A Patchwork Planet

15

AT 9:58 the next morning, she was sitting on a bench at the far end of Penn Station, gazing straight ahead. I know she saw me coming. But I couldn’t read her expression until I got closer. (I was traveling through squares of sunlight; she was hardly more than a silhouette.) I arrived in front of her and stood there. She raised her chin. Her eyes were swimming in tears.

She said, “You hung up on me, Barnaby.”

“I apologize for that,” I told her.

A woman sharing the bench glanced over at us curiously. I sat down between her and Sophia, blocking the woman’s view. “I don’t know what got into me,” I said.

“Nobody’s ever hung up on me. Ever!”

I reached into my jacket and drew out the money, which I’d transferred to a plain white envelope for privacy’s sake. (I’d thought of every possible scenario — even put a note inside, in case she refused to speak to me.) “Sophia,” I said, and I cleared my throat, preparing to make my announcement.

But Sophia went right on. “I simply wasn’t raised that way,” she told me. “I’m sorry, but that’s how I am. I was raised to be respected and treated with consideration. I was taught that I was a special, valuable person; not the kind that someone could hang up on.”

I said, “See, it was only that I felt … interrogated, you know? On account of the tone of voice you used.”

“Why wouldn’t I interrogate you? You walked into my aunt’s private home without her permission! Naturally I would wonder what you were doing there.”

“Well, I should think it was obvious what I was doing there. I wanted to get your money back.”

“Did I ask you to get my money back? Did I request your assistance? I tell you this much, Barnaby: I’d have thrown that money in your face if you brought it back!”

Then she glanced at my envelope. She said, “Is that what this is?” in a piercing, carrying tone that made me slide my eyes toward the other passengers. “Is that what you came to try and give me?”

I said, “Sofe—”

“Because I’m not accepting it, Barnaby. You’d have to ram it down my throat before I’d accept it.”

This was a temptation, but I decided on a different tactic. I said, “No, no, no. Good grief, no! It’s … something for Opal.”

“Opal?”

“Her, um, Christmas present. I need for you to take it to her.”

“Opal’s Christmas present is in this envelope?”

“Take it, will you? Take it,” I said, and I held it out to her. Right then it mattered more than anything that I get rid of it; I didn’t care how. When she unclasped her hands, finally, and allowed me to lay the envelope on her palm, I felt a kind of lightness expanding inside my chest. I imagined I had been freed of an actual weight.

“You’re asking me to carry this to Opal’s apartment?” Sophia said, and she raised her eyes to look into mine.

“Well,” I said, “or else … no.” (I could see how that might get complicated.) “No, I want you to give it to Natalie at the train station.”

“Natalie?”

“She knows you’re coming. She’ll meet you there.”

Sophia blinked.

“She’ll be … yes! At the Information island,” I said. And then something about how this situation rhymed, so to speak, made me laugh. I said, “I can assure you it’s not contraband.”

A confused, slightly startled expression crossed her face, as if some string had been tugged in her memory, but she went on looking into my eyes.

“Goodbye,” I said, rising.

“Wait! Barnaby? You’re leaving?”

“Yes, I promised I’d help pack up Mrs. Alford’s house today. Oh. Incidentally,” I said. (My mind was racing now.) “If you and Natalie happen to miss connections, I did put her telephone number in the envelope. Just get it out and call her. But you shouldn’t have any trouble.”

She nodded, with her lips slightly parted. I turned and walked away.

Spink and Kunkle, Plumbing Specialists, the man’s card read. “Our Name Says It AH.”

“Your name says it all?” I asked.

“Sure does,” he said. A freckled man with reddish, fizzing hair.

“ ‘Spink and Kunkle’ says it all?”

“ ‘Plumbing Specialists’ says it all,” he told me irritably.

“Oh.”

“I’m supposed to fix a leak in the master bath.”

“Right.” I handed back his card, and then I turned from the door and called, “Hello?” (I had no idea how to address Mrs. Alford’s daughter, never having heard her last name.) “Plumber’s here!” I called.

