Читать книгу Saint John of the Five Boroughs - Ed Falco - Страница 9

KATE was barely conscious of the rosary’s polished black onyx stones sliding between her fingertips as she waited apart from dozens of other churchgoers clustered in bright sunlight outside St. Andrews. Behind the elaborate Gothic facade of the church, in the stone and marble vestibule, Corinne was flirting outrageously with Dave Price, who was several years too young for her and had been separated from his wife, Lucille, for about five minutes. When Corinne had volunteered to drive to church, Kate had explained that Hank was stopping by and that she needed to get back in time to straighten out her house. Corinne had said, “Sure, no problem,” and now Kate was nonetheless waiting at the curb, her hand buried in a leather pocket-book strapped to her shoulder, running her fingers along the polished stones of her rosary. Still, the sun felt good on her arms and shoulders. She tilted her head toward a perfectly blue, cloudless sky and tried to relax, though her fingers kept working the linked black stones, following the circular path down to the medal of the Virgin Mary, down to the cross.

A month after Tim had died suddenly, thanks to an aneurysm that had probably been waiting to kill him since birth, Corinne’s husband, Stan, had died suddenly from a heart attack that was almost certainly connected to his liberal use of cocaine. Kate and Corinne, church acquaintances, had become friends, even though they couldn’t have been much more different as people. Kate was thin, always had been, a few pounds over skinny, with a fair complexion and auburn hair she kept cut in a bob, and she had a cheerleader’s cute if unremarkable face. Corinne was wide in the hips, big-boned and fleshy, a few pounds short of being fat, with long, curly hair that cascaded over her shoulders. She had a round, strikingly pretty face. Kate typically wore loose-fitting dark slacks and a light-colored blouse. Corinne was given to flowing dresses in a variety of floral patterns. Kate was small-breasted; Corinne’s breasts were ample. Kate worked in an office for a modest salary. Corinne made jewelry, which she sold at art fairs around the country, though she didn’t have to work thanks to a substantial inheritance. What the two women shared, however—each waking one morning to find her husband’s lifeless body alongside her in bed—made up for their differences. When Corinne was in town, they met regularly for lunch or coffee, went to movies together on weekends, and were walk-in-without-knocking guests at each other’s houses. At the moment, the friendship was strained. Corinne was getting to be expert at annoying Kate, currently, for example, by flirting with Dave Price, who should be thinking about his marriage, not Corinne.

A blond-haired boy in a red shirt ambled boldly up to Kate and then stared. She let go of the rosary, squatted to his level, and said hi. The boy smiled shyly before turning and running back into a cluster of women. Kate straightened up to find Corinne approaching her, shoulders bobbing from side to side in a little dance of pleasure once they made eye contact. When she was close, she leaned into Kate and whispered, “Guess who’s stopping by Dave’s tomorrow night with a bottle of wine?” With exaggerated suggestiveness, she added, “To comfort him.”

Kate laughed and tried to look amused. “You’re too much,” she said, and then put a hand on Corinne’s arm, directing her toward the parking lot. “Come on. I have to get my house cleaned up. I’ve got guests coming.”

“What?” Corinne said. She linked her arm with Kate’s. “You disapprove?”

Kate hadn’t meant to sound disapproving. Ordinarily she would have denied it, but now she found herself walking alongside Corinne in silence.

“Oh, come on, Katie.” Corinne bumped shoulders with her playfully. “Dave needs a good roll in the hay, and so do I.”

Kate said, “I’m not saying anything.”

Corinne said, “I know you’re not,” meaning her silence was saying it all. “You think because he’s only separated a couple of months—”

“Has it been that long?” Kate waited at the passenger door of Corinne’s car. She drove a vintage Thunderbird convertible.

“Don’t get bitchy. You know I hate bitchy women.” Corinne went around the car to open the door and glared exaggeratedly at Kate over the roof.

Kate laughed because she knew that was what Corinne wanted. Once in the car, she said, “I guess I do think it’s fast with Dave. He and Lucille haven’t been split up more than a month. If you get involved with him now, you know what people will say.”

“Okay, first,” Corinne said, one hand on the ignition key, leaning forward, her head resting on the steering wheel as if she were tired, “they may only have been split up a little while, but that marriage was winding down for years. I know for a fact they were in counseling at least two years. And next, I don’t give a flying fuck what people say—except maybe you.” She leaned back and started the car. “You want to take the top down?”

