Sorrow Floats Page 34

  “The cur what’s-his-name burnt it down.”

  “Ashley Montagu,” Marcella said.

  “Wasn’t that the guy in Gone With the Wind?”

  Marcella poured milk from a glass milk pitcher. “Wilkes. The guy in Gone With the Wind was Ashley Wilkes.”

  “She wants the barn rebuilt,” Lloyd said. “I went through to see if there’s anything worth keeping and what it would take to clear the foundation.”

  “Did you ever do any carpentry?” I asked.

  He shrugged his bare shoulders. “She just needs to know what’s out there. I won’t be here to drive the nails.”

  “Where is Granma, anyway?” I asked. “She’s passing up a chance to criticize us.”

  Even though I hadn’t asked, Marcella cut me another chunk of ham. “She’s with Shane and the doctor. Dr. Keller drove out after his regular office closed for the day.” Marcella smiled. “When you’re ninety, doctors still make house calls.”

  Brad couldn’t believe it. “That lady is ninety?”

  I said, “Shane hates doctors. He’d never allow one to touch him.” We’d tried to drag him off to a doctor in Chattanooga that morning and he’d thrown a Shane fit—threatened to make all our lives miserable if we didn’t take him straight home.

  “He didn’t have much choice this time,” Lloyd said. “Granma’s in charge.”

  Brad got up with his dishes. “Now that I’ve met Granma, I’m not so certain Ashley Montagu was a cur.”

  Lloyd said, “You’re starting to talk like Maurey.”

  I took that as a compliment.

  ***

  After supper I carried my coffee out on the front porch to watch the light change. Hank Elkrunner once told me you can’t go crazy if you take the time each day to sit quietly and watch the sun come up and go down. I’d almost as soon go crazy as wake up for sunrise, but I’ve found half the deal helps a lot.

  Andrew waved at me from across the yard. He’d made it his personal mission to knock down the birdbath, which meant running as hard as he could and hurling himself into the base. He wasn’t having any effect on the birdbath, but he had managed to scare away the birds.

  I felt drained. It had been almost twenty-four hours since I drank anything alcoholic, and that was only a juice glass of Scotch, but I didn’t feel the usual knot in my stomach and nail in my spine. My spine hurt, sure, but that was from being kicked. Maybe one pain blew away the other pain. The physical symptoms when you want a drink and can’t have one are way different from the physical symptoms when you don’t want a drink. In the end, the addiction wins either way, but that first forty-eight hours or so, mental attitude has a major influence on physical discomfort. So to speak. As it were.

  The screen door banged and Marcella came out to stand next to me and watch Andrew climb the birdbath. She was wearing a sweater, which is what people from warm climates do when the temperature dips below seventy. Somehow, Andrew had gotten his feet up in the basin and was hanging upside down by his heels, hollering for help. Neither one of us took it seriously enough to leave the porch.

  “The doctor is still with Shane,” Marcella said.

  “How’s it look?”

  She used her hands to pull her hair behind her ears. “You know doctors, they won’t tell you anything until they’re ready. Shane’s awake, anyway, he’s not delirious anymore.”

  Some kind of cricket or locust or something we don’t have back home started buzz sawing in the trees. That’s the kind of noise, if you’re raised on it, you find comforting, but if you’re not, it gives you the willies. Marcella hugged her elbows with her hands and stared up the road toward the tracks. I turned to check out what she was watching and saw the Oldsmobile.

  “Let him come in,” I said.

  Marcella rocked back a few inches. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s time to forgive. Hugo’s had enough.”

  “But you said throw him out on his ass.”

  It was my turn to be taken back. “Marcella, I’m amazed. A week ago you’d have choked if you tried to say ass.”

  She blushed from the neck. “You said never forgive a man who fools around.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “One of the reasons I’ve been so strong with him is because I’m trying to be more like you.”

  “Oh, Lord, Marcella, don’t do that.”

  Andrew fell off the birdbath on his head. He rolled over and got up shaky, then he kicked the stone, which hurt his foot so he had to sit down again.

