Stash (12 page)

“You got blasted,” Guy said. “Fucking Hajis. Does it still hurt?”

“Not really.”

“Sorry, man. At least you’re home now.”

Home. “Where you working?”

“National Grid, I got a gig as a lineman, working second shift so I get all the emergencies, cars running into the poles and shit. Tonight’s my night off.”

Guy’s girlfriend came into the room, wearing sweatpants and a too-small T-shirt. She’d put on makeup and brushed her hair. She was tall with a big ass and boobs. She’d be someone to wrestle. That was another thing he hadn’t done in over a year: gotten laid. Or even kissed a girl. That was something he needed to do real soon. He’d had a girlfriend during his one semester at college, but she transferred to Boston University and stopped returning his phone calls and texts after he’d been made a regular and sent to the desert.

Guy said, “This is Rose. She goes to ACC, just like you did.”

She gawked at Aaron’s face, the part caved in below the eye where a chunk of his cheekbone was gone.

“Sorry I disturbed you,” Aaron said.

Rose fidgeted. “That’s okay, you didn’t. Are you hungry? We
don’t have much. There’s cereal and I think some hot dogs in the refrigerator.”

“I’m not too hungry.”

The three of them fell silent for a moment. Finally, Rose said, “We only have one bedroom, but you can sleep on the couch.”

He lived on the couch for two days and the third morning before Rose and Guy woke up he dug Jude’s card out of his jacket pocket and called the number on it.

“You want to see the plants?” Aaron asked. At least that was something he could be proud of.

He led Jude inside and through the kitchen to a door that Aaron opened into a room as bright as midday sun. The windows were covered with blackout shades and the walls painted a brilliant glossy white. Rows of alternating metal halide and high-pressure sodium light fixtures beamed down on the grid of young plants rising from their nutrient-soaked trays. A three-foot-diameter ceiling fan hummed above. Aaron had researched and found out about painting the walls to reflect more of the light. He also rigged the system of chains and pulleys he used to raise and lower the lights to be the right distance from the plants as they grew.

Jude squinted from the glare, shading his eyes with one hand. He touched one of the plants, the stem thin and fragile.

“These are the new ones,” Aaron said. “The last crop is drying next door.”

He opened the door to what once served as a small bedroom and stood back and let Jude step in first. Clothesline spaced a foot apart crisscrossed the room. From each clothespin hung a thick
bud on its stem, the tips of the flowers purple and frosty. Two fans oscillated on the floor, blowing air over the buds, like a breeze playing with laundry on the line.

“What do you think, thirty pounds?”

“I’ll bet more.”

Jude fingered one of the buds. Resin stuck to his fingers.

“You’ve got a green thumb, anyone ever tell you that?”

His mother had told him that once, when he was a kid, and he had looked at his thumb, unsure what she’d meant. He still could see how she smiled when he did that, feel how she kissed his face. He used to help her plant flowers along the fence in their backyard. She showed him how to use a hand spade and which way to point the bulb in the dirt. He’d forgotten about gardening with his mother, never would have remembered it again if Jude hadn’t mentioned a green thumb.

“I got some honey oil, too, just from cleaning off the trimming shears. You need hash?”

“I’ll take some when I pick this up. When will it be ready?”

“A few more days is all it needs. It’s drying good.”

“I’ll be back within a week, I’ll let you know. And this time no shotgun.”

They returned through the kitchen, which Aaron also used as his bedroom, sleeping on a bed he’d put in place of the dining table. At the foot of the bed was a wide-screen TV on a stand, wires running along the floor and out through the wall to a satellite dish mounted on the roof. The generator emitted a constant hum and in the background the fans flitted.

When they were outside again, Jude looked around and said, “I might need someone to drive a couple of important deliveries.”

“I could do that.”

“You got a passport?”

“Still got my military ID.”

“You can’t be fucking up on me. I heard you were getting high in the parking lot of my restaurant.”

Was he? He didn’t remember.

“Sorry, sir.”

“Is that what you think my place of business is for?”

“No, sir.”

