Year After Henry (17 page)

“Okay,” said Evie. If nothing was broken, and that seemed to be the case, she could clean Gail up herself. But she wasn't going to let Marshall Thompson go free. She couldn't. Maybe Gail came from a long line of women who loved men like Marshall. But that was no longer a good enough excuse. Not these days. Besides, the line that wanted to stop men like him was much longer, and that's the line Evie Cooper stood in. She would find a way to deal with Marshall Thompson. She put her arms around Gail and helped her to stand. She grabbed the purse that was lying on the porch and threw the strap around her own shoulder. Then she led Gail into the house, past the singing lead crystals on the lamp shade and out to the kitchen.

“Did I wake you up?” Gail asked, her words thick and heavy, the swollen lips making speech difficult.

“Course not,” said Evie. She reached for the brown jacket. Gail had been so proud of that coat. It was the first thing she'd bought for herself in ages, any extra money going for clothing for the kids, for babysitters and school lunches. The jacket was torn at the sleeve joint and its back was covered with ugly grass stains.

“Come to the sink and let me wash you up,” Evie said. “I need to get some ice on those bruises.” Gail started to cry, the inside crying, the kind that hurts too much to let outside. That's when Evie saw that Gail was holding something in her bruised right hand. She reached for the hand and pulled it up where she could see. It was a long, thick swatch of her own dark hair, a piece of scalp still binding it together. Evie uncurled the fingers and took the hair away. She tossed it into the trash. What was it Gail had said earlier that evening, her face trying its best to be happy? “As long as it doesn't spoil this night. I got my heart set on cruising along the St. Lawrence, wind in my hair.”

“Does Marshall know where you are?” Evie asked. Gail shook her head.

Evie washed the bruised face, using a face cloth and just a bit of soap. All this time she was trying to figure out how to handle the situation. Maybe when she tucked Gail into bed, maybe then she could call the cops, report the assault. Or they could do it first thing in the morning, once the poor girl got some sleep.

“You're gonna be okay, angel,” Evie said. And that's when she looked just beyond Gail's shoulder, her eye having caught a slight movement. It was one of the faces of the dead, watching events from beyond that veil, peering into Evie's kitchen at Gail Ferguson's bloody and bruised face. Curious, maybe. But most likely wanting to comfort, as the dead always do. The dead feel sorry for the living, and that's what Evie Cooper had learned most over the years of her spiritual work. The dead wish they could stop our pain. Evie said nothing. She would put Gail to bed, where she would at least be safe. The morning would bring answers. She shook three extra-strength Tylenol from a bottle and laid them in Gail's hand, helped her bring the pills up to her mouth. Evie then poured a glass of water and held it to Gail's lips until she'd drunk enough to wash the pills down.

“I'm putting you in my bed, sweetie,” Evie said, and Gail merely nodded. Evie decided then that she'd drive Gail's car into her garage, where she never parked her own. That way, if Marshall came trolling on the big Harley, he wouldn't see it. “I'll be down here on the sofa, all night long, keeping an eye on you.” The adrenaline rush had gone out of Gail now. She was ready to fall deep into the safety of sleep.

Evie looked again at the form standing just behind Gail's shoulder, the sweet and loving face, the eyes so full of caring. Sometimes, all the dead want is for the living to know that someone is watching, someone is taking note, someone is nearby, so that the living will never have to hurt alone. And maybe that's why the child had come to pay a visit. But by the time Evie helped Gail to her feet and turned to grab her purse from off the kitchen counter, little Annie Jenkins had already gone.

Bam! Bam!

“Larry, open the door, son.”

Larry looked at the clock. Seven a.m. The exact time he had predicted the melee would come. It was Saturday, and the old man would have a half day to put in at the post office. He would arrive for work at seven thirty. Since it took him less than fifteen minutes to drive there, Larry assumed they would eat their breakfast first, and then allow fifteen minutes for the confrontation. Sometimes, it almost wasn't fair to know people so well you could predict them that easily. But then, it was this same talent that enabled his mother to rise from her bed the night before and take the house key from beneath the pot of geraniums.

