In Reach (14 page)

“Still sleeping in the lung, Mrs. Redmond?” Immediately, he regrets mentioning it. Does she know he’s been spying on her?

She pauses, cocks her head. Ted looks down, embarrassed.

“How’s your mother?”

Ted shrugs.

“Got a nice young girl in your life?”

“Not hardly.” Ted laughs. Too loud. He still can’t look Mrs. Redmond in the eye.

“Your parents haven’t given up on you, you know. They want grandchildren.”

Ted winces. It still gets to him, the way his parents lie about him. Mrs. Redmond drops the marriage talk, and they discuss a program on orchids they both saw on
PBS
. He watches Mrs. Redmond struggle to breathe, listens to her list methods of cross-pollination, and thinks that he’d like to graft her to his mother. He’s come up with hybrid roses this way; why not people? With his luck, he’d get it backward and end up with a mindless mother who not only couldn’t breathe but also wouldn’t remember to use the iron lung. Instantly, he’s ashamed of himself, so he offers to prune Mrs. Redmond’s hedge.

Over the next few days, Ted dusts, vacuums, scrubs floors, wipes down every inch of the bathroom with disinfectant. He fills the freezer with Healthy Choice frozen meals. He cooks dinner each night. He’s a regular hive of activity, knowing none of it will make much difference in the long run. One morning after breakfast, he insists on changing his mother’s dirty blouse.

“Leave her alone,” his father says.

“C’mon, Mom. Let’s get this nasty thing off you.” Ted tries leading her from the table to the bedroom, but she balks.

“What does it matter?” His father hangs on to the table for support.

Ted drops his mother’s arm for a moment and turns to deal with his father. He’s suddenly frightened that his dad might drop dead of a heart attack, so he keeps his voice calm. “She’s entitled to some dignity, Dad. That’s all.”

“You don’t like looking at her. But this is the way she is.”

“No. This is not the way she is. This is the way you allow her to be.”

Ted coaxes her away then. He sweet-talks her into letting him change her blouse. This simple task takes forty-five minutes, and he’s wrung out by the end of it. His father finds him flopped in a reclining lawn chair.

“She’s resting,” his father says. He doesn’t sit. He stands by Ted’s chair and rocks side to side.

“Dad, why do you have to do this by yourself?”

His dad runs his fingers over his face, ends by cupping his jaw in his hand. He looks to all four corners of the yard before he turns to face Ted.

“I can’t give her up, Teddy. I can’t be without her.”

“The nursing home is only blocks away. You could visit every day.”

His dad looks at him, presses his lips together, and says nothing.

“Why not hire someone to come in?”

“Strangers? It upsets her. You see that, don’t you? It’s worse having her upset. Takes me the rest of the day to calm her down. She still knows me most of the time. I wish you’d just leave us alone.”

That night, Ted sits up late reading, trying to quiet his mind before worry sets in for an all-night visit. He’s exhausted by being here. On their nightly phone call, Harvey hears the fatigue in his voice.

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I’ll tell you when I get home. I’m leaving in the morning.”

Restless, Ted steps outside to look at the night sky. He misses this panorama of stars in his life in the city. Searching for Orion, then the Big Dipper, he hears a soft moaning from Mrs. Redmond’s window. Spent and wanting only to be alone, he convinces himself he imagined the sound, or a stray cat is patrolling the neighborhood. The sound comes again. Louder. Unable to resist, he moves over to the neighbor’s window. Mrs. Redmond’s head rolls side to side, a moan escaping here, there, and once, Ted’s sure she calls her husband’s name. Will. Where is the man? Why doesn’t he answer? She’s clearly distressed, her breath ragged.

Ted has no idea what he’s doing, but he moves toward the screened porch in back. There’s a hook on the screen door, but one good yank pulls it open. Doesn’t anybody in these small towns ever think about burglars? It takes Ted only a few seconds to reach Mrs. Redmond’s room. Knowing he will startle her, he steps around where she can see him and whispers her name.