Jude turned around and headed for his van. Aaron gave Jude the finger behind his back. Drive the big runs. Fuck that. There was nothing big about this guy and Aaron was going nowhere with him, even though he worked like a mule in this backwoods hideout and cultivated superior product, as good as any Aaron had ever seen or tasted.

Jude hesitated at the van, turned to face Aaron again.

Come on, just leave, for shit’s sake. But Jude was hanging, holding back. Looking close at him, trying to make eye contact, as if on the verge of a decision.

“By the way,” Jude said, “the mums look great.”

Gwen parked at the end of a short single row of cars on a narrow, hilly lane in Niskayuna Rural Cemetery. Behind the gray hearse and matching limousine, she counted five other cars. She had expected more people. The obit had mentioned that James Anderson was an active community member and retired professor. Had he outlived his circle or made enemies of those he knew? Gwen would not go unnoticed here, approaching the tidy group alone and late, stepping between granite tombstones, trying to maintain a dignified posture with her heels sinking into the grass.

A dozen or so heads bowed in front of a brushed silver casket topped with cascading flowers. Gwen had memorized the names from the newspaper: son Walter, daughter Sheila. And the four grandchildren: Tyler, Lily, Connor, and Michael.

That must be the daughter, Sheila, the one dressed like a widow in black dress and veil, a man on either side supporting her, although her square frame appeared sturdy and firmly planted. That must be her husband to one side, and on the other, her brother. Next to them stood a younger woman, the lone black face among a bouquet of lilies, holding a toddler in her arms. The grandchildren were teenagers, sullen boys in ill-fitting jackets, the blue-haired girl staring off into the trees.

Gwen stood at the back of the group, a small gap between herself and the others. A few faces turned to notice her. The morning
was humid and hazy. Sweat trickled beneath her dark sleeves and her forehead glistened. The stitches over her eye itched.

The priest spoke about the good and noble life of James Anderson, which should not be overshadowed by the last few difficult years.

About his reunion with God.

Gwen had no image of who lay inside this casket. She’d never seen James or even a photograph of him. There’d been no glance of his face through the windshield just before the accident, no screaming imprint in her mind. The way the light had reflected the sky on the glass, the speed of the event—it might have been an empty car that crossed her path. But it wasn’t.

Now the priest sprinkled holy water on the casket. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust …” And now he made his way among the mourners, flicking sprinkles of holy water from a golden nozzle onto the family. Even in the back, standing to one side, Gwen felt a few drops like the first hint of rain. Cicadas twanged in the nearby trees.

Brian had been against her attending the funeral. He questioned whether she’d be welcome at the service. After she’d spoken to him about it on the phone, he’d come home from work a few hours later in a curt, cranky mood, going so far as to call it a stupid idea.

“Whether I’m welcome or not isn’t the point,” Gwen insisted. They didn’t often accuse each other of having stupid ideas.

“Then what is the point? Why do you want to insert yourself in this situation?”

“To pay my respects to someone who died in an accident I was involved in.”

“Gwen, stop blaming yourself for what happened. He hit
you
.”

“I’m not blaming myself, but I feel awful.”

“Then send flowers to the family, buy a mass card.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“I think it will only make things harder for you.”

“And I think it’s the right thing to do, even if it is hard. I need to go.”

“Then it’s not about paying respects to the family, it’s about getting closure for yourself.”

Closure. She hated that word. She didn’t believe in it. All those self-help articles and therapists who spoke about achieving closure after traumatic events: death, divorce, downsizing. Such chasms don’t close so neat and tidy; they reveal a new path that alters the course of your life. Like the time she’d had an abortion and afterward visited a cemetery, a different one from this one, in a different city, and sat on a bench until closing at dusk when a guard on patrol approached and asked her to leave the grounds. She’d made up her mind that evening never to have another abortion, no matter what. She didn’t look upon that assertion as an ending or a closure ritual; it was a life decision, one that made a big impact once Brian came along and she became pregnant again, this time with Nora.