“Too hot,” Kate said. “Plus the wind’ll make a mess of my hair.”

“And can’t have that when Hank’s coming over.” Corinne started the car and pulled slowly out of the parking space.

“What’s that mean?”

This time it was Corinne who was quiet. She negotiated the lot and nosed out into the Roanoke traffic.

Kate said, “Oh, please, Corinne. He’s my brother-in-law. My married brother-in-law,” she added. “My married brother-in-law with a seven-year-old son.”

Corinne’s eyes were fastened on the car in front of them, an aging green minivan with a couple of toddlers throwing things at each other in the rear seats. She brushed a hand over her breast, smoothing the fabric of her dress. “Look,” she said, “Katie . . .”

“Yes?”

Corrine was watching the car in front of her, but she seemed to be someplace else, someplace far away. “Sometimes,” she said and stopped abruptly, as if she needed another second to think. “Honey,” she said, “it’s like, with you—I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

Kate said, “What are you talking about, Corinne?”

Suddenly Corrine’s face was red and she was angry. She said, “How do you see yourself, Kate? Do you plan on living the rest of your life—I mean, is Avery and your job—Is that all you want?”

Kate laughed. “Okay, look,” she said, “go ahead and sleep with Dave. I’m sorry I questioned you. Really.”

“I’m serious.” Corinne tossed her hair back, as if shaking off Kate’s attempt at humor. “What’s your plan, honey? My plan is—Truth, Dave’s lonely and he’d love to get me in bed. So why not? It’s not like either one of us is a kid. I’m not lonely, but I like sexual intimacy.”

“Really?” Kate said. “Oh, yes, you’ve mentioned that.”

“Well, I do.” Corinne gave Kate one of her bemused looks. “I love the whole thing, especially the cuddling and talk. I love that and I don’t want to live without it. And,” she said, raising her voice as if the next point were both important and not easy to say, “And there’s still a part of me that hopes every time that I might find a real partner. I know I’m never going to have again what I had before, but I want a partner. I’m losing hope rapidly, I admit.”

“I understand—” Kate started to sympathize with Corinne, which was pretty much what she always did. Their friendship had started out with her offering Corinne sympathy and support, and it had never changed.

Corinne said, “What do you understand?” She looked at Kate long enough for Kate to point to the windshield, reminding her that she was driving a car.

“I understand about wanting a partner,” Kate said, “but you’ve got to consider . . .” She hesitated a second and looked out the side window at the sidewalk streaming by, at rows of weathered and beaten-up houses. “It’s only been a few weeks,” she went on, “and what if he gets back together with Lucille? Then you’ll be this thing between them. You might even be the thing that pushes them to break up when they otherwise might have gotten back together.”

“And this is my responsibility?” Corinne said. “I’m responsible not just for what Dave does but for how what he does might affect his relationship with Lucille? Are you serious?”

“Oh, Corinne . . .”

“Oh, Corinne what?”

“Look,” Kate said, surprised by the snap of anger in her voice, “you’re being glib.”

“I am?”

“Yes.” Kate folded her hands in her lap and sat up straight, as if good posture and a ladylike demeanor might be useful in an argument. “I suppose ultimately we’re all responsible for our own behavior and for the consequences, but please—That’s not an excuse to do anything you want. It’s not.”

Corinne pulled the car to the side of the road and cut the engine. She looked as if she might be trying to keep herself from exploding.

Kate put her hand on Corinne’s knee. “Corinne,” she said, “I don’t mean to be judgmental. Honestly.”

They were parked in front of a row of tawdry-looking shops, one of which was a bookstore of some kind, with piles of old paperbacks stacked high behind a storefront window, the bright colors on the spines faded by sunlight. Two girls walked past and glanced into the car, then looked at each other as if to say, What’s that about?

Corinne said, “If I waited around in this town for the right man—” She looked hard at Kate, as if she were holding herself back from what she had intended to say.

Kate said, “Go ahead. If you waited around, what?”

“I’d have to live the kind of life you’ve been living for the past four years, which, I have to tell you, Kate, looks emptier and lonelier and just plain sadder than I could bear. I’d rather drown myself, I swear. I’m sorry, but Jesus—”

“You think it’s that bad?” Kate looked away and laughed quietly to herself.