  “You think it can ever be the same between me and Hugo?” Marcella asked.

  Watching Andrew and being sober made me ache for Auburn more than ever. “It can’t be the same, but you can make it okay.”

  Marcella walked across the yard and lifted Andrew onto the birdbath. He stood with a foot on each side of the rim, his arms held high, and shouted, “King of the mountain.”

  Marcella looked back at me and said, “About Armand. It wasn’t all your fault. He fooled me at first, too, and I wasn’t even drunk.”

  “Thanks.”

  She smiled, then turned and walked up the driveway toward the Oldsmobile.

  46

  Lloyd sat on a couch in the living room, watching television and eating frozen grapefruit juice from the can with a spoon. It was odd, seeing him on regular furniture, watching regular television. I’d never connected Lloyd to normal things people do.

  “It’s called Bridget Loves Bernie,” he said, gesturing at the TV with his spoon. “One’s Jewish and one’s Catholic, and their parents can’t adjust.”

  I sat in an antique rocker that would have been great for nursing babies. It creaked gently as I leaned back. “Which one is Jewish?”

  “Bernie, I think. That’s more a Jewish name.”

  “Only Jewish kid I knew growing up was named Pete. Once a year he passed out crackers to everyone in class.”

  Bridget wore her hair the way I did before I went crazy and attacked myself with the scissors.

  “Will Shane die?” I asked.

  The spoon stopped moving. “I think so.”

  Bernie’s mother yammered at Bridget a mile a minute in real condescending tones. If I’d been Bridget, I would have said, “Go fuck yourself, bitch.”

  “Should I stop drinking?”

  Lloyd glanced at me, then back at the TV. I’ve noticed most people do best in serious conversations if you don’t look at them and they don’t have to look at you. “That’s your decision. If you do stop, I’ll be here to help.”

  “The way Shane helped you in Mexico City?”

  His eyes clouded, I suppose thinking of those days in Mexico City. “Yes.”

  I leaned forward, toward Lloyd, looking right at him. “But you’re going off to Florida.”

  On the television, a cartoon penguin urged us to smoke Kool menthol cigarettes. He wore a green stocking cap and glissaded down a chunk of ice. “I’ll stay with you till you don’t need me anymore,” Lloyd said.

  “Shane stayed with you three years.”

  “You won’t need me three years.”

  “How do you know?”

  Still without looking at me, he said, “If you do, we’ll look for Sharon together.”

  That would be an odd way to live, driving around the countryside, partners with a man searching for his wife. A permanent Moby Dick trip. I studied Lloyd’s face with its web of lines and crucified eyes. He slid a spoonful of frozen juice between his lips, swished it around, and swallowed. Had I missed something, or had we just sworn to a major commitment?

  ***

  Dr. Keller came through the living room after he left Shane. The doctor wore a suit vest but no coat. His glasses were the kind without ear pieces that hang from your pocket by a ribbon. They clipped on his nose and made his forehead wrinkle when he focused on somethin
g. People in Agatha Christie books wore weird glasses like these, but no one I’d ever seen or heard of in real life did. Maybe the doctor read too much Agatha Christie and became one of her characters. I’ve known cowboys to do that with Louis L’Amour.

  “Granma gave orders I was to look at you before leaving the house,” Dr. Keller said.

  “She did?”

  “Hold your face to the light.”

  The doctor inspected my chin and burned hand, then felt the knot on the back of my head. He had me lean forward while he poked at my lower back, asking, “Does this hurt? Does this hurt? How about here?”

  I answered, “Yes, yes, yes,” but he didn’t seem impressed.

  He had me unbutton my top two shirt buttons and breathe deeply while he listened for gurgles in my lungs.

  “How is Shane?” Lloyd asked.

  The doctor slid the cold stethoscope across my chest. “Mr. Rinesfoos might live through the night. I wouldn’t bet on tomorrow.”

  “He’s dying?” I asked.

  As he listened to my chest, the doctor cocked his head to one side, like a bird. “Oh, yes, he’s dying all right.”

