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Both of them dead and gone now; oh, my. Wiped off the face of the earth by a freight train, leaving not even bodies to mourn, just two closed caskets, and no one but the police to break the news. So unsatisfying, so inconclusive. That bothered Abby more than it did Red. Red was of the opinion that instantaneous death was a mercy, but Abby wanted goodbyes. She would have liked to say, “Li
Abby had been visited, lately, by thoughts of all the people whose deaths she had been present for. Two grandparents, her mother, her beloved older brother who’d died young. Not her father, though. For her father, she had arrived just minutes too late. But she had hoped, as she bent and laid her face against his, that there was some lingering vestige of him that would register her presence. Even now, sitting on the porch and gazing down at Bouton Road, she felt her eyes tear up at the memory of his dear, whiskery cheek already cooling. We should all go out attended by someone! That was what she wanted for herself, certainly: Red’s large hand enclosing hers as she lay dying. But then she reflected that this meant he would be without her when his own time came, and she couldn’t endure the thought of that. How would Red survive, if she were the one to go first?
He always held her whole hand, rather than interlacing his fingers with hers. When she was in her early teens, hearing from her more forward friends about the boys who reached for their hands at the movies, it was that enfolding clasp that she had envisioned, and the first date who surreptitiously threaded his fingers through hers had convinced her that hand-holding was not all it was cracked up to be. Till Red.
Maybe she and Red could die at the same time. Say, on a plane. They could have a few minutes’ warning, a pilot’s a
“The trouble with dying,” she’d told Jea
“But, Mom, there is no ending,” Jea
“Well, I know that,” Abby said.
In theory.
It was possible that in her heart of hearts, she was thinking that the world couldn’t go on without her. Oh, weren’t human beings self-deluding! Because the plain fact was that no one needed her anymore. Her children were grown up, and her clients had vanished into thin air the moment she retired. (And anyhow, toward the last it had seemed that her clients’ needs were bottomless — that society was falling apart faster than she could patch it together. She was getting out just in time, she had felt.) Even her “orphans,” as her family called them, were all but gone. B. J. Autry was dead of drugs and old Mr. Dale of a stroke, and the various foreign students had either returned to their own countries or else assimilated so successfully that they cooked Thanksgiving di
In the past, she had been at the center of things. She’d known everybody’s secrets; everyone confided in her. Li
“You owe your job to me,” she could have said to Jea
And now she was so u
Abby felt bad now about Mrs. Girt. They had let her go without a thought! And she’d probably had some very sad story. It wasn’t at all like Abby to pass up a chance to hear someone’s sad story. “Amanda,” she had said recently, “did we give that Mrs. Girt any severance pay?”
“Severance pay! She was with you nine days!”
“Still,” Abby said, “she meant well. And you all meant well to arrange for her; I hope you don’t think I’m ungrateful.”
“Well, since both you and Dad were dead set against a retirement community, for some reason …”
“But you can see our side of it, can’t you? Why, I bet those places have social workers to deal with the inmates. We’d be the objects of social work! Can you imagine?”
To which Amanda had said, “The ‘inmates’? And the ‘objects,’ Mom? Goodness. What does that say about your attitude to your own profession, all these years?”
Amanda could be so sharp-edged, sometimes.
Of the two girls, Jea
One thing that parents of problem children never said aloud: it was a relief when the children turned out okay, but then what were the parents supposed to do with the anger they’d felt all those years?
Although De
Yesterday, she had asked him, “How about your other belongings? You must have more than what you brought down. Did you put them into storage?”
“Oh, that’s no problem,” he’d said. “They’re stashed in my old apartment.”
“So you still have to pay rent?”
“Nah. It’s just one room above a garage; my landlady doesn’t care.”
This was puzzling. What kind of landlady didn’t charge rent unless her tenant was physically present? Oh, so much of his life seemed … irregular, somehow.
Or maybe it was perfectly regular, and Abby had just been sensitized by too many past experiences with De
Last week she’d knocked on his bedroom door to ask if he could take her to buy some greeting cards, and she’d thought she heard him tell her to come in, but she was mistaken; he was talking on his cell phone. “You know I do,” he was saying. “How’m I going to make you believe me?” and then he’d looked over at Abby and his expression had altered. “What do you want?” he had asked her.
“I’ll just wait till you’re off the phone,” she had said, and he’d told his caller, “I’ve got to go,” and snapped his phone shut too quickly.
If it was a girl he’d been speaking to — a woman — Abby was truly glad. Everyone should have someone. Still, a part of her couldn’t help feeling hurt that he hadn’t mentioned this person. Why did he have to turn everything into such a mystery? Oh, he just took an active pleasure in going against the grain! No, the current, she meant. Going against the current. It was like a hobby for him.