“It’s not?” Corinne said. “I’m your only friend, and I’m away half the year. The only thing you ever talk about with any real interest is Avery. Avery this, Avery that. Plus you’re only forty-five, and you haven’t had sex in years.”

“I hardly miss it,” Kate said.

“Bullshit.”

“Not everyone has the same—”

“Bullshit.”

Kate said evenly, “You don’t know as much about me as you think you do.”

“I’ll tell you what I do know,” Corinne said. Then she stopped again, her lips pressed together.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Just say it, please. What do you think you know?”

Angrily, as if she needed the anger to get it out, Corinne said, “I know you’re in love with your brother-in-law. When I’ve seen you two together alone, it’s as obvious as daylight.”

Kate said, “You’re just wrong about that, Corinne.” When Corinne was quiet, she added, “The thing I have with Hank is about Tim. It’s not about us. It’s not like what you’re thinking.”

“You’re lying.” Corinne shook her head, as if to say she were disappointed that they couldn’t talk about this. “I’ll tell you what else,” she said softly, “as long as we’ve gone this far: if he left that bitch of a wife of his, and if you both had the nerve to face all the shit you’d have to face to do it, you two could be happy together.”

Kate pointed to the ignition. “Please take me home,” she said. “You’re out of your mind. This is my brother-in-law you’re talking about.”

“Sure,” Corinne said, and started the car. “Whatever.”

For the remainder of the ride, Corinne kept her eyes on the road. Kate watched houses pass by for a while before closing her eyes and laying her head back against the headrest. When they finally arrived at her house, a tire scraping against the curb as Corinne pulled over, Kate took her time draping her handbag over her shoulder. “Corinne,” she said, “you’re all wrong about this, and I just hope to God it’s not something you’re repeating to others.”

“The thing with Dave Price,” Corinne said, “I’m not letting that pass because of what people might say. You make your choices. I’ll make mine.”

Kate looked up the driveway at her house, at the sea-blue aluminum siding that Tim and Hank had put up together, sweating through one of the hottest days of that summer. She wanted to say something more to Corinne, to make her promise she wouldn’t go around talking about her and Hank, but she couldn’t find the words, and she was angry enough that she could feel her heart bumping against her chest and a tight anxious knot in her throat. Finally she just got out of the car without even looking back at Corinne.

Near the house, she stopped to pull some weeds from a flower box at the foot of the three steps to the front door. The neighborhood was quiet, as usual, and when she looked up, there wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere on the street or a sound to be heard other than the occasional chirping of crickets or the intermittent call of a bird.

Tim’s funeral had been a grim, miserable, weekday-morning affair, and the memory of it, even now, four years later, with his wife and son in the car as he drove to the cemetery—even now there were moments so vivid that Hank’s eyes might well up with one thought and his cheeks might burn with another. He had been a pallbearer, with all his brothers, and he had fainted carrying the casket down the church steps on the way to a black hearse. He still had a scar where he’d gashed his head on the stone steps. He’d been told that he fell over suddenly, smacked his head hard on the edge of a step, and rolled all the way to the street with half his family scurrying after him.

But he didn’t remember any of that. What he remembered was the heavy weight of the casket, the way the hardwood carrying pole felt in the tight grip of his hand, the way, at the top of the church steps, his knees got watery and the corners of his vision went green and red and fluttery as he looked down at the black hearse and the long line of cars and the milling crowd of family dressed in black—and the realization that Timmy was dead and they were about to put him in the ground came over him along with something like shock, as if he’d just been told. That moment when a fully formed sentence emerged, Timmy is dead—that moment he remembered. He had been at his mother’s house, in the kitchen having a cup of coffee with her, when the phone rang and she answered, and his father, sensitive as always, gave her the news over the phone. She leaned back against the wall and slid down it and landed with her legs at a right angle to her body, the phone clutched to her chest, her face half dazed, half anguished. That instant on the church steps was like that, like he had just been given the news bluntly, and it brought him down.

Keith bolted out the rear door once they arrived. They were supposed to park in the lot and walk to the grave, but Sherwood Memorial was a quiet country cemetery in the shadow of the Blue Ridge, and no one minded that he left his car on the side of the road while he spent a few minutes standing at the foot of his brother’s grave. He knew half the people who worked there anyway. Sometimes he felt like he knew half the people in Salem, period.

“Does Kate ever come out here?” Lindsey asked. She took his hand as they walked across the grass toward the tombstone. Keith took her other hand.

