“Pete Riley for Carol Gerber,” I said. “Can you buzz her?”
She looked up, put her magazine aside, and gave me a sweet, sym-pathetic look. It was the look of a doctor who has to tell you gee, sorry, the tumor’s inoperable. Bad luck, man, better make friends with Jesus. “Carol said she had to leave early. She took the Black Bear Shuttle to Derry. But she told me you’d be by and asked me to give you this.”
She handed me an envelope with my name written across the
front. I thanked her and left Franklin with it in my hand. I wentdown the walk and stood for a moment by my car, looking across toward Holyoke Commons, fabled Palace on the Plains and home of the horny hotdog man. Below it, in Bennett’s Run, leaves flew before the wind in rattling drifts. The bright colors had gone out of them; only November’s dark brown was left. It was the day before Thanksgiving, the doorstep of winter in New England. The world was all wind and cold sunshine. I had started crying again. I could tell by the warmth on my cheeks. 96 tears, baby; cry cry cry.
I got into the car where I had lost my virginity the night before and opened the envelope. There was a single sheet of paper inside. Brevity is the soul of wit, according to Shakespeare. If it’s true, then Carol’s letter was witty as hell.
Carol
She said it was the sweetest thing that had ever happened to her, but she hadn’t put “love” at the bottom of the note, only her signa-ture. Still . . .
I looked at my watch. I had gotten to the dorm early (that halfconscious premonition at work, maybe), and it had just gone three now. I could easily get to the Trailways depot before she left for Con-necticut . . . but I wasn’t going to do it. She was right, we had said a brilliant goodbye in my old station wagon; anything more would be a step down. At best we would find ourselves going over the same ground; at worst, we’d splash mud over last night with an argument.
Yes. And we had gotten it. God knew we had.
I folded her letter, stuck it into the back pocket of my jeans, and drove home to Gates Falls. At first my eyes kept blurring and I had to keep wiping at them. Then I turned on the radio and the music made things a little better. The music always does. I’m past fifty now, and the music still makes things better; it’s the fabled automatic.
27
I got back to Gates around five-thirty, slowed as I drove past Frank’s, then kept on going. By then I wanted to get home a lot more than I wanted a draft Hires and a gossip with Frank Parmeleau. Mom’s way of saying welcome home was to tell me I was too skinny, my hair was too long, and I hadn’t been “standing close enough to the razor.” Then she sat in her rocking chair and had a little weep over the return of the prodigal son. My dad put a kiss on my cheek, hugged me with one arm, and then shuffled to the fridge for a glass of Mom’s red tea, his head poking forward out of the neck of his old brown sweater like the head of a curious turtle.
We—my mom and me, that is—thought he had twenty per cent of his eyesight left, maybe a bit more. It was hard to tell, because he so rarely talked. It was a bagging-room accident that did for him, a terrible two-story fall. He had scars on the left side of his face and his neck; there was a dented-in patch of skull where the hair never grew back. The accident pretty much blacked out his vision, and it did something to his mind, as well. But he was not a “total ijit,” as I once heard some asshole down at Gendron’s Barber Shop say, nor was he mute, as some people seemed to think. He was in a coma for nineteen days. After he woke up he became mostly silent, that much is true, and he was often terribly confused in his mind, but sometimes he was still there, all present and accounted for. He was there enough when I came home to give me a kiss and that strong one-armed hug, his way of hugging for as long as I could remember. I loved my old man a lot . . . and after a semester of playing cards with Ronnie Malenfant, I had learned that talking is a wildly overrated skill.
I sat with them for awhile, telling them some of my college stories (not about chasing The Bitch, though), then went outside. I raked fallen leaves in the twilight—the frosty air on my cheeks felt like a blessing—waved at the passing neighbors, and ate three of my mom’s hamburgers for supper. After, she told me she was going down to the church, where the Ladies’ Aid was preparing Thanksgiv-ing meals for shut-ins. She didn’t think I’d want to spend my first evening home with a bunch of old hens, but I was welcome to attend the cluckfest if I wanted. I thanked her and said I thought I’d give Annmarie a call instead.
“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” she said, and went out. I heard the car start and then, with no great joy, I dragged myself to the telephone and called Annmarie Soucie. An hour later she drove over in her father’s pickup, smiling, her hair down on her shoulders, mouth radiant with lipstick. The smile didn’t last long, as I guess you can probably figure out for yourself, and fifteen minutes after she came in, Annmarie was out of the house and out of my life. Be in touch, baby, seeya. Right around the time of Woodstock, she married an insurance agent from Lewiston and became Annmarie Jalbert. They had three kids, and they’re still married. I guess that’s good, isn’t it? Even if it isn’t, you have to admit it’s pretty goddam American.
I stood at the window over the kitchen sink, watching the tail-lights of Mr. Soucie’s truck disappear down the road. I felt ashamed of myself—Christ, the way her eyes had widened, the way her smile had faded and begun to tremble—but I also felt shittily happy, dis-gustingly relieved; light enough to dance up the walls and across the ceiling like Fred Astaire.
There were shuffling steps from behind me. I turned and there was my dad, doing his slow turtle-walk across the linoleum in his slip-pers. He went with one hand held out before him. The skin on it was beginning to look like a big loose glove.
“Did I just hear a young lady call a young gentleman a fucking jerk?” he asked in a mild just-passing-the-time voice.
