Patricia Gaffney (22 page)

“Did he ever get hit by a car?” Wolfie came out of a reverie to ask.

“Not that I know of.”

“He like to lay out on the front porch. He sure sleep a lot.”

“He never bit anybody,” Andrew said.

“I snuck him cookies Dash gave me. He liked me.”

“He had a big heart.”

“Yeah.”

Eulogy over, Andrew let Wolfie drop shovels of dirt into the grave until he got tired. “Got to put his name on top or something,” Wolfie said when the job was done. “Like a cross. You got any flowers?”

“How about a nice bush?”

“A
bush.
”

“Yes. I could get an azalea and plant it at the head.”

“When?”

“In a couple of weeks. Mid-April, I guess.”

“No, we got to put something now.”

They looked around the wintry backyard.

“That rock,” Wolfie said.

It was a big, shapely stone Dash had wanted in her flower border for a decoration. “Too heavy,” Andrew said, remembering hauling it there for her.

“We can do it. He got to have a mark.”

They managed it by rocking and shoving the stone out of the rut it had sunk into over the years, carrying it between them for a few feet, then kicking and rolling it the rest of the way.

“There.”

“Looks good. Like in a graveyard.”

“Headstone. Well, that’s it,” Andrew said before Wolfie could suggest carving Hobbes’s name in it. “Let’s go in, it’s cold. Want some hot chocolate?”

“My aunt died, but I didn’t see her. My sister said she all dressed up, like going to a party. But laying down in the box. Coffin.”

“People try to make their loved ones look nice.”

“My father might die and I wouldn’t know. He could be dead
now.
” He sat down on the hard ground and crossed his legs.

Andrew sighed, looking up at the streaky sky, following the black silhouette of a shrieking bird. “Aren’t you cold?” he asked as he hunkered down beside Wolfie.

“No.” He was starting to shiver, though, and blow into his cupped hands. Small, boyish white scars scored the brown skin of his fingers and wrists.

Andrew reached over for his coat and threw it across Wolfie’s shoulders. “How long since you last saw your dad?”

“I don’t know. He use to come by, then he quit.”

“Well, there are worse things than not having a father.” That sounded heartless. “What I mean is, no father could be better for you than a bad father. Sometimes.”

“My father…” Wolfie made
X
s in the dirt with a stick. “He use to let me put my hand in his pocket, like I was stealing his money. He’d laugh. Sometimes he put his hand on top of my head.” Wolfie put one hand on his own head. “Keep it there.”

“My father used to laugh at me.”

“What for? How old were you?”

“If I’d do something he thought was stupid. Say something he didn’t agree with.”

“He hit you?”

“
No.
” He looked at Wolfie in alarm. “Did your father hit you?”

“No. How old were you?”

“Oh, your age, or older. Younger.” All his young life, actually, until Edward and Tommie sent him away to school.

“Like what? What’d you do to make him laugh for?”

He regretted beginning this. Wolfie’s puckish face was screwed up with concern, the dark eyes liquid and sad. “Nothing, just silly things. Okay, one thing I remember. It was his birthday, and I wanted to give him something special. You know? Something he would really like.”

Wolfie nodded.

“He smoked cigars. He’d smoke one after dinner every night, and if he was at home, one every afternoon at four o’clock. He kept them in his humidor—know what a humidor is?”

“No.”

“It’s a fancy name for a cigar box. My father’s had a hygrometer inside, but it was broken.”

“What’s a—”

“It’s a dial that reads the humidity inside the box. Cigars can mildew if it gets too damp in there, or dry out if it gets too dry.”

“You gave him a box?”

“No, I gave him a hygrometer. Because his was broken. Except”—Andrew started to laugh, to take the sting out—“I didn’t know anything about humidity, I thought that little meter inside the box told the time! He was so regular—four o’clock and eight o’clock, every day—I figured that was a little
clock
in the humidor.”

Wolfie grinned uncertainly.

“So I pried it off with a screwdriver—”

“How old were you?”