“Mrs. Redmond.”

Wild eyes, and he quickly stammers.

“It’s Ted. I stepped outside; I couldn’t sleep. I heard you moaning. Shall I get your husband?”

With clamped lips, she shakes her head no. She tries to speak, but her breathing is labored, and because he doesn’t know what else to do, Ted steps to the top of the lung and places both hands on the sides of her face. He bends low and intones, “Shhh, all right now.” He croons to her until she quiets and her breath evens out. When he’s sure she’s settled, he removes his hands, runs his fingers down the sides of his jeans.

“I should . . . I’ll go now.”

“No.” She says it sharply, though her voice is barely audible. “Please. Don’t. Not yet.”

“Is there something . . . should I get you some water?”

She shakes her head. Tears pool at the corners of her eyes, run down her temples to spill on her pillow. Ted spies a box of tissues atop a small table, stretches his hand to grab one, wipes her eyes.

“Sometimes . . . I get panicky.”

“Do you want out of there? Do you need help?”

She shakes her head again. “It’s better . . . better tomorrow if I stick it out. There’s a chair, there. In the corner.”

Ted pulls forward a straight-backed chair and sits where he can see her face. He smiles. The chair is hard, uncomfortable, the back bordered with decorative knobs that gouge his back, but nothing compared to what she’s dealing with.

“Mrs. Redmond . . .”

“Call me Flora.” She raises one eyebrow and smiles. “I think we’re on a first name basis, don’t you?”

“Okay. Flora.”

“I had . . . a bad dream. It comes, sometimes.”

“The same dream?”

“Always the same.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Her eyes probe deeply into his. There’s an intelligent light there.

“Too tired.” She sighs and closes her eyes.

“Will you be all right, now?” Ted starts to rise.

“Talk to me.” She says it plaintively, a request. “You have a lovely voice.”

“So I’ve been told,” Ted says.

“I’ll bet you have.” A low chuckle wends its way out of her wracked body. She must have been a hell of a woman in her heyday.

“Talk about what?” he asks.

“Anything. A bedtime story. Tell me about your life.”

Ted talks. He tells her he lives in Minneapolis. Owns a coffee shop. At first, she murmurs from time to time, her eyes flicker open, but it’s not long before her breathing deepens. If he stops
talking, she stirs all over again, so he tells his life story. He doesn’t forget testing the coffins in Willenbeck’s Mortuary, the closed lid, though he leaves out the part where he compared the coffin to her iron lung, in case she’s still listening. He mentions that he’s gay and that his parents know but pretend not to. He came out to them during college. He’s partnered with a wonderful man. His parents don’t want Harvey in their home, and they won’t come to Minneapolis. Even if they could, which they can’t now, they wouldn’t. His mother’s sick. She doesn’t know him. She doesn’t know anything about him. Once, in Omaha, when he was young, he met a fellow in a bar and went with him to a hotel down by the Old Market. The guy made love to him, then beat him up, tied him naked to the bed, robbed him, and left him there. Too embarrassed to call out, he was there two days before a cleaning woman found him. He had to have stitches in his face. He was naïve and stupid and, well, ashamed. Of course, he didn’t tell his parents. Harvey’s Jewish, did he mention that before? His parents don’t know that, either. Ted collects Polish glass ornaments. The first Christmas he and Harvey were together, Harvey made him promise he wouldn’t put up any religious ornaments. That’s okay, because he’s not religious. But the new collectibles that year were the Three Kings. He drooled over them, but Harvey reminded him of his promise. He said, “Look, Harvey. Look at that ermine cape, the glittering jewels. What straight guy do you know who’d wrap a gift like that? Those aren’t kings, Harvey. Those are three queens.” They laughed and bought the ornaments. Isn’t that a great story? But he can’t tell his parents. They miss out on so much. They’re waiting for grandchildren, but he’s their only child and they’re missing his life.

