A Hole in the Universe (5 page)

Well, she didn’t blame him, she continued, not waiting for an answer. In fact, she’d still be in her old house, but after her mother died her sisters just about sold the place out from under her, they were so anxious to collect their share. “This lawyer I know says I should’ve billed the estate for all those years I took care of Ma, but what kind of person does that? I mean, she was my mother, and I was the only single one all those years, so naturally it was going to be me. But I never minded. I figure my time’s coming, you know what I mean?”

He had been thinking of his own mother traveling all that way, weekly at first. Every visit had begun with her tight-lipped censure and ended in tears as each tried to tell the other how sorry they were for everything.

“Oh, Gordon.” Delores shook her head and sighed. “I’m just boring the hell out of you, aren’t I, with all my talk.” Concern made her look even more unkempt.

“No,” he said tentatively, as if it were a question. “I guess I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”

“Oh, poor Gordon!” She moved next to him and put her arm over his shoulder. “You do. You look so tired.”

His thoughts roiled with the nudge of her breast against his arm. It was terrifying to be this inept, to not know what to say or do next. His face felt hot. She smelled like fruit, bruised and overripe.

“How about if I make some coffee? We can have dessert!” She started to get up. “Some nice, warm banana bread?”

“No, I don’t want any,” he answered too quickly.

She looked at him for a moment. “What’d you do today that made you so tired?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. If he mentioned the Market, she’d never leave.

She began to tell him about her boss’s son, who had been terribly depressed since losing his job. “He never goes anywhere. He’s always in the house. His mother wants him to see someone, but Albert says what he needs is a good kick in the behind, but it’s like I keep telling him, everyone’s got their own pace.” She gave Gordon a quick look. “I’ve told you about Albert, right? He’s a wonderful man, but he’s had to make it the hard way, so he can come off seeming a little gruff sometimes.”

Gordon felt he knew everything about Albert Smick. He used to think Delores had to be in love with the man, until he realized she was that effusive about everyone she liked.

After she left, he plumped the flattened sofa pillows. The wrinkled arm cover was on the floor. Leaving ripples in her wake, she disturbed things, left indentations in the rug, the door ajar, his heart beating uneasily. He never dared breathe too deeply when she was near. It wasn’t her fault, he knew, but his. Her kindness always frightened him, and now he felt guilty. He hadn’t even thanked her for all the pastry. He waited a few minutes, then called.

Breathless, she answered on the first ring. She said she had just gotten the key in the lock when she heard the phone. He hadn’t finished thanking her before she was thanking him for being such a good friend all these years; he would never know how much his letters had meant. And as she was driving home just now, it had started to sink in that he was really here. He was home. Her best friend in the whole world was finally home! After an awkward silence, he said good-bye. Wait, she said before he could hang up. Would he like to come to dinner Friday night? She’d bought a prime rib, because she knew that was his favorite meal—he’d told her once, medium rare, right? With baked potatoes and green beans. He didn’t remember ever telling her that, but it was true. He said he couldn’t. He said he had to go to Dennis’s that night.

“Oh!” There was a pause. “Well then, do you need a ride?”

“No. Thanks. I’m taking the bus.”

“Don’t do that. All those stops, it’ll take forever. I can get you there in ten minutes.”

“But I want to take the bus!” He paused to quell the panic in his voice. “I don’t mind the stops. I was looking forward to it. I haven’t been on a bus in such a long time.”

“That’s right. There must be so much you want to do now,” she said slowly. “But if you need something, whatever it is, will you call me? Please?”

I
n those first days at the Market, the two women plied Gordon with questions. His reticence intrigued them, his shy discomfort eliciting not just their own secrets, but customers’. The lady over there in the miniskirt, Allie, nice legs, huh? Well, she was really a man. And Leo, the butcher, he had been depressed ever since his wife ran off with the eighteen-year-old girl who used to live downstairs. From Gordon’s terse answers they learned that he had grown up in Collerton, then moved to the western part of the state. Hilldale, he said when they asked where.

“Hilldale! I never heard of that,” Serena said.

“Yes, you have!” June turned quickly back to him. “The prison’s there, right? Fortley. That’s where the worst ones go.”

