Spirit of the Place (9781101617021) (44 page)

Looking at him expectantly, she said, “So?”

He felt a sense of dread rising.

“
So?
” she said again, more insistently.

“The lady sure writes a mean letter.”

She gave him a look. “Please, do not joke. Your turn to talk to her.” She waited.

He faced the stone. Faced it more. Finally he said, “Mom, I'm sorry.”

Silence. He turned away to leave.

“That's
it?
” Penny cried. “After all this, and your leaving again tomorrow, and
that's it?
”

“Seemed like a lot, to me.”

“But Mom,” Amy said, “he
said
he was sorry.”

“It was nothing,” Penny said coldly. “Virtually, I mean.”

“I thought it had a lot of good qualities,” he said.

“After all
this,
” Penny went on, “just
that?
”

“Mom, I don't believe you! He meant it! It's what he wants to say to his mom! To Grandma! I think it was neat!”

“Fine,” Penny said, her tone making it clear that it might have been a lot of things but one thing it was not was fine. She took out her plastic bag. “Let's put the stones back in the baggie and we're done.” She picked one off Sol and moved on to pick off the three others sitting on Selma.

“No!” Amy said. “You can't take 'em back, Mom. They have to stay. Sometimes I think you
dream
of plastic baggies! Like you'd put me and Dad in 'em if you could only find ones big enough!” Amy started to cry.

“I . . . I'm sorry, honey,” Penny said in a shocked voice. “You're right, I mean, they should stay.” Penny was losing it, looking around distractedly as if, Orville thought, she was expecting to be rescued by a flying Selma. “They stay. What a mess I've made. Don't worry, I . . . you . . .” Penny started to cry, too, really hard.

Amy stared at her, amazed.

“I'm sorry, sorry sorry, honey, okay?” She paused. “Okay?”

Amy did not say okay.

“Oh!” Penny cried. “I always do everything wroooonnng!”

“It's okay, Sis,” Orville said, putting his arms out to her. She fell heavily against his chest so that he started to slide and had to do some fancy footwork to stay up. She was sobbing, really hard. “Now, now . . .”

Penny blew her nose. “Okay. See those three markers, Orvy?” She pointed to three small marker stones, lying flat under the ice. “The two together on Mom's side are for Milt and me. The other, Orvy, next to Sol? It's for you. If you'll, you know, well . . . accept it?”

He was startled. To be brought back from wherever he died to lie
here?

He stared up at the clouds and again it was as if he were seeing himself up above the scene, looking down at his own funeral a few decades ahead. People were laying him to rest. A surprisingly large crowd of Columbians had gathered, as if appreciative that he had stayed on as their doctor for all those years.

“I'd be honored, Pen,” he said.

“You would?
Honestly?
”

“Don't push it.”

“Right. Now. Let's all go home and have a nice hot cup of . . . of hot nice chocolate.” She turned to go back to the car.

“My turn.” It was Cray. He went to Sol's grave. “That's your dad, Orvy?”

“That's right.”

“He died. My dad died. I'm sorry you died. But you were old. My dad's plane crashed and he was young.” He turned to Orville. “And you're going on a plane tomorrow, a long way away and
you
can die.” The boy was looking up at him, his eyes pleading.

“Those big jet planes are really safe now, Cray.”

“But you can die, right?” Orville nodded. “And Mom and I'll be left?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe Mom and I can go with you, so if you die, we die too?”

“Your mom and you can't go with me.”

“Why not?”

“Well, because you've got school and she's got her work and—”

“I hate school.”

“Yeah, I know, everybody does, but she can't come with me.”

“Well, why you goin' then?”

Cray's green eyes were asking him for the truth, but the only truth Orville could tell him was a lie. It was like Bill showing him that the truth for some patients is a lie, a lie against the life force because if you tell them they're going to die, you'll hasten their death. And besides, you never know anyway, because even if everything points to their dying soon, well, they're Columbians and sometimes it's as if they've aquired a measure of immunity to the final breakage, and they can go on and on. Just look at Mrs. Tarr who yesterday with her oxygen tank went
bowling
,
for Chrissakes! It's not about their bodies, it's about something else. The truth Cray needed then was a lie.