The service ended and the group parted and moved about and the teenagers sat together under the canopy of a willow tree. The priest put an arm around James’s daughter, Sheila. Gwen should approach the family, she should say something—to somebody. Express regrets, explain the reason for her presence. She was not a funeral crasher.

Before she could take initiative, one of the men peeled from the group and approached her.

“I’m Walt Anderson—James’s son.”

Gwen had guessed his identity correctly.

“My sister wants to know who you are.”

Gwen introduced herself.

“I was the driver of the other car in the accident. I thought … I wanted to pay my respects. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Walt nodded. “The car my father struck. I’m sorry you had to be involved. He never should have been driving with his condition. It’s kind of you to come.”

Take that, Brian, I told you it was the right thing for me to be here.

“I see you didn’t come through the accident unscathed,” Walt said.

Gwen fingered her stitches. “Oh, this is nothing, nothing compared to …” Compared to a dead man.

“Who is it?” the daughter, Sheila, called out, loud enough that the others present turned their focus on Gwen.

“My father had Alzheimer’s,” Walt explained. “He lived with my sister—at her insistence, although it was very challenging for her.”

“Walter! Who is it?”

Walt shrugged as if apologizing to Gwen. “The car keys were hidden, but he must have come across them while looking for something else, who knows what. And the next thing he’s driving somewhere, who knows where. He talked a lot about the Adirondacks, where he’d grown up, but he was driving in the other direction when the accident happened.”

“That must have been frightening for you, not knowing where he’d gone.”

“It’s like having a two-year-old,” Walt said. “You don’t know what they’ll get into—you can’t leave them alone. I should know, I have one now. That’s my daughter, Mali, over there; my wife is holding her.”

He motioned to the black woman and the youngster in her arms, standing apart from the others.

Gwen went through the list of grandchildren mentioned in the obituary: no Mali.

Sheila made her way over to where Gwen and Walt stood, her husband following several paces behind.

“Sheila, this is Gwen Raine. She was kind enough to come for Dad. She was driving the car that Dad struck.”

Sheila flinched, as if a bug had flown into her face. “You,” she said.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Gwen said. “Your brother was just mentioning that you cared for your father—I mean, that he lived with you. I’m sure it was a great comfort to him being with his family.”

“You were on drugs,” Sheila snapped.

Now it was Gwen’s turn to flinch. “Mrs.…” Gwen started and stopped. She didn’t remember Sheila’s last name, hadn’t prepared for this.

Sheila moved closer, swaying in and out of Gwen’s face, like a boxer feinting.

“You were high on drugs. You struck and killed an innocent person. I know what happened. I have a friend in the Morrissey police. She told me all about it.”

“Sheila, that’s not what happened,” Walt said.

“You should be in prison. And what do you get—all you get is a black eye.”

“Sheila, please,” Walt said. He tried to put an arm on his sister. She brushed him off.

“What religion are you?”

“Um, well …” Gwen didn’t have a concise answer for the woman. She had a long and convoluted answer that she and Brian
worked out with the kids, about how people have different beliefs regarding God and religion and each person has to make their own decision and right now their family was not any one particular religion by name, but their goal was to introduce their kids to … It was the usual agnostic plea bargain from parents who had lapsed. But Nora wanted to wear a white dress and receive her First Communion like other girls in her class. Or celebrate eight nights of Hanukkah. Or at least know more about Episcopalians, the faith both Brian and Gwen had been raised in.

“Just as I thought,” Sheila said. “And you probably have young children.” She crossed herself.

“Sheila, let it go,” Walt said.

“Are you a mother?”

“I don’t see why that matters,” Gwen said, ready to fight back now.

“Oh, those poor innocent babes.”

“We should get going,” Walt said. “We’re expected back at the house.”

But Sheila would not let up. “If it weren’t for God—if it weren’t for the grace of God, where would I have found the strength to care for Dad every day? It’s me, I’m the one who …” She started to cry and fought back tears with the righteous defiance of a martyr about to be stoned.

Her husband, who had yet to say a word, took her arm.

“I’ve got a good mind to sue you for wrongful death. I can, you know,” Sheila said.