The state prison, where everything was hard-core: the crime, the time, the men. He had few illusions. Exposure was inevitable, but for now he needed the anonymity of those blank spaces so that while pretending to be a normal man, he might learn how to be one. What he wanted most was to feel something. Anything but this deadness. For twenty-five years he had allowed himself only the present, this moment, this day. It was all he deserved or dared expect of time. He had not realized how strange freedom would be, how alien he would feel. They knew that he had worked in a library, a hospital, a laundry, a sign factory, that his parents were dead, that he lived alone, that he’d never been married. “No, never come close,” he’d answered when Serena asked.

“Really?” June said with an eager smile. She wanted him to meet her sister, who was single—well, divorced. She had four kids, but none of them lived at home now. Yes, Serena confided later, because they were all wards of the state. Not the kind of person he would want to get involved with. Serena was one to talk, Leo said the minute she left. She and her husband smoked pot with their teenage sons and didn’t see the least bit of harm in it.

On Friday, Neil Dubbin emerged from his fetid bunker. He spent an hour in the cluttered office, signing checks with a trembling hand between phone calls to his wife. She kept hanging up on him. When he started to cry, she listened long enough for him to apologize and beg her to let him come home again. Mary Dubbin must have said no, Serena reported back, because after Neil hung up he disappeared into his windowless room.

With the store empty, the women stood by the ladder while Gordon razored scraps of brittle tape off the front windows. June kept an eye out for Eddie Chapman, who’d been called back this morning to one of his construction sites.

“Eddie’s an asshole, but he means well,” Serena said.

The Dubbin family had been deeply disappointed in their daughter Cynthia’s choice of a husband, but it was always Eddie in his steel-toed boots and with grimy fingernails who was sent in to hold the place together until Neil sobered up. June said the only reason the Market hadn’t been sold long ago was that the family needed a place to stash Neil.

Gordon leaned toward the glass. The women’s voices skirmished for his attention.

“She never comes in here,” Serena said of Neil’s wife.

“It’s the city. She doesn’t feel
safe
anymore,” June said in a mocking tone.

“But the truth is, she just doesn’t want to be around Neil.”

“Drunk or sober.”

“At least when he’s drunk she’s got some control.”

“Yeah. See, the thing is, when he’s sober, he can be such a bastard. Like mean. Like really, really mean.”

“Yeah, you never know. You gotta be careful,” Serena warned.

“But the thing is, poor Neil, it’s like the meaner he gets, the worse e gets down on himself for it,” June said.

“Yeah, he’s like one of those people, the only time they’re happy is when somebody else is miserable.”

“So the thing is to just ignore him. That’s what we do.”

“Most of the time, anyway. Oh, shit,” Serena groaned. “Hey, Eddie, you’re back!”

“Where the hell is he?” Eddie stormed down the aisle.

“Up here,” Gordon said. The ladder teetered as he hurried down. This was a project he had chosen for himself. “That old tape. I’ve been trying to get it off. I should’ve—”

“He said he was gonna work!” Eddie bellowed, looking around.

“He did.” Serena explained how upset Neil had been after talking to his wife.

“He called her?” Eddie backhanded the new stack of
National Enquirer
s, scattering them across the floor. Gordon began to pick them up. “I told him not to call her. Oh, Christ, I’m so sick of this. I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I got a business to run. If he’s boozing again, that’s it!”

No, no. The women didn’t think so. Neil hadn’t left the store. Not once.

“Go look out back, then,” Eddie ordered Gordon. “Tell him I’m here for one minute and I gotta see him.”

Leo kept feeding chunks of beef into the grinder. He shook his head; he hadn’t seen Neil. Next, Gordon asked the stock boy, Thurman, who was smoking a cigarette outside on the loading platform. “No. But I seen you last night,” Thurman said, flicking the cigarette into the dirt. “You live near my aunt.”

“I do?” Gordon said uneasily.

“Yeah,” the boy said, rolling his dark eyes. Yesterday Eddie had cut the boy’s hours in half. With so many holdups in the neighborhood, they needed someone big up front. So Thurman was hauling garbage and rounding up shopping carts, a humiliating demotion in a job he hated. As long as he stayed in school and kept his job at the Market, his grandmother would let him live with her.

