Everybody Loves Somebody (28 page)

But thirty years had passed, and she was ready to talk to Bev about it now. She needed to know why Bev hadn’t chosen somewhere
else to spend eternity. Why White Oak, the place where lonely children died horrible deaths and were left to rot? Why did
Bev want to be buried there—and next to Lou, no less? Why hadn’t she ever mentioned this to Nora?

They’d talk as soon as Bev’s condition improved. They’d talk about ugly, rotten, horrible death. What, exactly, would her
mother have to say? They’d begin with the story of finding Johnny’s body in White Oak Cemetery, and from there, wherever.
The past or the present. It would depend upon Bev. Nora could only guess what her mother would tell her. But she didn’t want
to guess. She wanted to know what Bev would say, if she could say anything. That and more. Her mother being far less predictable
than her father, complete, though partially hidden from view. Lou, much as he liked to talk, would never adequately answer
the one question Nora wanted to ask:

“Why White Oak, of all places?”

“What?”

“Why did you choose White Oak Cemetery?”

“Why?”

“Yes.”

“Why White Oak? Why that place? I don’t know. Why anyplace? We just wanted to be together, if you can believe it. Doesn’t
seem possible, does it? Hey, Bev? Can you hear me, Bev? I wonder if she’s been listening. Why there? Why us? Why did we spend
thirty years apart if we planned to be together in the end? Why did we do anything?”

Both Lou and Nora watched Bev for some indication that she had an opinion she wanted to share. She just lay there, unblinking,
unsmiling, her chest swelling and flattening with the action of the ventilator. Lou and Nora would have gone on watching her
forever if the nurse hadn’t come in to tell them that visiting hours were over, which seemed strange to Nora, whose fatigue
had led her to believe that it was the middle of the night. She’d call a taxi, she said. Lou reminded her that he had his
car. They could stop at a diner for a bite to eat, she suggested, and they could talk some more. They’d have a good night’s
rest and come back to visit Bev the next morning. She would probably be awake by then. Lou said he’d bet she had heard everything
and would give them an earful!

T
HE VOICE OF HER OWN FATHER
. The red circles on his cheeks. He was telling her about Joe Louis KO’ing Natie Brown in the fourth round. One cigar after
another.

Bev, phone’s for you!

What?

The whir of a fan. The roll of a carousel horse. The swoop of a swallow.

Or the time she found her husband’s lover’s name and number written on a slip of paper in his wallet. See how it is, Nora,
when we have to make do with suspicion? Sometimes it’s best to tell.

Two cups of flour. Cream the butter with the sugar. Crack an egg against the rim of a bowl. The satisfaction of catching the
yolk whole.

The time Gus came out to the garden, where Bev was trying to screw the nozzle of the hose on a spigot, and she could see from
the look on his face that something terrible had happened. More precisely, somehow she knew that his son was gone. She didn’t
yet know the details—that he’d been killed in a bus accident while traveling in Mexico. But in that flash of a glance, she
felt as though she knew everything.

Or the days following the day Nora ran home to tell her mother she’d found something in the cemetery. Nora wore her softball
cap around the house to hide her eyes in shadow.

Or the time Bev was about to remind her again how much she loved Adam and was grateful for Nora’s happiness, and the next
thing she knew...

What?

She’s not sure she weeded the garden before she left. Those stubborn little maple saplings, as tough as mandrakes. The songs
she used to sing. Gus, according to his wishes, reduced to ashes and scattered over the north Atlantic. Lou, come closer so
I can look at your face. The wiry white curls of your beard. The wide pores of your tanned skin. And you, Nora. Sitting in
the garden cradling cups of coffee. We must do something about the potato vine tangled in the pachysandra. Is that what she
wanted to say? Also, the thicket of loosestrife at the top of the front walk.

