He smiled. “See you later then, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said, getting my keys and heading out the door.
“We’ll talk soon,” said Stan, and I nodded.
* * * * *
At one time, I imagined, I had every crack in every formed concrete block of the downtown sidewalk of River Falls memorized -- enough to walk it blindfolded, even now.
Newer cars were parked in the diagonal parking designations. Nicer cars, I noted, pricier than the salt-pitted American models that had dotted the street when I was very young.
Hallowed Grounds was on the corner of Main Street and Bear Lake Lane, just a ten-minute walk from my apartment. I was coming at it from the east and had to pass the Ben Franklin and the public library to get to it. I continued at the desultory pace I realized I’d started using since I got back home. Time slowed in River Falls too, although not like it did in Santo Ignacio with its kind of magical healing quality. It faltered, like aging, like sore joints, muscle weakness, and loss of bone density. I felt shrunken in River Falls, where in Santo Ignacio I’d had the feeling of getting larger.
I took a look in the window of the public library and noticed it was open on Sundays now. I stopped to watch as a group of children sat in a semicircle on an alphabet rug waiting for the librarian to tell a story, their mothers sitting in chairs behind them. The librarian held up the book and introduced it, I thought, handing it off to a helper, who showed the pictures. When she began to tell the story, she both spoke and signed it, like Shawn, enthusiastically using her whole body. I followed my feet into the children’s area of the library before my brain even engaged and sat to watch her. There was something so sweetly familiar about her fluttering hands. To find a part of the life I’d left behind in St. Nacho’s here in River Falls, where I felt like an exile, washed over me like warm light. I was every bit as enraptured as the children were.
“I couldn’t help but notice you don’t have children with you,” the librarian remarked after the kids ran off with their parents to find books. “A big story hour fan, are you?”
“No.” I’m sure I blushed. “No.”
“Come off it, Cooper. Don’t say you don’t recognize me. I’ll be devastated.” I stared at her, appalled. I didn’t recognize her. Shit. Shit.
Her silvery laugh was not quiet enough to go unnoticed in the library, and people looked over at us.
She shook her head. “Dang, I tried everything to get your attention when I was a kid at RFHS. I played the viola?”
76 Z. A. Maxfield
I shook my head.
“When you were a senior and I was a junior? Mary Lynn Anders, now Johnson.” She stuck her hand out and I shook it.
“Girls…weren’t my thing,” I said. “I’m afraid.”
“I get that -- now. I’m glad to see you anyway,” she said. “So I take it that it isn’t regret for failing to notice my otherworldly beauty that draws you here?” I laughed. I wish I had noticed her. She seemed nice. “Sorry,” I said. “I saw you signing.
I have a friend… I was trying to learn sign language before I came back to River Falls.”
“I see,” she said.
“Anyway, I like watching it. I mean, when people talk with their hands. I find it…attractive. That sounds stupid.”
“No, I do too. It’s one of the reasons I learned. That and my first nephew was born deaf.
He likes a good story too.” She smiled.
“My friend wasn’t born deaf, so he speaks. I just…sometimes I think I’d like to talk to him like that, instead of me texting and him answering with his voice or me writing and him reading. It’s exciting when people talk with their hands.”
“I know. It’s so graceful and way more immediate.”
“I was wondering… Maybe I could volunteer or something. Clean? Wash your car?
Maybe you could teach me.” How stupid is that? Am I still holding out hope I’ll see Shawn again?
“Oh, sure, I could teach you some. You don’t have to clean or anything, but frankly, I could use some help with my laundry.” I’m sure she saw something flicker in my eyes because she laughed hard. “Kidding. Just kidding. Were you always this awkward?”
“Yes,” I said. I resolved that I liked her and wanted to tell her only the truth. “I was, but I hid it behind a shitload of partying.”
Her face suddenly sobered, and I felt like all the air was sucked out of the room. “I remember.”
“I’m done with all that.”
“I’m glad.” She smiled again. “Stop by the library in the morning tomorrow. I’ll bring you some books.” She began to walk toward the circulation desk, where a bunch of impatient preschoolers waited for her. “Right now I have more important customers.”
