne.” He took off the back of the frame and pulled out another photo. “This one here’s my wife. I alternate.”
“Ah,” I said, and held back a smile. His wife had a kindness in her face, but Suzanne was a bombshell.
“On account of what’s the difference now?” he asked. “I alternate, and that way I feel like I have some company coming in and out of here.”
Joni looked at her watch and gasped. “Uh-oh, we’ve got to go and get our friend.” She started to gather the plates, and Brooks took them from her hand. “Never mind that. But wait one second. You might want to order some pies from me sometime. I’d box ’em up good and drive ’em on up to you.” From a kitchen drawer, he pulled out a paper napkin, wrote down his information. Same shaky writing as the sign outside. A worthy souvenir, if nothing else, I thought. “My card,” he told Joni, handing her the napkin.
Now, in the café, the three of us seated at a table by the high windows, Lise says, “This trip is great already. I’m really very happily surprised. It’s kind of like the Christmas I was ten years old and I got the thing I wanted that I never thought I’d get.”
“Which was?” I ask.
“A BB gun.”
“What did you do with it?” Joni asks.
“I shot stuff. Shot boys.”
“Really?” I asked.
“I missed, every time. But yeah, I tried to shoot these boys who were always shooting birds.”
“I’m sorry you missed,” I say.
Beneath the table, I spy a wadded-up piece of paper. I hold it up to show the others. “What are the chances?”
“That might not be it,” Lise says.
I uncrinkle the paper. “It is it.” I start to read it aloud. But then the waitress comes and I put the note in my lap and order the first thing I see on the menu. Which is the ham hoagie. Which Riley will be very happy about. Speaking of the trip being like Christmas.
The waitress finishes taking our order and I turn again to reading the note:
Miss Browne,
I’m sitting across the room from you. I recognized you when you first came in, you didn’t have to put a rose on the table and especially shove it to the edge, no one could miss it. Kind of a stupid idea, really. I was going to talk to you, but now I don’t really want to. My mom thought it might be fine, but she also has always told me to go with my gut and my gut is sort of screaming at me to get out of here. It’s embarrassing to think about even introducing myself to you and anyway, why should I put myself out for you at all? I’ve babysat for a lot of infants, and every time I do, I look into their eyes and I see such trust. I don’t know how you could have done what you did. Okay, you didn’t want me or you couldn’t take care of me or whatever but you just gave me away and that was that. And now you’re guilty or curious or something and you call and I’m supposed to come running. Which kind of pisses me off that that’s exactly what I did. I don’t think there’s anything you can say to me that will make up for all those times I wondered what was wrong with me that you couldn’t even be bothered to send a birthday card. Although you probably forgot when my birthday is. Anyway, I’m just going to go and would ask that you don’t try to contact me again. You have your life and I have mine.
Haley
I look up.
“She’s mean,” Joni says.
Lise says, “She’s hurt.”
“She’s both.” I look at the note again. “I think I should keep this in case Renie ever wants it.”
“Maybe,” Joni says. “But don’t give it to her now. Wow. I wonder what they’re talking about.”
Silence, while we all ponder that.
We take turns going to the bathroom, and then our food arrives. We all sit staring at it. And the next time the waitress comes, we ask her to wrap it to go. Across the street, I see Riley pull his head back in from the partially open window. Wait till he sees this.
We are on the way out to the car to wait for Renie when we see her coming down the block. She waves, smiling, and when she gets in the car, she says, “I’m going to come back and visit in a few weeks. I saw the outside of where she lives. It’s nice. She has a window box. And she’s like me, a little. I really think I can see myself in her. And … I guess that’s all I want to say right now.”
Renie drives, Lise is up front with her, and Riley, Joni, and I are in back. We fall quiet, listening to the radio and to the smooth-voiced woman on GPS saying things like “In half of a mile, right turn.” Then Joni takes her seat belt off and lies down, resting her head on Riley’s rump.
“Put your seat belt on,” Lise tells her, and Joni, her eyes still closed, says, “They’re dangerous.”
“What?” I say.
“They’re dangerous. That’s what my Aunt Peg always said. She was a pistol. She lived to be one hundred and two and she never did wear a seat belt and she got in a wreck once and she didn’t get hurt at all.”
I cross my arms, look out the window at the scenery passing by: the budding trees, a string of identical brick houses with white wooden front porches, a strip mall with a coffee shop called Down with Ground. We pass an empty playground, swings moving in the wind as though ghost children are in them. I take my seat belt off, too.
