Authors: Renee Manfredi
“Anna?” she said.
“Hi, Violet, how are you?”
“Have you been by Thibbidoux’s drugstore lately?” No small talk with
Violet. She was the heart-of-the-matter kind of woman. “I ask because I was in there last week for Flonase and there were condoms in full display, not too far from the Almond Joys.” Anna stifled a laugh. “I thought you’d want to know, with the girl there and all.” Anna let her go on for a while about neighborhood transgressions major and minor, grateful for this distraction. She half-listened to Violet, but her attention was drawn to Jack. He was singing now in such a way that made her freeze, hold her breath. He had Joan Baez’s “Suzanne” on yet again and something about the singer’s honeyed alto and slow, measured lyrics made Jack’s baritone shine forth. The acoustics in the sunroom were grand, thanks to Hugh, who had hired the best architect in the East so Anna could have a place to practice her cello. The stereo was a good one, too. A Bang & Olufsen system that was, to her ears, the auditory equivalent of pointillism: each note a bridesmaid coming forth, dressed alike but distinct, part of the music’s unified pageantry. Jack’s voice fit alongside Baez’s so perfectly it was almost as if they were in the same space.
“Anna?” Violet said.
“Yes, I’m listening.”
“Does the man not know that candy and prophylactics aren’t first cousins? I’ve written a letter to the editor I want to read to you. It’s titled ‘Looking for Mr. Goodbar in a Trojan War.’”
Anna laughed. “Clever.” She picked up the ammonia spray and began cleaning the big bowl of glass doorknobs on the hall table. Her mother-in-law had changed them all back in the ’60s or ’70s when tacky ruled. A thrifty New Englander, who used wrapping paper three times, Anna knew her mother-in-law wouldn’t have thrown out the doorknobs. Anna had searched on and off for twenty-five years, and finally found them in a storage closet under the hall steps.
Jack was going at it with gusto now. Anna had never cared for that maudlin song, but Jack’s phrasing and tone were lovely. She listened. Something about Jesus being lonely, watching sailors from a wooden tower. It was lovely. Over two decades since Hugh had built that room for her. Who could have imagined she’d end up like this, completely estranged from the daughter she never wanted, sharing the house with a gay man she inexplicably loved, and a granddaughter whom she loved with an intensity that sometimes bordered on anguish.
The soul
selects its own society. Who
was that? Dickinson? One of those reclusive female poets at any rate. The strange thing was, she was happier than she’d been for years, even despite leaving her teaching position, which she thought she would miss, but didn’t, not even a little. Her days had a rhythm and urgency, things that fell to her to do: keep the household running, keep Flynn on track, and keep Jack healthy. Money was plentiful—Hugh had left her well off, Jack’s contribution was abundant—but nonetheless Anna worked four hours every day for the town’s sole internist. It got her out of the house long enough to be away from all the worry for a while, but not so long that it made her anxious about what might be happening in her absence.
The changes in the past year had taken their toll on Flynn, though she seemed, overall, to be healthier here than in Boston. Flynn still had trouble making friends and refused to take part in after-school activities, but Anna thought that would come in time. Flynn walked for hours every day with that giant dog—the vet weighed him in at one-seventy-eight—who never left her side. Like Jack, Flynn had good days and bad, days when she focused on her schoolwork and wanted to go to the mall, and days when she insisted she talked to the dead. Yesterday, Flynn had refused to go to school on the grounds that she didn’t need earthly knowledge, that the wisdom of heaven was enough. “Oh yeah?” Anna said. “You have ten minutes to get your heavenly wisdom onto the school bus, missy.”
The granddaughter holding a one-sided conversation in her bedroom this morning with the ghost of Anna’s mother-in-law, and the man who played the same song about a crazy woman and Jesus a hundred times in a row. That’s what had been on her docket since the start of the weekend. And now the highly verbal three-trousered widow in her ear. Anna thanked Violet for calling, and hung up.
She walked back into the sunroom, flipped off the stereo, and picked up all three discs. “Jack, I’m sorry sweetheart. I love you, but if I have to listen to this song one more minute, I’m going to commit a violence.”
“Fair enough.” He leaned back in the rocking chair, tipped his head up to the path of the late November sun.
“What else can I put on?” Anna flipped through the stack of CDs, named fifteen or sixteen none of which elicited any interest.
“Nothing. I relish the silence,” he said, exasperated, as though it hadn’t been he who chose the music in the first place.
“Okay. I’m going to start dinner. Can I get you anything?”
He shook his head.
