The State We're In: Maine Stories (7 page)

The cat startled her, brushing her leg. It was feeding time. A bit past it. “Feeling time,” she murmured, then did a double take and corrected herself: “Feeding time. Yes.” His eyes were all bright desire, but he wouldn’t utter a sound. You sometimes heard it other times, but only the most silent of demands was made for the nightly meal. The cat would claw the banister and his bell collar would tinkle if the request wasn’t promptly fulfilled.

Across the road was a scene she wouldn’t have noticed if the cat’s touch hadn’t made her lower the binoculars from the sky: a doe and her fawn, the mother hovering as the lanky-legged baby led the way, eating something hanging below the low leaves of a bush. The pair was listening, listening, but the doe was listening more keenly. Oh, how sad is it I have to pump myself up with my own importance? she wondered.

Suddenly conscious of her earrings, dangling pearls, she touched them lightly to still them. She swiveled to see the empty room, the ocean-intense span of blue spread across the huge bed, the dresser mirror allowing her to see behind her to the pink sky darkening above whatever scene had been happening before that was now out of sight. Was September deer season? October?

Please let the plane not crash, she thought, going weak in the knees.

This was a habitual thought. More or less like prayer.

ENDLESS RAIN INTO A PAPER CUP

I
t was July, Myrtis’s favorite month since school days, when it would seem the summer still stretched before you, and your tennis shoes were just the right soiled color with your toenails poking up the canvas, and the water had warmed up enough that you could swim in the ocean—though now she lived inland; there was no nearby ocean—and the hummingbirds were busily sucking nectar from the bee balm (red was the only color in the garden). The Fourth of July! Strawberries ripened in July and bathing suits went on sale. She still bought a new one every year to wear in the steam room at the gym; she hadn’t waded into the Atlantic in years, even on visits to Raleigh and Bettina. How she wished her daughter also saw summer as a magical time when the world overwhelmed you with its bounty, but Jocelyn seemed to notice little if anything about the environment in which she lived. She looked myopically at her friends, and from very close distance, they mirrored her expression of incomprehension or boredom, or they laughed about how ridiculous everything was, whether it be a buzzing bee or people working in a community garden. Her former husband’s idea of happiness and harmony with nature had been gambling amid potted plants in Atlantic City casinos.

She called Raleigh, as she’d promised she would, when she got the results from her blood test. It was late enough at night that Bettina wouldn’t even know she’d called. If she wanted real information about Jocelyn, her brother was a better bet than her sister-in-law, who didn’t really understand young girls and therefore projected even more negativity onto them than was there—if such a thing was possible. Raleigh had met Jocelyn’s teacher and pronounced her “very nice, quite intelligent.” That opinion could be relied on, more or less, factoring in that Raleigh rarely expressed doubts until after the fact, and that he liked young women. He’d been as mystified as the next guy by women when he was young and dating, but now he seemed to think the mere sight of one was as lovely as seeing the first robin of spring. As far as she knew, he’d never strayed in his marriage to Bettina, but who ever knew about such things when few birds and even fewer people mated for life. He picked up on the second ring. She could envision the blinking red button on the phone—an odd phone that flashed but never rang—so that of course he would not know someone was calling unless he was sitting in his study.

“Good news?” he said. The phone must also somehow indicate the caller’s identity.

“Inconclusive. I tested positive for antibodies to mono, so at some point I had it. It might have been a year ago when I thought I had flu. The test for Lyme came back okay, but something about it was borderline, and the doctor wants to repeat it in a couple of weeks. How’s my girl? How are you, for that matter?”

“I’d say she’s doing well. She’s bored here, of course, but I think it’s for the best. So would you say you’re feeling less tired?”

“I slept from one until four. That’s going to wreck my sleep tonight, but I was just so exhausted, I couldn’t stay awake. All I did today was take the car in for an oil change.”

He coughed softly, turning his head away from the phone. He said, “I came upon the key to Bettina’s diary. She was out, so I read a few pages.”

“She hid the key where you could find it?”

“In the bottom of the Excedrin bottle. Can you imagine? It was on a thin gold chain underneath the last of the pills. She must write in it when I go jogging.”

