Open season

16

She was in the living room, surrounded by three small tables, her daily pastimes piled around her like the borders of a nest. But her hands were motionless in her lap. She was watching a soap opera, something I’d rarely seen happen before. She was an avid radio listener, but daytime TV was a sign of things amiss.

She caught my movement and turned suddenly toward me. For a split second, I saw the face of a woman with no reserves left-blank, hollow-eyed, sagging from the lack of life. It was gone so fast, it was more of an impression than a real image, but it left me shocked. In its place was an older version of what had welcomed me into this house as far back as I could recall.

She gathered me in for a hug. “What foolishness have you been up to?”

I kissed her warm wrinkled cheek. “I wish I knew.”

She held my face out at arm’s length. “And Frank?”

I could only shrug.

“Where’s Gail?”

“She went back. I think she felt awkward.”

“She’s a good girl.”

I straightened and glanced at the television. Mother hit the remote-control button by her side and killed the picture.

“Stories without end. Not like life at all.”

I had to smile. “I can’t argue with that.”

She was watching me closely, her eyes bright and sharp. She had one of those faces in which every line followed her mood. She smiled, and hundreds of wrinkles smiled; she frowned, and they were all sad. “How do you feel, Joe?”

“A little detached.” I walked over to the bay window and sat on the bench sill. This had been my favorite reading spot at night as a kid, surrounded by the cold wind on three sides, and yet warm and safe.

“It sounds like after Korea.”

“I suppose so. I hadn’t thought of that. God, you have a long memory.”

“A mother’s memory. For you, that was just a phase. For me, it was the death of my child-it robbed me of something special. It’s not a time I will ever forget.”

“I ended up going to college, at least for a while.”

She shook her head. “The price was too high.”

I smiled. She was right. I had been the one to break the cocoon holding this house and its inhabitants. That had changed things for ever, and no achievement of mine would ever justify it.

“How long are you going to stay?”

“Just a couple of days-until I get my legs back.”

“You were hit very hard, weren’t you?” The softness in her voice made the answer superfluous, but I didn’t want her to retreat to what I had seen when I’d entered.

“Not hard enough, I guess. I’ll be okay in a couple of days. But I’ve got to go back to wrap this thing up. I can’t leave it hanging.”

“Did you stop by to see Leo on the way up?”

“No, I came straight here.”

“Go down and see him. He’d like that.”

“What about you?”

She gestured at her piled-up pastimes. “I’ve got my projects. Go.”

I kissed her again and went outside. As I closed the door behind me, I heard the television start up. The stories without end had acquired a certain appeal, and I found that sad.

I crossed over the icy snow to the barn and swung back its big double doors. The blank, gray light fell on a semicircle of eight dusty, mummified cars, all looking like alien pods wrapped in canvas. This was Leo’s pleasure palace-his other obsession besides women. Under each tarp was an automobile loved for its own special virtue, whether it was looks, engine, popular appeal, or merely that it had been around for so long. None of them were in mint condition. Leo kept them covered, but only because the barn was so dusty. Their paint jobs were dull, and they were dented here and there; on the street they attracted attention for their quaintness, not their gleam.

But while their shells were weather-beaten, their innards were immaculate. Each car ran with the smoothness of its first mile.

I uncovered the one nearest me, hoping it wasn’t the pale green T-bird, and found the ’49 Cadillac-the first car he’d ever collected. I knew there was a Mustang somewhere, probably the most practical choice given the time of year, but I didn’t have the energy to dig it out. I got the key off the wall. The Cadillac would have to do.

It was only about three miles to Thetford Center and the grocery store where Leo worked-a nice walk if you were up to it. Not that the reasons for such a stroll were compelling. The town didn’t boast of much beyond the grocery and, at fifty miles an hour, it could be missed uldNotentirely during a good sneeze.

Leo was actually part-owner of the store, having tacked a full-fledged butcher shop onto its back to save it from bankruptcy. He had been operating in Hanover, New Hampshire, about twelve miles south and across the river, catering to the blue-blood barnacles attached to Dartmouth College. There, over the years, as head of the meat department at the town’s trendiest “food emporium,” he’d become the Walter Cronkite of viands-the area’s most trusted butcher. But he remained an employee. When he heard of the plight of the grocery store in Thetford Center, he took the chance that his clientele wouldn’t begrudge him the extra fifteen-minute commute. Apparently, they hadn’t-much to his, and the grocery store’s, profit.