She was chopping carrots for soup when she heard version number four of “Suzanne,” Jack’s a cappella rendition. She sighed, flipped on the radio above the sink to get the evening news. It wasn’t until she heard Noah Adams identify the program as “Weekend All Things Considered” that she remembered this was Saturday and she hadn’t seen Flynn since the morning. She dumped the carrots in the soup pot and went upstairs to check the rooms. “Flynn?” Anna called. Not anywhere on the first floor, either.
Jack interrupted his song long enough to tell her that he hadn’t seen Flynn all day. This wasn’t entirely unusual, though she often stayed close by on weekends. On school days, Flynn almost never came straight home. Anna might not have noticed, busy as she was, getting home after six each evening—she agreed to help out the local pediatrician with sports physicals this semester—if not for the observant Violet.
A week or so ago, Violet called just after seven one morning. “Is everything all right?” she’d asked.
Anna said that it was. “Well, I just saw your girl not get on the school bus. The bus stopped, but she did not.” Anna pieced together from Violet and Flynn’s teacher that Flynn sometimes got to school late—between ten and twenty minutes—and back to the house, according to Violet or Jack, about five or five-thirty. Anna confronted her granddaughter gently, without accusation. After all, how many of her classmates had mothers who just disappeared at a pancake house and never called? There would be an adjustment period, Anna knew, so as long as she was safe Anna wasn’t going to punish her for cutting classes. School could always be repeated.
“Where do you go?” Anna asked, when Flynn had finally gotten home that day Violet called her.
Flynn shrugged. “Nowhere. Just walking around.”
“Violet said she saw you down by the train.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I like to walk along the tracks.”
The next day at work, vacutainer and patient’s arm in her hand, Anna had a flash that something was wrong, a panicked certainty that Flynn was in danger. It was what Anna had felt, years ago, the afternoon she’d found Poppy in the neighbor’s swimming pool.
She left Dr. Naylor and the patient alone in the examination room and
went out to call home. Jack answered, said, No, Flynnie isn’t back yet. A quick call to school confirmed her half-day absence. Anna left, got in her car and raced down to the railroad tracks. She was just about to chastise herself for overreacting—something she’d been doing a lot of in the past year, it seemed—when she saw her. Anna couldn’t believe her eyes. Flynn was standing on the tracks; right in the path of the 5:35 whose mournful whistle was already audible in the distance. All at once the train thundered into sight, and still Flynn didn’t move. Anna ran as fast she could, yelling as loud as she could, but the thundering engine drowned her calls before they could reach even her own ears. The whistle sounded again, louder and drawn-out. Flynn jumped off the track just as Anna reached her, the train at about a hundred yards. Anna grabbed Flynn and slapped her hard across the face in the sheer shock of terror.
“Why were you doing that? What’s the matter with you? You are all I have left.” She folded Flynn into her arms and waited for her pounding heart to quiet.
Flynn rubbed her cheek. “Please do not strike me ever again.”
“You scared me to death,” Anna said. “I’m sorry. What were you doing standing there like that? Didn’t you hear the train coming?”
“Of course I saw it. I was just watching, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with watching a train closely. I know what I’m doing.”
In the car, Flynn turned to her and said, “You worry too much. You worry when you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t ever be afraid. There is nothing whatsoever to fear.”
“Maybe. But all the same, I don’t mind if you watch the train, just stay off the tracks. If I catch you doing that again, I’ll lock you in your room and handcuff you to your bed.”
Flynn snorted exactly the way Poppy did when she was a young teenager. This time around, though, Anna found it less infuriating; the turmoil of adolescence was a mental illness all its own.
Anna walked to the back of the house, down the steps that led to the shoreline. She saw Flynn from a distance, sitting at the edge of the water and digging in the sand with a piece of driftwood. The horizon was pink and gray, the November light draining out of the sky. As she got closer, she saw Flynn’s lips moving.
Flynn looked up as Anna edged toward her.
“Hey,” Anna said.
“Hi there.”
Anna wrapped herself tighter in her sweater, sat. “I’m cooking dinner. Got the oven way too hot, and thought I’d come out for air.” She had to be careful these days not to give the impression that she was checking up; Flynn got angry when she thought Anna was tracking her.
“How has your day been?” Anna asked.
“Good. I hiked up to the blueberry patch.” Flynn stretched out against the dog who was napping, filthy and covered with burrs. Were there nettles up in the blueberry patch? Anna couldn’t remember.
“How are the blues?” Anna said.