“She says she doesn’t.” He was about to explain that Kate didn’t come to the grave because it made her think of Tim’s actual body buried a few feet under the ground, what it would look like decomposing. She had come out a few times and always wound up trying to imagine what would be left of him at that point. What the hands that used to stroke her face would look like. What would remain of the lips she had so often kissed. “She feels like she can talk to him just as well at home,” he said, and with his eyes told Lindsey he couldn’t explain fully with Keith there.

At the grave, Hank folded his hands together and lowered his eyes. Alongside him, Keith and Lindsey did the same. The site was marked by a marble stone engraved with his brother’s name and dates: Timothy Mason Walker, 1955–2002. In the sunlight, the gravestone glistened. With its rolling green lawns divided by lines of neatly kept graves, surrounded by a network of paths and gently curving blacktop roads, mountains in the background, the cemetery was a restful place, and Hank supposed that was mostly why he came, for the few minutes of serenity in a tranquil setting. In the beginning he would close his eyes and say a few words to Timmy, and he still did occasionally. Mostly now he just closed his eyes and was quiet for a minute or so.

Lindsey told Keith to wait for them in the car, and the boy walked away without a question. He put his hands in the pockets of his shorts, bobbed his shoulders, kicked playfully at something in the grass, and then took off, zigzagging around graves as if avoiding gunfire. “I’m sorry about last night,” she said. She looked up at Hank with an expression composed and sincere, as if she had carefully thought through what she meant to say. “I know I’ve been drinking too much,” she said, and then stopped, her composure suddenly weakening as her face went slack. A moment later she was silently crying, her eyes closed, the tears spilling out, her head turned away.

Hank put his arms around her to comfort her. He intended to say that if she felt her drinking was a problem she couldn’t handle on her own, they could try to get her some help, they could work on the problem together, but when he put his arms around her, she was rigid and ungiving. He let her loose and took a step back.

“We should just go,” she said, sounding for all the world like she was angry at him. She wiped the tears from her face with a tissue and, without giving him another look, started for the car.

He took a couple of quick steps after her, meaning to make her stop and explain herself; but when he remembered where he was, in public, at the cemetery, with Keith nearby, he stopped and turned back to face his brother’s grave. To anyone looking he would have seemed like an ordinary guy in a moment of contemplation. He waited there a long time, several minutes, until the heat and frustration boiled away and he was able to go back calmly to the car.

Three summers ago, the first summer after his brother had died, she had tried to kiss him on a sweltering evening under a black sky, out in the yard, with constant cicada night music in the weeds, in the fields. He was back from a long weekend fishing trip on the Jackson, and she’d missed him. In some ways it wasn’t a complicated thing, and in other ways she was still trying to figure it out three years later. He was standing in the grass with his hands clasped behind his neck looking out at empty fields. She had just put Keith to bed after the three of them had spent a half hour rocking on the wood swing, Hank with his arm around the child’s shoulder, she with a hand on his knee. She couldn’t remember what they had talked about, but it was an easy back-and-forth, probably about nothing at all. She could still feel it, she and Keith and Hank on that swing in the backyard on a beautiful summer night. Then she put Keith to bed and came back out to find Hank standing at the edge of the patio light. She came around him and put one hand on his chest and the other around his neck as she closed her eyes and tilted her head up, lifting her lips to his. He was supposed to wrap his arms around her back and pull her tightly to him and kiss her hard because he loved her, because he had missed her, and what she was starting there, by the way she touched him, by the way she offered herself to him, was supposed to end in the bedroom—but when she opened her eyes she saw him looking back at her as if she were a mystery to him. He lowered his head to hers and gave her a peck on the lips, followed by a friendly smile. That was all that happened. She let him loose and then she went in to bed and was asleep before he came in, whenever he came in and joined her.

The next day, nothing was said. The next day or ever, and yet her mind often wandered back to that moment. It was like a door had been slammed shut in her face. She could feel the back of his neck ungiving under her fingers, his closed mouth glancing against her lips, the hard little peck and the dismissive smile. The memory now brought tears to her eyes, and then Hank, in the present moment, in the car on the way to Kate’s with Keith quiet in the backseat, leaned over and whispered, “Can we please keep it together. Please,” as if they both somehow knew what they were talking about, when neither one of them, she’d guess, if someone put a gun to their heads, neither one of them could have found the words to say exactly what it was.