The Bubble Reputation (27 page)

Larry threw Andy's letter onto the floor. He wished the Howard F. Honig College would accept the pimply faced youth, get him the hell out of Bixley. He was driving Larry crazy, sitting on a bar stool at Murphy's nightly and talking about his future education when the rest of the regulars were trying to sip their beers and watch their beloved Red Sox on the tiny television set over the bar. With every home run, every base hit, every well-placed pitch, Larry ached for his little brother. But Henry would never again hear a Boston bat crack to deliver a home run. He would never see a well-hit line drive
whap!
itself into a Red Sox glove to deliver the last out of the game. He would never know that his and Jeanie's only son, Chad, was drinking too much beer and driving Henry's old motorbike so fast around the curved roads of Bixley that it was unlikely the boy would see his eighteenth birthday. Henry would never know that Jeanie was now going to a psychologist, too warped with grief to carry on by herself. Henry would never know, nor would he believe, that Larry had taken up the mail sack for him, that Larry Munroe was now delivering letters all over Bixley in Henry's stead,
Larry,
who was to have been a happily married schoolteacher and father for all his earthly days.
Larry,
who was now a single mailman living again with his parents, while his child lived in another house, in another city. And Henry would never know that Evie—ah, Evie with those magnificent breasts—had decided to let his brother, Larry, know what those breasts felt like in his hands. Henry would never know.

EVIE

Ever since she was a child, Evie Cooper has seen the faces of those who have passed on to the other side. Mostly, she watches them filter by in a steady stream, like the line that inches forward at a movie theater. But every now and then, one of those restless souls will stop short and turn to look at Evie. They lean forward, as if they're staring into a mirror at their own reflections. Sometimes, they seem confused, as if their eyes are searching through a trunk for an item they've left behind. These are the special people. These are the faces of the dead that Evie Cooper can study well enough to draw. She makes part of her living expenses from spirit noses, and eyes, and mouths shaped like small bows. Evie Cooper makes dollars and cents from sketching angel hair.

Until she was seven years old, Evie thought
everyone
saw the faces of the dead. It was not until Rosemary Ann that she learned the truth. Rosemary had come to her one afternoon when Evie was sitting in the backseat of her father's car. He was driving and her mother sat in the passenger seat. Spring had just arrived in Temple City, Pennsylvania, and all the streets were lined with budding trees. Kids were wheeling about on bicycles and old men sat stiffly on park benches, talking up their pasts. Rosemary Ann must have loved spring, too, the way the hazelnut bushes cascade out over riverbanks, the nesting birds, the hazy clouds drifting across the sky. That's probably why Rosemary Ann visited Evie in the springtime, in her father's Kaiser Manhattan, with the automatic buttons and the plush green seats. But then, the faces of the dead often come to Evie when she's driving. It's as if speed can take her to them, can enable her to catch up to their vaporous heels. Rosemary Ann came to Evie while she and her parents were driving past the Temple City Movie Theater. The movie was
The
Alamo
, starring John Wayne as Davy Crockett, a man who fought to his death in the famous Texan battle. There was a poster in the window of the actor himself, wearing a coonskin cap and holding a rifle over his shoulder. The movie had won the Academy Award because Davy Crockett had really wanted to live. Maybe Rosemary Ann wanted to live, too. Maybe that's why Evie saw her sitting between her parents in the front seat, acting as if she were their only little girl, as if life were something you could put back on once you take it off. As if life might be an old coat.

What Evie felt then was jealousy rising up in her like a hot liquid, bubbling to get out. Yes, it was jealousy that rescued Evie Cooper from her ignorance. Jealousy set her free, loosed the artist that was hiding in her soul. She sometimes wondered what she would have become in life had it not been for that afternoon, had it not been spring, with life bursting the seams on Temple City. It was such a beautiful day, with brownish dogs floating above the green grass in the park and vendors selling ice cream and newspapers. The sidewalk shops had spilled out into the streets, with sales on towels and dresses and woven baskets. What would have happened to Evie Cooper if they hadn't driven past the theater on that glorious day? Would Rosemary Ann have bothered to come? “What is that little girl doing here?” Evie had asked. When her mother turned to look, Evie knew instantly this was something important. She could see it in her mother's eyes. Even as a child, Evie relied heavily upon the human eye and what it speaks.
What
little
girl? What little girl? What little girl
? the eyes were asking. “There's a little girl sitting between you and Daddy,” Evie said. “Right there.” And that's when Rosemary Ann had turned around and looked at Evie with the most curious stare.
On
the
contrary, what are
you
doing
here?
That's what Rosemary Ann's eyes wanted to know. “Make her go away,” Evie said. “I don't want her to sit there.”

Evie's mother said nothing for a time, but as the Kaiser turned the street at Cresent Drugstore, she leaned across the girl she couldn't see and grabbed the steering wheel. “For Christ's sake, Helen,” Evie's father said. “Do you want to kill us all?” Angry, he pulled the Kaiser up to the curb in front of the drugstore. “This isn't going to start again, is it?” he asked. But Evie's mother wasn't listening. Instead, she fumbled for her purse and then opened the door. “You can't go in,” Evie said. Rosemary Ann had seemed about to follow, one small leg already out of the car. “I don't want you with my mummy.” That was when Evie's father swung around in his seat, his eyes glaring like black ice. “Stop it!” he said. “You don't even realize what you're doing.” Rosemary Ann, her long brown ringlets trickling down her back, had mimicked him.
You
don't even realize what you're doing.
“Shut up!” Evie shouted. Jealousy was on fire inside her heart. Jealousy was eating her alive. “What did you say?” her father asked. And before Evie could explain, he slapped a hand across her mouth. She had never been slapped by anyone in her whole seven years of life. Her eyes filled with tears, but she was too embarrassed to cry, especially in front of such a pretty girl.

