Fellow Mortals (14 page)

*   *   *

Sam thinks about the hug and the pressure of her hands. He was hugged so often in the days around the funeral that he finally ceased to notice it was happening at all. But for nearly seven weeks he’s been limited to handshakes, nothing more intense, let alone from a woman.

The forest closes in and makes it difficult to breathe. It’s humid in the sun and windless in the shade. He takes his shirt and jeans off and lounges in his boxer shorts. Stands and walks around. Tries the radio, discovers that the batteries are dead, and leans against the cabin wall, tired in the glare. There’s a bird that he’s been hearing all week,
Drink your teeeea
, but he doesn’t have the will to go and seek it out.

He finds the half-eaten sandwich Ava left behind. He peels the wrapper at the table, examining the peppers: visceral and thick, like slices of a heart. The bread’s soggy, cheese and mayonnaise oozing out the sides. He takes a bite, more focused on the texture than the taste, and he’s barely started chewing when he spits it on the ground. He’s swallowed some; there’s plenty more covering his tongue. The flavor shifts color, turning volatile and bright. He pants through his mouth but it rushes up his nose, all acid burn and firelight and Mexican alarm.

He runs around the clearing—
Jog it off, jog it off
—until it peaks and he can’t help shouting out loud. The forest comes alive, flickery and fresh. He licks the cheese off his bagel, hoping it’ll help, and then he coughs and even laughs when the heat begins to fade, wishing Laura could have seen him at the mercy of a pepper. He collapses on the ground and looks around, wide-awake, and the dirt feels good beneath the bubble of the sky.

A delicate perfume rises in the heat, drifting off his arm and intermingled with his sweat. He pictures Laura in her sleep the morning of the fire, feels the softness of her neck, the ridges of her spine. Down the valley of her back to the dimples at her waist, miniature fingerprints that always made him woozy. Round her iliac crest, down a long pale thigh, to the furrow in her calf with her muscle and her tendon. There’s a Band-Aid there; she had a blister from her shoe. The bottom of her heel snuggles in his palm. She notices and rolls, spreading open on her back, and he lies between her legs and all the length of her’s alive. When he kisses her, it feels as if she’s swallowing his tongue. Their temperatures converge until it’s difficult to tell if they’re together or apart. He can feel her in his lungs.

14

Billy finishes the drywall and gets a coat of primer on. The panels were a breeze to cut and hang, but the mud had been a mess and when he sanded the joints, he rubbed too hard and frayed a lot of the tape, forcing him to tear the sections clean and start again. There’s still a bit of mud splattered on the floor but basically it’s done and waiting for the final coat of paint—one or two days and they’ll be ready for the furniture again, and then he’ll start the bedroom, and look for cheaper siding, and—assuming he can foot the bill—vapor-lock the basement.

He picks the ladder up and turns and knocks a divot in the wall.

“Fuck,” Billy says, fingering the spot.

He overcomes an urge to punch it even wider, takes the ladder to the yard, and chucks it near the drywall. They need to get a Dumpster but there’s plenty more to come. Sheri scowls at the pile every day. So does Peg.

Billy makes himself spaghetti and watches the television they moved into the kitchen. When Sheri gets home—two hours late—she’s mad he ate without her and lets him know by talking about her lousy day, clattering pots, and punctuating her complaints with cutlery and glass. The diner was “slammed” this afternoon, a word she got from one of her girlfriends at work, Mary or Kate, he can’t remember which. She has her own private world there, with holidays and seasons, in-jokes and habits Billy doesn’t know until they show up at home like second nature. Jake the dishwasher—that’s one name Billy has straight—taught her the best way to load a dish rack and now she’s militant about it, rearranging Billy’s order when he gets it all wrong. And suddenly in recent weeks she’s all about the Sox, talking like she hasn’t missed a game in twenty years.

“It’s big at work,” she says.

“With who? That dishwasher guy?”

“Jake? He’s an
Orioles
fan. He grew up in Baltimore. You should hear Mary-Kate tease him every day,” and Billy can’t tell if Jake’s being teased about the Orioles, growing up in Baltimore, or something else entirely.

“The living room’s done.”

“Really?” Sheri says, brightening at last, and he almost has to jog to follow her up the hall. “Oh,” she says. “I thought you meant
done
.”

“But that was the worst of it.”

