The corners of our carts touched. Red plastic bumped red plastic. I can only imagine what she must’ve seen. My unkempt hair. My grey face. No makeup. My sweater had a stain running down the front, a thin, dried-out river of a previous meal.
She was in town visiting her family. It was her father’s birthday. Her husband was in the bakery section with their daughter. Emily, I was told, was four and wanted to help pick out a cake for her grandfather. Angela motioned with her head and her bangs swayed.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called,” she said. “You’ve been on my mind, Mrs. Sparks. How are you doing?”
“As well as can be expected,” I said. It was my standard response.
“And Mr. Sparks?”
“He keeps himself busy.”
Angela’s eyes glistened. “I miss John a lot. I forget sometimes that he’s gone. My head can’t wrap around it.”
She inhaled sharply, looked over at a tank of lobsters with elastic-bound claws. “I don’t know if you knew this or not, but Marty passed away, too. This past spring. I went to the funeral. His mother held the service in her garden. Marty would’ve approved. He was a horticulturist.”
“A horticulturist,” I said.
“His family owns a nursery in Port Locke. Taylor’s. They’ve had it for years. Marty came from a long line of green thumbs.” She paused. “Sorry … I shouldn’t assume you know about Marty. I don’t know what you—”
“They were together.”
She paused again. “Yes.”
“How long?”
“Maybe three years. They got along well. They’d go up north and spend weekends with Marty’s mother in Port Locke. John would cook for everyone. Marty’s father died a while back. Heart attack, I think. But it was a big family. Two sisters, if I’m not mistaken. And a brother. Good people.”
My hands curled tightly around the handle of the shopping cart. A young girl with black pigtails came running up and wrapped her arms around Angela’s thighs. Angela smiled self-consciously.
“This is Mrs. Sparks, Emily. Can you say hello?”
I bent down. “Hello, Emily. Nice to meet you.”
But the little girl would have none of it. She stared at me petulantly, her lips a thin, bloodless line.
——
I can never catch up
, I think, watching the passing trees and houses as Walter and Helen take me to the hospital. Never could catch up to time. It evades me, slips through my fingers like cold, black oil.
Since my son’s death, I’m early for everything. I’ll leave the house a half-hour before I need to be someplace just ten minutes away. I can’t even imagine the hours I’ve passed waiting in people’s driveways or watching unenthusiastic store employees unlock automatic doors.
“Hurry up and wait,” Charlie would say. “That’s your motto.”
I wish I were one of those people who sailed into doctor’s offices just as the nurse was calling their name. Or someone who could pass an afternoon in conversation before glancing down at her wristwatch and announcing, “Would you
look
at the time?”
I often wonder what time must feel like for those people. Something that is always there, a guarantee, like air.
I don’t need to go to the hospital. This excursion is pointless. I’ve said this until I’m blue in the face, but my protests fall on deaf ears. They don’t understand. There’s nothing about me that a doctor can fix. No pill for second chances. No prescription for fixing mistakes.
A year after Charlie died, I decided to do an inventory of the boxes in the basement. It wasn’t something I’d been looking forward to. Many of them held evidence of a life that had long disappeared. Holiday decorations. Report cards. School photos of a cow-licked boy with a gap-toothed smile. But the contents of the boxes had to be sorted. I couldn’t ignore them. I couldn’t wish them away. And, I thought, it may not be that bad.
This was true for the first part. I opened boxes to reveal an old lace tablecloth that had belonged to my mother and a set of green-rimmed dishes with a jack-in-the-pulpit design and a set of Bobbsey Twins books from my childhood that I’d completely forgotten about. I set these boxes aside, took the old kitchen chair that sat next to the furnace and set it in front of the shelves. Making sure the chair was steady, I carefully stood up and, with my flashlight, discovered my old Christmas wreath and an orange and gold vinyl tablecloth that wasn’t worth holding on to. In the far corner, I spotted what looked like a shoebox. I couldn’t reach it on my own, so I stepped down from my chair and went to Charlie’s workroom to see if I could find a yardstick. The workroom’s smell reminded me of Charlie. Varsol and old rags and powdered cement. I’d have to deal with all these tools at some point as well. I found a yardstick and went back to my post and after a few unsuccessful whacks and grunts, I managed to slowly spin the box towards me. It was only when the box was in reach and out of the shadows that I saw the name written on the side in black Magic Marker.
