Onward Toward What We're Going Toward (33 page)

Diane felt rejuvenated—alive, fully conscious. She stopped listening to the radio. She did sit-ups. She took drives in the car. She stood in the backyard and took big, deep breaths of fresh air. She walked around the block, waving at her neighbors and shouting, “Hello there!” She painted her toenails. She sat on the front porch and drank ice tea. She went to Stafford's and pushed a cart up and down the aisles. Stafford's had changed. They'd expanded and rearranged the store, putting the frozen food section in the back and bringing the produce to the front. And the produce! There were now exotic items like pineapple and mangos. There was also an entire section devoted entirely to vitamins. (Diane didn't know this, but this was Stafford's reaction to Buddy and Lijy's health food store.) When her alarm clock buzzed at a quarter to six in the morning, she threw back the covers and announced, “World, I am Diane Waldbeeser, and I am getting up now.” And with that, she sprang out of bed. She'd spent over a decade in that bed. She tried to recall the thoughts she'd had while lying there, listening to the radio, but when she closed her eyes to call them up, there was just darkness. But that life was over now—she was moving forward.

One night, she invited her parents over for dinner. They were very old now. Her father had retired in 1968, and he could barely hear anymore. Diane had to shout at him across the table, and several times, he turned to his wife and asked, “What'd Diane just say?” At one point, before dessert, he stood up and began to speak. He said he'd been a math teacher for thirty-five years and felt that he'd served the town well. He had had a purpose, and had a gold watch as proof of his value and a commemorative plaque hanging in his living room. He didn't know what a health food store was, but Middleville now had one, thanks to Chic's brother. He asked Chic and Diane what they thought their purpose was, and both of them looked down at their laps. He said
he was sorry that they'd lost their son. He said he thought about him from time to time. He said when it was time for him to go, he'd go peacefully, hopefully in his sleep. He hoped it would be soon. He was getting tired.

“Oh, sit down,” Diane's mother said. “He gets like this sometimes.”

“Daddy,” Diane said. “You're not going to die.” She couldn't handle another death, not now, not after she'd finally gotten herself up and off the ground.

Her father sat down and put his napkin back in his lap. He looked at Chic and smiled.

After her parents left, Diane did the dishes and wiped the table, while Chic sat in the living room to watch
All in the Family
. After she turned out the lights in the kitchen, she went upstairs and sat in the rocking chair with a doll. She wanted to think about what her father had said, but there was a barrier around it—like a scab over a wound—that protected her from thinking about it. However, she did allow herself a few moments of imagination: her father and Lomax in heaven, both of them laughing. Her father throwing Lomax a baseball, Lomax catching it. Then, she snapped back into the present and looked down at the doll she was cradling.

After a while, Chic ducked his head into the nursery and asked Diane if she wanted to come to bed, but she wasn't ready yet. He went into the bathroom, and she listened to him getting ready. After he was finished, she called him back into the nursery.

“Yes?” he asked.

“I think I want to join a bowling league,” she said.

“A bowling league?”

“We never get out and socialize. We should do more of that.”

“OK,” he said.

“I'm going to sign us up. Wednesday nights.”

“Very good, then. Wednesday nights.” He watched her for a while. They probably weren't going to have another kid. He
shouldn't even bring it up. It occurred to him that he wasn't sure if he was in love with her. He thought he was, but maybe he wasn't. Maybe he only felt like he loved her because of what they'd gone through. Maybe that was all love was. Anyway, it was much easier if he didn't think about it. Just go with it. Get in the river and float along with it. Wednesday nights. It was settled, then. Bowling.

Green woke up. His neck was killing him. He'd been too stubborn to sleep in the bedroom, so he'd slept in his wheelchair, with his head slumped over on his chest. The sun peeked through the Venetian blinds. The house was quiet. What time was it? He heard a car start up on the street. He peeked out the blinds—the minivan was in the drive. He rolled into the kitchen, but she wasn't there. The coffeemaker hadn't been used. In the bedroom, the bed was made. The bathroom. He pulled aside the shower curtain. There were droplets of water in the tub, and it smelled like she'd recently washed her hair. In the back of the house, out the sunporch window, he had a view of the backyard—the grass needed mowing—and the neighbor's house with its garden shed and picnic table. No Mary. Then he heard the door open. He glanced over his shoulder, sending a sharp jolt of pain through his body.

“There you are, sleepyhead.” She was holding a cordless phone. She saw Green eyeing it, and put it behind her back.

He dug out his Post-it Note pad but didn't write anything. He didn't feel like talking. He thought about asking about the phone, which she was obviously hiding behind her back, but what was the point. He was tired of arguing with her. He wanted to wheel himself away so that he didn't have to be in front of her and feel like such a little man.

“So, I'm going to the Brazen Bull later today. I know you
don't want to go, so I'm not gonna make you. But I thought we could go have dinner tonight. Me and you. I shouldn't be home too late. Around six. Seth and that guy they call Eight Ball are usually there until about then.”

Green felt the anger rising up inside of him. He knew she wasn't going to the Brazen Bull. The Pair-a-Dice guy, or whoever, was probably going to spring for some sloppy hotel where they'd spend all afternoon watching soap operas on the television while he took her from behind.