Certain that Mrs. Redmond is safely asleep, Ted stops talking, stands, and peers down at her. He’d like to kiss her brow. Touch her face one last time. He does neither. Feeling composed and strangely cleansed, he moves quietly from the room, gently closes
the back screen door and under the canopy of stars and night, crosses over the lawn.

Ted has just eased himself under the sheet when he hears his parents’ door bump open, recognizes his mother’s shuffle in the hall. He gets up to check on her. Thinking this night may never end, he pulls on his jeans, buttons the fly while he looks in the bathroom, in the kitchen. He glances through the window at the house next door, the bedroom faintly glowing. He’s glad, for some reason, that he can’t see the iron lung.

He finds his mother standing in the middle of the living room, arms lifted, elbows and wrists slightly bent, fingers delicately curved. She’s silhouetted against the window and the streetlight outside. Through her summer nightgown, sleeveless and sheer, Ted can see the sag of her breasts, her pillowy stomach, and yet, he’s knocked out by her beauty. Afraid to disturb her, he stands and watches, and then she begins to sing: “Irene, good night, Irene, good night.” She turns in perfect rhythm to the waltz. Somehow she misses the coffee table, the floor lamp. Ted knows it’s only a matter of time before she bashes a shin, falls and splits open her head or, worse, breaks a hip. He knows he has to do something, but he loves seeing her like this, half in shadow, where he can remember the mother he once knew. He moves forward and lays both hands on her shoulders, his face inches from hers. She doesn’t flinch, leans her weight into his hands, docile and smiling. If only she could die right now, while he is here, holding her, something painless and fast. He closes his eyes to conjure up a bolt of lightning, offering himself as the conduit. He discovers he’s holding his breath when finally the need for air overcomes him, and he gasps. She shies, suddenly not trusting him, so he opens his lips and sings, “Good night, Irene, good night, Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams,” while he takes her by the hand and leads her down the hall. At the doorway to her bedroom she stops, but
Ted begins the song again, and they move in time, their bodies knocking together, to the side of the bed where he gentles her into sitting, then lying down, and lifts the sheet to tuck her in, lingering to make up for wanting her dead and because he doesn’t want to let her go. Even like this, he longs to be near her.

His father snores on the other side of the bed, his face and body cling to the edge away from her. Ted stands and looks at the two of them lying there, rafts drifting apart on an ocean, an invisible filament binding them together, for better and for worse, and by God, if they haven’t had it all.

The next morning, Ted rises early, makes himself coffee and toast. He kisses his sleeping mother on the cheek and hugs his dad in the doorway of the kitchen. He’s cheerful because it’s easier to leave that way. He gets all the way out to his car, stuff thrown in the trunk, when on impulse he goes back and picks up two potted geraniums. He crosses his parents’ yard and moves over the grass to the Redmond house where he sets the two geraniums on the front step. He feels he should say something, a benediction, but he can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound trivial, so he stands a moment in silence, and then he’s gone.

Normal

As an auctioneer’s wife, Teresa Bailey thought she’d seen it all. Still, she’d never had a client whose household goods included an iron lung. Their best bet for a sale would be the Internet. Somebody, somewhere, would make an offer. Secretly, Teresa hoped for Steven Spielberg or some other movie mogul, who would pay outrageous sums for an authentic prop. She loved movies, herself. She and her son, Otto, sat many a Friday night watching films they rented. Otto, at fourteen, read all the reviews online. He didn’t go in for action blockbusters, like most boys his age. He liked independent films, dark and twisted. Teresa worried about him constantly.