“All right, both of you put those seat belts on,” Lise says, not even turning around, and then, “If Renie has to stop this car …”
I put my belt on. Then, after a minute, Joni does, too, but she stays lying down, her head still on Riley’s rump. As for Riley, his head is in my lap. I rest my head against the window and close my eyes. I think of Michael, and what I think of as the miracle that happened yesterday.
“So tomorrow’s the day, huh?” Michael had said, after I’d come in and settled myself in the chair next to his bed.
“Yup. We’re leaving at six A.M. Or so we say, anyway.”
Outside the room, I saw a flash of someone rushing by.
“What’s the first stop?”
“Depends,” I said. It happened again, that flash. A woman. I thought it was Phoebe. I stood up, headed for the door.
“Let her in,” Michael said.
I turned toward h
im. “What?”
“Let her in. But if I … All right, look. Let her in, but you stay. If I want you to go, I’ll raise my right arm to scratch my head. If I want you to get rid of her, I’ll raise my left arm.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re sure?”
He nodded. I flew out the door. I realized I’d been wanting so much for him to let her in. In the last couple of days, he’d told me more and more about her, how they had just gotten engaged when he was diagnosed with leukemia. How they had frozen sperm before he started treatment. How at first the treatment had seemed as though it was going to work, but then it didn’t. How he then wanted to cut ties with Phoebe so that she could find someone else and not suffer any longer on his account. “But are you maybe changing your mind?” I’d asked him.
“No.”
“Because if you are—”
“I said no!”
“Fine,” I’d said, a little miffed.
I went into the hall and saw no one, so I started for the lobby. Knowing that I was leaving the next day, I wanted him to have someone he could really talk to. When the other volunteer, Karen Night, came to stay with him, he never talked. He slept. Probably because I wore him out, but also I thought he talked to me because he liked me. As I did him. I tried not to think about the fact that he might not be there when I got back from my trip, but it was a possibility.
I looked for Phoebe in the lobby; no sign. I wondered if he’d let me call her. Or if he would call her. I was deep in thought when I bumped into someone. Phoebe.
“Oh!” I said. “You’re here!”
“I’m going,” she said, color rising in her face. “Okay?”
“No. No, I was coming to get you. He wants to see you.”
She stood still, eyes wide.
“Come with me, he wants to see you.”
We moved to the wall, out of the way of a medication cart coming through. Phoebe said, “Who are you?”
“My name is Cece Ross, and I’m a volunteer. I’ve just been sitting with Michael every day, just to talk, and—”
“And to watch for me,” she said, though it was without rancor.
“Well, yes. But he wants to see you now.”
“He does?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“He just now asked for you to come.”
She nodded.
Together, we walked down the hall and into Michael’s room. I went to the chair in the corner and sat. Phoebe moved slowly to the bedside, clutching her purse to her middle. “Michael,” she said, and her voice cracked. She began to cry, hard, dropped her purse and put her hands over her face. Michael raised his right arm to scratch his head. And I could not for the life of me remember if I was supposed to stay or leave when he did that. I stood, pointed to myself, then to the door, with my eyebrows raised. Go? He nodded solemnly.
I walked out quietly, closing the door behind me.
I went to Annie’s office and found her on the phone. She held up a finger and I stood before her. “May I call you right back?” Annie said and hung up. Then, to me, “What happened?”
“Phoebe’s with Michael.”
Annie jumped up out of her chair, and I said, “No, he wants her to be.”
“Oh!” She sat back down. “Oh, I’m so glad.”
“Me, too.”
“And on your last day!”
“Yes.”
“You will come back after your trip, won’t you?”
“Of course. I’ll go through the whole training then.”
She smiled. “Good. We’ll be glad to have you.” She looked toward the front door, where a dark-haired woman was being wheeled in, a number of people in attendance, a few of them weeping. “I have to go and admit someone,” she said. “Have a wonderful time on your trip. It’s going to be so much fun!”
I thought of that famous Savannah cemetery statue, the one of the woman holding a plate in each hand, balancing them perfectly. That’s who Annie reminded me of. I thought of how much I admire people who are able to not let one side of life cancel out the other, who can face up to opposing sides of it fully, often at the same time.
I walked home, thinking about Michael, wondering what he and Phoebe were talking about. My third day there, I’d read him some haiku, and we’d talked about how much we both liked it, the simplicity of the form. I’d made one up on the spot, a silly one about robins and their blue eggs. And then he’d made one up:
On a windy day
Her hair lifts and my heart breaks
And that was before
After a moment, I’d said, “That’s lovely.” And then, “Phoebe?”
He’d shrugged.
I’d known enough not to say any more.
I hope she’s with him now, as close to him as she can be.
I listen to the hypnotic sound of the tires on the road, and feel myself falling asleep.