“Oh, good.” She came galumphing down the stairs. Dressed for manual labor, Valerie was gawkier than ever. She wore huge white canvas gloves that made her look like Minnie Mouse. “Thanks for stopping by on such short notice,” she told the man. “We’re trying to get the house ready to sell, and you know how a minor thing like a drip will scare some people away.”

“Ma’am,” the man said heavily, “no drip on God’s green earth is minor. Believe me.” He was following her up the stairs, carrying what seemed to be a doctor’s bag. “If you was to put a measuring cup under that drip,” he said, “you would be scandalized. Scandalized! To see how much water you’re wasting.”

“Well, this house belonged to my mother, you see, and somehow she never …”

I went back to the kitchen, where I was packing the pots and pans. Martine was doing utensils. Supposedly, we’d be finished by the end of the day, but that was just not going to happen. Valerie had already asked if we could return tomorrow. I said, “Tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Yes, but the next day’s Christmas,” she said.

So I said, “Oh, I guess I could.”

I felt obliged to, really, because she had told me earlier that her mother had willed me the Twinform. “That mannequin thing in the attic,” she’d explained. “I can’t imagine why she thought … But if you don’t want it, just say so. Please.”

“I want it! I want it,” I said.

After that, how could I refuse to come Sunday? Martine said she would come too, but only for the morning. Her brother’s new baby had finally been sprung from the hospital, she said. This meant that her family would be throwing their annual carol sing, after all, and she had to help them get ready. Then she told me I was invited. “You should dress up some,” she told me, “now that you have a Twinform to try out your fashion statements on.”

“Right,” I said. “I can’t wait to see her in a coat and tie.”

Underneath, though, I took my Twinform very seriously. I kept going into the foyer to check on her; I’d moved her down from the attic as soon as I learned she was mine. I pretended I was just figuring out the logistics. “If we could borrow a blanket or something,” I told Martine, “and wrap her up so she doesn’t rattle around the truck bed …”

“ ‘Her’?” Martine teased me. “ ‘She’?”

“Oh, come on, Pasko: you have to admit that face has a lot of character.”

She snorted, and we went back to our packing.

Place mats, tablecloths, napkins, doilies. Tupperware and empty mayonnaise jars and plastic juice containers. Waxed paper, aluminum foil, Saran wrap, freezer wrap. A lifetime supply of white candles. More than a lifetime supply, if you want to be literal about it.

Every now and then, in this job, I suddenly understood that you really, truly can’t take it with you. I don’t think I ordinarily grasped the full implications of that. Just look at all the possessions a dead person leaves behind: every last one, even the most treasured. No luggage is permitted, no carry-on items, not a purse, not a pair of glasses. You spend seven or eight decades acquiring your objects, arranging them, dusting them, insuring them; then you walk out with nothing at all, as bare as the day you arrived.

I told Martine, “I should find some other line of work.”

“Not that again,” she said, and she folded down the flaps on a box of cookbooks.

“It isn’t natural for someone my age to go to more funerals than dinner parties.”

Martine just smiled to herself.

Mrs. Alford’s brother came in with an empty coffee mug. He rinsed it at the sink and placed it in the dishwasher. (Old folks almost always prerinse.) Then he left, slogging off with his head down, not appearing to notice us.

Overhead, the plumber was clanking pipes, and it occurred to me that the name really did say it all. Spink! the pipes went. Kunkle! In the living room, a boom box was playing alternative rock — probably the first time these walls had ever heard such a sound. “Listen to this one,” a kid was saying — talking to his mother, I think. She had started packing the books. “This song comes from before their lead singer went crazy. Okay? Now, this next one … wait a sec. This next one is after he went crazy. Hear that? Can you tell the difference? Well, then, let me play it again. See, this is before he went crazy. This next …”

The bearded husband wandered into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and gazed into it. Then he closed it and wandered off. I still hadn’t heard him speak. Upstairs, the baby was crying, and somebody told her, “Aw, now. Aw, now.” (It sounded to me like the plumber.) I found a length of white flannel in a drawer — the kind you’d spread beneath a tablecloth for protection — and took it out to the foyer and draped it over the Twinform’s shoulders. She gaped at me round-eyed, as if I’d been presumptuous.