She knocked on Flora Redmond’s door. If it were anyone but Flora, Teresa might have walked on in, yoo-hooing in a casual way, but Flora didn’t invite that kind of friendliness. Flora answered the door in blue cotton pants, a floral knit top shirred over the bodice, silver hair immaculate. A small gold heart dangled on a slender chain around her neck. She wore tiny gold earrings in pierced ears. Teresa had dressed for this occasion, traded in her usual sweatshirt, blue jeans, and sneakers for a plaid blouse, tan pants, and loafers. Still, she felt frumpy in Flora’s presence. Her hand traveled to smooth her wiry hair.

“Please,” Flora said, “come in,” her voice like whispers in a heavy fern wood.

Flora motioned toward a cream-colored couch. Teresa brushed at the seat of her pants before she sat. Hard telling what glop might have been on the upholstery of their van.

“Would you care for something to drink? I could brew some tea,” Flora said.

“Just water. If you have ice, that’d be great.”

Teresa wanted Flora out of the room so she could look around without seeming to pry. It had only been three months since Will died. Normally, Teresa would recommend waiting a year before making a decision to sell, but Flora was finding it difficult living on her own.

Teresa jotted notes on her yellow pad—couch, two chairs, a recliner, two lamps, a coffee table, an end table. An old upright piano in the dining room. Except for the iron lung in the front bedroom (which everybody in town knew about thanks to Glenda Barrenhorst, the welcome wagon hostess), all these furnishings were as ordinary as corn flakes. She’d expected, what? Something exotic. Telling, at least. Will and Flora had turned up in Reach late in life. Married. No children. No relation in these parts. When asked, they’d said only that they wanted a quiet life. There were rumors, of course. The most popular ones involved sordid crimes, not murder or assault but something crafty and lucrative, embezzlement maybe. Offshore bank accounts. Some folks said they’d been part of a cult and ran away under assumed names. Or they’d worked for the
FBI
or the
CIA
and were in a witness protection program. They had to be running from somebody or something. Otherwise, what were they doing in this backwater town?

Flora returned from the kitchen, set a glass on a ceramic coaster on the end table, then sat in a wooden chair with a needlepoint cushion. “All of this”—she swept her hand around the room—“will have to go. I’ll have limited space in my assisted living apartment.”

Teresa sighed. “The piano will be a tough sell. And the iron lung, but I’ve an idea for that.”

“I’ll have to take the lung,” Flora said quietly.

“Really?”

“I sleep in it. Every night. Rebound effects from childhood polio.”

Teresa scribbled a caustic note to herself. How could she have been so stupid? She thought polio was a thing of the past, like dial phones and leisure suits. She’d assumed the lung was a prop, a sentimental relic or a conversation piece, like a planter she once saw made from an elephant’s foot. She spoke without looking up from her tablet. “Where will you go?”

“I thought Denver.”

Teresa wanted to ask, why Denver? Why not Lincoln? Or Albuquerque? Or Toronto? If nobody cares—a terrifying thought—how would you decide where to spend your last days?

“You want everything else sold at auction?”

“Yes, all but the paintings.”

Teresa raised her head from the pad. “Paintings?”

Flora’s hand fluttered near her throat. She picked up the tiny heart and ran it back and forth on the slender chain. “I need help getting them crated and sent.”

“Where?”

“I’ve donated two to the University at Lincoln. The others, three others, will be sold at a small gallery in New York.”

With some effort, Teresa managed to work the hinge of her jaw and close her gaping mouth. She reminded herself to breathe. She knew how to act matter-of-fact about the damnedest things—pet graveyards in basements, rooms bursting with clutter, kitchen cabinets crusted with moldy food, gun cases shot full of holes, pictures with people’s heads cut off. But really? First, the iron lung. Now this? She wet her lips and answered in her most professional voice. “Of course, Flora. We’ll do anything we can to help you. Are you a collector?”

Teresa thought that was the proper word. Collector. Someone who could afford to buy important works of art. Her mind worked at lightning speed. Was it Flora or Will who bought up these paintings? And where were they? Why hide them? Were they bought as investments to hide ill-gotten gains?