“How I envy you being physically fit. Not everybody who has a metal plate in his leg would go running at your age. How are Jocelyn’s essays? Does she put enough effort into them?”

“They seem to worry her a lot. She certainly doesn’t like writing them. I was that way, myself, back in school. I don’t think that young people like to be obliged to address subjects not of their own choosing.”

“How are we going to get her to pass algebra? That’s the big question.”

Raleigh had gotten straight As in high school. It was how he’d gotten into West Point. His former running buddy, who’d recently relocated to Phoenix for the warmer winters, had been his classmate. He missed their twice-weekly runs. Though he’d told no one, there was some possibility he might need an operation on his leg. He was the one who’d bought the big bottle of Excedrin. Bettina had taken most of the pills. “One thing at a time,” he said.

“What have you been doing other than being physically fit and being Jocelyn’s uncle? We’re all expected to be diverse in our interests and to give back. It’s like we’re all still trying to have a good résumé to get into college, whatever our age. Remember when I feigned interest in old ladies in nursing homes? Now I’m going to be one of them soon.”

“Today I contributed nothing to any good cause and listened to ‘Across the Universe.’ The Beatles.”

“I know who sang ‘Across the Universe.’ ”

Bettina was right; sometimes his sister did sound very much like Jocelyn. He said, “Jocelyn might like to know you called.”

“I’ll call her in a day or so, when I’m not so headachy.”

“Why should you have constant headaches? What do they say?”

“They don’t answer questions like that. They do blood work.”

“But I’d think that if you asked—”

“Ha!” she said. “You must have different experiences with those guys than I do. I suppose that’s true. They take men more seriously. That, and you can continue to have your delusions about good communication because you don’t ask questions of doctors or of anyone else, do you?”

“My training taught me to listen,” he said. “But don’t be ridiculous. Of course I ask questions.”

“So you’ll question Bettina about the diary?”

“No,” he said, snorting softly. “That isn’t at all likely.”

“You’ll secretly carry a grudge. That’s what she says about you, you know. That when you’re saying one thing, she can hear all the other things unsaid rolling around in your head like marbles, shooting off in all directions.”

“We get along,” he said, after a long pause.

Her tone softened. “I so much appreciate what you and Bettina are doing for Jocelyn. And I’m relieved that at least she’s doing the work. Maybe it will give her more self-confidence when school starts in September.”

“She’s made some friends. I think things are okay,” he said. He’d decided not to mention Jocelyn’s new bangs, cut jaggedly on a sharp diagonal, or the pink streak in her hair, which he understood to be temporary. Who knew what his own daughter Charlotte Octavia’s hair looked like, or whether she’d shaved her head? Her only overture in many months had been to send a pound of Kenyan coffee beans. It had been excellent coffee. About half the bag remained. He had suggested they store the remaining beans in the freezer, but she thought that unnecessary. In her diary, Bettina had called him prissy. How hugely insulting. It suggested, at least to him, homosexuality.

“I’ll call again soon,” Myrtis said. “I really am indebted.”

“Nonsense,” he said, as he hung up.

“Uncle Raleigh?”

He jumped. His eyes shot to the mirror hung beside the desk—the mirror whose border was patterned with little ducklings that had once hung in his daughter’s bedroom, where they now stored clothes out of season and where Bettina had set up a little area with a rocker, to read her cookbooks and to reread her beloved Edgar Allan Poe. One would certainly be a good antidote to the other, and Excedrin would not be required. Jocelyn stood in front of him in a voluminous T-shirt hanging over leggings (in July!). She was wearing socks over the tights and Hello Kitty slippers.

“Was that my mom?” she said.

“It was. Yes. Come in, Jocelyn. Sit down.”

“Did she ask if I was doing all my homework? Did you give her a good report?”

“It wasn’t a report, Jocelyn. We discussed the fact that you were working hard, yes. She’s going to call back soon. Still doesn’t have much energy. No one does, recovering from surgery.”

The way his niece settled herself in a chair, plunking down with absolute resignation, and without any thought of a moment’s pleasure, always surprised him. He suspected she came by his office so often to ask questions that were pointed and blunt, though perhaps not the issues that were most on her mind.

