The View from Mount Joy (33 page)

“Dumb bitch,” said Kirk.

There had been a small memorial service down in Florida—Martha had made enough friends down there who wanted to honor her passing—but the big service was held up in Minneapolis, where so many people knew her and Clarence. Poor Clarence had been hit hard—he was convinced that he should have known something was wrong with Martha.

“She just said ‘okay’ in kind of a tired voice when I told her we’d go to the library—and she
loved
our library nights. I should have known something from that tired little ‘okay.’”

I had invited him to our house after the service luncheon, but he had said he was going to spend time with his sister, who was pretty broken up.

“Myrt
loved
Martha,” said Clarence. “She stayed with us for three months last winter, and the two of them stayed up watching David Letterman and giggling like schoolgirls.” He paused for a moment. “I prefer Koppel.”

Kirk and Nance had come with us when we drove Flora back to the airport—our beautiful daughter had insisted on coming back even though we had just left her a week earlier in Santa Barbara.

“Dad,” she had said over the phone, “I want to be there. I’ll fly in Thursday night and leave after the funeral Friday. I’d stay the weekend, but there’s this freshman welcome party I’d really like to make on Saturday.”

Her brothers, still slightly speckled with chicken pox scabs but no longer itchy and miserable, were delighted to have their sister back and made use of her one night at home, dragging in their Star Wars sleeping bags and camping out in her bedroom.

They weren’t pleased when she said another good-bye to them before we went to the funeral, and would have put up a big stink save for the fact that Jenny’s sister, Jody, was coming to babysit and bringing along her own two boys, who were the kids’ favorite cousins.

When Jody arrived, Ben and Conor squealed with delight, tackling their cousins before they got out of the entryway.

“I guess I’m pretty dispensable,” said Flora with a shrug.

“No, you’re not,” I said, draping my arm around her.

Her presence had meant a lot to Kirk and Nance and Clarence; at her young age she knew the importance of showing up. But now she was gone again and, according to my watch, due to land in fourteen minutes, and the gloom that our laughter had blown away gathered itself and seeped back into the room.

“Anyone want a drink?” I asked.

“I could go for a walk,” said Kirk. “A walk and
then
a drink.”

“Ladies?” I asked.

“Do you mind if we stay?” Nance asked Jenny. “I’m sort of pooped.”

“We’ll start a fire,” said Jenny, “and open a bottle of wine.”

It was a cool September night, but not according to Kirk.

“Man, what’s the wind chill factor?” he said before we were even down the front steps. “Twenty below?”

I stepped back into the house and grabbed a jacket from the closet.

“It’s at least forty-five degrees,” I said, handing Kirk the jacket. “Have you gone completely Floridian?”

“Totally,” said Kirk, putting the jacket on over his sweatshirt. “If it’s below seventy degrees, I start digging out the long underwear.”

We walked down the sidewalk in silence for a while, a wind rustling through the leaves that would in a few weeks be on the ground. Kirk was right. It did feel cold, and I turned up my coat collar.

“You know, Coral did a reading at Mom’s service in Cocoa Beach,” said Kirk. “I couldn’t believe it; she didn’t break down or anything. Clarence had asked if I wanted to speak and I…I couldn’t. I wish to hell I could have, but I couldn’t.”

“What did Coral read?”

“A Walt Whitman poem Clarence picked out. Clarence couldn’t read either. But Kristi did. She didn’t even ask Clarence, just told him that she’d be reading.”

“What’d she read?”

“That’s the thing. I thought she’d read something from the Bible in her big phony preacher’s voice, but she read a poem she had written when she was a kid. It was a typical kid’s poem, rhyming words like
ma
and
law—
in fact, the first line was ‘I’m glad it’s not against the law / To love my ma’—but I’m telling you, Joe, it was touching. It made me think maybe I was wrong about her, that maybe she did love Martha.”

I nodded in the dark.

“And then after the service, she pulled me aside and said she hoped we could be better friends now and that she wanted to thank me for loving our mother and father even when they were at their most unlovable.”