When I awaken, Lise and Joni are talking about people they were mean to in high school. “Patricia Gunderson,” I say, my eyes still closed. “Everybody was mean to her, she was the it girl for meandom. She wore black cat-eye glasses with rhinestones. She wore sweater guards and white ankle socks, and she had a voice like a foghorn. She carried a bucket purse with two rabbits’ feet, pink ones. She had really frizzy hair and she wore velvet bow barrettes on either side of her head every day. She drank coffee at lunch and her only friends were teachers. She’s probably some famous artist who lives in Portland now and does interviews about her dopey classmates who had no idea how ahead of her time she was.”
“Do you wish you could apologize to her?” Joni asks.
I open my eyes and look down at her. “Yes. Maybe. Yeah, I would. I would like to say, ‘Patricia, I just want to say I’m sorry for being so mean to you in high school. Although I wasn’t the meanest, I think you’ll agree, I think you’ll agree that Annie Whitmore was the meanest.’ ”
“And what do you think Patricia would say?” Lise asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know. Probably, ‘Who are you?’ ”
Lise turns up the radio for “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.”
After the song finishes, she says, “That’s one of those songs that, if it comes on when you’re driving around, you just feel hot.”
Renie, her mouth full of red licorice, points out the window. “Rook! A chatu parror!” She turns into the strip mall, where there’s a tattoo parlor.
“You’re getting a tattoo?” I ask.
“I am!”
Frankly, I’m surprised she doesn’t have one already. She parks in front of Branded! and turns off the engine.
Lise says, “I don’t know, Renie. It doesn’t look all that clean.”
But Renie’s out of the car and on her way in.
Lise turns around to look at me and Joni. “It doesn’t look clean.”
“Well, let’s just go in,” I say. “Maybe it’s better on the inside.”
“Yeah, and maybe it’s worse,” Lise says.
“I might get one,” Joni says, shyly. “Just on my ankle. A little bitty one. Maybe just my initials or a butterfly.”
“Oh, please,” Lise says. She looks at me. “Are you going to get one, too?”
“Not on your life.”
“Fine, you can sit with me and read magazines. They probably have Modern Mercenary.”
We go inside. The place is dim, but not really dirty. There’s a black tile floor, fluorescent lighting, and the walls are painted red. New age music is playing, which really surprises me. I suppose the guy doing the artwork wants to keep calm.
There are three chairs with armrests, big comfortable things that look like what you sit in to give blood, and a couple of straight-back chairs along the wall. Renie is standing by one of the big chairs where an overweight, heavily tattooed man with multiple face studs is sitting on a stool and holding a tattoo gun, apparently getting ready to work on his client, a hypermuscular young man who looks to be in his twenties. The client is draped, and his arm, whi
ch already has tattoos, shines with some sort of preparation the big guy has just sprayed on him. The big guy is wearing a black plastic apron over a black shirt and black jeans. And now he snaps on black vinyl gloves.
“Hey,” he says. “Y’all want tattoos, too? Getting busy!”
“No, we’re just waiting for her,” I say, gesturing toward Renie.
“I might want one,” Joni says. “Just a little one.”
“Well, we got those,” the guy says. “Got a lot of real pretty little ones. Flowers and birds and such. I’m Eddie, by the way. Y’all have a look at the sample books we got, we got pictures of everything we do. Y’all like sunsets? They’re my favorite to do. Course they take a long time, a few hours.”
“I think I just want a little butterfly,” Joni says.
“That don’t take no time at all,” Eddie says. “I can have you on your way in ’bout half an hour.”
He turns his attention to Renie. “Okay, so you ready?” He tells us, “Your friend wanted to see one done ’fore she decides for sure. Gon’ watch Michelangelo at work here!”
He turns on his tattoo gun, and a horrible sound fills the air. It’s like a dentist’s drill, only worse. He starts drawing on the client’s arm.
“How long does it take to heal?” Renie asks. Shouts.
“ ’Bout two weeks,” Eddie says. “And you can’t be touching it with a towel or nothing like that.”
“Does it hurt?” Renie asks the guy who’s getting the tattoo.
He shrugs. “It’s just like a hot scratch. No biggie.”
The tattoo gun whines and whines.
“Okay, I’m just going to wait outside,” I say.
“I think we’ll go and get some ice cream,” Lise says.
“I’m coming,” Joni says.
“Don’t you want your little butterfly?” the guy asks, and Joni says, “No, thank you.”
“Hold up,” Renie says, and the guy says, “Aw, come on, you’re leaving, too?”
“I’d love to do it, but I didn’t realize how much time it took. We’re on a trip and … I gotta go.”
She walks quickly over to join us and we go outside.
“What were you going to get?” Joni asks Renie.