“Can you do me a favor, Uncle Raleigh?” she said. “Since you’re an adult, can you maybe call the hospital and find out if one of my friends is there?”

“Which friend?” he said. “Who is that?”

“T. G.’s father’s your friend, right? You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Well, like, he tried to commit suicide.”

Charlotte Octavia had attempted to take her own life once. Twice, to be honest. Though they’d paid for psychiatrists, he’d never really understood why. He found the whole subject almost paralyzing. “Hank is my friend, yes,” he said. “I can’t believe T. G. would do a thing like that. It wasn’t Nathaniel, you’re sure?”

“Well, yeah. One person’s T. G. and then there’s his brother Nathaniel,” she said. “It was T. G.”

“When did you find out about this?”

“The other day, on the beach,” she said. “If you call the hospital, they hear it in your voice you’re young. I thought maybe you could find something out.”

“My god, how absolutely terrible,” he said, picking up his cell phone. “The last time I saw Hank or heard anything from him was playing golf last week.” The phone was programmed with the number of the hospital. Also, the police. The surgeon he’d recently consulted about his leg. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. No—none of them existed on his phone. As he’d entered the numbers, he’d dropped out so many names he felt he’d never call again; he didn’t have to scroll down far to find anything. “Patient information,” he said aloud. “Question,” he said. Jocelyn was holding a Scünci in her teeth, unwinding her braid. A small strand of hair pinker than the rest revealed itself, just as a human being came on the phone. He asked about the condition of a patient named Thomas Grant Murrey. Jocelyn ran her fingers through her bangs and felt them flop lightly onto her forehead again. T. G. had liked her pink streak, but not the bangs. She was growing them out. “M-u-r-r-e-y, correct,” her uncle said. “No, but if a family member is there, I’m a close friend of the boy’s father,” he said. He covered the mouthpiece. He whispered to Jocelyn, “Nobody’s there. That’s the good news and the bad news.” He listened for another few seconds. T. G. had been admitted, but there were to be no phone calls to his room. When her uncle thanked the person and hung up, he said, “I don’t know. You might be able to talk to him in the morning.”

“Why do you think so?” she said.

It was a reasonable question. My god, what poor Hank Murrey must be going through right now. This was also sure to put Nathaniel into a worse tailspin, to say nothing of Hank’s vain, high-strung wife, who acted like she lived with wild boars rather than with her husband and sons, lavishing all her attention on her only daughter. “Because in hospitals, they really believe in mornings,” he said. “It’s an old cliché, right? Everything might be better in the morning.”

“You think I might be able to talk to him because of a cliché?”

At such times—when she seemed to echo what he’d said, yet she’d missed his point—he was never sure if she was mocking him, or whether she truly did not understand what he’d tried to say. Was she a little thickheaded, or was she just, of course she was
just
, an adolescent.

“I meant that hospitals trust that most situations change by morning,” he said, a bit dully. She must be very upset about her friend. Why hadn’t she told him immediately? He wished he had something better to offer. He also wished to avoid surgery on his leg. He wished Bettina did not keep a diary—especially one that was so critical of him. He supposed he might also wish for no one to ever go to bed hungry anywhere in the world and for peace.

“So, you and my dad. You drank together, right?”

Where did that come from? He said, “We’d have the occasional beer. The drinking problem was mine, not his.”

“But you hung out together.”

“Yes. We sometimes worked together.”

“In a job you can’t talk about because you had a security clearance, but my dad didn’t.”

“Your father didn’t require a security clearance, no.”

“So were you smarter than he was?”

“Brighter? Than your father? I had great respect for your father’s intellect and perceptions. I went to military college, and he didn’t. It made our outlooks somewhat different.”

“But did you have the same outlook on girls?”

“What do you mean?” She was often very direct, though he suspected that most such questions were at some remove from what she really wanted to ask. She could certainly be just as difficult to talk to as Myrtis.

“I mean, did you pick up girls?”

“Before we were married? You’re asking if we dated women? How would I have gotten to know your aunt if we’d never gone out?”