“Seven. Then I took the watch I’d just gotten for Christmas, took the band off, and glued the watch face inside the box, where the hygrometer had been. Elmer’s glue. And I gave it to my dad for his birthday.” He drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, smiling broadly over at Wolfie. “Pretty funny, huh? My father thought so.”

“He laugh?”

“He roared.” Andrew’s mother had fluttered her hands—“No, it’s nice, Edward, tell Andrew it’s a nice present”—but every time Edward looked at the Bulova dial inside his handsome, wood-inlaid humidor, he’d laughed harder. Not indulgent laughter, not charmed or tolerant, no “aww” in it to make Andrew feel silly and fallible but still loved. Just humiliated.

“Hey,” he said to Wolfie, who was pushing his lips in and out, looking worried. “No big deal. Thank you for helping me out with Hobbes. How’s school? What’d you learn today?”

“I got a girlfriend,” Wolfie said doubtfully, as if half his attention were in the new conversation, half still in the old. “Her name’s Tina.”

“Is she nice?”

“Yeah. Only she don’t know she’s my girlfriend yet.”

“That could be a problem.” He rubbed his cold hands together. He’d known—feared, truthfully—this was coming someday: a call to dispense fatherly advice to Wolfie. Now that it was here, he didn’t feel as burdened as he’d thought he would. “Well, does Tina like you? Can you tell? Does she look at you in cl—”

“She not in my class. She don’t know me, I see her at recess.”

“Ah. Well, that makes it a little more difficult. Are you in any clubs together? Perhaps—”

“I threw a football at her yesterday, got her in the back.” He reached up and patted himself between the shoulder blades.

“Well, that’s…the direct approach. Maybe if you spoke to her, said, ‘Hi,’ or something, ‘My name’s Wolfie,’ and then began a—”

“Nah, I’m just gonna go and get her. Girls like that.” He jumped up. “I have to go now.” He threw off Andrew’s coat. “See you.”

“See you.” He was accustomed to Wolfie’s abrupt departures, as if an urgent previous engagement had suddenly occurred to him. He trotted down the walk and through the gate to the alley, sneakers echoing on the concrete for a second, then silence.

The wind was picking up. Once, a long time ago, Andrew had just gone and gotten Dash. She’d liked it. Beyond Mrs. Melman’s roof, a crooked quarter moon was rising in the paling sky. The sweat Andrew had worked up digging the grave had long since dried on his skin; he should go in before he caught cold. He’d have to call Mrs. Melman, tell her about Hobbes. Andrew usually walked him this time of the day. It took forever. He’d lose patience, mutter, “Come on, come on, come on,” while the dog limped from grass blade to grass blade, deciding where to pee. If he were here now, Andrew would walk him gladly.

Dash didn’t leave him at the altar—the first time she left him—but almost. Three days before the wedding she’d planned and insisted on paying for—a tiny ceremony at the National Arboretum followed by lunch at their favorite Thai-Vietnamese restaurant; immediate family and closest friends only—Andrew appeared at her apartment to show off the Mexican wedding shirt he’d just bought at a men’s store on F Street. He’d thought at first that that was it, a terrible miscalculation with the shirt, an item of clothing so unlike anything he had ever worn before, he was sure she would love it. But no, it couldn’t have been the shirt, because he’d hardly gotten it out of the bag before she burst into hysterical tears, told him she was sorry she couldn’t marry him, couldn’t, it was impossible, and ran out the door.

Seven hours later Arlene, his motherin-law-to-be, called. Dash was there, in Greensboro, with her. How did she get there? The train. She was in her room with the door closed and the lights out.

“May I speak to her, please?”

“Honey, you know…I think it would be better if you just came on down here.”

He’d only met Arlene once, when she’d driven up to check him out after Dash told her they were getting married. From Dash’s stories, he’d been expecting someone softer, rounder, a woman who embodied maternalism, and Arlene was hardly that. She was handsome instead of pretty, taller than Dash, with keen, critical brown eyes she’d turned on him with the intensity of searchlights. When she’d decided to like him, he’d felt as if he’d passed some shrewd and difficult test.

And when she said Andrew should come down, he didn’t think it was a suggestion.