B
lue sky. Summer day. One car after another. A woman talking back to the radio, the thread of her voice trailing through the
open window of her Chevette. Another woman sucking into her mouth the deflated bubble of her bubblegum. Two boys riding in
the bed of a pickup truck, one expertly flicking away his cigarette butt. Yellow ribbon in support of our troops. Ticking
of a blinker. An attorney who last year was defeated in his bid for the city school board calling, “Maria!” into the mouthpiece
of his cell phone. Another man telling the woman beside him about the television show he’d watched last night. The woman in
her Chevette snapping, “Go to hell!” A baby wailing, straining against the belt of his car seat. A brother pinching his sister.
A sister slapping her brother. A retired social studies teacher fuming as he heads back to the hardware store to return a
garden hose with a cracked nozzle. A retired salesclerk crying silently because today is the twenty-second anniversary of
her son’s death. An anesthesiologist pretending not to listen to her daughter and two friends in the backseat trading gossip.
“It was like, you know, and when she like said she did she really meant she did...” Red light remaining red while the green
light changes to orange. Cars idling. Cars speeding up. A man with a cane appearing out of nowhere. A fly bumping against
a rear window. A squirrel on a branch. The woman chewing bubblegum watching the man with the cane as he steps off the curb.
The same woman moving her foot to the brake. A paper flag tied to an antenna. A squirrel leaping. A brass plaque on a stone
near the intersection marking what was once a spur of the Ohio Trail. The young mother yelling at her children. The attorney
calling, “Maria, Maria, hello, are you there!” Two boys laughing. Three girls laughing. “Because she didn’t like have to,
you know.” A squirrel catching the tip of a branch to save itself from falling. Orange light changing to red, red changing
to green. The outrage of money spent on faulty merchandise. The fact of dirt. The annoyance of dry skin. The man with the
cane stepping off the curb. A child complaining. A squirrel swinging on a branch above the sidewalk. Boys watching the squirrel.
Girls watching the boys. The retired salesclerk noticing the man with the Lucite cane and failing to remember the word she
wants to shout in warning. The woman with her foot on the brake wondering if the old man has Alzheimer’s. A fly buzzing. The
driver of the pickup truck banging his hand on the horn to warn the man with the cane. A woman singing, “If I could see...”
A cloud slipping like a cutout in front of the edge of the sun. A plastic gallon of two-percent milk lying on its side in
the trunk. A flock of sparrows rising all at once, like smoke. “Like yeah, like I was saying.” The imprint of last night’s
strange dream on the waking mind. Imagining the time when she didn’t exist. Heading east. Heading south. Twelve minutes after
four. Damn. The anesthesiologist furtively slipping her finger under her shirt to finger the lump in her breast. The jolt
of one sneeze followed by another. The retired salesclerk staring at the empty place where she’d seen, or thought she’d seen,
a man with a cane. The woman with her foot on the brake recognizing that time is moving as slowly and as rapidly as the sun
sank into the sea that evening last month when she and her friend walked down the beach to have dinner at the restaurant in
a little fishing village on the island of Corsica. The driver of the pickup truck blinking away the hallucination. Boys swearing.
Rumble of a jet passing overhead. “Like how typical!” Aware and not aware all at once. The pickup truck driver telling himself
that he must have had one too many beers last night. A single feather nestled between a wiper and the windshield. A burp.
A yawn. Boys waving at girls. Girls laughing at boys.
Stop,
that’s the word the retired salesclerk had been trying to remember, but the light has already changed to green, and she realizes
that she’d been mistaken about the man with a cane. There is no man with a cane. At the moment, there are only the people
in passing vehicles, girls and boys, men and women—among them three individuals who have realized simultaneously that they
didn’t really see what they thought they’d seen and now can secretly savor the good feeling of knowing that only they know
how ridiculous they are for getting all worked up over nothing.

O
NE SUNDAY MORNING
in June, in the year 2000, Lawrence Duroy walked with his two old greyhounds across the park that separates the reservoir
from Culver Street. Fading lilacs perfumed the air. Yellow heads of dandelions dotted the grass. Thrown off balance by the
tug of the two leashes, Lawrence slipped into a rut left behind by bicycle wheels but managed to keep himself from falling
by planting the heel of his left sneaker in the mud. His yell halted the dogs, and they both gazed over their bony shoulders
with mild impatience.