“The door is open,” Larry said, and then there they were again, the two of them, standing in his room. They peered at him with eyes that held nothing but disappointment. Larry lifted the mailbag from off the bottom bunk and handed it to his father. It now held all the bills and junk mail he had thrown into the clothes basket, the pile he intended to destroy.

“I delivered the important letters,” he said. “I was going to throw these out since all they do is cause people pain. You know, credit card bills for all that useless junk they can't afford, foreclosures, threats from the IRS. But I couldn't do it. So here they are. Gil can glue the envelopes again and then lie about how it happened. Remember how we covered up the time those kids stole his mailbag and ripped open letters while he was getting a coffee and doughnut?”

Larry stopped talking, but all that time he had watched as his father pushed a hand into the precious leather mailbag and riffled a finger among the open letters, lovingly, as if they were children of his that had been abused for too long. Then he watched his mother, watching his father.

“Larry,” his father said. “You are
not
post office material.” He closed the flap on the mailbag and shouldered the thing expertly, as if it were an extension of his own arm. “You're fired, son. I hope you know I have no choice.”

“He has no choice,” his mother said. Together, they looked like a plastic couple, the sort you might find standing with white frosting up to their knees, like snow, on the top of an anniversary cake. They had been married far too long to look like the little plastic bride and groom that had stood on the wedding cake Larry had shared with Katherine Grigsby on their own wedding day. If Larry were in charge of manufacturing those plastic ornaments, he would make some changes. The bride would be holding a prenup agreement. The groom would have the name of a good divorce lawyer tucked into the pocket of his plastic tux. Larry realized then that he respected his parents for how they had kept their lives together. It couldn't have been easy, and yet here they were, a responsible pair who raised their family reasonably well, a couple who'd been dragged down the marital highway a few miles. Parents who knew what it was like to have a son predecease them. At least, that was the word obituaries liked to use. Lawrence and Frances Munroe were the last of their kind. No one Larry knew took marriage that seriously. Not anymore.

“You
should
fire me,” said Larry. “It's okay, Dad.” He breathed out the painful breath he'd been holding. He was just about to resign his job until this revelation came at him. Now, he felt a sure, quick relief. This would make the old man feel better, his mother too. It would be a way of punishing him, and he surely did need a good punishment. If the old man hadn't been the postmaster, Larry could have gone to jail. If he remembered correctly, mail tampering carried a $250,000 fine and a five-year jail sentence. But jail would be another safe square room where he could hide, so long as he wasn't gangbanged and buggered around the clock by the other white-collar inmates.

“We're very disappointed in you, son,” said Frances. She seemed even more tired than the day before. Planning the memorial service was draining what energy she had left.

“I know you are, Mom,” said Larry. “I know you are, and I don't blame you. To tell you the truth, I'm disappointed too.”

“Once the memorial service for your brother is over,” said his father, “we'll need to sit down and talk, son.”

“We'll talk,” said Frances.

“Let's do that,” said Larry. “Let's sit down and talk.”

Larry was wondering if he should be the one to say, “Well, good to see you then,” and close the door. Or if he should wait for one of them to do it. It seemed the big confrontation was already over, with ten minutes left to spare. He supposed that in the early days of their marriage, like most young couples, they might have put those extra minutes to good use. Ten minutes was enough time for a quickie before the mailbag disappeared out the front door.

“Make no mistake about this,” said Frances. She followed her husband over to the door and turned to look back at Larry, the knob already in her hand. “You will be at Henry's memorial service.” And then she closed the bedroom door.

Larry heard them whispering to each other as they went down the stairs, like swallows trapped in the eaves of a house. A few minutes later, he heard his father's small Toyota back out of the drive and whine down the street, toward the post office, and the tethered pens, and the stack of magazines that recorded the long and prestigious history of stamps and letters.

...

