Year After Henry (7 page)

“When are you going to stop this?” Frances said. She couldn't contain the disapproval she felt right then. Or was it disgust? Larry could no longer tell. The sadness had mixed their emotions all together, like a kind of primordial soup. Their happiness and joy now comingled with their pain and sorrow, like a thick syrup that was smothering them. Was that ache Larry felt when he awoke over missing Jonathan? Or Henry? Or both? Or was it for the life he thought he would live, back when he was a teenager and catching all those footballs, making all those touchdowns just behind Henry? He had come to realize that it no longer mattered, since an ache was an ache.

“I don't know,” Larry said. “I don't know when I'm going to stop this.” And he realized for the first time that this was the truth. He didn't know. Maybe he would live in his old bedroom forever. Maybe his parents would die, and then vines and thorny growth would cover the entire house, the town forgetting that he was ever in that upper room where the small yellow light was still burning. Until one night, the light no longer came on. Maybe.

“I want you to go see Dr. Carden,” his mother said. “You've got to get a grip, Larry. You've got to pull out of this.”

Larry felt an immense love for her then. He wanted to put his arms around her, wanted to weep tears against her neck, to feel her arms around
him
as he did when still a child. But he had gotten too big and too old for her to hug. It made her uncomfortable, and he sensed it. He was a grown man and now, like those Easter chicks that are so fluffy until they grow into clucking hens, he was no longer something to be cuddled.

“I need some time,” Larry said. He felt very awkward standing there, one arm against the doorjamb, the other hanging limply at his side. Bare-chested and barefoot, he was wearing only his black sweatpants. But even in a full suit of clothes, tie, cuff links, cummerbund, the whole works, he always felt very boyish in his mother's presence.

“Henry's memorial service is a week away and you're still locked in this room,” Frances said. Larry smiled down at her. What else could he do? It wasn't really about him, about his welfare, about his son disappearing down the interstate to another life, about his failed marriage, about his lost job. It wasn't even about the goddamned purloined mail, a government offense if ever there was one. It was still about Henry.

Larry closed the door in his mother's face. Then he locked it.

...

Evie dreamed of Henry that night. She had slept with the bedroom window open, the curtain fluttering in the breeze, the ends of it slapping the foot of her bed. Henry was at the Days Inn, holding the door wide open to room 9. Evie was telling him again what she had told him the last time she met him there. She was sitting in the rickety motel chair and Henry was lying on the bed, his head on a pillow and a lit cigarette in his hand as he listened.
No
more, Henry. I feel ashamed is what I feel. This can't go on. I've lived in this town long enough to meet your wife at the grocery store, our carts banging together. I hope she never finds out. I want this to end now.

In the dream, Henry had done just what he'd done when he was alive. He'd jumped from the bed wearing nothing but his white jock shorts. He'd grabbed Evie up off the chair and flung her onto the bed, covered her with the weight of his body.
Are
you
nuts? You know you're crazy about me.
But Evie had resisted him, had spurned Henry's attempts to pull her back to the magnet of his personality. Henry wasn't used to being rejected in any form, she could tell. He'd grown furious with her.
You'll be back, Evie
, he'd said.
Where
you
gonna
go? Who you gonna go to?
But Evie hadn't gone back. Instead, Henry had taken to getting that same room at the Days Inn, getting into bed with a six-pack of beer, and phoning Evie up, whether she was at home or at the tavern.
I'm in bed at the Days Inn, with a six-pack of cold beer and wearing nothing but a smile,
Henry would call her to say.
I
got
you
a
bottle
of
that
French
wine
you
like. Come on over, Evie. There's a pillow next to mine with your name on it.
But Evie had stopped going. Later, Henry told Larry that he'd come to enjoy watching sports on the Days Inn television, no tavern noise to disrupt him, no Chad playing his CDs at top volume, no Jeanie talking loudly on the phone to her friends. It was just Henry, the TV, that six-pack of beer, and a pillow where Evie's head used to be. It might have been true. Or maybe it was Henry's pride talking.

