He took a quick breath in and blew it out audibly to calm
himself. He swallowed hard and then walked around the corner and slid quietly
onto the glider across from her, oblivious to the dust that had settled on its
cushions. He leaned forward, his hands clasped loosely and hanging limp between
his knees. Clearing his throat a second time, he asked, “Heh, where you been,
Sunshine?” His voice, though not as steady as he would have liked, was soft and
sincere. He waited.
Charlie Frances had been sitting with her head down as if
in deep thought. As she lifted it slowly, her eyes rose from his dusty boots,
to his callused hands, pausing at his chest, garnering confidence to meet his
stare. Gentle and accepting, his expression caused her to smile as sweet as
when she was six-years-old. It always did.
“Tough couple of days, Marley.” Though she seemed calm, the
foot on her crossed leg incessantly beat a soundless rhythm on the air beneath
it. Marley remained stone still. “Went up to Sawyerville Monday to that estate
auction they have there. Wanted to unload some of those old pieces of furniture
the folks left me. They could almost pass for antiques, but I think it’s just
junk. That’s my inheritance, Marley, this old place, the junk in it, and of
course this goddamned diabetes. She paused, then offered a response to a
question he hadn’t yet asked. “I ran a little short of cash.” She saw his mouth
open in protest but raised her hand like a traffic cop to hush him. “It’s been
one hellavu week. My deceased hubby’s final hospital bills and his funeral
expenses arrived three days back. Five invoices in one day totaling $225,000.
It’s not doable, Marley. I can’t fix it any longer, this broken mess I call my
life. I figured it finally got the jump on me.” She smiled back at him, her
face not so much a picture of defeat but confusion. “So I started scrimping on
my insulin and chose lights and water over food and drugs.”
The implications
weren’t lost on him, and he felt panicky inside. “I was thinking the auction
house might spot me an advance, then I’d fill my prescription, but before I got
back to my pick-up, I started feeling woozy. She laughed apologetically. In a
flash, I was down on the sidewalk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t move.”
She tried to blink back tears but was unsuccessful. Unable
to bear what he felt from her words, he moved over by her and squatted next to
her. As gently as his thick, awkward hands could move, he pushed the strands of
hair behind her ears, which the tears had begun sticking to her cheeks.
“Shh, shh, shh, shhhh,” he soothed. Oh if only she weren’t so sure she deserved all this suffering, he
thought, not for the first time. He’d seen those storm clouds gather over her
when they were just kids together, and then build up through the years. It was
her husband’s death, however, that unleashed them into a steady downpour. Not
only had he given her a shitty life, but also he’d wiped out any savings they
had, dying as slowly and expensively as he could. There was no doubt in
Marley’s mind that it happened just like that.
“How did it all come to this?” she asked, her voice as
guileless as a child’s. “Who would have thought my life would end with me lying
paralyzed on a sidewalk? I had so many good chances in life, Marley. I made it.
I got out. I went to university. Away from these hypocrites. I thought anyway.
But some part of me sure stayed stupid. Maybe it was his title, PhD. and all
the seeming prestige of being a professor’s wife. It certainly wasn’t his
kindness. But, Marley, I was the one who said yes and married the sod. What
accounts for such stupidity, Marley? Mine, I’m talking about.”
He knew she wasn’t whining, that her question was sincere,
but Marley always felt nervous when she asked such questions. He couldn’t
answer them. He wasn’t even sure they had an answer. He just didn’t want her to
continue the drumming she’d taken as a child, only now by her own hand. She was
different. No question about that, had been from the first day he saw her; and
it was to that sweetest of memories he’d drift when she’d ask the hard
questions.
They met the day his dad, a local farmer, was taking him to
town but had stopped first at Charlie Frances’s home place to see her dad. She
was sitting on this same porch, singing to a stray she’d just rescued, a
coarse-coated mongrel with cloudy eyes and bones sticking out every which way.
She had him in her lap and appeared not to notice his stench or his filth. She
was doctoring his sores, digging out the ticks, and singing a song she made up
as she went along.
Marley had tried most of his life to understand what
happened in the magic of that moment, how it is that love begins. He wasn’t
dull-witted. But it was something that hid in his heart away from possible
corruption by reason or logic. He didn’t even get to speak with her that day,
and truth be told, he was glad, as absolutely nothing would have come out of
his mouth in that moment. But he sensed how different she was, and how unlikely
that she’d ever fit in. People labeled her a dreamer, as they couldn’t figure
out any other way to describe a child whose interest in the world gave
wonderment a whole new meaning. She wasn’t making an acquaintance with the
world. It was like she already knew it, and now was only deepening her
relationships with it. As a result, she saw things no one else saw. It was hard
to explain, but she seemed to live from a totally different frame of reference.
The world for her wasn’t subject to object. She was like a baby discovering its
toes only to realize they were part of her. She knew the world in that way,
each new discovery somehow connected to her and her to everything else. It was
people who eluded her grasp, for they kept demanding of her that she see the
world from how they thought it was. And to her that seemed down-right silly.