“I've got a job there. You'll come visit, you and Amy.”

“But if me'n Mom went with you and the plane crashed, we'd
all
die, so me'n Mom won't be left alone standin' here cryin'.” He walked away.

Orville hurried to catch up with him and put a hand on his shoulder. Cray looked up, his face somber, older, sadder. Orville took the little boy's hand, and that was when he started to cry.

· 35 ·

Is this crazy?
Miranda was asking herself later that evening, as she walked carefully around the icy puddles and up the steps and onto the porch of Orville's house. Yes, this is crazy. Especially after the disaster in the leaf pile. Be brave.

By noon that day the wind and weather had done one of those Columbian inversions. The sun came out and the temperature rose, so that the ice was melting rapidly, flushing the cement dust into puddles and pools of gray ice water. The twigs and branches and limbs, liberated from the weight of concretized ice, were springing up higher, resuming their shapes, seeking out just that little extra sunshine to turn into nutrients that would carry them through what promised to be another severe winter.

She had waited until late afternoon, when the footing was solid down her flagstone path to her car. The Ford Country Squire sailed easily over the ruts and rolls of the dirt road out to Route 9 and then south into Columbia. After the parade, Cray had called and asked if he could stay with Amy and Orville the rest of the day and for dinner. Fine by her. She needed the time to finish up some work on her magazine piece, run some errands, and come to final terms with Orville's leaving, not to mention saying good-bye. In her mind all day long was the death of her husband and the effect of Orville's leaving on her son. After dinner she drove over to his house.

It was a bright twilight. In the Courthouse Square the warm air falling down onto the icy ground was combusting to mist, rising in spirals and floating in whorls under the argon streetlamps. Bravely she rang his doorbell. Bravely she was greeted by Orville, Cray, and Amy.

“Can I have another sleepover with Orvy tonight, Mom, please?”

“No,” Miranda said.

“Aww, Mom, c'mon!” Miranda said nothing. “Why not?”

“Because tonight it's my turn.” She watched Orville's jaw drop. Watched Amy and Cray take it in—at first puzzled, then glad.

“Yeah, but what about me?” Cray asked.

“I checked with Penny. You can sleep over at Amy's tonight, and Penny can drive you all down to pick up Orville and me in the morning so we can take him to his train. If it's okay by Amy.” Cray looked at Amy.

“Hey,” Amy said nonchalantly, “works for me. Okay, little brother?”

“Yes!” Cray said, fist punching the air.

“Cool,” said Amy. “When do we leave?”

“Now. I'll drive you over.” She had barely glanced at Orville during this, and now did. “Okay by you?”

He felt a rush of trepidation but then, admiring her gutsiness, said, “Better than okay. Much.”

Left alone in the house again after so much kid activity, still raw from walking away from the grave with Cray, he felt lonely and a little frantic. Might as well finish packing. He poured himself a bourbon and relit a Parodi and went up to his bedroom in the turret. He worked for a while, recalling how he'd come into town with only a backpack and an Italian Women's Swim Team sweatshirt. Now he could fill three suitcases. But he was determined to take only the backpack and one suitcase. Starting to travel light again. What do I take with me? What do I do with all the stuff I leave behind? Storage? Trash? What about Starlight? Cray, for some reason, didn't want it; nor did Amy. And the birthday presents? The plaque saying what a great doctor he'd been, the framed blowup of him chained to the Worth, the brass cow from
BOTHWAYS FARM, WEST GHENT
, the photo of Selma and Durney at Olana, the pen-and-ink sketch of the one-room Ichabod Crane Schoolhouse where he'd met Miranda, the
ROME PARIS LONDON COLUMBIA
sweatshirt? All these and more he packed in a box for Penny to keep in her basement. Let go, he said to himself. Go lightly.

But then he took back out of the box the photo of the Worth and the sketch of the schoolhouse. These—and a small brass whale and the
Guide to Good Morals
Miranda had given him—he would take with him back to Europe. He turned to the last box, Scomparza Moving and Funeral.