JOHN
Small capitals. My husband’s handwriting.
I stepped down from the chair, box in hand. I didn’t want to open it, but knew I had to. I thought of how dark it was inside the box, how dark it was inside my body, how everything functioned in complete absence of light: my stomach, my kidneys, my heart. I sat down on the chair and set the box on my lap. It wasn’t a shoebox after all. It was from the refinery where Charlie had worked, the logo printed on the top. I’d never seen this box before. I held my breath and lifted the top. Newspaper. I parted the sheets, and then Charlie revealed himself to me.
Years had passed, but the doll’s eyes were still clear, her puckered lips still rosy pink. I reached in and gently pulled out Curly Q Sue. So Charlie had found it. And when? I took the sheets of newspaper from the box and searched for a date. August 25, 1998. Years after John died. Years before Charlie did.
When we found out that Charlie’s tumour was malignant, the doctor told us that treatment would buy us a few months, but not much more. We were sitting in the sparse hospital room he was sharing with an elderly man. I’d drawn the curtain across for privacy, but I could still see the man’s shadow as he moved about his side of the room. Charlie had said few words following his diagnosis. I didn’t pressure him. I knew enough by then not to push anyone down a path I thought they should be following. We were watching TV when Charlie said, “He was always good enough for me.”
I didn’t know what he meant at first. I was aware of the man next to us shuffling in the room. Although I couldn’t see them, I knew the kind of slippers he was wearing. Black with rounded toes, vinyl made to look like leather, soles polished smooth. He was pulling open his night table drawer.
“I think you always knew that about me,” Charlie said. “But I’m not sure it mattered to you, Joyce.”
We’d been married all these years, but I couldn’t remember the last time Charlie had actually spoken my name in a conversation. I placed a hand on his bedrail.
“What are you talking about?”
He shook his head. “You tried so hard. To keep everyone behind their battle lines when there was no battle to fight.”
I heard something drop and watched as a tensor bandage rolled towards Charlie’s bed.
“Did you ever stop to think that people deserve more credit than you give them? That your opinion wasn’t the only one that mattered?”
The bandage unfurled, a flat, beige offering.
“I know you didn’t think what you were doing was wrong. Not wrong for me. Not wrong for John. Your intentions were sincere. But that doesn’t make it
not
wrong. Things never mattered as much to me.”
This fatherless man. The sorrow I’d created but could never heal.
“He was my son, no matter what. I would’ve been happy with anything. Because it would’ve been
something
, Joyce.”
Walter pulls up in front of the emergency entrance and steps over to the passenger side of the car.
“I don’t think you can park here,” I say as he helps me out of my seat.
Helen is beside me and takes my other arm. “Be careful,” she says.
“For god’s sake,” I say, yanking my arms away. “I’m perfectly fine.”
Walter leaves to park his car in the lot across the street. Once inside the waiting room, Helen and I go to the front desk. A nurse hands me a form to fill out and asks me to have a seat.
“I feel stupid being here,” I say as Helen guides me over to a pair of orange vinyl seats in the far corner. People look up at us, sizing up our suffering compared to their own. I notice a young woman trying to control a toddler who keeps wiggling from her clutches.
“Arthur,” she pleads. “Stop.”
But Arthur doesn’t. He refuses to be contained.
Helen sits down with an exasperated sigh and sets her purse in her lap. Her straw hat is looking a little worse for wear. “I don’t care if you feel stupid,” she says. “An ounce of prevention is worth of a pound of cure. That’s what Mother always said. Besides, we’re old, Joyce. We can’t fall to the ground and simply pick ourselves up like we used to. We have to be cautious.”
I ask her for a pen and she begins to dig through her purse.
“This party wasn’t a good idea,” she says. “I don’t know why you were so hell-bent on it. You don’t owe anyone anything.”
She pulls out a nail file and frowns at it. “I know you don’t want any part of that, either.” She finds a pen and passes it to me.
I’m not sure how to respond, but she doesn’t give me the chance.
“You were a good mother. No one thinks any less of you because … Anyway, you had a moment today. Emotions got the better of you. It happens. But I promise you we won’t talk about this again. About John, I mean. We’ll keep it under wraps.”