And then Evie's mother was back, a notepad in one hand, a pencil in the other. She didn't even notice that Evie was on the verge of tears. And Evie
wanted
her to notice. Evie wanted her to say,
Evelyn, my darling, this day, this invisible girl, this slap across your lovely mouth will not change your life a single bit. You will remain safe, always. You will never lose the gift of innocence.
Evie wanted her mother to say these things because she could feel safety being wrenched away from her. She could feel it being taken from her possession, as though it were a doll, or a dress. She would soon know some things about life and death that most people never know. And that's how quickly it happened. Her mother put the notepad on Evie's lap. She fit the pencil into Evie's trembling hand. “Draw her,” Evie's mother whispered, her voice lit with pain and excitement. “Draw the little girl you see sitting between Daddy and me.”

And that's how Evie learned that not everyone can see the dead, and not everyone can draw a decent picture. But
she
could. She wasn't a Leonardo da Vinci. Or a Rembrandt. But Evie Cooper learned over the years how to capture the true character of eyes, and lips, and noses. She learned to draw a curl so real it looked as if a comb had just passed through it. And maybe that's why those souls who are restless and wandering seek her out. Her hand trembling that day, in the backseat of her parents' car, Evie began to draw. First she sketched Rosemary Ann's oval face and the tightly wound ringlets. She drew the bow-shaped mouth, the eyebrows that curved like thin rainbows over the dark eyes. She even drew the cross Rosemary Ann was wearing around her neck. Then Evie passed the notepad to her mother. Her father was staring out his window, the noise of spring floating through his side glass. He was staring at the life of Temple City, as it buzzed up and down the streets.

Evie's mother took the pad but didn't look right away at what Evie had drawn. “Don't do this to yourself,” Evie heard her father say. He was watching Mr. Hanley, the town cop, as he went from parking meter to parking meter.
Don't do this to yourself,
Rosemary Ann mimicked, and then she giggled. Evie's mother lifted the pad and peered down. She said nothing at first. Then, “I'd forgotten about Rosemary Ann's necklace,” she whispered. And that's how Evie came to know that the girl's name was Rosemary Ann. Her mother let the pad rest on her lap, carefully, as though it were a masterpiece she held there. And in a way, it was. It was Evie Cooper's first picture. Crude though it was, it was her first sketch of the faces of the dead that would come to follow her through life. Evie's father started the car and they drove home. Just before they turned the corner of Henderson Street, Evie looked up to see that Rosemary Ann was gone.

When Evie was sixteen, her mother showed her a large framed portrait that was still dusty from being kept in storage in the attic. It was of the little girl with the bow mouth, the girl Evie had drawn that day, the girl sitting with such confidence on the plush seat of the Kaiser. It was a portrait of Rosemary Ann Cooper. Her ringlets were tightly wound and framing the oval face. Her eyebrows were curved like thin rainbows over the dark eyes, which peered up at Evie in defiance, still mimicking. “She was your sister,” Evie's mother said. “She died of a ruptured appendix, long before you were born. We put her between us in the car, Daddy and I. We were trying to get her to the hospital, but we didn't make it. It was on Main Street, in front of the movie theater.”

After her parents died, Evie Cooper tried to leave the faces of the dead behind her. There was too much sadness in the eyes that appeared on her sketchpads, too much pain on the faces. So she moved from Pennsylvania to the bustle of New York City, hoping to find a certain peace. But the dead followed her. The dead aren't bothered by distance, or road signs, or mountain ranges, or boundaries on maps. The dead pick up and travel. By the time Evie left the city and settled in Bixley, Maine, by the time she met Henry Munroe, she was making good money in tips at Murphy's Tavern as a bartender. But she couldn't live on that income alone. So, she eventually put a sign up on her front lawn:
Evie
Cooper, Spiritual Portraitist
. By then, it seemed to Evie she was finally settled down. She was getting her life in shape. She had even told Henry Munroe that their affair was over. It had been a mistake, and now she was moving on. And she had held to that decision.

It had been twelve long months since the morning Evie heard the news, when Andy Southby stopped by the tavern and announced it to the regular customers, as if it were nothing more than the results of a ball game. Henry Munroe, dead at forty. “This is gonna kill Larry,” that's what Evie thought. And then, the sadness hit her, right in the solar plexus, that spot that picks up the dead so sharp and so fast. Evie assumed Henry would stay close by, turning up behind Larry's shoulder every time his brother came into the bar. But in the twelve months that he'd been gone, Henry never once bothered to peer at Evie through the veil that separates Bixley, Maine, from the other side. Not once. And Evie Cooper knew why. Henry was still mad at her.

Author photo by Doug Bruns

Cathie Pelletier was born and raised on the banks of the St. John River, at the end of the road in northern Maine. She is the author of eleven other novels, including
The
One-Way Bridge
and
The
Funeral
Makers.
As K. C. McKinnon, she has written two novels, both of which became television films. After years of living in Nashville, Tennessee; Toronto, Canada; and Eastman, Quebec, she has returned to Allagash, Maine, and the family homestead where she was born.