Lawrence glared back at the dogs. The smaller one returned to him and rubbed its long nose into the creased khaki behind his
knee while the other squatted nearby and squeezed out its morning turds. Lawrence tugged on the leashes and tried to head
toward the path leading up to the reservoir. But these two dogs, both of them used to losing on the racetrack, were habitually
stubborn. They began rooting in the grass beside the tennis courts, pulling the leashes taut. Lawrence threw sticks to draw
their attention, but they ignored him. He threatened punishment. He pleaded with them. Finally he indicated with a clucking
sound that in his empty hand he held delicious treats—an old trick that never failed, and the dogs lurched stupidly after
him up the hill.

The next person to cross the area was a jogger, a middle-aged man who was pleased with himself, for he’d made it up the slope
and three times around the reservoir without stopping and had just descended at a spirited pace. Nearing the end of his run,
he was thinking about how he couldn’t even imagine the feeling of getting old. A strict exercise regimen for twenty years
had kept him youthful. He’d survived a prolonged separation and divorce, and now he was newly in love with a woman half his
age. He pictured her waiting for him back at the apartment with a pot of coffee and fresh-baked muffins.

More than two hours later, a group of children raced at full speed toward the tennis courts. Their game had been organized
by an eleven-year-old boy, who’d announced that tag would soon be an Olympic sport and it was never too early to begin training.
A seven-year-old girl had bolted from the pack before her cousin finished counting. Whether or not she’d be disqualified remained
to be seen. But she was fast, faster than anyone in her second-grade class, and one day she’d be the fastest runner in the
world.

Her ten-year-old stepbrother trailed her, calling taunts at the pair of slower boys behind him, twelve-year-old twins who
considered the game juvenile but at the last minute had decided to participate and with their example were demonstrating how
to be way cool and agile at the same time. Next came a six-year-old boy, who was missing four of his upper front teeth. He
grinned as he ran just to feel the air whistling into his mouth through the gap. The youngest of the group, a five-year-old
girl, was at the tail of the fleeing pack, with the eleven-year-old, the organizer of the game and the one chosen to be It,
so close behind her that when she stopped squealing she could hear his heavy breathing.

The seven-year-old girl who’d been in the lead, the girl who in the last year had changed her name to Cheeta, flew behind
a lilac bush, jumped out, yelled, “Ha-ha!” at her cousin who was It, and ran away. Her cousin ducked behind another bush,
made a wide circle, and surprised Cheeta with a roar. She screamed and in a flash was out of reach, so her cousin decided
to head after the twins, who had stopped running altogether and were huddling by the tennis courts getting ready to light
cigarettes, though they were the ones dubbed by their mothers
in charge,
the ones who would pay for the inevitable catastrophes that happened when this gang got together.

But what could go wrong in a game of tag? As long as everyone played by the rules, the game could go on forever. Cheeta sprang
forward, leaping off the ball of her foot to gain momentum. She would have jumped as high as the radio towers at the top of
the hill if the toe of her right sneaker hadn’t caught on a root that had suddenly popped out of the grass. She fell onto
her knees. And then, just as quickly as she’d fallen, she scrambled upright and was about to bolt. First, though, she had
to pause and examine the root.

The root, it turned out, wasn’t a root at all. It was a fine plastic walking stick, hooked into a handle at one end, that
someone had accidentally dropped or intentionally thrown away, and now, finders keepers, it belonged to Cheeta.

“Got ya!” shouted her cousin, who appeared from nowhere and slapped Cheeta on the back, slapped her hard, harder than was
fair in a game of tag. But Cheeta was armed. Cheeta had a cane as long as a gun, which she pointed at her cousin to scare
him away. But he wasn’t even rattled, and in a quick offensive he leaped to the side, grabbed the cane by its rubber tip,
and ran off, waving it above his head, hooting in victory.

In seconds the twins had cast away their cigarettes and set off after him, wanting whatever their cousin had. The ten-year-old
joined the pursuit, and Cheeta charged after them, shouting that the stick was hers. She didn’t notice that when her six-year-old
stepbrother tried to follow, he slipped on the wet grass.

“Yuck!” cried the boy. “Dog poo.”

“You gone down in dog poo mess!” announced his delighted little sister.

“Dumb shit,” said the boy.

“Don’t you call me that!” the girl commanded.

“I didn’t call you nothin’.”

“You did.”