But the thing that struck me wasn’t his uncanny marketing, but that he was now less than two minutes from our house. At this rate, in fifteen years he’d have his profession, his hobby, and his home all under one roof. I thought of our mother sitting in a single room surrounded by all her possessions. Maybe the two of them were more compatible than I’d thought.

He must have seen me from the window, because he came running out of the store in his blood-smeared apron and pounded me on the back, patting my chest with the other hand at the same time-a true meat lover. “Joey-Jesus, I’m glad to see you. You look lousy. How do you feel?” He looked over my shoulder. “The Caddy-good choice. How’s Mom?”

I muttered something to his back as he trotted ahead to open the door and usher me in.

He gave me a fleeting, sorrowful look. “I was sorry to hear about Frank, Joey. A lot of people felt the loss up here. He was a real favorite.” He closed the door and the subject with an expansive wave of his arm. “Look at this. Dynamite, huh?”

I had been here less than a month ago-I was never allowed home without visiting the store-and the place had been so stuffed with Christmas greenery, it had looked like Sherwood Forest. Now, it was Danish modern: blond wooden chairs, white counters, butcher block everywhere. I could still smell the sawdust and new paint.

“Christ, Leo, it looks like a furniture store.”

“Great, huh? I even have a play area for kids. Now the mothers can take their time.” He laughed. “And spend more.”

This last was addressed directly to several of those mothers, clustered in front of his meat display counter. They giggled like groupies. He dragged me around to the other side of the counter and shoved an apron at me. “This is my big brother, ladies. He comes to help me out sometimes for therapy-he’s a cop, you understand.”

He pointed me at the meat grinder and went to take care of his customers. Leo, in short doses, was good for the soul. How my mother put up with him, I could never guess.

We spent the afternoon back there, I making hamburger meat, cutting fat, or wrapping pieces in plastic for display, Leo hustling the trade, making the fancy cuts and keeping up a running patter of conversation. This had become a traditional part of my visits, both here and when he’d worked in Hanover. He was right. In a way, it was therapeutic. Our father had taught us to butcher, and to go through the memorized patterns of an earlier age was a relief fros ad im having to think.

Leo knew that. Beneath his marathon conversational style, he was a keen watcher and a champion depression squasher, acutely attuned to getting other people out of their slumps. I don’t know how much else he had on the ball, but he was a hell of a friend. Over the hours, I noticed him glancing at me occasionally, making sure I was all right.

At closing time, he looped his arm over my shoulders. “So, do the docs say you can booze it up?”

“Nope.”

“I was afraid of that. Girls?”

“That’s why Gail isn’t here.”

“Bummer. Well, I guess it’s home, then. Pizza tonight.”

“You ordering out?”

“Hell, no. Mom does the slicing and dicing and I do the rolling-that part’s rough on her wrists. It’s a group effort.”

He jogged off to his car-a ’65 Corvair-and I followed him back to the farm. The afternoon had been well spent. My headache was finally gone. I was as tired as I ever remembered feeling, but not exhausted. It had all the omens of a good night’s sleep.

Mother was indeed slicing and dicing when we got home, on a board laid across the arms of her wheelchair. The two of them worked well together. As usual, I stayed out of the way, my culinary prowess being rarely in demand.

After dinner, Leo put on his coat and beckoned to me to follow. We went across to the barn. He switched on the light and nodded at the Cadillac. “How did she handle?”

“Pretty well. I was surprised.”

“Yeah, I’ve updated her a little. The purists wouldn’t like it, but then they never drive the goddamned things either. You want to borrow her until you get another one?”

“No, Leo. I wouldn’t want to take the risk. I don’t seem to be leading the most sedate of lives right now.”

“So I hear. What are you going to do about a car?”

“I don’t know. I can bum rides until I find another one.”

“Pretty weak, Joey. You can’t borrow mine ’cause you’ll smack it up, but you can destroy someone else’s-and possibly its driver-with no problem. Did I get that right?”

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

“Right. Here are the keys.” He slapped them into my hand. “Remember, one scratch, one smudge, one single bird dropping, and we never speak again, okay?”