Whatever it was, it was a year old. Now that the Buick was turning up in front of Evie's house, parked at the curb like some kind of spy car, she knew that Jeanie wanted to talk. That's why Evie had finally written Jeanie Munroe a letter. She had mailed it three days earlier, but there had been no response, not yet. It was a mess, that's what it was. Their lives had gotten all mixed up in tangles and briars, so much so that maybe they'd never unravel themselves.

When Evie woke it was still only one a.m. She knew it would be a couple hours before she could fall back asleep. She always had a hard time sleeping in the heart of the night, ever since she began her sketching as a profession. Sometimes, she even heard muffled voices talking to her, as if a group of people were all wrapped up in cobwebs and trying to tell her their secrets. She would sit up in bed to listen, but the voices were always too distant to hear well. She wondered if this was her own family, trying to break through the veil to reach her. If so, they needed to poke harder. They needed to speak up.

“Fuck it,” Evie said. She hadn't the concentration to lie there for two hours, waiting for sleep to come back to her, not that morning. And not with so many new variables being tossed about, from Henry to Larry, to even Jeanie and Chad. She got out of bed and found her rumpled jeans where she'd stepped out of them the night before. She pulled them on and grabbed a denim shirt from her closet. She selected one of the joints she'd rolled in case of an emergency and slipped it into the shirt pocket. She put the lime-green plastic lighter into the hip pocket of her jeans.

She didn't bother to lock the door behind her, not in Bixley. The night air was damp, still moist with a brief summer rain that had come and gone earlier in the evening. Evie counted stars as she walked, the big bright ones that manage to shine through haze and light pollution. A ten-minute walk later, and she was at the cast-iron gates of Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery, at the edge of town. She stood there a minute, letting her eyes adjust to the light coming from the pole lamp that had been erected near the cemetery.
I
Go
To
Prepare
A
Place
For
You,
said the brass plaque on the front gate, which Evie opened slowly. She heard the creak echo across the tops of the headstones. Twenty stones in, five stones over
: Henry Munroe, b. November 10, 1962—d. July 8, 2002.
At the grave, Evie sat on the ground and took the joint from her shirt pocket. She lit it up, the Bic snapping its own tiny echo out into the night. In the mottled light, she could see that someone had left a new pot of flowers at the base of Henry's stone. She held the Bic's small flame closer to the pot. The flowers appeared to be pink geraniums. The grass had already grown, not as thick and green as the older graves, but thick enough and green enough that the earth was making a statement. The earth was taking Henry's body back into itself, into its mouth, digesting it, taking it home.

One of the few things Evie Cooper remembered about high school was the play her junior class had done,
Our
Town,
where the dead in a small cemetery talk to the living who come to visit them. But the living can't hear their words. By the time her class had done the play, Evie already knew the truth, that spirits show themselves to some but not to others. And so she had paid attention for the first time in her school years. She had clung to every word. And maybe that's what brought her to a small New England town. Maybe it was the memory of how she had felt almost safe while the class was reading that play. Feeling safe is what the living want most. But sometimes, only the dead realize it.

Under the large pole lamp at the cemetery entrance, bats and moths swooped and dived beneath the light. Evie watched them as she smoked, taking each draw far down into her lungs and holding it there. She looked back at the headstone that marked Henry's resting place. Dear Henry. He deserved to live. He deserved to fall in love once more with Jeanie, some wild night of wine and an old black-and-white movie. He deserved to see the baby his daughter was carrying. He deserved to see Chad grown into manhood, proud and tall and handsome. As Evie finished the joint, she saw a bat swoop down fast and swift into a circle of moths. And then, just as quick, it was gone again. One less moth in the world. With the pot finally settling in, turning her thoughts pleasant for a change, it all seemed funny now. Bats and moths. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Life was really quite simple, especially when you considered its qualities late at night, in a country cemetery, stoned to the heavens.