“Tomorrow morning.” I grinned at her and left the building. Mary Lynn, viola. Still wasn’t ringing any bells. Shit. How many nice people had I just completely ignored? I was still frowning in thought when I got to Hallowed Grounds.
I saw my sister right away, schmoozing the caffeinated faithful at the register. She immediately stopped what she was doing when she saw me and came around the counter for St. Nacho’s
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a hug. She ordered us both something in white ceramic cups as large as a soccer balls and sat down with me at a tiny bistro table. One of her minions brought peanut butter brownies.
“It is good to be you,” I said, looking around at her store. Everywhere I looked an eclectic mix of modern, gothic, and Victorian furnishings cluttered the small space, spilling out right onto the sidewalk, where the doors opened and she had set out tables. She had wall racks full of trinkets for sale, as well as art by local artists, jewelry, books, and greeting cards.
The food looked fabulous. She had a long white marble counter, copper cappuccino machines, and overstuffed divans and club chairs with tiny marble tables that made it look like a picture of a Parisian cafe in the 1930s.
Julie was a hell of an entrepreneur, but the most surprising thing was that it went over as well as it did in stodgy River Falls, where a John Deere baseball cap got you into the finest places, the men were men, and guys like me left home early and often.
“I’ll tell you a secret. I’m already playing a complicated game of Go with the appliance place next door. They don’t know it yet, but I’ve surrounded them and choked off any chance for retreat. Well, that and the owners are old and looking to buy a casita in Arizona.
By next fall at the latest, Hallowed Grounds will be four times the size it is now.” She read my surprise. “It’s changing here. More people have come from the cities. Kids from the high school love this place. I like having a place they can come for an alternative to drinking beer in the school parking lot.”
I burned with shame.
“Oh, baby… I didn’t mean… Well, yes, I did, I guess.” She stuck up her chin. “I’d rather they get high on caffeine here and read bad poetry than get into the kind of trouble you did.”
Well, it might not have worked on Jordie and me, but I had to give her credit. “I love you,” I said. “In case I haven’t told you lately.” Where had that come from?
She smiled. “Me too.”
“So,” I said. “I played at Mama Lina’s this morning.”
“I’ve already overheard people talking about you. You’ve made quite an impression.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “Good or bad?”
“All good. The general consensus is that you have come back, at last, with a renewed determination to become what you should have been all along.”
“I see,” I said.
She caught my hand in hers and gave it a brief squeeze. “I always saw you on a detour, Cooper, not on a road of no return.”
I sighed. “I don’t know what it was.”
“Look,” she said, gripping her cup and taking a sip. I didn’t tell her there was a blob of foam on her nose. Some things never change. “There was a time when I didn’t feel I could be 78 Z. A. Maxfield
straight with you, but now I’m wondering if that was just as bad as being honest and alienating you completely.”
“I find people who were ‘straight’ with me didn’t make much of a dent back in the day.”
“You weren’t going to tell me I had foam on my nose, were you?” She grinned.
“What, is that some kind of a test?”
“No, there’s a mirror behind you and I just noticed.”
“Oh.”
She sighed. “How’s it going, Cooper?” she asked. “Really.”
“I miss California sometimes,” I said carefully. “I liked Santo Ignacio. Something about me changed there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Like something softening me up and warming me, from the inside out.” Could I ever find the words for that? “It was a healing place.” She was silent for a while. “Was it pretty there?”
“Yeah, a lot like the Oregon coast. Unspoiled.”
“Must have been nice.”
“It was.” I pulled off a corner of my brownie and ate it. It was so good I couldn’t think of anything else for a minute. “I was sorry to leave it.”
“Why did you?” she asked suddenly, leaning forward.
“What?”
“I didn’t give Jordan your number so you would come back here and take up where you left off with him.”
“It’s hardly like we’re where we left off, though, is it?”
“Of course not, how could it be?” she asked. “But what I didn’t expect is you moving back to town and taking up with him again.”
“He needs me,” I said. “It wasn’t easy for him to come back, to face the people here alone.”