“She said that?”

“Uh-huh. And then she said she hated to leave, but she had a flight to catch and shows to tape—blah, blah, blah—but she’d stay in touch and then she hugged me—hard—and handed me an envelope and told me not to open it until I got home. Then she slipped out the back of the church and into the limousine that was waiting for her.”

“What was in the envelope?”

“A check for five thousand dollars. On the memo line she wrote ‘Mom.’ And there was a copy of a picture.”

“A picture of what?”

He stopped, the wind flipping up a side of his hair.

“Let’s turn back,” he said. “I’m too cold to go any further.”

“Maybe I’m wrong about the temperature,” I said as we turned around, both of us tucking our hands deep in our pockets.

“I had never seen the picture before,” said Kirk, “but it was in perfect condition, which makes me think it was a copy. It was a picture of our family—I think it was taken down at the falls, in the pavilion. My mom and dad and I are sitting on top of a picnic table; I’m on my mom’s lap and my mom’s on my dad’s lap and all of us have these big laughing smiles on our faces. And then there’s Kristi—six or so, she’s got braids—standing off to the side with her hands on her hips, her face turned up and away from us, her eyes closed, like she’s shunning us.”

“What do you suppose she meant by giving it to you?”

“I have no idea. On the back she had written, ‘Members only.’”

“So who was the exclusive club? Kristi or the rest of your family?”

“Beats me, but it made me feel bad. And again, I thought maybe I’d been wrong about her all along. Then, hearing her on the radio tonight…”

“It did seem her eulogy had an agenda.”

“That’s just it. She doesn’t wipe her butt without an agenda. And I wonder why I’m such a sap to keep trying to find the good in her when I think it shriveled up and died a long time ago.”

“That’s pretty harsh.”

“But pretty true, don’t you think?”

A man standing in front of a picture window scratched his belly before pulling down the shade as we walked past his house.

“Yes,” I said after a moment.

Up in my office, I had Conor ring the bell.

“Good morning, shoppers,” I said into the microphone. “It’s time for another contest here at Haugland Foods.”

The dozen or so shoppers stopped in the aisles; Swanny Swanson waved up at me, and Jan Olafson pointed to herself as if letting me know she was going to win.

“Today’s prize, courtesy of Lenny’s Kitchen and Bath, is free, yes, free tile
and
installation for any bathroom in your house.”

This was a rigged contest; Lenny had given me the gift certificate over a week ago, but I had waited to give it away until Belinda Long was in the store. She reminded me of my mother—a young widow, new in town—and I knew from Eileen that she had recently moved into a run-down house close to the airport. Eileen was our resident psychiatrist, learning all about people while ringing up their groceries, and had told me the young woman was originally from Toronto. This was information I used this for the contest.

“Anyone interested in this incredible value, meet me in Banana Square.

“Come on, Conor,” I said, taking my five-year-old’s hand. “We’re going to go make someone’s day.”

I was a little frazzled to see that the group that awaited me at Banana Square did not include the young widow.

“Nice tie, Swanny,” I said, stalling for time.

“It’s the wife’s idea,” said Swanny. “Now I’m retired, she says I gotta make an extra effort with my appearance or I’ll wind up in my bathrobe all day. Heck, I didn’t wear a tie when I worked at the Ford plant!”

I saw Belinda shyly edging her cart toward the action.

“Say, young man,” said Estelle Brady to Conor, “why aren’t you in school?”

“I go to afternoon kinneygarten.”

“
Kinneygarten,
” said Estelle, looking to her left and right. “Isn’t that cute?”

“I think we’re ready for the contest,” I said. “For the free bathroom tile and installation, who can tell me what province Toronto is in and which provinces are to the east and west of it?”

Swanny opened his mouth but closed it again, and Jan Olafson looked up as if trying to visualize a map.

“If you know it, just shout it out,” I said, looking directly at the young widow.