“You missed a spot,” she says, feeling at the divot, like he might have overlooked it if she hadn’t pointed it out. But then she says, “The couch’ll cover it up,” and walks around the middle of the room and even smiles. “This’ll look amazing with the color I was showing you. I’m totally impressed.”

She smiles right at him.

Billy takes her waist and holds her hand below his chin. They sway a little dance, turning in the room. She lays her head against his shoulder and relaxes with his breathing, balancing her feet on Billy’s toes until they’re laughing, almost stumbling, and her eyes are full of fun.

“What do you say,” Billy asks, giving her the look.

Sheri kisses him and lingers at his mouth. Billy hums.

“I’m tired, though,” she says. “I won’t be any good. Let me take a nap. I’ll be great in half an hour.”

After this many weeks, thirty minutes sounds sweet. He drinks another beer while Sheri’s showering upstairs and watches
Wheel
and
Jeopardy!
, knowing more of the answers than some of the contestants. All the women in the ads have a summery allure and Billy waits an hour, just to play it safe.

When he goes to wake her up, he finds her sleeping on her stomach in her T-shirt and panties, one foot dangling off the bed. She’s sleeping so hard she almost looks drunk. Actually she is—on the table are a few mini bottles of Kahlúa, the kind you get in airplanes, empty in a row. He didn’t know she had them, can’t imagine where she got them.

Her calves are faintly orange. She’s been using artificial tan and can’t get it right, streaking her skin and looking like she ate too many carrots. He’s thought about sending her off to a spa, a whole package to surprise her, but it would cost him more than he can justify and honestly, he shouldn’t have to try that hard. She looks good to him tonight, though, comfortable and clean. He kisses her and smells her apricot shampoo. He imagines they’re together at a tropical resort, and it’s thrilling when he’s naked with the warm air moving on his back. She rambles in her sleep and curls her fingers into a ball. He pulls her panties down slow and says, “You’re beautiful. I love you.”

He straddles her and tries a little spit for lubrication, but he hurts her when he starts. Sheri clenches up.

“Shh,” Billy says, smoothing down her hair.

“Stop,” Sheri slurs.

“Just relax.”

“Said get
off.
”

She’s groggy from the drink but waking up fast. Billy moans at how pliable and velvety she feels.

“Billy…”

“Shh.”

“Stop…”

“I said
relax
,” Billy growls.

It’s better when she butts and wriggles up against him. Sheri bumps him with her head so Billy grabs her hair, burying her face until it’s muffled in the pillow. He tries to think of Ava and he tries to think of Peg, but he ends up imagining he’s Jake from the diner, and he pounds even harder, deep as he can go, until it feels like he’s pounding right through her to the bed.

He shudders in a sweat, coming to a rest. The slipperiness between them turns clammy in the dark. At some point she must have quit struggling and collapsed; he didn’t notice at the time and he’s surprised by her now, lying so still, face flat against the pillow.

Billy slumps off and gets a towel from the bathroom. When he comes back out, she hasn’t changed position and her underwear’s still around her knees. He leaves the towel at her side and takes a shower, soaping up hard in very hot water, but he doesn’t feel altogether rinsed until he urinates. He listens at the door and doesn’t hear a sound. He turns off the light and hides awhile longer.

When he finally eases out, Sheri isn’t there.

He finds her downstairs beneath a blanket on the couch, in the middle of the hall where they had to move the furniture. She’s tighter than a pill bug, curled toward the cushions. He can tell that she’s awake.

“Sher?” Billy says.

When she doesn’t move or speak, he gets a feeling like he killed her. He stares a minute longer and retreats upstairs, knowing it’ll stew until they talk and hash it out. The house is so still it’s like he’s standing underwater. He’s exhausted but he’s wired. He’ll be up all night. He has to do
something
but he can’t leave the room, can’t eat or watch TV with Sheri on the couch. So he slaps himself repeatedly, hard across the cheek, hoping she can hear how terrible he feels.

*   *   *

Henry, Nan, and Joan share a supermarket cart, and while the sisters choose ingredients for brownies, Henry hums a melody they all recognize but can’t identify. They spoke about the tune in aisle three, more than once, and when Henry couldn’t name it Nan insisted that he stop. But the melody’s persisted in their heads, especially since Henry keeps forgetting not to hum, and it’s nostalgically entwined with everything around them, from the muffiny aroma of the bakery to the little blue turkey on the box of Bell’s seasoning.