The house was a tiny, postwar bungalow on a one-block street lined with replicas of itself. He sat in his car and tried to imagine Dash growing up here, playing in the miniature yard, running on the chalky sidewalks—when suddenly the enormity of what he didn’t know about her crashed over him in a hot, numbing wave. His fear was physical; it made his heart race, his palms sweat. It was as close to a panic attack as he’d ever had, before or since. He thought of driving off; his fingers even fiddled with the key. In that moment he forgave her for running away—after all, she’d only given in to the same sickening temptation he was feeling. And it wasn’t heartless of her, he realized, it was smart—for God’s sake, they’d only known each other
five months.

He’d gotten out of the car stiff-jointed, like a man going to his hanging. Arlene answered the door. She looked at him and laughed (but in the same sweet, charmed way Dash sometimes laughed at him), and kissed him on both cheeks. He took heart from her unworried face. She sat him down in the living room, asked about his trip, gave him a glass of sweet tea. Then she told him a story that only confused him.

“When Dash was in kindergarten, she made friends with a little girl named Karen Svensdotter. That’s all she talked about for days, Karen Svensdotter said this, Karen Svensdotter did that, oh, to have freckles like Karen Svensdotter—well, finally the day came when the mother called and invited her to go home with Karen after school one day. A playdate. Dash was just over the
moon
, so excited, she couldn’t sleep the night before. So the mother picked the girls up at school, took them home, and at three o’clock Dash called. In tears. ‘Come and get me, Mama, I want to come
home
!’”

Arlene had a mannerism so like one of Dash’s—crossing her legs and leaning so far forward to speak to her companion, her breasts almost touched her thigh—Andrew was distracted and could hardly follow what she was saying. It seemed like rambling, anyway. Where was Dash? Why were they talking about Karen Svensdotter?

“She stopped crying as soon as she was out of that house. ‘Mama,’ she told me on the way home, ‘Mama, they all had such little ears!’” Arlene leaned back to laugh. “Little ears, every one of them, the mother, Karen, her two brothers—the whole family had
little ears.
”

“Em,” Andrew said, empty-headed.

“Well, it just scared her to
death.
She wasn’t a fearful child, but something about it just got her. Those little ears. I guess she thought the Svensdotters were monsters or something. And that was the end of the friendship, needless to say. I don’t remember what I told the mother when I called her up to apologize. Nothing about little ears, I’m sure.”

She laughed again (Chloe’s laugh; pure music), and Andrew tried to smile back politely.

“Now, honey. Don’t take this personally, because it’s not. What happened…” She touched his arm with her fingertips. She still wore a wedding ring, he noticed; her hands were the same bony, competent shape as Dash’s.

“What happened is, you…” She put her hands over her nose and mouth, an abashed little tent. Then she sat up, squared her shoulders, and gave it to him straight. “Honey, it’s your hair. It took an age to get it out of her, but that’s what it is. Your wedding haircut, it just—now, it looks
fine
to me, a little short but perfectly nice, not one
bit
alarming—”

“My haircut?” He’d gone to his father’s barber two days earlier, mentioned he was getting married. It was shorter, yes, but he’d thought—he’d thought—

“She won’t talk about it—truthfully, she’s hardly done anything except cry since she got home—but she did say—”

“My haircut?”

“She mentioned that—”

“Where is she?”

“In the backyard. You go talk to her.” Arlene stood up. “I didn’t tell her you were coming. Honey, everything’s going to be
just fine.
Believe me, this is something y’all are going to look back on and laugh at.” She gave his shoulders an affectionate shake before turning away, her lips pressed together. As if, for her, the laugh had already started.

His haircut? He walked out through the kitchen, rubbing the bare back of his neck, in a fog of confusion. Dash had left him over a haircut? It made so little sense, he couldn’t think. Was he marrying a crazy person? Arlene seemed so normal, though, and so unconcerned. What was he missing? Was he really supposed to take comfort from the fact that Dash had done something just this absurd and idiotic when she was five years old? He couldn’t possibly throw in his lot with a person like that. Lunacy, insanity—