“No, oh no,” Flora said. “Nothing like that.” Her hand fluttered again, inspecting the folds of her bodice. “These are minor works. Hardly a ripple in the art world.”

“Oh.” Teresa sagged. Not van Gogh, then. Or that crazy artist who flung dots on a canvas. She and Otto watched a film about him not long ago.

“Anyone I’ve ever heard of?”

“No. I’m sure not.” Flora stood.

Teresa stood, too, not sure what to do. They’d hardly made a dent, and she was being dismissed. She hadn’t seen the paintings. She couldn’t even look up their worth on the Internet if she didn’t know the artists’ names.

Flora smiled. “I tire easily.”

Teresa narrowed her eyes. “Of course.” No arguing with that line. Crafty. Teresa made a mental note not to underestimate Flora.

Flora walked her to the door. Once through on the other side, Teresa turned. “You do still want us to handle your sale?”

“Of course, dear.” With that, Flora shut the door in Teresa’s face.

Teresa sped home with the news hot under her tongue. She couldn’t wait to tell Otto; this was better than a movie. She supposed she’d tell Warren, too, but she already knew what he’d say.
So what? We aren’t going to make anything off paintings being sent to New York.
Warren wouldn’t recognize a good story if it bit him in the ass. When those Shackleton sisters died, he hadn’t cared one bit when it was revealed that they weren’t sisters after all but instead two women who’d lived together and shared the same bed. People thought he was discreet, but Teresa knew the truth. Warren just
didn’t pay attention to the details of people’s lives. Numbers and sports were Warren’s language, and little else interested him.

She walked into a familiar scene when she got home. Warren had Otto trapped at the kitchen table. A big man, he leaned over Otto like a looming crane. A bowl of strawberry ice cream melted on the table. “Son, if you want to be respected in this town, you got to go out for football.”

Warren had been riding this horse since school let out in May, trying to goad Otto into playing football in ninth grade. Warren had been a star fullback. Watching, Teresa’s stomach hurt.

“Dad, I don’t want to play football.”

“Just go out. Make some friends. Be part of the team. One of the guys.”

Otto snorted. Teresa winced. “Hey, you two.” She kept her voice light.

They ignored her.

Otto stared into his bowl of pink soup. “I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Warren stood back, surprise on his face. They’d never spoken about it, but hadn’t they both wondered? She secretly thought Otto’s life might be easier if he were gay. Wouldn’t gay people stand a better chance of appreciating his artsy ways?

Warren looked away, out the window. Frustration oozed out of his ears. He raised his big fists and dropped them. “I want you to have friends. You have to get along with people.”

Otto raised his head, a sneer curling his lip. “Like you and Mom?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Sucking up to everybody so they’ll give you their business.”

That did it. Warren yelled about kids and respect and how his old man would have decked him if he talked like that. He yanked Otto to his feet. The plastic bowl clattered to the floor upside down, speckling the white linoleum with pink goo. Otto stood
with his fingers in his ears, singing la-la-la and being the irritating little shit he turned into whenever his father was around. Teresa wedged herself between Warren and Otto, placed her hands on Warren’s chest, shoved with all her might until finally Warren said, “Christ almighty,” and stomped out. She cringed when she heard the back door slam, waited for the roar of his pickup, squeal of tires, before she turned to Otto.

Her son, the creative genius, stood itching his crotch with his right hand. His curly dark hair looked matted, unwashed. Circles draped under his eyes, because he spent half the night surfing the Internet. He had hundreds of Facebook friends and none in the flesh. She wanted to smack some sense into him. His father was right. This kid didn’t stand a chance in the real world. What was to become of him? She saw her son’s future laid out clearly. Helpless, begging for pennies in a subway station. Penciled drawings of cartoon cels taped to walls of a cardboard box where he spent his nights. Cold. Alone. She shuddered.

“Mom?”