Suppose my great-grandfather was walking down the street one day and who did he see but his angel, the woman with the golden braid. “Miss!” he’d cry. “Miss! Wait up! I never thanked you.”

She would turn and say, “Me?” She’d be this average, commonplace woman, maybe even homely, maybe chapped-lipped or shiny-nosed, depending on the season. “What for?” she would ask, and he would see then that he had been mistaken — that there were no angels, after all. Or that his angels were lots of people he had never suspected.

Where, exactly, would I get hold of a gray cloth ledger with maroon leather corners?

Martine passed through the foyer, lugging a carton. “We’re running out of space,” she told me. “I’m going to start stacking things here.” Then she said, “Yikes.” She’d just about bumped into the alternative-rock kid. He veered around her, cradling his boom box in both arms. I guess his mother had finally had enough of it.

Another boy sat at the dining-room table — so far I’d counted four boys and two girls — reading a comic book. He didn’t look up until I said, “Uh …,” because right on the carpet in front of my feet I saw a disgusting brown mess. “Is this dog do?” I asked the kid. “Or what? Is there a dog in the house? There’s dog do on the rug.”

“It’s fate,” he told me coolly.

I said, “Oh.” Then I said, “Okay.” I waited a moment, and finally I decided to head on into the kitchen. It wasn’t till I’d cleared another shelf that I figured out he’d said, “It’s fake.” I grinned.

By now Sophia would be arriving in Philadelphia. She’d be clicking across the station toward the Information island, carrying the envelope and looking around for Natalie. Of course, she’d seen Natalie once before, but that was only briefly and some time ago. She would be wondering whether they’d recognize each other. Maybe she would notice a woman in a red coat, and she would think, Her? and then realize the woman was too plump, or too fair. (And just then the real Natalie walked across my mind — her straight, slim figure and tranquil face, her grave, brown, considering eyes.)

I fished a screwdriver out of my pocket and removed a rusted can opener from the wall above the stove. I put it in the box we had set beside the back door for trash. Mrs. Alford’s brother said, “Oh! What’s this?” I hadn’t even heard him arrive. He bent over the box to study the can opener. “All I have at home is that hand-grip kind; nothing that hangs on a wall,” he told me.

“Then why don’t you take this one?” I asked. “It’s only going out to the garbage.”

“Yes, perhaps … It’s a pity to throw it away, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely,” I told him.

He clutched the can opener to his chest and padded off. In the dining room I heard him say, “There’s dog do on the rug, Johnny,” but I didn’t catch Johnny’s answer.

Sophia would have stood waiting for several minutes now. She’d be looking to her left and her right, biting her lower lip, her eyebrows quirked in annoyance. (I pictured her in the feather coat, although more often lately she wore something beige and belted that she’d bought on sale last spring.) Maybe she would ask the Information clerk, “Has anybody been here that you’ve noticed — a woman who seemed to be meeting someone?”

She’d be glancing down at the envelope more and more frequently, wondering if it was time yet to get Natalie’s phone number out.

The last thing left on the wall was one of those rechargeable mixers. I unhooked it and placed it in the carton of utensils. Then I unscrewed the mounting plate, and just as I was lifting it from the wall I felt the most amazing rush of happiness wash over me. I didn’t know at first where it came from. I was looking at the mounting plate, is all, not thinking of anything special, I was staring at those figure-eight-shaped holes you slide over the screws. They reminded me of something. They brought to mind the brass clasps on Martine’s overalls.

Martine walked back into the kitchen, dusting off her hands, and she picked up another carton. I said, “Martine?” and she said, “What,” and I said, “Haply I think on thee.”

“Huh?” she said.

But I could tell she knew what I meant.

Out in the dining room, Mrs. Alford’s brother was demonstrating his new can opener. “Barnaby was planning to put this in the trash,” he said. “Can you imagine? Why, there’s years and years of use left in it!” Upstairs, the boom box was playing something noisy and disorganized. And in Philadelphia, Sophia was opening the envelope. She was staring down at the money inside and drawing a quick breath inward. She glanced around the train station. Then she unfolded my note. Sophia, she read, you never did realize. I am a man you can trust.