Wickett's Remedy (12 page)

Forget it. We don’t got time anyhow. We better get some coffee, we gotta be goin’ soon.

But I wanna piece of somethin’ sweet.

Then put some sugar in yer joe, cause that’s the closest yer gettin’ tonight.

Bentley, wake up!

’Sno use. He’s out.

How’re we gonna git him back?

Could carry ’im.

Us carry Frankie? What are ya, drunk? He’s too heavy!

But we ain’t got enough dough for a cab.

I say leave ’im. Lean ’im ’gainst this statue.

But if Frankie don’t show, that’s derilision of duty.

Fitzy’ll kill ’im fer sure.

Aw, he’ll make it back. Bentley kin take care ’f himself.

I don’t know, fellas—

C’mon! Bentley’s bein’ a real pain in the neck passin’ out like this. We tole ’im t’ take it easy but did ’e listen? Nope. He did not.

’Sides, if we tried t’ carry ’im back we’d get in plenny trouble ourselves, either bein late or gettin’ seen with ’im. ’Ts our patrialic duty t’ ship out tomorrow no madder wha’. Otherwise we’re all of us in derilision, and what’s th’ good o’ that?

Well, Joey, you put it like that I s’pose I can’t argue.

Easy now. There.

Don’ ’e look sweet?

Y’sure Bentley’ll be okay?

Look, he’s sleepin’ it off unner the protection of—whoozzat? I can’t see straight.

Says here, “John Winthrop, Guvnor Massachusetts, 1629.”

See? Frankie’ll be fine. He’s got the guvnor hisself lookin’ after him.

VOLUME 9, ISSUE 3 MAY 1991

QD and Me
:
A Sodaman’s Journey By Ralph Finnister
Chapter 1 Water Meets Flavor

We never know what the day holds. On one day, we are created—on another, we expire. In between, we flow or we float according to our natures—and if we are lucky, we mix with something that changes us for the better. I am a Sodaman. I see the world through a Sodaman’s eyes.

I was sixteen when I started working at QD Soda. Few boys know what they want out of life at that age, and if someone had asked me I would have said I wanted to be Hewey Hughes, the host of the
QD Radio Comedy Hour.
I only came to QD Headquarters on account of that show, but after I was hired I learned it was broadcast from somewhere else. By then, of course, it was too late. I was already a mailroom clerk.

To see me then was not to see the future president of QD Soda. By the time Quentin Driscoll was sixteen, he was an apprentice at a soda counter and well on his way to fulfilling his life’s ambition—but as for me, I was content to sort envelopes and daydream.

The future began with a simple errand. One day the regular delivery boy was out sick, so the manager asked me to take the mail up to Three. I was standing at the secretary’s desk when a voice asked me to bring it in myself. And that voice was none other than Quentin Driscoll’s.

Over the years I have been asked many times about that moment. Was I excited? Was I nervous? Always I ask in return: Is a star excited before it streaks
across the night sky? Is a bird excited before it takes wing? No. Star and bird are only doing what they are meant to do. At that moment, I was just a boy delivering the mail. But I will say this—it was a powerful voice that called from behind that door, the kind of voice you don’t refuse.

My first memory of Quentin Driscoll is not a memory of him at all. It is a memory of his desk, the likes of which I have never seen elsewhere. It was seven feet wide and made of polished wood. It had curved sides and the letters “Q.D.” across its front in gold. Like everything else in that man’s life, his desk had a story behind it. But I did not know that sad story, at least not yet.

Only after Quentin Driscoll said, “You are not the usual boy,” did I turn my attention to his face. Once I did, I knew I was in the presence of greatness. The square jaw, the dark, intelligent eyes, and the broad, expressive brow all bespoke intelligence, savvy, and ambition. Though I had seen pictures of great men in history books I had never met one before, and I have not met one since.

“Tell me your name,” he asked.

“My name is Ralph,” I replied.

Imagine my shock when that noble visage blanched!

“I had a son named Ralph,” the Sodaman said softly. “He would have been seven this year.”

I was old enough to observe more than sadness filling Quentin Driscoll’s face, but too young to give those other emotions names.

“I’m sorry,” I replied.

“Why?” he said in return. “It’s not your fault that my son is dead, or that you have his name.”

I did not know what to say. A moment ago I had been a boy content to
daydream by the radio. Now, more than anything in life, I wanted to impress this man—but I was torn between wanting to appear humble and wiser than my years.

“I don’t know if Ralph is the name of a great man,” I said, “but I think it is the name of a good one. I feel sorry because it’s sad to think that the world lost someone good.”

“Is it better to be great or to be good?” Quentin Driscoll asked quietly, with a sad smile.

I had wanted to sound noble. Instead, I felt foolish.

“It’s best to be both,” I answered, hoping to make up for what I had said before, “but if a man can only be one, perhaps it would be better for him to be good and not great instead of great and not good.”

I did not know it then, but with those words my Sodaman’s journey had begun.