Jeanie had just looked in on Chad, making sure he was still there, safe in his bed. They had made a major step toward healing. She would let him sleep awhile longer and then she'd make him the same breakfast she had thrown into the garbage the day before. In her bedroom, she was just pulling on her jeans and a shirt when the phone on her nightstand rang. She was certain it must be Frances. The memorial service was that next afternoon, a Sunday, which the weatherman had predicted would be sunny and mild, almost like the day Henry died. It would be Frances, talking about who was bringing what casserole and whether Jeanie might speak to Larry, make sure he attended. She hesitated picking up the phone, her hand on the receiver. “Come on,” she told herself. “It's just a telephone.” It wasn't Frances. It was Lisa.

“Mom, what's up?” In all the years of her growing up, Lisa never used any words but those three. It was never
Hello, Mom
. It was always
Mom, what's up?
And it hadn't changed, even now that she was a grown woman and about to be a mother herself.

“Who is this?” Jeanie asked, and smiled to hear her daughter giggling on the other end of the line. This was the baby that had been the reason she and Henry had married in the first place. And that had made it all worthwhile. And it was Lisa who had come home from a party in tears one night, just two years earlier. She had knocked on Jeanie's bedroom door and then sat on the edge of her bed. Henry wasn't home, and so Lisa had spread out next to her mother in bed, the tears now unstoppable.
What's the matter, baby, what's wrong?
And Lisa had told her. David Carlson was drunk at the party and he'd blurted out that his mother was having an affair with Henry, her father. Was it true? So what did Jeanie do? Did she say
yes, baby, it's true and Wendy Carlson is far from the only one. The last one was Dorinda Freeman, who lives at 910 Hunter's Lane and is always getting packages she has to sign for
. No, she held her daughter in her arms and whispered into her hair that sometimes people say cruel things because they're jealous, or confused, or they need attention. Lisa must promise, promise that very moment, that she would put it out of her mind and never think of it again. Never. And as far as Jeanie knew, Lisa had done that.

Jeanie, on the other hand, had confronted Henry. It wasn't the first time she'd done so, but she assured him it would be the last time, especially since it was now affecting the children.
You
do
it
again, Henry, and I'm filing for divorce,
Jeanie had said. It's what Mona had been urging her to do all along.
Don't let him get away with that crap, Jeanie.
And it seemed as though Henry even heard her that time, as if maybe their marriage was worth saving after all. Henry certainly acted like a different man, coming home to supper on time, taking Jeanie out to a movie now and then. For almost a year. And then she found the receipt to the Days Inn. Room 9. Evie Cooper. No one ever knew, not even Mona, but she had looked in the phone book for a divorce lawyer and kept his number handy. It was a matter of time, of stockpiling evidence, before
Munroe
vs. Munroe
became a reality. At least, Jeanie wanted to believe that she would've had the courage to leave Henry. How to tell now?

“Mom, I'm so huge,” Lisa said. “I swear I'm about to burst.”

“I was huge, too, when I was carrying you,” said Jeanie. “I guess it runs in the family.” She
had
been huge. And it was at the time when her friends, and Henry's friends, had realized that maybe Jeanie wasn't going to be fun to hang out with anymore. Henry could still be one of the guys as long as he was out fishing, or playing football in someone's yard, or working on his bike. But if he was at home, it meant responsibility. It meant his young wife was about to have a baby and he wasn't ready for it. But hell, neither was Jeanie, and yet she'd gone ahead and handled it. Looking back, Henry had never been a good husband. Not even from the beginning. Not even then.

“Mom, I've got a surprise for you,” Lisa said. Jeanie felt a quick beat of her heart.

“Don't tell me the baby came early,” she said.

“Nope,” said Lisa. “But I'm coming. The doctor says it's okay to travel. Patrick has to work today, but we're getting up early in the morning. We'll be there in plenty of time for Daddy's memorial service.”

Jeanie's first thought was to go up and wake Chad.
Lisa's coming home!

