Where the Broken Lie (6 page)

When I can’t get back to sleep, I go downstairs to the kitchen. I am sticky with sweat, and where my heart should be, a fist tries to punch its way out of me. Or it’s pounding on something inside of me that doesn’t belong there.

I pull down the bottle of Scotch that Grandpa Gaines keeps above the refrigerator.

“Make it two,” I hear from behind me as I pull a glass out of the cupboard.

I turn around to see Grandpa standing in the doorway. His hands are in the pockets of a gray tattered housecoat, which hang over flannel pajamas and a potbelly. I never understood how those skinny little bird legs of his could support such a heavy upper frame. It always scared me when Grandma told me how much I looked like Grandpa had when he was a younger man, because as an older man he looks like a damn ostrich.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I thought I was being pretty quiet.”

“Oh, you didn’t wake me. I was up.”

When I raise my eyebrows in question, he says, “We’ve all got our demons that keep us awake, Tuck.”

He gives me a conspirator’s wink. I pull down another glass and pour.

“To demons,” I say, handing the glass to Grandpa.

“To demons,” he returns with another wink.

We take the bottle and our empty glasses to the table and sit. I pour two more shots.

“You know,” he says, “I myself never did see anything wrong with dousing one’s demons with some holy spirits now and again. At the very least, you’ll confuse them a little. Disorient them and get them back on their heels. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll drown them altogether.” He slams down his shot as though he has a fire inside him to put out. “Here’s the thing, Tuck. One way or the other, demons will change you. They can change you for the worse or they can change you for the better. You could look at the bad that’s happened and try to make some good out of it. Or you could look at it and start thinking that the world owes you something, like you’ve got some sort of free pass.”

I drink my shot and refill. “Were you ever able to drown the demons that came after Uncle Joe died?”

My Uncle Joe—Grandpa and Grandma’s youngest child—had died in a car accident when he was eighteen. It was the first time I had ever brought up Joe with Grandpa, and whatever he was about to say would be the first words I ever heard him speak about the dead uncle I never knew. His own dead son.

Grandpa stares at the empty glass twisting in his hands before finally tilting it toward me. I pour, and he drinks.

“Yeah, Joe,” the words escape him like a breath he’s been holding for near thirty years. “No, Tuck, I’ve never been able to drown those demons. Joe’s death did not change me for the better.”

“What was he like?”

Grandpa is still focused on that empty glass, as though all his answers are sitting somewhere inside of it. He smiles out of the corner of his mouth and suppresses a laugh. “Joe was a big dumb kid, you know. Always a dumb kid. Having fun, joking around, laughing and smiling. Everyone wanted to hang around with Joe. I can still see that goofy grin of his.” He finds it in the bottom of that twisting glass. Finally, he looks up at me. “Nothing ever got him down, you know? You ever know one of those people? The kind of person that always finds the good wherever they’re at? Well, that was Joe all right. Except he didn’t just find the good, he brought it with him. Wherever he went, he brought the good. That was Joe. That was my boy.” He dabs at his eyes with the sleeves of his housecoat. “Look at me. It’s been thirty years for Christ’s sake.”

I pour two more drinks. He sniffs and shakes his head. “Anyway, I figure when he died, he took all the good with him there, too. Wherever that might be.”

“Seems to me he left some good behind, too,” I say.

Grandpa stares at me hard and then downs his drink. He sets the glass down and weakly, brokenly, pushes away from the table.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go back to bed. The demons are gone for now.”

The morning after my night of Scotch and demons with Grandpa, I walk to the Willow Grove Cemetery, which rests about a half-mile west of town. I stop first at Ethan’s grave and sit on the ground behind his headstone. Exactly where I had stood with my hands on his coffin until forced to let go and watch as they lowered it into the open-mouth of the hungry earth. I would never be that close to him again. I would never be closer than these six feet. Never farther than closed eyes and a quiet moment.

“I love you, Ethan. Daddy loves you forever.”

Katie Cooper’s gravesite is thirty feet or so from Ethan’s—from mine, too, for that matter, as my name was inscribed on one side of Ethan’s, Tammy’s on the other. I sat on the ground in front of Katie’s headstone, put my hands to the ground, and stared at the words on the headstone.