In This Issue

To Drink or Not to Drink? The Eternal Dilemma of the Sealed, Collectible Bottle Page 3

A
t first day and night were meaningless. Lydia slept; and when sleep disowned her she stared at the cracked ceiling and the faded walls, wishing sleep would take her back. Sometimes the familiarity of the room persuaded her that she was Lydia Kilkenny of 28 D Street, who worked at Gilchrist’s and had always slept on the pallet beside her parents’ bed. But then she would remember the sheet being stretched over Henry’s corpse, or the soiled onion poultice that had slipped to the floor unnoticed until she was alone with it in the room. These memories sent the rest rushing back, a crush that left her gasping for breath.

Sometimes she emerged from the gray blur of her mourning to find Michael sitting beside her, his broad hand stroking her forehead as if trying to smooth away a fever. Later, she was told no one else could soothe her during that first week, shards of days she recalled only in narrow slivers of memory.

Henry’s funeral took place during those first shattered days. She was unsure how many people attended, or in what church the service was held. She remembered standing across the open grave from Henry’s
parents. She remembered gripping someone’s arm so tightly that her nails cut through the fabric of her gloves. The lowering coffin seemed much larger than her husband and her mind flashed to an image of Henry’s body rolling back and forth inside the box. To keep from shrieking, she pictured herself inside there with him, her arms wrapped around his body to hold him in place.

Eventually time regained its form. She stopped hoarding sleep, and the bowls of soup her mother delivered to her bedside no longer grew cold. Meals in bed progressed to meals at the table—at first in bedclothes and then in proper clothes—and from there to assisting her mother in the kitchen. Soon she found herself undertaking short trips to the corner grocery for an essential item somehow “forgotten” by her mother; and in this way Lydia gradually reentered the world.

She would have preferred a world that no longer contained the Somerset. It seemed only fair the building that embodied her life with Henry should disappear along with him. Both Michael and her mother offered to pack up the flat, but she did not wish to cede that task; she was simply furious that the building was still standing when the decent thing would have been for it to sink into the earth. Her wrath was so acute that it overshadowed her dread of being pitied. On the day she returned, anger propelled her through the lobby and up the stairs to the fourth floor, heedless of those she passed on her way.

The fourth floor hallway was as indifferent to her as it had always been. Nothing about the door to the flat indicated that a man had died on the other side of it.
She had unlocked that door countless times when Henry had been alive. As she unlocked it now she could have just as easily been returning from errands—her wrist rotated the same way; the lock gave its small but resolute click. The idea that anything in this building should feel as it had before was intolerable. Lydia clamped the tip of her tongue between her jaws and held it there, pinioned by her teeth. There was not pain, only a growing pressure that would safeguard against familiarity. Biting her tongue, she opened the door and stepped into the flat.

It smelled the same. She had never attributed a particular smell to the flat before, but having been away from it she recognized it in an instant. It was cooking and clothes, bodies and housework; it was a compendium of little smells that embodied the scent of her and Henry. Standing inside the doorway, she inhaled the air in greedy draughts, trying to memorize the scent of her marriage before it disappeared.

According to Michael, at the funeral she had accepted her mother-in-law’s offer to help pack Henry’s things. Without Michael’s reminder she would not have known what to make of the cartons she found neatly lining the hall. In the bedroom, the bed had already been stripped. It was possible Lydia had done this herself but she did not think so. A faint pulse beat in the tip of her tongue. She could feel the edges of her front teeth pressing in. She sat on the mattress and dared herself to look at the floor. The onion poultice was gone. Some angel had removed it. Her hands had been clenched fists, but now her fingers unfurled.

Packing did not take long. Her clothes fit into one large suitcase. A second suitcase held odd things:
toiletries; a wooden oatmeal spoon brought from D Street; the Remedy ledger, labels, and correspondence. She placed Henry’s love letters in the same handbag that had held them before. Even in her visions of the Somerset’s destruction, she had spared these letters, imagining them resting unscathed on the blighted lot, awaiting her return. The tip of her tongue ached as a fingertip aches when tied too tightly with string. A faint coppery taste filled her mouth.

In the entryway, Henry’s life had been reduced to four boxes. Placed end to end, they would have made a narrow cot just long enough for Lydia to lie on and just shorter than the man whose effects they contained. She could too easily picture the boxes stacked in a corner of a disused room somewhere above the damask parlor, or their contents dispersed among Ernestine Wickett’s manifold charitable causes. In Lydia’s desire to save the boxes from such a fate, she imagined a room wallpapered with pages from Henry’s letters and notebooks and carpeted with his clothes. She would be the only one permitted to enter this room, and inside it she would do whatever she liked—cry or scream, laugh or sleep. But since no amount of wishing would bring this room into being, she would select for herself one article of Henry’s clothing and that was all.

The letter was fastened to the top of the first box of clothes. When she saw it, her mouth opened in surprise and the blood trapped in the tip of her tongue by her clenched teeth surged back into her body on its way to the heart.

“Dear Lydia,” the letter read in penmanship that looked just like Henry’s: