Year After Henry (12 page)

It was good to have something tangible from Henry, and Larry was thankful to Jeanie for that. He felt his brother in the Jeep sometimes, sensed him floating about on the passenger side as Larry breezed down the highways and byways of town. This is how they cruised when they were just brothers, and also sons, but not yet husbands and fathers, and certainly not what they'd become: ex-husband and deceased husband. Some nights, on his way back from Murphy's Tavern, wind in his hair and some old song by the Eagles, or Bob Seger, or Springsteen cutting up the airwaves, Larry would just drive around town, often passing the football stadium, until the light on his gas tank hinted to him that it was time to go home. He talked to Henry on nights like that, reminded him of the old fun they'd had, back in those golden days.
Hey, Henry. Remember the night we didn't know who Ginnie McCowell picked to have sex with until the very last minute, and then I was so surprised it was me she picked, I couldn't do it?
And he could hear Henry laugh from the passenger seat, that quick, large laugh that was big enough for a lot of people to enjoy. How many times had Larry seen some stranger at Murphy's look over from across the room to see where the big laugh was coming from, and then smile to see Henry's beaming face? Henry was like smoke. He could move in a lot of places at once since no place could keep him out. He was wind. Electricity. Even when you weren't with him, you
felt
him. He was that powerful a personality. He was that strong a brother. And that's why, for all these months that Henry was gone, Larry had just seemed to drift. He still felt his brother in the empty places. He just couldn't find him there. He could talk to him, for he already knew what Henry would say to the old memories.
Christ, how could I forget that night? You had to walk home with your dick in your hand since I'd already left with Dad's car. It was almost dawn when you crawled into your bunk. You looked like hell. What a wasted piece of ass that was. If Ginnie had picked
me,
she
and
I
would
still
be
rolling
on
the
grass
out
behind
the
stadium
.

When had Jonathan started karate class?

Larry looked at the envelope again, the boy's easy scrawl spelling out the letters and numbers. Jonathan had kept up on his promise to mail the occasional math or history paper, a school drawing maybe, or just a regular letter since Larry wasn't computerized like so many people were these days. Katherine often referred to him as Larry Luddite, especially in the teacher's room. Maybe it was the weight of the postal service in his blood. Who knows why? But he still liked to open an envelope and see a real letter in it, maybe a small school photo hiding in one corner. It made it more real somehow, more honest. Larry took the envelope over to his bed and tucked it safely under the pillow. He lay down on the bunk, not wanting to think about boys who live without fathers, whose lives are shaped by men who start out as
Mr. Santino the basketball coach,
and end up as a second dad. But when he lay his head on the pillow, it was almost as if he could feel the body of the letter pushing itself up, that single page so buoyant with energy, a boy's life, one filled with the latest movies and the kinds of classes that kids sign up for, and the kind of longing that so many families know well these days:
I
miss
my
dad, but my mom says I can go home for Thanksgiving.

He had never even heard of
Monsters
Inc.
, and yet it was his boy's favorite movie.

The way Larry looked at it, you didn't have to be a high-powered attorney or a grief counselor to understand what a boy wanted in his heart.

My
mom
says
I
can
go
home
…

Sometimes, it's as plain as writing on the wall.

...

Evie didn't have to be back at Murphy's for four days, and that was a good thing. She needed the rest. Not just from Andy Southby and the sound of his knuckles, but from looking up each time the door opened to see someone other than Larry Munroe walk in. Once her meeting that afternoon with Margie Jenkins was over, Evie intended to take a short and self-imposed vacation, not just from the tavern, but from her sessions. Maybe she'd throw a few things into her car and head out to Portland or Boston. She could return once the memorial was firmly over.
Finis.
Maybe then Larry would be back to his old self. But first, she would have to deal with the visitor she was expecting.

When Margie Jenkins arrived, Evie led her away from the parlor where she held her sessions. Instead, she and Margie sat at the kitchen table where Evie poured them each an iced tea. This would help it seem like a visit and not an appointment. Margie clinked her spoon around in the tall glass, stirring up the sugar again and again until Evie took the spoon from her and placed it on the table.