I remember every moment with Katie all at once. I close my eyes and picture her face. See it, like one of those scenes in a movie where someone is remembered to music.
Seasons in the Sun
 plays in my mind. Katie fades into shadow and when she comes back to light it is the face of Swinging Girl. She smiles her knowing smile then fades to shadow again. When Katie’s face returns, she is tilting her head to one side and pulling long, wind-blown hair away from mouth and eyes. Whether I’m Imagining or remembering, I can’t say. I opened my eyes and read the headstone again.

1981—far away and getting farther. How many eyes had looked upon these engravings over the years? The long hard stares of friends and family wearing away the letter and number grooves. How many hearts had mourned here? More than just the Coopers and me, I hope. We can’t do it all by ourselves. Between what’s to remember and what’s to wonder about, the three of us can’t bear the load on our own.

At that moment, a familiar car pulls into the cemetery. A long silver Lincoln Continental that I recognize from the church parking lot. It drives right in front of me and then slows to a stop on the far side of the cemetery. Soon, Phyllis Ross emerges. I wave, but she doesn’t see me. She pulls a spade and a colorful arrangement of wildflowers out of the trunk of the car and carries it to a nearby headstone. For the next several minutes, Phyllis does the meticulous work of planting those flowers by the grave of her deceased husband PJ. She works quietly, effortlessly. After tenderly tamping down the earth around the flowers, she returns the spade to the trunk of the car and brings back a water pail, which she fills at a nearby pump. After watering the flowers, she brushes off her knees, washes her hands, and shakes them dry. In front of the grave, with hands clasped together loosely—back bent from the years it carried and the burdens it bore—she looks down with the warm smile that she’d been wearing all along. When she leaves, I go over to PJ’s headstone.

Beloved Husband and Father

Beloved
. There it was again. That was the thing, wasn’t it? Daughter, husband, father, whatever. Year of birth, year of death, the dash in-between. If you were beloved, then, man, you had done something, hadn’t you? I thought about Beatrice Hart and her little girl Laura Jane, whose obituary was folded inside my wallet. That little girl who hadn’t lived to see the age of four had changed me forever. And so had PJ Ross who had lived to eighty-four. Once beloved, always beloved.

I head back to Grandpa and Grandma’s to make more repairs to the hole in my barn. And to try to make myself more beloved.

… he didn’t vomit, but for a minute there, he was sure he was going to. The longer Tucker had stood at Katie’s grave, the more convinced he was that Katie was telling secrets from the grave. He half expected Tucker to wheel around and look right at him accusingly. His heart pounded with the anticipation of this. What would he do if that were to happen? What if Tucker somehow discovered the secret? To what lengths would the monster go to make sure the secret died there? With Tucker …

I have a pen, a notebook, and a vodka tonic. The paper remains blank until I figure out that what I actually need is a pen, a notebook, and
two
vodka tonics. But it’s the third drink that loosens the lid on my emotions and the fourth that pops it off. I tilt my head back in my chair, closed my eyes, and let the vodka remember what it wants to remember. Let it feel what it wants to feel. The past swirls before me, and I write. I think about good old PJ and jot down the memories that come. Coaching my park district baseball team when I was six. Greeting me with a handshake and a warm smile every time he saw me in church. How he could click a little wink at you and make you feel like he knew you inside and out and liked you anyway.
It’s okay. We all make mistakes. I like you. You’re a good person.
I picture him bouncing along on his John Deere tractor out in his fields of corn. Planting in the spring, harvesting in the fall. I think of that old tractor sitting in a dark barn, covered with cobwebs and buried in dust. As un-living as old PJ himself, and rightly so.

By my fourth vodka tonic, I have managed to put words to the slideshow in my head. I carefully fold the letter with sharp even creases and slide it into an envelope that I do not seal. I can’t wait for morning. I leave right then and there and again walk the half-mile to that dark and lifeless lot. Old Man Moon lights my path, and I’m able to find PJ fairly easily. I stand in front of the headstone with my hands clasped together in front of me the same way that Phyllis had earlier that same day. Then I pull the envelope out of my back pocket and paper clip it to receptive flowery fingers.