The counterman recognizes the sandwich order Mead places and says, “Hey, I know who you are. You’re Lynn Fegley’s son, Teddy.”
Not in the mood for idle chitchat, Mead says, “Yes, and if you know that you probably also know how testy my uncle gets after an embalming.”
“I sure do,” the counterman says. “Your order will be right up.”
Mead gazes out the window to avoid further conversation. It’s a habit he picked up in junior high, after he got promoted from fifth grade to seventh, as a way to ignore the spitballs and rubber bands that flew past his head or pinged off his eyeglasses. A way to pretend that he did not hear his peers saying things like, “Do you still wet the bed, Ted?” He has found that people tend to leave him alone when he is gazing out a window, as if they are afraid to interrupt his train of thought, as if the young Theodore Mead Fegley might be on the brink of making some earth-shattering discovery. Or at least this is what Mead tells himself when he is studying alone in the library on yet another Saturday night.
Someone is chaining a green Schwinn to a bicycle rack across the street from the five-and-dime, someone with a gray ponytail hanging halfway down his back, someone who closely resembles Mead’s math professor Dr. Alexander. What did the man do, ride his bicycle all the way down here from Chicago? He must be worried, that must be it. He came to High Grove to make sure Mead is all right. To find out why he left. Mead steps over to the plate glass window and raps it with his knuckle. “Hey,” he yells, but the professor doesn’t turn around. “Hey,” he yells again and raps harder, then opens the front door and steps out onto the sidewalk. “Hey! Dr. Alexander! It’s me! Mead!” Finally, the old man hears him and turns around. Only it isn’t Mead’s math professor, it’s a middle-aged lady in trousers and a work shirt. Mead drops his arm. But of course it isn’t Dr. Alexander. How silly of Mead to have thought that it might be. After all, the professor is probably just now finding out that Mead not only skipped the presentation but skipped out of town altogether.
Disappointed, Mead steps back into the five-and-dime, letting the door swing closed behind him. He looks up and sees everyone seated at the lunch counter staring at him.
“Friend of yours?” the counterman says.
“No,” Mead says, embarrassed to have been caught making a public spectacle of himself. He snatches up the two brown paper bags on the counter and hands over the twenty-dollar bill his father gave him to pay for lunch. The counterman rings up the order and says, “Aren’t you supposed to be a genius of some kind?”
“Ex-genius,” Mead says. “I converted back to Catholicism a month ago.”
“Excuse me?”
“Keep the change,” Mead says and hurries out of the store before the counterman can ask any more questions.
N
OTHING SOOTHES THE SOUL
of the savage beast like food. Whoever said that has obviously never met Martin Fegley. Not only does the man appear ungrateful that Mead got the sandwiches, he seems downright pissed off about it. Like the more Mead tries to please him, the angrier he is going to get. Uncle Martin unwraps his roast beef sandwich and peers between the slices of bread as if hoping to find a dead cockroach in there, something he can add to the growing list of demerits he is compiling against his sorry-assed nephew.
“So how did it go?” Mead’s father asks Martin.
“Not too bad,” he says, smelling like a mixture of Ivory soap and formaldehyde. He leans back in his chair and sets his feet up on the desk.
Lenny has also joined them for lunch. He’s sitting in a chair next to the window that separates the back office from the showroom floor, so he can keep an eye out in case a customer should come in.
“I got to her before rigor mortis had a chance to set in,” Martin says as he chews on his sandwich, “so I didn’t have to do too much massaging of the extremities. She was a little stiff around the knees and ankles, though, due to arthritis.” He takes another bite out of his sandwich, chews and swallows. “But I tell you, I’m always amazed how much blood comes out of these little old ladies. It’s as if they’ve been hoarding it, like cat food, for a rainy day.”
“I helped, you know,” Mead says. “I didn’t just sit in the car. I helped transport the body to the hearse.”
Martin takes another bite and washes it down with some soda. “The other thing about little old ladies is that few of them have any teeth left. If they come to me without dentures, then I’ve got to stuff their mouths full of cotton before stitching their lips shut. So they’ll look good, you know, at the funeral.”
“All right, Martin,” Mead’s dad says. “That’s enough.”