  “Shouldn’t we take him to a hospital?”

  “I have done everything possible to make him comfortable. There is no real point to admitting him, and, evidently, he wants to die at home.” Dr. Keller gave a soft chuckle. “The man has quite a forceful personality, you know. Not unlike his grandmother.”

  He finished and put away his doctor tools. “No broken bones or internal bleeding. That cut on your face should have been stitched, but it’s too late now. Better to leave it open, let it breathe. I’m afraid you’ll have a rather nasty scar.”

  “You think it would help my back if I don’t pick strawberries tomorrow?”

  The chuckle came again. “Oh, no, work is the best thing—keep you from stiffening up.” He snapped his black bag shut. “You’re the woman Mr. Rinesfoos rescued, aren’t you?”

  “I’m the woman.”

  “I wouldn’t feel too badly if I were you. He would have died in another year or two anyway.”

  ***

  Too tired to sleep. Desperate to sleep. Granma or someone equally sadistic would bang on the door at dawn to drag my ass into the strawberry fields. Panic sets in—knowing you’re exhausted beyond human endurance yet you must be back on your feet in so many hours makes every moment of rest too precious to waste lying there wishing you could sleep.

  I stared up from my bunk bed at the bottom of the top bunk bed. This was Shane’s very own room from God knows how long ago when he was a boy. Those were Shane’s hangers in the closet and Shane’s chest of drawers with the framed black-and-white photographs of Shane, upright, in a graduation gown and funny hat. Those stains on the box springs two feet above my nose were no doubt made forty-five or fifty years ago when a thinner Shane, who was Andrew then, lay right where I was now and whacked himself off in the dark. It staggers the imagination to picture people of an older generation masturbating.

  Sounds of Gunsmoke drifted up through the floor. Lloyd and Brad were down there in the living room, held captive by Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty. Did Matthew and Miss Kitty hump? That was the crucial question of an entire decade of American history. First there was the atomic bomb, then the Cold War, and finally Matt Dillon’s sex life. And why bunk beds? Had there been another Shane, a brother who died or didn’t die or what? If Granma really was his granma—which was debatable since everyone from the doctor to the black guy in the field called her Granma—then that implied a middle generation, a Mom and Dad. No wonder I couldn’t sleep. I was going crazy.

  I rolled over facedown with my arms tucked at my sides, then back over with both hands clasped on my belly, like a laid-out corpse. Nothing worked. I didn’t need a newspaper to tell me Granma was one of those hated fanatics who claim it’s a sin to sleep past sunrise. Which I wouldn’t mind if they kept it to themselves, but in my sleepless heart I knew Granma accepted no internal clock but her own. Sunrise—get up. Sunset—sleep. Do it my way or else. That’s how grouchy people get to be so old while pleasant people who don’t bother anyone die young.

  “It’s no bother.” Those were Dad’s last words to me. He’d called to see if I wanted some gourds they’d picked up at a farmers market in Idaho. Auburn was two months old and I said I couldn’t drive out to the ranch until Thursday, and Dad said he’d bring them in after he rounded up a couple of cows the next day. I said, “Don’t make a special trip to town,” and Dad said, “It’s no bother.” I should have told him I loved him or would miss him or something, but, Jeeze, you can’t walk around every day thinking, What if my loved ones die before I see them again? You’d go nuts.

  If Shane died in the next hour, his last words to me would be “My rod’s hot as a firecracker.” He probably planned it that way.

  The last time I saw Sam’s grandfather, before he died, I’d flown to Greensboro for Christmas my sophomore year at UW. It was right after the Park heartbreak thing, and I thought Sam and Shannon would help me find sanity. Sam’s grandfather Caspar had already suffered a couple of mini-strokes, and he wasn’t in great shape. Christmas morning he leaned on his cane next to the tree and recited Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Hiawatha.” I read the directions while Sam and Shannon tried to assemble a L’il Miss Doll House. No one paid any attention to Caspar. Two weeks later, he was dead.