“You look enough like Gail to be her twin,” said Evie, hoping to lighten the heavy mood. Margie smiled at the notion of this. She and Gail were close in spirit, too, always looking out for each other's kids, always scraping together a few dollars if one of them was broke and the rent due. The way sisters should be.

“That's what everyone says.”

“Margie, I'm so sorry for your loss,” Evie said.

Margie nodded at this, probably having heard it a few hundred times in the month since Annie died. What to do now but nod?

“Sometimes, I think it's harder on Phil,” said Margie. “She was Daddy's little girl, you know.”

“I know,” said Evie. “Gail told me.”

The two women sat like bookends, one at each end of the table, holding silence between them. The faint buzzing of the clock over the refrigerator, and the refrigerator itself, filled the small room with its own kind of mantra. Outside, occasional horns tooted. Kids bicycled by, their noise fading at the end of the street, disappearing. Next door, Mrs. Albion's dog barked at each passerby. Seconds came and went as time did its job of passing. When it became apparent that Margie Jenkins had no intention of talking, Evie did instead.

“Come on,” Evie said. “I do my sessions in the parlor.”

Evie poured the rest of her iced tea down the kitchen sink and then took several deep breaths, preparing herself. She filled the glass with water and sipped at it. She just needed a few minutes alone, the time to put her mind in that place that was necessary, a mental game she had learned. She had taught herself, years before, to block out the faces of the dead until she was ready for them. Otherwise, she'd have burned out long ago, like one of those stars out in the universe that just winks out one night. It was a way to survive in a world filled with pain. Then, as ready as she could be on such short notice, she put the glass in the sink and went to the parlor.

Margie was sitting on the sofa, leaning back into the lavender flowers on the fabric, when Evie saw the little girl. She knew who it was, of course, there could be no doubt. Annie Jenkins. Ten years old and already there was a wisdom in her eyes that Evie knew well. It was the wisdom that comes of letting go, the knowledge that goes hand in hand with the fragility of life. But, still, a child is only a child. With that wisdom Evie could also see confusion, as if the eyes were asking,
Why
did
I
have
to
know
all
this
now, when I was just starting to learn my earthly body, the small buds of breasts, why when I was so close to being told all those secrets the older girls know? Why now?
And this was why it was too soon for Annie to come. It was too soon. If Evie were to sketch this worried face, it would not bring an ounce of comfort to Margie Jenkins. Instead, it would bring her immeasurable pain.

Evie took her sketch pad and began, as she always did, to make circles in one corner with her drawing pencil. As she did so, she remembered Annie Jenkins the last time the little girl visited Murphy's Tavern. It was before she became ill and Evie never saw her again. It had been the previous December, a couple weeks before Christmas. The place was all colored lights, reds and blues and greens, with strands of bulbs encircling the bar itself and then decorating a lighted fir tree in one corner. Gail was taking her niece home after work since Margie had some shopping to do. So Annie sat on a bar stool and ate the burger and fries that Gail made for her. She had sipped at the glass of soda. Annie, with a thick ponytail, thick and full, and eyes so dark they sparkled with energy. A happy child on her way to living a long and happy life.

Evie drew the shape of the face first, oval and sweet, and then the dark hair and the eyes full of such Christmas excitement, eyes happy to be seeing what they were. She finished the drawing off with the sweater Annie had been wearing that day, with small kittens embroidered on the collar. Maybe it was cheating, and Evie didn't like to cheat. But she could tell as she looked again into the troubled eyes of the child who stood just behind her mother's shoulder that this was the best thing to do. Annie would want this, too. She handed Margie Jenkins the finished sketch. Margie stared at it for some time before she spoke.

“Maybe it
is
a better place,” she said to Evie, her voice so low and soft that Evie had to lean forward to hear the words. “When we die, I mean. Maybe it really is a happier place than here.” She looked back down at the face of her only daughter, Annie Gail Jenkins, who woke up one morning before Christmas vacation feeling too sick to go to school. And so she never went again, going instead to the doctor who took the tests and delivered the news.

Evie put the sketch pad down.