Walter enters the waiting room, wearing his bug glasses. He attracts a few stares. Two young men nudge one another. He spots us and hurries over.
“I just paid two dollars to park,” he says. “For
the entire day
. This city makes me feel like I’ve stepped through a time warp.”
Helen excuses herself. “I need to find a pay phone. I should give my husband a call. He’ll start to worry.”
I watch my sister walk away.
“She’s a little tightly wound,” Walter says as he sits down next to me. “No offence.”
“None taken.”
I keep my eyes on the form.
“I’ve never liked hospitals,” Walter sighs. “It’s because of Nanna Kay. My grandmother. As a child, I was forced to visit her in the hospital every week.”
“Mmm-hmm.” I wish he’d be quiet. I’m having a hard enough time concentrating on writing.
“I’m afraid of getting old,” he says. “Well, not that I’m not already old. But elderly. Incapacitated. Alone.”
“It’s something we all face.”
“Not Fred,” he says. “Not your son.”
My pen comes to a stop. I glance sideways and see him turn his bug glasses over delicately in his hand, as if he were holding an ornate flower.
“I’m sorry about this afternoon, Joyce. It was too much for you.”
“It’s fine,” I say. I try to fill out the address field, but the pen won’t write.
“Was your son out to you?”
I don’t know what to do with his question. “What do you mean?”
“Did he tell you he was gay?”
I clear my throat and glance nervously around. “He didn’t talk much about his personal life. He was a private person.”
Another lie. John wasn’t private.
I
was the one who demanded privacy. No, not that.
Secrecy
.
“I see,” Walter says. And I can tell by his tone, by the clip of his words, that he does. He can see through me as though I were made of glass. The same as my husband. The same as my son. I huddle over the form, trying to make myself as small as possible.
“It’s different,” he says. “Nowadays, I mean. People hardly bat an eyelash. Sometimes we guard these things so fiercely, only to find it doesn’t matter all that much. At least, not as much as we thought it would.” He pauses. Looks from the glasses in his hands to me. “Or is that what you’re afraid of?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I
’M TAKING
a trip tomorrow. I made a phone call this morning to confirm my destination and then I called the bus station and ordered my ticket. I haven’t told anyone about this. I don’t want anyone to know. This trip is mine.
I’m going to try to fix something I broke. It’s a partial fantasy, I know, as most things are in life. Three-quarters wishing to one-quarter reality. But it’s all I’ve got at this point. And I have to do something. I have to try to take something back.
The good thing is that I don’t have to travel that far. Port Locke, where Marty’s mother lives, is only three hours away. It will make for a long day, but I’ll be back in my bed by nightfall. Safe.
Walter calls from the hotel early this morning and asks me how I’m feeling.
“Fine,” I say. “I’m supposed to go through some more tests, but nothing serious. At least, the doctor seemed to think that.”
“That’s good,” he says. “You can never be too sure. Do you plan to be home for the next hour or so? I’d like to see you before I head back to Miami.”
Although I’ve softened to him somewhat since the party two days ago, I still have no need for goodbyes.
“It’s out of your way,” I say. “You’ll have to drive all this way and then back out again. It makes no sense.”
But he won’t take no for an answer. “I have something for you, Joyce.”
Good lord, I think. A plant? A bouquet of flowers? A rainbow kerchief? I don’t want to see Walter. I’ve had enough of him and his offerings and his bug glasses and his knowledge about my son.
“I’ll be there around ten,” he says. “I’ll drop by the Sunset first and say goodbye to you-know-who.”
I have no choice but to run around and wash the dishes and sweep and vacuum and try to make my house presentable when it’s the last thing I feel like doing. My mind is elsewhere, focused on conversations yet to happen. Dots that have yet to be joined.
Mrs. Taylor?
Yes?
My name is Joyce Sparks. My son’s name was—
John. Of course
.
I stand in the middle of my living room. The TV informs me I’m in store for another beautiful day. Across the street, I watch Mr. Sparrow slowly unravel the garden hose from its hook at the side of the house. He twists the tap and the hose stiffens as water rushes through it. He holds the silver spout in one hand, gives the hose a tug with the other and slowly drags it across his lawn to the bright red geraniums under his living room window. He presses the handle of the spout. A crystal shower arcs through the air. The geraniums sway in response.