  When lightning killed Molly, my whole world was devastated. If I ever go to a shrink, I think I’ll tell her that was the moment the happy part of my life ended. I still mourn that horse, and the deal is even more complicated because I mourn her in a way I don’t mourn Dad. So I feel guilty that my grief for Dad isn’t as pure as my grief for my horse. When Molly died, I felt horrible; when Dad died all I felt was hollow. And to prove I really loved Dad the way you’re supposed to, I adopted self-destruction as a personal style—made myself ugly by cutting my hair and stupid by staying drunk.

  Let’s cut to the crux of all this sleep-avoidance mishmash: My mistakes ended someone else’s life. Shane would die because I screwed up. I didn’t want to ever forget that.

  A knock so gentle it had to be Marcella came at the door. “Maurey, are you asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  She cracked open the door. “Shane is asking to see you.”

  I rolled over on my side to consider what that meant. Accusations? A deathbed forgiveness scene? Shane had squeezed drama from every situation in his life, no reason to think he would stop at this point.

  Marcella slipped through the light into the room. “He said to wake you on account of he’d probably die before morning.”

  “I’d have come without extortion.”

  “Shane wanted to be certain.”

  47

  When I cut through the living room Lloyd and Brad looked up from the couch but didn’t say anything. Merle lay curled in a fur ball, asleep in Brad’s lap. From the rocker, Hugo Sr. smiled through his rectangular glasses. He nodded at the TV and said, “I liked Festus better.”

  On Gunsmoke a cowboy named Newley or Muley or something like that helped an overdressed lady into a stagecoach. I said, “Everyone likes Festus better.”

  Hugo Sr.’s box head bobbed up and down. “Ain’t it the truth.”

  ***

  Granma sat under a semicircle of light at a rolltop desk doing whatever paperwork people who run farms do. She one-finger-punched her calculator with the force of punching out eyeballs, then scowled through bifocal wire rims at whatever results the calculator had the audacity to cough up. So far as I could tell, the bifocals were Granma’s only admission that time touched her body or mind.

  “I was just thinking about Mary Beth,” Shane said. “She was such a lovely, energetic girl. I wonder if there’s not something we could do to help her.”

  “Who?” Shane’s side of the room was so dark it took a few seconds to loc
ate him under the massive quilt that must have been passed down from the Civil War.

  “Mary Beth. Critter. She’s much too vivacious to attach herself to that manipulative snake with the ridiculous name.”

  Shane’s forehead and upper lip glistened with sweat. Drops collected on all three chins and ran into the creases in his neck. His eyes glittered like purple lights on a Christmas tree, but they seemed to be withdrawing into the flesh beneath his eyebrows. I slid into a chair still warm from Marcella and picked a damp washrag from a bowl on the nightstand. I guess it’s an automatic response to wipe sweat off sick people’s brows.

  “Critter was wonderfully happy and curious when I met her. One look and I knew she was the one to make me feel young again. I wish I could have kept her. You probably are unaware that she loves strawberries. Of all my women, I recall Critter most vividly.”

  “I guess you always remember the last one most vividly.”

  “Critter was not the last woman I slept with, you know.”

  I wasn’t sure if that meant he didn’t sleep with her or he’d slept with someone since. I held his hand. “Tell me about the last one.”

  He gave my fingers a weak squeeze. “She was a confused girl with a raging fire inside that had been so insulated by her fear of love, no warmth came to the surface.”

  Didn’t take any idiot to tell he was talking about me. “That was first aid, Shane. Don’t go around saying we’ve slept together.”

  “When I am in heaven and called up to testify before God concerning the many beautiful breasts I’ve taken comfort between, yours shall lead the list. You should see Maurey’s tits, Granma. Show Granma your tits.”

  Granma glared at me with blatant hostility. You’d have a monumental battle if you threw her hawk eyes up against Lloyd’s Jesus look. Could he absorb anger faster than she fired it out? Would her drive to judge saturate his capacity to accept? Las Vegas could lay out the odds.