“Come on,” she said. “That little café on the corner of Frederick Street has ice cream. Why we don't we go for a walk, you and me?”

Margie Jenkins rolled the sketch up neatly. She reached for her purse and held it in her arms. When she stood, Evie saw that the back of her blouse had grown wet with sweat, as if Margie's body had become dead weight in just the past month. Margie Jenkins could feel Annie there in the room, Evie was certain of it. She could tell by looking at the woman's face. The ties were still so strong between mother and daughter. Sometimes, Evie had a client tell her what it was like to feel their own child nearby, just beyond human reach, the pure energy of your firstborn, or second born.
It's like being on a roller coaster and you've just crested the very top, and then the car rolls over and down you come, your stomach riding so high inside you that you know you're going to pass out just from the pull of it.

“I wonder if they have chocolate,” said Margie. The ice cream had done the trick. It was a way of surviving, is what it was. A way of grabbing up a simple notion, a nice idea, and hanging on to it like it's a piece of driftwood. “Chocolate was Annie's favorite,” she added, as Evie opened the front door. The diamond-shaped crystals hanging from the lamp shade in the parlor rattled as the door closed behind them.

His mother was back. Larry heard the soft
squeak,
that same board beneath the carpet at the top of the stairs, the step that had been talking ever since he could remember. All those high school nights that he and Henry had crept into the house just ahead of dawn, they had been careful of that step, not wanting its painful sound to rouse their mother. But it was as if she and the step had an agreement:
Wake
me
when
the
boys
sneak
in
so
I
can
scold
them
in
the
morning.
Now the step had turned on her. For the past three mornings Larry had heard it, and then the soft movement of a body lurking just outside his door. Or maybe he
felt
her there, in his gut, she being his mother and all. Maybe nature gives humans that ability. But this was the third morning, and Larry couldn't bear it anymore. He knew what she was doing, eavesdropping, her small white ear pressed like a seashell to his door, hoping to catch the ebb and flow of his life, to hear some clue as to what he was up to.

Larry rose from the chair at his desk where he had been writing a letter to Jonathan.
Dear
son, Aunt Jeanie got your letter and we're all very happy that you're coming home for Thanksgiving.
He walked to his side of the door and stood there, waiting quietly, wondering if perhaps
this
was the morning she'd come up with a screwdriver in her hand, determined to flush him out. When she arrived like this, midmorning, the time of day that his father was just seeing the last mailman out of the post office, Larry knew she was alone. And that was a good thing. When the old man was with her, she seemed to draw some kind of energy from him, rising up higher on the heels of her feet, straightening her back, turning now and then to catch her husband's eye, to see if he was
listening
to
this
. The old man was like some kind of ammunition truck that follows the tanks. But soon, Larry knew, they would come for the mail pouch, and when they did, his father would need to be at the vanguard, if for no other purpose than the symbolic. And they would come with a battering ram. But for now, his mother was alone again in the hallway. Larry could almost feel the warmth of her coming through the door, as if her pain were something liquid that could be poured out of her body if she let it. What could he do? What
should
he do? Larry remembered the skink Jonathan had tried to catch the summer before their lives went all to hell. Before Larry had a chance to warn him, the boy had grabbed the bright blue tail of the lizard, hoping to pick the thing up. Instead, he was left with the wiggling tail in his hand, the rest of the skink long gone.
That's its protection, son,
Larry had explained.
The
tail
is
bright
blue
so
that
predators
will
grab
it, and not the soft body. Its tail will grow back in time.
Thinking back on this now, Larry wished the same worked for him. Perhaps if he could toss an arm or a leg out into the hallway, something for his mother to hold in her hand, maybe it would buy him some more time. He could slam the door, lock it soundly, and then sit in the dark with the mail pouch on his lap as he waited for the arm to grow back.

More time for
what
? It was a question he still couldn't answer.