Mary sighed. He didn't even have to write anything. She could see it in his face.

The sigh made Green feel like a scolded dog, but he couldn't help himself. He wanted to know the truth. He dug out his notepad and wrote
, I 'm sorry I didn't turn out the way you wanted me to.

She put her hands on her hips. The way she was looking at him, he could tell she was at her breaking point. He was pushing her too far.

While Diane had her dolls and now bowling, Chic still had nothing. His desire to connect with someone, something, was so great that it felt like a blender was whirling inside of him, constantly churning, churning, churning with longing. He needed to find it, whatever it was. Maybe it was books, he thought. Or yogurt? Maybe that yogurt book or whatever it had been that had done the trick for Buddy? He should pay him a visit. Maybe he could recommend something. He was his big brother after all, and wasn't a big brother supposed to help the younger brother? Wasn't that how it worked?

Chic got as far as standing on the sidewalk in front of the health food store when he glimpsed Russ standing by the counter. He was ten now, pretty much the same age that Lomax had
been when he drowned. Chic froze. He couldn't breathe. His heart was doing a crazy dance—pitter-pat, glug, glug, beat, beat, beat. His mind flashed back to the time he took Lomax to the high school gymnasium for Little League tryouts. Lomax had brought along his briefcase and spent the morning sitting in the bleachers, shuffling papers. When it was his turn to take some grounders, he stood under the basketball hoop, his legs crossed at the ankle, his glove hanging limply at his side. The coach could tell Lomax wasn't a ballplayer, so he rolled the ball at him instead of smacking it with the fungo bat. Lomax didn't even try to make a play on the ball—he simply watched it bounce off the wall behind him. His own son couldn't—or wouldn't—even scoop up a slow roller! Chic wanted to go turtle and put his head into his shell. All the other fathers turned the death eye on him as if he'd raised some kind of oddball. And it was true. His son was different. Chic knew it. Diane knew it. Anyone who spent three minutes with the boy knew it. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe if he had pushed Lomax to hang around with the boys in the neighborhood more, he wouldn't have gone off to Kennel Lake on some lake-diving mud-gathering science study thing. He'd be in college now, maybe down at the University of Illinois, and there wouldn't be a room full of goddamn dolls at home, and his wife wouldn't be dragging him to a Wednesday night bowling league, which, by the way, he hated. He was terrible at bowling. They were both terrible at it, and he knew the other bowlers were laughing at them just like the fathers had laughed at him that afternoon at the Little League tryouts. He should have forced Lomax to become a normal, red-blooded, American boy. Now, the worst thing, the absolute worst thing, the knife twisting in his goddamn stomach, was that his brother was raising a son who played baseball. A real son. A normal son. An alive son. Chic couldn't go inside the store. He couldn't make small talk with Russ—ask him about Little League and school. No goddamn way. And he certainly didn't want to ask his brother for advice.
He wanted to be alone—alone with this heavy rock sitting on his chest, alone with his thoughts, his memory, his disappointment in himself as a father. He'd find his own book.

There was a can of beer under the seat, stashed there for occasions when he needed something to loosen the strings, take a little weight off. Chic cracked the beer. It was warm, but he guzzled it anyway; a little bit dribbled out the corners of his mouth. There was another one in the glove box and three more in the spare-tire well in the trunk. He pounded them all and crushed the cans and hid them under the seat. He wiped his mouth. He felt woozy. The feelings of disappointment subsided a bit. The beer always helped. He drove to the library.

Chic tried pushing through the library's glass front door, but it wouldn't open. Closed! The library was closed. He couldn't believe it. But what were those people doing inside? He stood there scratching his head until someone pushed through the door and excused himself past Chic. (He hadn't realized that the door needed to be pulled open.) He opened the door and went inside. In his head, he heard trumpets. He was here. His salvation! Books! Which, to be honest, he didn't really enjoy. The last book he had read was
Great Expectations
—in high school.

He walked toward the card catalog, stumbling a few times along the way. He was trying not to appear drunk, but he was too buzzed to be able to pretend. Across the library, he noticed his former English teacher, Mr. Haze, reading a book at a table. He had to be around one hundred years old. He had been old when Chic was in school, and that was twenty-five years ago. Chic acknowledged him with a shy wave. Mr. Haze gave him a stern look, then went back to reading his book.

Chic thumbed through the cards quickly. He wasn't really sure where to start or what type of book he was looking for. He flipped the cards in the T drawer—
Taproot. Tarrytown. Tennessee
. He was looking for
temple
. His body was a temple; for some reason, that phrase stuck in his mind. He felt a tap on his shoulder.
He turned around, but no one was there. Then he noticed a girl looking up at him, a tiny girl with straight dark hair and feet the size of dinner rolls.

“Have you been drinking, sir?” She had a squeaky voice.

Of course he'd been drinking. In fact, if he had any beer left, he'd be out in his car right now still drinking. But he had no beer left, and besides, he was looking for something different, a book or something. This is what he wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her other things, too. The baseball tryouts. Lomax. The death. His brother. Russ. Lijy. Dolls. Bowling. Everything. She could pull up a chair and they could have a conversation. He tried to talk to her, opening and closing his mouth like a fish, but the beer had stolen his voice.