“Cotton. It’s an embalmer’s best friend. Yup. Nothing plugs up the ol’ anus better than a good wad of cotton.”
Mead knows what’s going on here: His uncle is trying to gross him out. And as much as he hates to admit it, the man is succeeding. In spades. Mead throws down his sandwich and storms out of the office. Pulls open the back door and steps out into the parking lot, fuming. He considers walking back to the house —after all, it’s only seven blocks away —but decides against it because the only thing waiting for him back there is the six-legged creature. Then he considers his other options and realizes that he has none. Not a one. Because of Herman.
The back door opens and Lenny steps out. “I thought I might join you for a breath of fresh air,” he says. “You mind?”
Mead doesn’t answer, instead he sits down on the parking lot bench. Why there’s a bench in the rear parking lot, he has no idea. Perhaps it is here for this very reason: to blow off steam whenever Uncle Martin starts acting like an ass. How many times has Mead’s dad come out here to do the exact same thing? Not that he ever needs to blow off steam. Not Mead’s father. Everything just rolls right off that man’s back. It’s some set of parents Mead got. On the one hand, there’s his father with his calm, cool reserve; and on the other, there’s his mother with her high academic expectations. Shit. Between the two of them, Mead has no wiggle room to be human at all.
“So what’re you doing?” Lenny says.
“Trying to stay out of my uncle’s way.”
Lenny sits down on the bench next to Mead. “No, I mean what’re you doing here in High Grove? Ain’t you supposed to graduate next week?”
“Birds are supposed to fly south for the winter,” Mead says, “and flowers are supposed to bloom in the spring. Days are supposed to be long in summer and corn is supposed to be harvested in the fall. But I am neither a bird nor a flower nor a day of the week nor an ear of corn.”
Lenny smiles, the kind of smile someone wears when he hasn’t understood a word of what has just been said but thinks he should have. And he won’t ask Mead to repeat it because he’s afraid it will make him look stupid. It’s another habit Mead picked up in school —talking in metaphor —to deflect questions he did not wish to answer, like whether or not he had a date for the senior prom.
“You’re right,” Lenny says. “It ain’t none of my business.” And hands Mead the sandwich he left half-eaten inside.
Mead takes a bite out of it and chews angrily. “Does Uncle Martin always talk like that at lunch or was this a special performance for my benefit?”
“He has his good days and his bad.”
“Please tell me this is one of his bad days.”
Lenny stands up. “Time heals all wounds.”
“Where’d you read that, in a fortune cookie?”
Lenny smiles, then heads back into the store.
Now why did Mead have to go and say that? After all, he isn’t mad at Lenny. Shit, Mead is acting more and more like the insensitive, self-centered prick his uncle thinks he is. And he isn’t. Really, he isn’t.
S
AMUEL WINSLOW IS STANDING
on the sidewalk in front of Fegley Brothers holding a navy blue dress up to the plate glass window and knocking on the door, which has been locked since the close of business half an hour ago. Mead’s father crosses the showroom to let him in and Samuel hands over the dress, saying that he’d like his mother to wear it at her funeral. The two men then head up to the third floor to select a casket. Lenny is busy pushing a broom around the showroom floor and Uncle Martin has already gone home, so for the first time all day Mead is alone.
He sits down in his father’s chair and leans back. If he were still up in Chicago, Mead would just be getting back to his dorm room, the biggest day of his life behind him. And lying there, on the other bed, would be Forsbeck, his roommate. Sound asleep at six o’clock in the evening. Getting a little shut-eye before heading out to spend the evening with a dozen or so of his best friends. Mead glances at the phone on his father’s desk and thinks about calling his room at the dorm. About waking up Forsbeck to ask if the swelling under his eye —where Mead punched him —has gone down. Or maybe he will call Dr. Alexander instead. He could tell the professor how he thought he saw him on Main Street in High Grove with his bicycle. How Mead momentarily forgot that the professor was still limping around with one leg in a cast. He’d like to ask the professor if he is disappointed in Mead for skipping out on the presentation. Or angry. Or worse.
Lenny knocks on the office door. “I’m taking off now,” he says. “You gonna be around tomorrow, Teddy?”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you in the morning.” He leaves by the back door.
Mead continues to stare at the phone but doesn’t make any calls. Because questions would be asked. Questions Mead does not want to answer.