She heard him calling to her, but she couldn’t get past the winter snowstorm in her head. She stooped to pick up the upended bowl. Ice cream glued her fingers together.

“Mom, why are you crying?”

She wiped her nose with the back of her clean hand. Snot streamed across it. “No more movies.”

“Mom?”

Gently, she set the bowl on the table and stepped around the puddle to pick up a dishrag off the sink. On hands and knees, wiping the floor, not looking at her son, she said, “I got other things to do on Friday nights.”

“C’mon, Mom. He’ll get over it.”

“No. I mean it. Find a friend. Go out. Get drunk. Give us a reason to ground you.”

“You know I’m not like that.”

Her heart hurt, squeezed like hamburger in a press. She sat back on her heels and forced herself to look at her boy’s contorted face. “Son, I’m not sure what you’re like. Are you?”

Teresa got through that sleepless night by making a list of what she’d do to help Otto get normal. She could sense him sitting up, working the Web.

After that, she fell back on her pillow, exhausted.

A week later, Teresa stood in front of Flora’s paintings. They didn’t look all that special. Slashes of color, thick and pulsing and oddly disturbing. Five canvases in all. Two hung on common nails in the back bedroom, where Will had slept. The other three Flora dragged out of a closet. Nothing special about the framing either, white mats, white metal.

“Will wouldn’t let me sell these.” Flora wore tan slacks today, a peach and green floral shirt. “He switched them around every few months. He said he couldn’t take looking at more than two at a time.” A small ripple that might have been a laugh caught in Flora’s chest, made her cough.

The signature on every painting was the same. Flora. No surname. For a brief moment, Teresa considered that there must be some other Flora, someone this Flora had been named after. How could this genteel, quiet, elderly woman have painted
these slashing, angry, vibrating, highly sexualized paintings? That one looked like a vulva staring right at her. Teresa averted her eyes.

“Well,” Teresa managed. “My goodness. I had no idea you were so, so”—she waved her hand in circles and finally sputtered—“accomplished.”

Flora smiled. Her lips smiled. The rest of her face remained inscrutable. “Let’s have a cup of tea, shall we, dear?”

They sat at Flora’s dining room table. Teresa waited while the tea was steeped, poured, the chocolate cookies plattered. Lace tablecloth over oak, the teapot blue and white china. A ceiling fan hummed. Outside, the June temperature had climbed over ninety degrees. Teresa fanned herself with her yellow tablet.

Flora lifted a steaming cup to her lips. “I’d just as soon you not tell anyone, dear.” Then, she sipped.

“Oh.” Damn. Teresa had been halfway out the door, planning how she’d carry this message home, to the beauty parlor, to the bakery, to the vestibule of the First Baptist Church. She could make hay out of Flora’s story: Mysterious Artist Reappears. They’d get a whole lot more traffic for the auction, not to mention what could happen to the prices if the bidding got competitive. She hadn’t told Otto and might not have even now, given her recent resolution to steer him onto a normal path. But gosh, not to be able to breathe a word? “Why all the secrecy?”

Flora shifted her weight in her chair. Her gaze floated out the window, seeing past the lace curtains. “Will and I came here to get away from all that. It wasn’t part of this life.”

“I see.” Teresa did see, reluctantly. Flora wasn’t her first client with secrets. “Can I ask . . . why did you stop painting?”

“I suppose I didn’t need it anymore. My health was declining. The fumes from the paint . . .” Flora waved her hand dismissively. “And Will came back into my life.”

“Back?”

“We’d known each other as children. I lost track of him for a while. A good long while. Neither of us had married. He came to a showing of mine in Chicago. My last showing, as it turned out.”

Flora poured herself another cup of tea. She took milk and sugar. Teresa, who hated tea, took hers straight, lifted the cup to her mouth and managed a tiny sip. The silence stretched out between them. Just when Teresa had almost given up hearing any more, Flora sighed and said, “When I was twelve years old, I found out that my mother had been raped.”