On an impulse, Larry unlocked the door and opened it slowly. His mother was standing in the hallway, looking down over the banister at the living room below. He could tell by the way she glanced up at him, the confusion in her eyes, that she had forgotten why she'd come upstairs in the first place. Larry knew this because it often happened to him. Many times, on his way back from the bathroom, he'd stop and look down at the living room as if it were a stage set waiting for a family to enter and do their parts, the two sons rushing in to fight over
TV
Guide,
the parents following, the father smiling at his sons, the mother frowning and telling them to take off those muddy shoes now and go wash up for supper. It's when no one rushes onto the stage, and you're still standing there looking down, that's when you get confused. That's when you wonder where the actors are, the director, the audience. And then you realize that the play is long over. He often wondered if this is what the faces of the dead tell Evie Cooper with their eyes. Is this what
they
feel, too, as they peer back at the stage where they once lived out their lives? Maybe the dead are just confused. Maybe all they really want to know is
where
the
hell
is
everybody?
But Larry didn't believe in the dead. And as far as he could tell, he no longer believed in the living either.

“Mom?” He said it in a soft and caring way, so that his intention could not be mistaken for confrontation. He wanted no argument on that morning. He needed his energy to finish the letter to Jonathan.
We're all very happy that you're coming home.

“I came up to talk to you,” she said, her eyes still on that small world below, the light blue sofa, the tan-shaded lamps, the vase of dried flowers, the heavy oak coffee table her sons had made for her in shop. Larry could tell that the fight had gone out of her. He left the safety of his bedroom and walked over to the banister, wanting to be closer to her, fearing she might even pass out. The truth about life does that to people. Sometimes, it punches them so hard they can't breathe anymore.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and was relieved when she nodded. Not that he believed her. But she was back in some measure of control again.

“Did I tell you that I called Katherine?” No, she hadn't told him. This was his ex-wife. It would have been nice to know about it. “I left a message on her machine. I asked if Jonathan could come for the memorial. We're his family, after all.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Larry said. Otherwise, he was afraid he would say what he was thinking.
How
dare
you
call
my
ex-wife, about my son, without telling me first?

“Do you ever get tired of that same hardwood floor, day after day, year after year?” she asked. She was staring down at the living room floor now, talking more to herself than to him.

“Not really,” Larry said, wanting to put her at ease, to let her know that he was close by. In the end, after all was said and done, he was the older son, and the one who felt most protective of his mother, more so than Henry.

“Remember that teal-colored rug I put in the summer my mother died?” she asked then. “Remember how hard you boys were on it all through your growing-up years? Spilled colas, spilled Kool-Aid, spilled God-knows-what. Still, when you put in a hardwood floor, you're stuck with it for life.” She turned to look at Larry's face.

“Mom, are you all right?” he asked.

“I came up here for something,” she said softly, “but now I just can't remember what it was.”

“That's okay,” said Larry. “That's been happening to me a lot too. You came to tell me you invited Jonathan.”

He stood there beside her as they both looked down on the sofa, the lamps, the heavy coffee table. He had read once that the
living
room started being referred to as such to set it apart from the parlor, which was where the dead were waked in years past. Except for the hardwood floor, not much had changed since he and Henry had made that room their own, the place they often did their homework as they watched television, one lying on his back on the sofa, the other sprawled on his belly on the teal-colored rug, their books or bowls of popcorn and cans of soda covering the oak coffee table. The truth was that
he
had done all of the work on the table, with Henry using shop time to practice his foul shots for basketball. Mr. Harris, the shop teacher, was also the basketball coach and so no one ever knew. Henry's foul shots were so important to winning their games that this seemed like a great idea at the time. It was only years later, when Larry had become a teacher himself, that he saw the folly in this notion. It was as if the whole damn town had been aiding and abetting Henry's whims. But when it came time to present the coffee table to their mother, her gift for Mother's Day, it wasn't Larry who handed her the card. It was Henry:
This
table
is
made
of
white
oak
which
can
grow
as
tall
as
a
hundred
feet. The bark is gray and the leaves turn purple-red each autumn. This table was made by your sons, Henry and Larry Munroe, in Mr. Harris's Woodworking Shop, 1975. Happy Mother's Day
. Larry didn't have a hard time remembering what was written on the card for it was still lying inside the thin drawer that slid out of the table's belly. That drawer alone had taken him a month of classes to make, the groove requiring many hours of painstaking work. He'd read the card several times over the years, especially on Sundays when he'd come to watch the Super Bowl with Henry and the old man. Or those Saturday afternoons when he was there to mow the lawn for his mother. Larry would come in from his workout with the lawn mower to pour a glass of lemonade and then sit on the light blue sofa to drink it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't help himself. He always slid open the drawer and found the card in the plastic sheath his mother had bought to protect it. And he would open it and read again.
This
table
was
made
by
your
sons.
Well, Henry did turn up that last week to help with the varnishing. And the Bixley Bandits did win the basketball championship that year.