Flynn looked at her suspiciously, until she realized Anna was talking about the berries. “Blues are way finished. Low-bush cranberries are still hanging on. I might go get us some tomorrow.”
“Good,” Anna said, and stood. “Dinner’s almost ready. Are you coming in?”
“Pretty soon. Start without me.”
“It’ll be dark soon.”
“That, I know.” She looked at Anna, then away, as if there was something she wanted to say.
Anna bent down to the dog. “And what about you, Baby Jesus?” The dog thumped his tail at the sound of his name. “Are you ready for a nibble of kibble?” Anna patted him, looked out at the water, waiting.
“Your husband sends his regards.”
“What?” Anna said, trying to keep the alarm out of her voice.
“He tells me I should plant pink rosebushes for you. That it’s been too long since you’ve had the pleasure of your favorite flower.”
Anna froze in place, caught between exhilaration and fear. Poppy must have talked to Flynn about Hugh at some point. Flynn’s memory and power of observation were phenomenal, so it wasn’t totally unexpected that Flynn would know this. The girl never forgot a thing.
“Yes, that’s true,” Anna said. “Don’t stay out too long. I’ll keep your dinner warm.”
Anna carried two bowls of soup into the sunroom, where Jack still sat, though without the morbid music, thank God. “Navy bean and ham,” she
said, and cleared a space for him on the ottoman.
“He’s not coming is he?” Jack said.
“What? Who?” He did this a lot lately, resumed conversations that had taken place hours or days before.
“Corduroy man.” He slurped his soup, some of which traveled in thick rivulets down the front of his sweater.
“Oh, no,” Anna said. This was Jack’s new name for Marvin. Marvin commented to Anna during one phone call that Flynn needed a hobby. Perhaps sewing, he said, and the next day UPS delivered fifteen bolts of blue corduroy, enough to sew uniforms for an entire grade of British schoolchildren.
“It might be time for a medieval Icelandic saga, what do you think?” Anna said, and held up volume two of
Kristin Lavransdatter
. Television gave Jack migraines so Anna had started bringing home books on tape. For such a small town, the library had a surprisingly good collection. Both she and Jack were captivated by this trilogy. “Do you remember where we left off?” she said, rewinding a little back into volume two.
He nodded. “With Suzanne.”
“In
Kristin Lavransdatter
. Kristin and Erland have decided to marry, and her father is heartsick and ashamed at the poor match.”
“Yes, okay,” Jack said, though Anna saw that not much would get through to him tonight. She’d have to replay this part for him when he was feeling better. She listened for a little while, but her own focus was getting fuzzy. She went outside to check on Flynn.
Jack watched her go out. His head was a fevered waterfall: hot and rushing and loud. And how long he’d waited for Hector, the shining bird, love surrounding him in plumes, the kiwi smell of his hair and his cool brown fingers scented with sandalwood. Hector and his warm umbrella of aroma. Sometimes he could draw Hector to him in this way, sing about the lady of the harbor and Hector would appear, the gold cross gleaming against his yellow shirt and he would smile his white-toothed smile, though his appearances were just wishes made into visions, because the instant he would look directly at Hector, try to speak to him, he vanished. Walking up the stairs, he would see Hector rounding the corner, and if Anna, supporting him, heard him say “hurry” it was to the bathroom she took him when all he wanted was to touch Hector, tangle his fingers in the
silky curls once more, press his face into the hollow of the collarbone. Hector was always just far enough away that Jack knew with part of himself it was a kind of delusion, but real enough, too, like a waking dream. The second he felt Hector’s presence and turned to look—a movement out of the corner of his eye, a shadow falling over his right shoulder—he wouldn’t be there.
Jack closed his eyes, felt the viscous cold soup begin to soak through his sweater, but he didn’t have the energy to take it off and find another one. He listened to the drone of the tape, to the crash of the tide against the rocks outside. It sounded a little like it might be sleeting, the icy hiss of weather that made him cold just thinking about it, his bones frozen wax, every rib a cold taper. Dying didn’t scare him. What scared him was the possibility of something beyond, something continuing. Spirit without body was repugnant, desire no longer limited by the boundary of skin, expanding to fill the universe, love like sound waves going on forever, not stopped by the density of flesh. How could he ever keep track of himself when his margins were infinite? He concentrated, tried to conjure a god to pray to: if there was just someone who would listen, he could make a good case. All he wanted was for an exception to be made, that if there was an after-ife or continuance of some kind, he be permitted to opt out. What he wanted after death was death, not life. He was tired, but it wasn’t that, not really. It was the idea of an eternity of not getting things quite right.