O
N THE WAY HOME IN THE CAR
, Mead’s dad suggests they stop at the Elks Lodge for supper and Mead jumps at the opportunity, happy to avoid what would have otherwise been an uncomfortable evening spent in the presence of the six-legged creature. The Lodge is nestled inside a grove of trees on the north edge of town, a log cabin whose parking lot is more brightly lit than its rooms. Mead follows his father through a lobby decorated with rifles into a smoky dining hall ripe with the smell of sweaty bodies and malt liquor. A room full of men celebrating the end of yet another workweek, escaping from the demands of their lives at least for a few hours. It is a concept Mead is all too eager to embrace: escape. Not just from the past week, but from the past month. Past year. Past decade. Oh hell, Mead would like to escape from his whole frigging life, to go back to day one and just start all over again. Maybe next time he won’t worry so much about pleasing his mother. Maybe next time he’ll refuse to skip third and then sixth and then tenth grades, because next time he’ll know better. Next time he’ll know that being the kid with all the right answers means being the kid with no friends. If only somebody had told him this before, then Mead could have saved himself a whole lot of grief.
Four people are sitting at the table to which his father has led him. Three strangers and Uncle Martin. Shit. Mead cannot believe his father did this. Tricked him. If the man had told Mead ahead of time that his uncle was going to be here, he wouldn’t have come. No way. As a matter of fact, he can still leave. No one is stopping him. He can just turn around and walk back out the front door. After all, the Lodge is only about a mile from his house. It’s completely doable. He could just leave right now, walk home, and eat supper with the six-legged creature.
Mead pulls out a chair and sits down.
“Well, well, well, would you look who’s here,” his uncle says. “Surprised you could make it, Teddy boy.” The man’s got one hand wrapped around a beer mug, the other around a fork, a combination that strikes Mead as downright dangerous.
“Does everyone know who this is?” Martin says and gazes around the table at his companions. “Why, this here is the infamous Fegley genius. The family jewel. A freak of nature. So tell me, Teddy, to what do we owe this great honor?”
Mead’s uncle is drunk, so everybody ignores him. Instead Mead’s father introduces Mead to the strangers. Sitting beside Martin is Mr. Sammons, a broad man with the body of a superhero, only older and softer in the middle. Next to him is the missus. She looks like an ex–beauty queen, her face and hair all made up as if she’s planning to attend a pageant after knocking back a few frosty brews. And seated next to the missus is this pretty blond girl, Hayley. The daughter. She looks like what her mother probably looked like before age and time took its toll, only without all the makeup.
“I know who you are,” Hayley says. “I remember you from first grade.”
“I was never in first grade,” Mead says.
“Yes, you were. I gave you a shoebox with a dead bird in it for Valentine’s Day. You know, because your dad’s an undertaker. It was a pretty awful thing to do but I was only six. I hope you can forgive me.”
Great. Of all the people in all of High Grove that Mead has to end up sitting next to on the worst day of his life is the girl who was responsible for the second worst day of his life. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific,” he says. “I got a lot of dead birds that year. Was it the robin, the blue jay, or the wren?”
“I never heard this story before,” Mead’s father says.
“And you didn’t hear it just now either, Dad. She’s making it up. Or maybe she’s thinking of somebody else.”
“Teddy’s right,” Martin says. “She probably gave it to the other undertaker’s son. You know, to Percy.”
Not a single person sitting at the table believes that Hayley gave a dead bird to Percy for Valentine’s Day. Not a one. He just wasn’t the kind of kid to whom other kids gave dead birds. He would much more likely have been the kid who handed them out. Besides, Percy wasn’t even in first grade the year Hayley and Mead were. He was in fourth grade.
“Congratulations on your recent graduation,” Mrs. Sammons says and reaches across the table to pat Mead’s hand. “I saw the announcement in the local paper.”
“What announcement?” Mead says and looks at his father.
“Your mother sent one in to the
Grove Press
,” he says. “They weren’t supposed to publish it until next week.”
“Phi Beta Kappa,” Mr. Sammons says. “That’s pretty impressive.”
“And yet you don’t look a day over sixteen,” the missus adds.
“He’s eighteen, Mother,” Hayley says. “Like me.”