The Marriage of Sticks (28 page)

“Do you like remembering these things? You sound so sad.”

“Well, it is sad watching your house burn down. When there’s nothing you can do about it, you have to stand and watch. You remember the things inside you’re losing. It’s hard, but it reminds me of how rich my life was. God, I had a good one.”

“But I’m looking at your face, Frances. You’re not remembering only good things, are you?”

She wouldn’t answer.

Is it better to remember all we’ve lost? Especially when we know it’s gone forever? And what about the bad memories? The bad times, bad people, bad choices, bad plans—should we be reminded of them?

I didn’t think so, especially not in Frances’s case. In her retelling, even her good memories, the Freud stories and their like, trailed an aroma of melancholy and loss that stank. Even in a room filled with the most exotic flowers.

“I’ll go now. I’m going back to Crane’s View.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. She knew I had no other choice. “If you leave here tonight, you can’t come back until after you’ve decided. You won’t be protected.”

“I don’t want to be protected.” I bent over and kissed the old woman high on her forehead. She smelled of talcum powder. “Thank you for everything, Frances. Even after all that’s happened, I still love you very much.”

“And I love you. The one thing I always regretted was not having a child. A daughter. Now, having known you, I know what it would have been like and I regret it even more.”

I touched her cheek and left. I walked into the hall and closed the door behind me.

After two steps I started shaking so much I couldn’t move. I wasn’t ready yet. I had thought I was but I was wrong. Five more minutes with Frances. A few more questions. I just needed five more minutes with my friend. Then I would be all right and able to go on to whatever was next. She would understand that. She would know how to stop my shakes and push the demons back.

I returned to her door and opened it. The music was playing. Frances sat with her face in her hands weeping so hard her whole body shook violently.

“Oh Jesus, Frances!”

She looked up. Her face was crimson. Her cheeks were shiny from tears. She waved a hand at me to leave. I did not know how to help, how to save my friend from a fate so hopeless and decided. But I could fetch the doctor. Maybe the doctor had something that could calm her down and at least let her rest.

Dr. Zabalino was downstairs in the lobby talking to the receptionist. The sight of me racing toward her must have said everything. I started explaining what happened but she was hurrying for the elevator before I was three sentences in. I started after her but she stopped and slammed a hand against my chest.

“No! If you want to stay here and be protected, don’t move till I get back. But you cannot come with me! Think of Frances. Something you said obviously upset her. She’s very weak and this is bad for her. I don’t want her seeing you again now.” She took her hand away but kept both hands wide open at her sides, as if ready to shove me again if I tried accompanying her. She walked to the elevator, entered, turned around and faced me. As the doors slid closed, she said, “Don’t go anywhere. Stay here and you’ll be safe.”

The light above the door illuminated the floor numbers. When it stopped at Frances’s, I turned and walked to the receptionist. She wasn’t ignoring me or reading poetry this time. Her eyes were bright and alert, like those of a small animal that’s just realized a much bigger one is very close.

“What happens now?”

“What do you mean?”

I slapped my hands down on the desk loud enough to make her cringe. “Don’t give me shit!
What happens now?
”

“Usually the doctors can fix things. Dr. Zabalino is very good. She’ll know how to help your friend. But it’ll be harder to help you because you haven’t chosen yet. That’s the worst. Making up your mind, because there are so many reasons for and against it. That’s why you should stay here until you’ve decided. Fieberglas is the safest place for you. Outside it’s very, very dangerous. There are things out there—”

“Tell the doctor I left.”

“You
can’t
!”

“I don’t want to be here. I’ve got to—Just tell her I left.”

“But—”

The clatter of my heels against the stone floor rang out again in that quiet place as I walked to the door. Through a window, I saw Erik Peterson in his taxicab, the light from the portable TV flickering on his face. I pushed open the heavy front door. The air outside was cold and smelled of pine and stone. I felt no desire to return to the “safety” of the building.

“Erik? Let’s go home.”

He looked up. “You finished?”

“Yes. Do you mind if I sit next to you?”

“Not at all. Hop in.” He reached across the passenger’s seat and threw open the door. The overhead light came on a weak yellow. I walked around the front of the car and got in but didn’t close the door. I needed a moment just sitting before my life could continue.