Larry's mother turned away from him now and walked back to the top of the stairs. The step squeaked, and she was on her way down. Halfway, she stopped and peered up at Larry, who was still standing at the banister, looking down.

“Do you believe in God, son?” she asked.

This caught Larry by surprise. It was supposed to be all about the mail, and the mail pouch, and did he have any letters hidden in his room? Where was this “God” shit coming come? And what to tell her? The best answer, of course, but how to word it? God didn't give him any trouble when he was talking to his fellow teachers, especially the ones in the science wing. “If there was a God, I'd fire him,” Larry liked to say. It was true. You'd fire the CEO of any company who had done such a piss-poor job with overall production and employee morale. A God who allowed wars. And then, a good part of the world was starving to death, while another part was overweight. Obesity had become a
disease,
while children died in Africa with flies swarming their malnourished bodies. As Larry saw it, you should fire the bastard behind a company that allowed any of this to happen. Or you should certainly
sue
him. And you should fire the bastard who allowed lives to be shattered and broken, such as Larry's had been in losing Jonathan, the bastard who turned a cold shoulder to the world he supposedly created out of love. Fire the son of a bitch and then bring in some new blood to replace him.

“Of course I believe in God,” Larry said. “You always told us we had to, Mom.”

Frances was still standing on her step, halfway down the stairs, one white hand holding on to the railing, the other resting against her throat.

“Did I say that?” she asked. Then, “I honestly don't know what to believe anymore.”

As Larry watched, she descended the rest of the stairs, her feet hitting the hardwood floor of the living room, her dress brushing against the oak coffee table as she floated by, a ghost of the woman she used to be, the woman she was before Henry died.
This
table
was
made
by
your
sons…white oak can grow as tall as a hundred feet.

And then Frances Munroe was gone.

...

Evie slept until noon, something she hadn't done in a long time. She had nixed the idea of a quick vacation, just she and the little Mazda cruising along Route One to visit the ocean, and the fishing boats, and the rocky shoreline. It all seemed like too much work, especially after her meeting with Margie Jenkins. Evie hadn't intended to do a session. But the little girl, Annie, had pulled so much energy out in just those few minutes she appeared that Evie had slept for hours, all night long, and then all morning, in a stupor of broken dreams and noises filtering in from the street. The cotton top sheet was wrapped about her ankles when she kicked it free and finally sat up in bed. That's when she saw the clock. Almost noon. Why had she let Margie do this? She had only intended to talk to her, drink some iced tea, offer a kind of aloof comfort. But the pain in the woman's eyes had seduced Evie again. She was a sucker for a mother's grief, had always been so. And little Annie Jenkins, dead just a month, was still learning the ropes, still finding her way around in that new dimension that was now her home. There was still too much connection to the old world at that point, too much confusion. When this happens, it's as if both worlds are pulling on the newly departed at once. A tug of war. Coming through as Annie did, with Evie channeling for her mother, took just too much energy. It reminded Evie of what used to happen to the lights in those houses built next to prisons that had electric chairs. It takes a lot of current to kill someone, and so all those lightbulbs over dinner tables, and on bedside stands where Bibles are kept, or on desks where kids did their homework, those bulbs in attics and basements, they had to grow dim just to allow it. The same is true of bringing the dead back. If they aren't standing at the veil peering through on their own, ready to look back at the world again, then you need to draw them, like a nail to a magnet. But in six months, maybe, Annie Jenkins would not only be ready, she'd be a good contender. She had high energy, this kid, and the connection between mother and daughter was sharp and strong. When the time was right, Annie Jenkins would be back.