“Toronto’s in the province of Ontario,” she said, leaning over the cart handle. “Manitoba’s to the west and Quebec is to the east.”

“We have a winner!” I said. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t exactly sure where each Canadian province was, but she was a Canadian and I was willing to take her word for it.

“Boy, can I use this,” she said, accepting the gift certificate.

“Well, that’s great,” I said. “Bring us a picture when it’s all done and we’ll put it on the bulletin board.”

“Okay,” she said shyly, “I will. Thank you very much, Mr….”

“Everyone calls me Joe.”

“Thanks, Joe. Is this an American thing, these contests in grocery stores?”

“Well, it’s our thing here at Haugland Foods, and we’re American.”

“Wait’ll I tell my mother,” said Belinda. “She thinks everyone carries a gun and can’t wait to shoot one another. Wait’ll I tell her I won a bathroom remodel in a grocery store!”

Up in my office, I showed Conor an A, G, and D chord. His brother Ben played both piano and guitar and Conor, whose competitiveness would either serve him well or do him in, had demanded that I start giving him lessons “because I wanna be the best guitar player in the whole wide world!”

I had kept a guitar in my office all these years and had gone over these same chords with Ben here and at home and now it thrilled me to think that the tradition of jam sessions up in this grocery store office might continue with my sons.

Still concentrating on watching my fingers roam the fret board, Conor said, “That lady who won the contest—why does her mommy think she’ll be shot?”

“Oh,” I said, wondering how to answer yet another question I didn’t really have an answer for. “Sometimes mommies worry about their children.”

“If I were a cowboy, I might get shot. ’Cause cowboys have guns.”

“Some do,” I said. “Some just have lassos.”

“I know what a lasso is,” said Conor. “Ben drawed me one. It’s a rope in a circle that you catch bears with.”

I smiled, and played some twangy chords. “Well, cowboys usually catch cows with them. And bulls and horses.”

“Yeah. And giraffes and monkeys.”

“But the guys that catch those aren’t called cowboys. They’re called giraffeboys and monkeyboys.”

Conor laughed. “And bullboys and horseboys.”

“Hey, you know what, pardner?” I said, looking at my watch. “It’s time we mosey on off to school.”

“Oh,” said Conor, disappointed.

“Come on,” I said, putting my guitar back into its case. “Maybe you can play Bullboys and Monkeyboys at recess.”

“Yeah! Let’s hurry up, Dad!”

After I dropped Conor off at school, I walked across the playing field toward my car, trying to remember if I was supposed to do the shopping for tonight’s dinner with Jenny’s parents, or if she had wanted to. I decided to call her when my cell phone vibrated.

It was Kristi.

“Hey, Joe.”

For the past couple years, since her mother died, she called me every few months. They were harmless enough conversations, never long or meaty; it seemed she just wanted to check in. Kirk got the same kind of phone calls; he said they never talked long enough to get into an argument, which seemed to suit both of them.

“It’s not a real deep relationship,” he told me once, “but at least it’s a relationship…sort of.”

Now Kristi was asking me what I was up to.

“Oh, I just brought Conor to school,” I said. “Now I’m wondering if it’s me or Jenny who’s supposed to do the shopping for tonight’s dinner.”

“Well, you being the supermarket mogul,” said Kristi, “I imagine it’d be you.”

“So how’re things in the soul-saving business?”

“The soul saving’s going very well, thank you. Four billion at last count. But I’m calling you to share some personal news.” Her laugh, for a change, was one of delight. “Joe, I want you to be one of the first to know. Tuck Drake—”

“Tuck Drake the nutty senator?”

Her laugh hardened. “Tuck Drake the highly regarded and esteemed senator has asked me to marry him.”

I stepped into the street and a school bus honked its horn.

“So…what did you say?”

“Well, I said yes, of course. I’ve been waiting for a man like Tuck Drake all my life. Well, listen, Joe, I’ve got a million things to do. I just wanted to give you a heads-up so you could start shopping for the perfect gift.”