Gordon made his careful way through the messy back rooms. This morning he had dislodged a stack of fruit crates, sending oranges and grapefruit rolling in every direction. It was a shame. Old Mr. Dubbin had been so organized, he used to know where every bit of stock was in the store. Neil’s door was ajar. “Mr. Dubbin? Excuse me. Mr. Dubbin?” he called softly, then leaned into the dark, airless room. Water was running. He tapped on the bathroom door. Neil Dubbin emerged, patting his newly shaven face with a dingy towel. He nodded sheepishly as Gordon relayed Eddie Chapman’s message. He said he’d be right out. He was almost ready.

“Wait,” he called before Gordon could leave. “What’s your name again? I forgot.”

“Gordon.”

“Gordon? Gordon what?”

“Loomis.”

“Loomis?” The hand with the towel dropped to his side. “How long you been working?”

“Since eight.”

“I mean, here. What day? When’d you start?”

“Monday. I came in the afternoon.”

“Who hired you?” He leaned closer. “Wasn’t me, was it?”

“Yes. Well, in a sense. But actually I guess it was Eddie. I mean Mr. Chapman.”

“Mr. Chapman!” Neil laughed. “No. You were right the first time. You mean Eddie.” He laughed again. “So how’s Denny doing? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He’s fine. He’s doing well, thank you.” Gordon kept trying to swallow.

“So, what happened? How’d you . . .” He twirled his hand. “You know, end up here?”

“The sign. It said, HELP WANTED.”

“No, I mean, how’d you get out?” He laughed. “You didn’t escape, did you?” Dubbin’s gleeful wonder escalated. “I mean, you’re not on the fucking lam or anything, are you?”

“I was paroled,” he said, the word a stone’s weight upon his tongue.

Delores Dufault checked her watch again. Almost six, and Albert still hadn’t let her know about tonight. She had called him this morning at the Dearborn store, but he couldn’t really talk. He’d have to get back to her on the details. All day long she had assumed that meant yes, that he was coming to dinner, but now she wasn’t so sure. She was tempted to call again, but that would irritate him, so she’d been trying to keep busy until she heard from him. Their night together had always been Friday or Monday, depending on Albert’s schedule. Holidays belonged to his family, of course. Lately, though, she’d hardly seen him at all. The new store was taking up all his time. It was already doing three times the business the old one was, he had said almost accusingly. But what did he expect with all their old customers going to the Dearborn store? Albert said people didn’t want to drive into the poor, grim city of Collerton, which was precisely why he had opened the new store in Dearborn’s affluent little downtown. Rents might be sky-high in Dearborn, but that’s where the customers were.

Kiki said the handwriting was on the wall; it was only a matter of time before Smick Stationery closed, like so many other Collerton stores. Delores hadn’t called her since. If she wanted to be put down, all she had to do was call one of her sisters. She didn’t need it from her best friend.

When Delores finished refilling the greeting-card display rack, she noticed that the manila envelopes on the rounder were getting low. She looked out back but couldn’t find any. As he had everything else, Albert must have taken them to the new store and forgotten to tell her so she could order more. He couldn’t seem to keep things straight lately. Orders were always being messed up, and last month he’d sent three checks to the wrong suppliers. The problem was his family. They wouldn’t be happy until they’d drained every bit of energy and happiness out of the poor man. All he got at home were complaints and coldness. It killed her to see that perky little wife of his in her sleek workout clothes breeze in here with her painted smile, calling everyone honey and sugar in her fiercely guarded southern drawl, when Delores knew what a calculating, self-centered woman she really was. His son was a leech, and his daughter was a spoiled brat whose prep-school tuition and brand-new sports car left her poor father too broke even to buy himself a decent pair of shoes. Two Christmases ago, Delores had bought him the expensive English cordovans he had worn every day since. It was depressing to see the heels all worn down, his wrinkled pants, and the frayed collars. Didn’t his wife care? Or as usual, was Delores the only one who did? She slammed the storeroom door and stood by the front window, looking out at the street.