“How’d it go in there, Miranda? How’s your friend?”

“Sick. Is this your family?” On the dashboard was a small metal frame with three oval photographs inside. A boy, a girl, a wife. The girl wore a cheerleader’s sweater and flirted with the camera. The pretty woman looked straight at it, expressionless. The boy—

“Yes. That’s my wife Nina, our daughter Nelly, and Isaac.”

“He looks like you.”

“Isaac died of meningitis two years ago. One night he didn’t feel well and went to bed. The next morning he was gone.” He gestured for me to close the door. I hesitated so as to have another, closer look at Isaac in the dim light. Erik started the car. The strong smell of exhaust fumes filled the air.

“I’m so sorry. What was he like?”

“Interesting you ask. Most people when they hear about it just say they’re sorry. They’re embarrassed to ask questions. Or they feel uncomfortable.

“What was he
like
? He was a pistol. You couldn’t keep the kid down. He woke up at five every morning and went full tilt till you threw him into bed at night and shut his eyes for him. I guess he was hyperactive, but my wife said he was just too interested to sit down. We miss him.”

I pulled the door closed and we drove away from Fieberglas. The gravel crunching beneath the car tires sounded very loud. As we drove onto the street I looked down at my hands in my lap and saw they were both clenched into fists. I was fearful something might stop or hold us back, but that was egotism or paranoia. Nothing stopped us; nothing met us but the night in front of the headlights.

“Once when Isaac was a little boy, I mean really little, I walked into the bathroom and saw him standing next to the toilet barefoot. The seat was up and he was dangling a foot over the bowl. I asked what he was doing, because with that kid, it coulda been anything. He said he’d bet himself he couldn’t put his foot in the toilet. For some crazy reason he was frightened of doing that. So there he was standing, daring himself to do the thing that scared him most.”

“Why was he afraid to do that? Had it been flushed?”

“Oh, sure.” Peterson took a hand off the steering wheel and gave an airy wave. “But you know how it is when you’re a kid: you got different monsters than the ones you got as an adult.”

I slid forward to get as close as possible to the photograph. The boy did look like his father, but even in the picture there was a wildness in his eyes that said he
was
a pistol.

We returned to Crane’s View the way we had come. Passing the drive-in theater, I worried that something would again be playing on the giant screen, but it was blank. Erik continued talking about his son. I asked questions to keep the conversation going. I didn’t want to think about what to do because I knew my whole life would depend on that decision once we got home.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.

“No. God, cigarettes! I’d love one too.”

He pulled a pack of Marlboros from beneath his sun visor and handed them to me. “I think I got two left in there. Have a look.”

I slid them out.

He pushed in the cigarette lighter on the dashboard. “All the things we’re not supposed to do anymore, huh? You know what I say? Cigarettes are gooood!”

The lighter popped out and he handed it to me. I lit up for the first time in years and took a deep drag. The smoke was harsh and raw in my throat but delicious. We sat in a nice silence, smoking and watching things pass by.

“There’s a 7-eleven up here a-ways. Would you mind if I made a quick stop and bought more smokes and some other things? I told the wife I’d bring them home and she’ll be real mad if I don’t.”

“Please, of course stop.”

He sighed. “That’s one of the bad things that’s happened since Isaac died. Nina gets real upset about small things. Before, she was as calm as summer, but now if even the slightest thing goes wrong, she has trouble with it. I can’t blame her. I guess we miss people in our own ways.

“Me, I think about all the things I’ll never be able to do with the boy. Take him to see the Knicks, watch him graduate from school. Sometimes when I’m alone in the house, I go up to his room and sit on the bed. I talk to him too, you know? Tell him what’s been going on in the family, and how much I miss him. I know it’s stupid, but I keep thinking he’s near me in that room. Nina cleaned it out completely after he died, so it’s only a small empty place now, but I can’t help thinking he’s around there sometimes and maybe can hear me.”

“What do you miss most, Erik? What do you miss most about him?” A question I had asked myself again and again since Hugh’s death.