Selma's letters would stay. The bar mitzvah photo of the Family Rose tilted to the left would stay, as would all the other stuff Selma had left him. As he got ready to put the things back in the box and seal it, he found something else that he hadn't noticed before, jammed flat on the bottom of the box. He pried it out. A large wrapped framed something or other. He took a deep breath. She can't hurt me now. He started to rip the brown paper wrapping off one corner, and then heard the front door slam and Miranda call his name.

“Up here,” he said. He heard her uneven steps on the stairs.

She came into the turret and saw him sitting on the polished oak floor in the curve formed by the five windows, caught in a shaft of final sunlight. He was still in the white shirt and dark slacks he'd worn to the funeral. The sleeves were rolled up, and he was leaning back on his hands looking up at her and his eyes seemed different—more open, more open
to
something. She had always loved his hands, his doctor's hands, with their fingers more long and delicate than his bulky arms would suggest and, she knew from his touch, more gentle. With his fingers splayed on the floorboards, now, his hands, too, seemed somehow more open. They weren't tight with doctoring. His doctoring here, now, is history. Eyes and hands. Vulnerabilities and innocences. Kindnesses. These were what she loved in him.

All this came to her in a moment, the moment of his smiling at her.

“I didn't think you should be alone tonight,” she said. “No one should be alone, their last night anywhere. In front of the kids you said it was okay, but maybe . . . if you don't want me to stay—”

“I do,” he said, surprised at what rolled into his head, a line from a Shakespeare sonnet,
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground
. “I really appreciate it.” How lovely she looked just then to him, standing in the doorway, the last light of the day playing on her red hair, her reassuring green eyes in which he for the longest time had seen not just her but Cray, her lips, strong shoulders, breasts under her baggy lilac sweater, her rumpled jeans with their asymmetric legs. Pain nested in his heart and spread out its wings, much as it had done that moment he'd left Bill's deathbed and had the sudden sense of being old, too old.

He struggled to rise and said, “Let me get you a chair.”

“It's okay. I'll sit here on the bed.” She did. “There's something I want to tell you,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I keep thinking back to our, you know, our horrible argument in the pile of leaves, a few weeks ago, the last time we . . . well, you know.”

“Me too.”

“Yeah, and I have to clear the air about one thing. It came to me early this morning, as I lay there listening to the sleet come down . . .” She took a deep breath. It all seemed too formal, too wrong—as it always seemed lately with him. “What you said to me, that I didn't know how much power I had, how much I can hurt another person?” Orville nodded. “You were right. I
don't
know that. I can't see that. And this morning, you know, lying there like you do at times like that, I . . . well, what I thought was that maybe it had to do with my own history.”

“In what way?”

She knew, but could not say the word. “I'm not sure.”

“Polio?”

The word, said out loud, had always filled her with revulsion. She herself would never volunteer it. But now, hearing it from him, she was surprised to find that it was okay. She understood that he understood. She got teary and looked down into her lap.

“Hearing you say that right now, seeing you look so—forgive me, Orvy, but so, so damn handsome and caught in that beautiful light, hearing you, it's strange. I mean, that such a horrible thing could have such a . . . a cheery, musical name.”

“I know.”

“Even if it does sound Italian.” She smiled through her tears.

“I can't win.”

“You are,” she said kindly. “You're doing fine right now.”

“So how does it make sense to you now?”

“Maybe, sometime . . . . But I'm not saying that or doing anything like this just because you're leaving.”

“I never would think that you'd—”

“I don't want anything from you tonight. I mean it. But I just had that to say, and didn't want you to be alone.”

“I'm glad you're here. Really truly. I'll never forget it. Never.”

They sat for a few moments, quietly.

“What's that?” she asked, pointing to the wrapped, framed something.

“Don't know. It was jammed into the bottom of the Selma box. A final blast from the past. Let's see.” He ripped the brown paper off. A large, old, black-and-white photograph of hundreds of people in a hazy, gaslit ballroom.

The doorbell. They looked at each other.

“I won't answer,” he said.

But right away it rang again, and again. They heard someone try the door, with no luck, and then pound on it.

“I must have locked it when I came in,” Miranda said.

“Good. They'll go away. No more patients anymore. None.”

“Hey Orvy! Orveee! It's me!” It was a familiar voice, shouting up at them from the square.