“
Henry,
” Nan says.

“What? Shoot, sorry.”

“It’s a Christmas song,” Joan says.

Henry’s swayed for a moment by a passing whiff of cinnamon.

“It’s not a Christmas song,” Nan says. “We need vanilla.”

“It’s Bob Carmichael,” Joan declares, and the name assumes a yuletide glow, like Bing Crosby or Johnny Mathis, so familiar that at first Henry’s certain she’s correct: the song’s a Bob Carmichael holiday standard.

Bob says hi and snaps him to attention. He ambles down the aisle with his boys, Danny and Ethan, leaning his weight against the cart even though it’s virtually empty: a single loaf of Wonder Bread, half a dozen eggs.

Nan addresses them but doesn’t lose her supermarket game face: pleasantries are fine, but let’s remember why we’re here.

“How are you, Bob?” she asks.

“I’m good, good,” he says, the double
good
resonating powerfully with Henry. Bob greets Joan and compliments her sweater; she almost gets teary with appreciative delight. “How’s the house hunt going?”

“Peg’s doing her best,” Nan says.

“She always does,” Bob agrees, rather mournfully it seems.
How’d a man like me
, Henry almost hears him thinking,
and a woman like her 
… he can hear him trailing off.

“You remember Miss Finn and Miss Finn,” Bob says to his sons.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Miss Finn.”

“Hello, Danny,” Nan says. “Hello, Ethan.”

“You’re getting tall,” Joan says. “You look like first and second graders now.”

“They’re going into second and fourth,” Bob says.

“
Are
you?” Joan asks, widening her eyes.

The boys shuffle at the cart, stealing glances at the
mailman
.

“You’re Henry Cooper,” Bob says, growing serious but not at all cold. He shakes Henry’s hand and says, “We ought to clear the air.”

“Mr. Carmichael…”

“Bob, call me Bob. Listen, Henry, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this”—whispering now in front of the boys—“goddamn lawsuit. I’d have dropped the whole thing the day we cashed the Allstate check. Honestly, the house is even better since the renovations, whatever anybody keeps saying. But ‘anybody’ says we have to sue, Allstate says we have to sue … It’s nothing I’m happy about.”

“You’re suing the postal service, not me directly,” Henry says, lowering his head and looking up through his eyebrows. “I hope you know I’d pay you out of pocket if I had it.”

Nan hits his ankle with the bumper of the cart. She’s warned him not to talk this way, even with a person as innocuous as Bob.

“I never got a chance to apologize to you personally,” Henry says.

“Let me stop you right there,” Bob tells him, holding up a hand traffic-cop style. “I understand you’ve already talked to Peg. That’s enough for all of us, far as I’m concerned. You’re helping Nan and Joan, I understand you’re helping Sam Bailey. I’d just as soon call it water over the bridge, or under the dam, or whatever you like.”

“Over the bridge,” Henry says, and Nan just throws in the towel and starts reading a box of chocolate. “So these are your sons,” he adds, standing back to formally size them up.

“This is Danny,” Bob says, putting his hand behind the smaller boy’s head. “And this is Ethan.”

“Nice to meet you,” Henry says. “I’m sorry about the fire.”

Ethan nods.

“None of our stuff got burned,” Danny adds.

“Tell me something now. You guys had a swing set, right?”

Danny bites his lip; Ethan says yeah.

“What about bikes?” Henry asks, widening his stance to more vigorously brainstorm. “You could go wherever you want.”

“We already have bikes,” Danny says.

“We have to stay on the block.”

“On
our
side of the street.”

“Peg worries about strangers,” Bob explains.

Henry rears up to study all their faces—surely one of them, at very least the youngest, will be giggling. Nan shakes her head in mannerly alarm and yet the fact is too incredible.

“That’s crazy,” he decides. “I rode clear across town when I was your age.”

“We don’t have a tree house.”

“Ethan,” Bob says.

“Done!” Henry shouts. “As long as your Dad says it’s okay.”

“You really don’t—”

“I know I don’t, Bob. But I really, really want to.”

The aisle has a flutter. There’s a bad fluorescent bulb. The music stops—the deli has a call on line two—and then the radio and light are gracefully restored.