Evie lay back on the cool grass, stretched herself out as long and lean as she could, one arm over the mound of earth, as if it were Henry himself. They had slept that way at the Days Inn until guilt, or maybe it was duty, would pull Henry out of a deep sleep, send him scurrying to his pants and shoes, and the jangling keys to his Jeep. Most of the time, Evie would spend the rest of the night there alone, between the cool sheets, hating to waste money spent on a room for just a couple hours. But that was before she told Henry it was over.

“Hey, it's me,” she said. Her words sounded hollow, lost among the numerous headstones. She could hear movement in the brush and knew the raccoons and foxes were out searching for food. A few stars were bright enough overhead to break past the light of the pole lamp. They squinted and blinked down at her from their dark sky. “I can't sleep.”

“Neither can I.” It was a voice that came from out of the shadows. Evie's heart went wild, beating so hard and fast that she could feel it press against her breast, a small fist pounding. Then time slowed down for her again. She sat up.

“Who the hell is it?” she asked. “That's not funny, you know.” She heard a rustling from behind the rosebushes that grew along the edge of the cemetery. Footsteps came toward her. She held her hand up to her eyes, trying to make out the shape in the blue-purple glare of the pole lamp. It was a tall man with an easy, halfhearted stride, the way Henry Munroe walked. Her heart began its rapid beating again, a heart thinking for itself since Evie now knew the truth. It wasn't Henry. Under the rays of artificial light, the orange wool bonnet looked almost yellowish.

“Chad,” she said. “What the hell are you doing out here?” He squatted at the end of his father's grave, rocking on his haunches, staring at the stone, unable to see the words that Evie knew were written there:
Beloved
Father, Husband, Son.
From across the short distance she could smell the thick odor of beer, a smell she knew well from Murphy's Tavern.

“Guess I could ask you the same thing,” Chad said. Evie had to think fast.

“I couldn't sleep,” she answered. “So I went for a walk and, well, when I ended up here, I figured I'd visit old Mrs. Conley. She died, you know. She used to make such good pies. Conley's Bakery isn't the same without her. And then, well, I remembered your dad was here, and he was always such a good tipper.”

In the shadows, she saw Chad nod his head, and she knew this pleased him. It was the kind of legacy Henry had wanted to build for himself, that of the social man, a man who always had a good joke ready to roll and a tendency to buy a round of drinks for the house every time the Sox hit a home run.

“He was something, the old man,” Chad said. Evie smiled now, still feeling the sweet stupor of the pot, relishing in the irony of the moment, as only one who is stoned in a cemetery can. What if someone had told Henry before he died that on one star-filled night in the near future Evie Cooper would be sitting out by his grave while his son, Chad, squatted at the end of it?

Chad put his head back and sniffed, wolflike, at the air around him.

“I smell something better than beer,” he said.

“I'm all out,” said Evie. “And even if I wasn't, I wouldn't give you any.”

“I'm not out,” said Chad. He reached into his jacket pocket and quickly produced what Evie knew would be a joint. When his lighter burst to flame, she saw it clenched in his fingertips as he lit it. He inhaled and then offered it to her, for she saw the fiery tip coming toward her in the night. She wanted to accept it, knowing the pot would carry her a bit deeper into herself. She trusted Chad, even though he was just a boy. He was a smart boy, the kind of boy the dead might even talk to, when he was ready to listen. He was a boy who seemed to know things only older folks should know, a knowledge of the outer world that some folks are born with and others can't learn, not even at the best university. Evie almost reached for the joint.

“I can't, Chad,” she said. “You're not of age, and besides, you're Larry's nephew. He'd have a fit if he knew you were out here right now. And doing this.” She heard Chad inhale again, long and deep. The smell of the pot was laced with that
other
smell, what smelled like a
library
to Evie, a smell that took her places, carried her into other realms, toward new ideas and poetic adventures, the same things a good book is supposed to do.