“Oh no,” he said. “Schooner. I'll get rid of him.”

Henry was standing outside at the end of the walk, staring up at the lit-up turret. He saw Orville open the door and started up the pathway, that bulky body rolling smoothly through the mist and the puddles. Orville met him on the porch. For once he was better dressed than Henry, his white shirt and tie and dark slacks and shoes outclassing Henry's jeans,
T-
shirt, and what looked like a jungle-green flak jacket.

“Everybody's gone!” Henry said, as if this were an important news flash. “My boys are gone. Nelda Jo's gone. Tomorrow you're gone.” He sighed. “Can I come in?”

“Not now.”

“Aw, c'mon.”

“I'm busy.”

“Yeah, I know she's here and that's great, just great, but I'm friends with her too. Maxie and Cray, you know, so we can all sit down, have a drink, cup of tea, whatever.”

“You been drinking?”

“Not a drop.” He crossed himself. “Swear to God. Please?”

“Sorry.”

“See that? Y'still don't respect me. Sure, things were rough way back when we were kids, but your mother forgave me, and I've come back and done well.” He paused. “Haven't I done well?”

“Depends what that word means.”

“I'm gonna be your congressman.”

“Not mine, Henry. I'm on a morning train, and I'm not coming back.”

“So why don't you respect me?”

“How'd the breakfront come to fall on Maxie?”

He paused, considered. “I don't get your question.”

“It didn't just fall. I saw it wobble all year long. In fact, I told you you'd better get it fixed. It wobbled, but it never fell. It would have to be hit hard, real hard, to fall.”

“Like from someone bumping into it, sure.”

“I bumped into it. It rocked, but it didn't fall.”

“What are you implying?”

“That you hit Maxie—or pushed him hard—and he crashed into it.
Hard.
” He paused. “All year long, broken bones, bruises . . .”

Henry stood there in the shadows cast by the porch light, dead still. He didn't look down, or glance away, but kept looking straight at Orville. He just stood there. Bulky, solid, closed.

Strangely, Orville felt himself rooting for Henry right then, rooting for him to tell the truth, whatever it was. Cut the denial bullshit. Ask for help. Redeem yourself.

Finally, taking a step into the porch light, Henry spoke. His voice was the deep, calm, resonant one that was so appealing. “Where to start?” Henry asked, softly, sadly. “I can see, given everything between us, how you would make an insinuendo that I could do something like that. To tell you the truth, my friend, I have done a lot of bad things in my life, things I'm ashamed of, things a man does in war that he can never forget and never tell, things that make what you say I did to you when we were young, well, so to speak, ‘child's play.'” There was a glancing smile, quickly erased.

“But I am a human being,” he went on, “with a heart, and with pride, and love. And right now I'm down. But I'm still standing, still trying to answer your . . . accusation. Because I know it comes from your heart. Look at me, Orvy. Look. Am I a man that could even
live
if I'd done something like that to my son, to my little baby boy, my flesh and blood? Could I even
breathe?
No way! I'd have to be some kind of monster. And I'm not. You know I'm not. I swear to God I'm not. And you're right, my friend, you did tell me to get that damn thing fixed, trued up, and I kept saying, ‘Tomorrow, I'll do it tomorrow.' And tomorrow was yesterday, now.” He fell silent again and just stood there, shoulders hunched, breathing heavily, head fallen on his chest.

A creepy feeling came over Orville. Maybe he's telling the truth. He found himself wavering. The thing
had
wobbled. Maxie
was
a wild kid. Couldn't he have been slamming around the house and crashed into the breakfront and
bam?
But I've believed him before, believed guys like him before and been fooled. With him, you never know. With all these guys, you never know. Maybe they really did kill Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bobby. Maybe Bush really did go to Paris secretly and bribe the Iranians with money and guns not to release the American hostages until after Reagan won the '80 election. How can you ever know the truth? Years later, maybe. You find a hint of it in the paper ten years later buried on page 17. Discredited by experts. Never happened.

“And so, my friend,” Henry was going on, “just for the record—and you can check this out with Nelda Jo or the maid or Maxie himself—I wasn't there when it happened. I was upstairs, getting ready for bed.”