“Okay.” He covered the Corvair and revealed the green T-bird, the most garish of his collection. “You heading out?”

“Uh-huh. Heavy date.” He got in behind the wheel.

“The gas station owner?” He furrowed his brow, visibly pained. “Oh no, not in this. Tonight’s very high-class. I’ve found a ’ight="Dartmouth prof. She’s a Roman civilization nut.” The engine started up with a mellow, deep-throated roar. He grinned with pleasure. “See you later.”

I turned off the lights after he’d left and walked back to the house. It was a full moon, and the snow around me exuded an eerie pale-blue glow.

Mother was back at her station, the TV off, the radio burbling in the background. The single lamp on one of the tables made her white hair shine, setting her apart from the surroundings as if she were floating in the dark.

I sat in an overstuffed armchair across the room from her. “How was your afternoon?”

“You ought to know. He just lent me the Cadillac.”

“He’s a nice boy. A little strange, but I’m glad I have him. When you two were little, I never would have dreamed things would turn out like this.”

“You two really get along, don’t you?”

“He does all the work. I’m just a cranky old lady. I sometimes wish he would go out on his own so I could die peacefully, but that doesn’t seem to be the way it will happen.”

“You worried your dying will knock the pins out from under him?”

“Good Lord, no. I’m much more selfish than that. I would just like to get it over with, and that’s hard with him around-he’s so irrepressible.”

I smiled. “Is it that bad?”

“No. I suppose not.” She reached for something beside her and pulled out a large book. “It’s just that when everything else you’ve known is dying around you, you sort of feel left out. When I heard of your accident, I had Leo get this out. It’s your album.”

Over the years, she had built up separate photo albums for Leo and me. Typically, the only signs of her and my father were fleeting appearances in the background of some of our pictures. I got up and laid the book open on the table under the light.

Whatever pains we might recall from endless photo sessions, grinning for some relative until our teeth began to dry, there is something magical, years later, about the result. I saw myself in those pages, from babyhood on, looking ahead; not to what I now was, but to what I was to be and yet had never become. It was like looking at pictures of the twin brother I’d lost to history. He had my face, he shared my memories, but he’d ended up somewhere else in this world.

Frank began appearing in the photographs, at first peripherally and out of focus. I found one taken at town fair. I’m about nine or ten, holding a kitten we later named Heather, and in the background is Frank, a skinny blond in overalls talking to a girl, one foot maturely planted on a tree stump-the older teenager, soon to go off to war-not that any of us knew it then.

He steps forward thereafter, coming into focus at my side, laughing, painting the house, working with my father, grooming a horse. Suddenly, in his World War II uniform, he retreats, looking again like the boy at the fair, gathering his courage in front of him so he can believe what he sees. alult. I sThen comes the crucible-the years immediately after, when, giving up on my father as a guidepost to the future, I narrowed in on Frank, the returning veteran. He’d blazed through the protective bubble created by my parents, returning wiser and more bold. When my turn came to pose in front of the Army camera, it was Frank’s steps I was following, even more than my own desires.

There are lots of shots of Korea in that album; everyone seemed to have a camera. They were mostly taken during R amp; R, or at rest spots far from the action. Some were taken in the field but only when nothing was happening. They don’t show the wounded men we all saw later during Vietnam; they don’t show burning huts or huddling civilians or helicopters bearing body bags. They just show erstwhile kids, looking the same as when they left-dirtier maybe, thinner certainly-but lacking something fundamental, as if only the photographer had noticed they were no longer tied to their pasts.

I began to weep then, flipping through those pages. Nothing terribly emotional, of course-I couldn’t let go that much. But the tears still fell, no less real. I missed Frank, and missing him made me cry. I guess we don’t really cry for the dead, but for the people they leave behind-ourselves.

Somehow, our lives had branched apart. He had married and had kids. I had married and she had died. He’d become a cop and had made captain. I’d become a cop and would become captain over his dead body. And yet he’d gone into that river without a struggle, already conceding death before knowing when it would come. And I had not-and would not. Perhaps in exchange for having lost the standard human goals of life, I felt imbued with a sense of survival, as if I were standing by the side of a road, watching everyone else walk by.