“The hugs. That kid was a hugger. He’d grab hold of you tight , as a vise and squeeze. Not many people really hug you.” He smiled sadly. It looked like his whole life these days was in that smile. “There aren’t that many people in life who really love you either.”

I felt my throat swell and I had to look away.

“I’m sorry, Miranda. I’m just talking. There’s the place. I’ll be out in a minute.”

We slowed and pulled into a large parking lot. The store was brilliantly lit. It glowed, and the vivid colors of the products on the shelves radiated out into the night. I watched Erik walk in. He stopped to speak with the man behind the counter and in a moment both were laughing. I looked around the lot. There was only one other vehicle parked there, an old pickup truck that looked like it had traveled to World War Three and back. I twisted the rearview mirror to have a look at myself and was surprised to see my head was still on my shoulders and I didn’t have big
X
s over my eyes like some cartoon character that’s just been knocked out.

I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Far across the parking lot, a kid on a bicycle came weaving slowly into view. My first thought was, What’s he doing out so late, but as he got closer my mind froze. It was Erik Peterson’s son Isaac.

He was dressed in an orange-and-blue windbreaker and faded jeans. Riding in loopy circles around the lot, he got closer and closer to the car. I knew who he was, but since I could not believe it, I looked again at the picture on the dashboard. It was him. Inside the store, Erik had disappeared back among the shelves. Outside, twenty feet away, his dead son rode a bicycle.

I opened the door and swiveled to get out. The boy stopped abruptly and put his feet down to keep from tipping. Looking at me, he shook his head. Don’t move. I stayed where I was and he slowly rolled over.

“That’s my Dad in there.” His voice was high and sweet. He lisped.

“Yes.”

“He’s nice, huh?”

“He’s…He loves you very much.”

“I know. He talks to me all the time. But I can’t talk back. It’s not allowed.”

“Can I tell him you’re here?”

“No. He couldn’t see me anyway. Only you. Remember you saw me before? When you were driving the other way, I was racing you. I kept up with you pretty long. I mean, I’m pretty fast for my age.”

He was so sure of himself, this ten-year-old big talker out for a spin on his bike at night, checking to see if anyone was watching. It wrung my heart.

“You know Declan?” he asked.

“Yes.”

A green Porsche growled in off the street and stopped a few feet away. A woman wearing a man’s fedora got out. Looking straight ahead, she walked into the store.

“Women are the stones you use to build a house, men are the sticks you use to start the fire and keep the house warm.”

Distracted by the jarring noise of the car, I wasn’t sure I’d heard what he said. “Excuse me?”

“That’s what Declan’s father said.”

I stiffened. “You’ve seen him?”

“Sure. He and Declan are together all the time. He said that today when Declan asked the difference between men and women. They were talking about why Declan never got to be born.

“See you!”

Erik came out of the store carrying a brown bag and glancing over his shoulder. Pushing the bike backward, the boy came within two feet of his father. He looked at the man as he walked past. He reached out a hand and pretended to slap his arm.

Erik stopped. For a moment I was sure he knew who was there. Isaac watched him with calm eyes. Erik moved to the left, stopped, moved to the right. He was dancing! He turned in a circle. “Do you hear it, Miranda? From inside the store? Martha and the Vandellas. ‘Dancing in the Streets.’ ” He continued swaying back and forth as he approached the car. “One of my favorite songs. Isaac loved it too. I hear it all the time now. Funny. More than ever before, I think.” He opened the back door and laid the grocery bag on the seat. “You ready to go?”

The boy nodded at me, so I said yes. His father got in and started the motor. “I got everything. Some more cigarettes too if you want one.

“Erik, if you could, what would you say to Isaac if he was here right now?”

Without hesitation he said, “I’d say I’m living, but I’m not alive without you.”

One of Hugh’s favorite quotes was from St. Augustine: “Whisper in my heart, tell me you are there.” I suppose it has to do with God and his unwillingness to show his face to man. But in light of what had happened, I took it to mean something entirely different. I was sure “Women are the stones you use to build a house, men are the sticks…” was meant for me, not Declan. I was sure Hugh was whispering in
my
heart, suggesting what to do. I had already come to the same conclusion by then but his words only strengthened my resolve.