“Your old room will be ready,” said Jeanie. And then, “Lisa?”

“What, Mom?”

“I love you, kiddo.”

Jeanie put the phone back down on its cradle and stood there by the bed, looking at it. It was the same phone she had picked up the morning Henry died, a year earlier, the one she held to her ear to say the awful words.
My
husband's had a heart attack
. It was the same phone that some stranger had used to comfort her long distance, a woman she would never meet.
They'll be there soon, Mrs. Munroe. Stay on the phone with me. Try to be calm now
. A full year, come one more night.

Jeanie lay down on the bed, stretched out full, the way she was that morning twelve months earlier when she had put her head on Henry's chest and waited for the ambulance to come wailing up the street.
He
doesn't have a heartbeat, but he's got a sense of humor that won't quit. His favorite food is spaghetti and meatballs. He stills listens to the Beatles, and he loves the Red Sox almost as much as he used to love me.
What had she whispered into his ear before they could rush into the house with their stretcher and carry him away?
Why
did
you
do
it, Henry?

Jeanie said the words again, aloud, hoping that if Henry were hovering somewhere, if there were such a thing as the dead coming back to spy on the living, he might hear her. Maybe he'd send her an answer. Maybe their wedding photo still on her dresser would topple over, the glass shattering into a dozen pieces. Or maybe a bird might fly into the windowpane and drop to the ground outside, its neck broken. She knew these things were called omens, and so Jeanie lay there waiting for her omen from Henry to arrive. She heard wind shake the house. A spring rainstorm was on its way, a heavy one, according to that morning's weather report. It would be a day of thunder and lightning, storm clouds and gray skies. But Sunday would be that sunny and mild day that Frances had been praying for.

Jeanie's question to her husband that morning he died had not been about Evie Cooper. Or any of the other women. It was just the first part of a two-part question that Jeanie didn't finish since it was obvious Henry Munroe was dead. But if she had asked the full question, it would have gone like this: “Why did you do it, Henry? Why did you fall out of love with me?”

What bothered her most about Evie Cooper was the hold she seemed to have over Henry, even when she no longer wanted it. After Evie had ended the affair, Henry was still obsessed with her. Jeanie reached over to the nightstand and pulled open its top drawer. She found the letter and took it out.
Dear
Evie, How much longer are you going to keep this up? If I come to the tavern you avoid me. If I wait by your car in the parking lot, you get Gail to drive you home. If I call, you hang up. Come on, girl. You know you can't stay away from me forever. I'll be here, arms open, when you change your mind. Love, Henry.

Jeanie had found the letter in Henry's Jeep, hidden beneath the coils of the seat. It was lacking a stamp was all, or it would have been ready to mail. It was addressed to Evie Cooper, at 25 Avalon Court. It had the proper zip code, sitting like a small afterthought below the words
Bixley, Maine
. It was everything a letter needed in order to be official. Surely, Henry being a mailman, finding a stamp was not the problem. Maybe it was his pride that had kept him from sending it. Or maybe he planned to mail it on the very day he died. Jeanie's grief counseling class had suggested she write a letter to Henry, a way to tell him how she felt about losing him, a way to come to terms with the anger she was feeling. But Jeanie hadn't been able to do it. It seemed silly, considering Henry had been a mailman and Jeanie didn't know the zip code for heaven. Or whatever the place is where people who die end up going.

Jeanie heard the first pelts of strong rain hitting the bedroom window, and then Chad rising from his bed upstairs, his footfalls heading down the hallway to the bathroom. Lisa's feet used to tread that same hall. It seemed to Jeanie now that you could measure out a family's time together in footfalls, and gallons of water rushing through pipes, tubes of toothpaste, or the moments a refrigerator door opened and closed. The door on a house, too, opening and closing as the kids got older and graduated and then disappeared into the world. Those tiny signs that most people ignore as they live out their days together—maybe they were
omens
—were nothing but markers. They were ways of keeping time, if you had a mind to do so. But Jeanie knew most people didn't.