She was silent for a long time. “I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t tell you I want you to put your past behind you once and for all.”
“People can’t just put their pasts behind them, Jules. I’ve spent almost four years on the road, running, and it still caught up with me.”
“I think…” she said, toying with my brownie. “I think, if you ever figure out what is your past and what isn’t, and stop getting it all mixed up with Jordan’s, you’ll be free of it.”
“I’ll never be free of it, Julie. And anyway, I can’t do that. My past is mixed with Jordan’s, whether I want it to be or not. He paid the price for something we both did.” St. Nacho’s
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Her hand came down on the table with a bang that caused our coffee cups to jump and people all around to startle. “Actions count,” she said. “What you did counts, and what you didn’t do counts. And nothing Jordan said then or now can change that if you don’t let it.
You can’t go on feeling responsible for something you didn’t do, Coop.”
“But I am responsible. I did nothing to stop him. Sure, I knew I couldn’t drive, but I didn’t do anything to stop him from driving! It isn’t that simple. I gave up responsibility to him not because I was a good person or because I knew better than to drive drunk. I did it because I wanted to…be a passenger. Let somebody else think for me. I picked the wrong person. I know now that was as bad as if I’d driven myself. I don’t even want to think about this anymore.”
“I want you to think about it, Coop. I want you to think and think and think about it, because I believe you’ll realize that we can only be responsible for what we do, all by ourselves. That seems like it’s enough responsibility for anyone.”
“And what if we were all to abdicate our responsibility? Excuse ourselves from the process and just let others take the fall?”
She put her hand on mine and squeezed, and I could see the caring and the anxiety in her eyes. I wondered if I’d ever see her look at me without that pain again.
I ended up leaving after we finished our coffee in a strained silence and walked back to the apartment deep in thought. I looked in the library window and saw Mary Lynn packing up puzzles and games, and I wondered again if the real world might just be somewhere between the uncomplicated one my sister described and the indecipherable and frightening place I had always believed it to be.
80 Z. A. Maxfield
Chapter Thirteen
When I got home the only people left in the apartment were Stan and Jordan. I said a polite hello, but they seemed to be in deep conversation, so I went onto the balcony to smoke. Jordan seemed agitated, and Stan was using that supercilious, smooth voice of his to calm him. It wasn’t long before Jordan came to the slider and opened it.
“I’m going to go with Stan for a while. He thinks I need a meeting.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. I knew Jordan attended regular AA meetings. He was years past his “thirty meetings in thirty days,” but often went every day anyway.
“Yeah.” He sighed, raking his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I’m…I’m just going, okay?”
“Okay.” I watched him walk across the living room with Stan and out the front door.
Stan turned to me and gave me a look that was hard to decipher. I wondered if he thought maybe I was bad for Jordan. It wouldn’t have surprised me, given what he’d said about the accident. It didn’t matter. I finished my cigarette and went back inside, where I found the kitchen full of the effects of that afternoon’s meal, and I took the time to clean it up.
* * * * *
All in all, I liked the quiet of our apartment, yet I knew that Jordan was unhappy that we didn’t have a television. I liked to take walks, and he liked to stay indoors. I think my practicing got on his nerves. I tolerated the church group, went to AA meetings, and attended Bible study. I knew he was aware that I didn’t have any kind of personal spiritual calling, but I didn’t see it as “going through the motions” the way he thought I did. I tried to give him space and stability. He routinely found reasons to call Stan for counseling and searched for meetings to attend. He always needed more.
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At some point, I began to go to the library often to help out with cleaning or whatever Mary Lynn might need. She taught me some basic sign language, enough so that I could carry on a greeting and a small discussion of the weather. She gave me books, and I practiced with a couple of DVDs when I could watch them on the library players. I memorized signed words, but was unable yet to place them into coherent sentences.
Jordan tolerated my interest, saying that it would be good to have someone who could sign for Stan later if the church attracted any deaf parishioners. I walked past the banks of computers in the library every day, avoiding the temptation to use them to reconnect with Santo Ignacio. But my fingers itched to reach out for something, anything that would bring Shawn’s face more clearly to my mind.