Amid the sweaty practicality of a farming community, her
behavior seemed foolish and unproductive. Her innocent need to understand most
everything wasn’t valued, but considered instead as haughty, blasphemous even.
Only Marley knew her, sensed who she was, and felt the strange energy of life
that swirled about her. She had created the pounding in his chest, the same
thrill of just being alive he got when he’d test himself playing chicken on the
old river road or taking over the controls on his uncle’s plane. She made him
feel whole and useful and more a man he respected. All he ever wanted to do was
make it right for her, let her know someone got who she was, and loved her for
every inch of it.
“People walked right by me, Marley. Right by me, lying
there, helpless. One even made some comment about being drunk in the middle of
the day. Even the old street guy, who was sitting there drinking out of a paper
bag, moved off a bit as if I was defiling his space as well. The light around
me was starting to close off into a cone, and my one thought was, how did I
make such a mess of my life? I was sure I’d die on that pavement with nothing
but peoples’ judgments being the last words ringing in my ears. I wasn’t in any
pain, just losing control of everything. And then it happened, like it was
right out of a Disney movie. That old pile of bones over there on the doormat;
he came sniffing down the sidewalk.”
Charlie Frances’s eyes lit up again, and
she smiled warmly at Marley. He moved back over to the glider but sat just on
its edge, so he could stay within arm’s-reach of her. He smiled back, no less
thrilled now by her glow than fifty years ago. The child she’d never lost touch
with, reached her hand out toward his face and played her fingers lovingly down
over its rough stubble and sun-etched wrinkles.
Then she continued. “That old pup started sniffing at my
feet and ran his big, wet nose right up my body until he was licking my face.
At first it was gentle, but then he got insistent and licked on me like a mama
trying to bring her new offspring to life. When I didn’t respond, he started
digging at me, but with his little feet, not his claws, but like he was saying,
‘get up; get up.’ But I couldn’t. When that didn’t work, he began to speak
Beagle, not barking but baying - loud. He didn’t quit. He sounded like the
hounds of the Baskervilles.
A young man sitting in traffic with his car window
rolled down looked my way. When the little guy felt the man’s attention on him,
he turned toward him baying right at him. The man jumped out of his car and, as
he came around in front of it, he saw me. He ran up and knelt beside me, asking
if I needed help. When he saw I couldn’t speak, he swept me up in his arms and
put me in his car. Then he ran back and grabbed the beagle and threw him in
too. Off we went to the hospital, and that’s where I’ve been for the last three
days. He never left his name, and, since my vision was so fuzzy, I couldn’t even
tell you what he looked like. But he left some money and that old dog.” She
shuddered at the thought of all that happened, and then smiled half
questioningly, half shyly at Marley.
Marley smiled back and said jokingly, “You always knew how
to pick ‘em, Sunshine, dogs, that is.”
“When they stabilized me and adjusted my medication, I felt
like nothing had happened. They gave me some free samples of what I use and a
stern lecture about being less careless. A peach-fuzz-faced doctor lecturing me
on behavior. I guess they don’t want to deal with reality the way it is these
days - that some people can’t afford the medicine that keeps them alive.”
There was no self-pity in her voice, just matter-of-fact
reporting. She paused, thoughtfully. “When I was driving home I had this
thought.” She looked Marley square in the face. “I do believe that if it
weren’t for dogs and babies, the cosmos might just flip the switch on gravity
for a few seconds, wiggle the earth’s axis a tad, and shake off as many of us
as it could, cleaning house, so to speak. We’re not making much headway,
Marley. We can’t seem to quit judging each other and admit we’re just plain
scared, then nuzzle up to each other, wagging our tails, knowing there’s
something good in there regardless.”
They continued to stare at each other. Marley broke first.
He chuckled. Then he shook his head slowly from side-to-side. He reached across
the gap between them and tapped the tip of her nose playfully with his index
finger. Her smile widened with each pat until she too broke into a soft
chuckle. Shyly she said, “Sometimes it’s just downright embarrassing being me.”
“I think of it as entertaining,” Marley rejoined. “And I
think one more thing too. Without sounding judgmental, I’d like to suggest a
bath for that dog as I can smell him all the way over here.”
In that moment, as if all the years they knew together shed
like hair off a dog in spring, he offered her his hand, and she took it
giggling, going off with him like two school kids. It wasn’t the first time
either of them had walked away from despair, between her ugly marriage and his
uglier war; though death this close for Charlie Frances was a new wrinkle. As
she hunted under the sink for a wash tub, clear-minded and comfortable in her
skin once again, she heard herself think, Don’t
flip the switch just yet. We may have made some headway, reflecting on the
kindness of that stranger.
On the front porch, the old beagle, with eyes so big and
round each looked like a fortune-teller’s crystal ball, watched Marley come
toward him and thumped his thick tail against the boards of the porch floor,
raising small puffs of dust. Marley squatted down and began rubbing the dog’s
boney head, its doggy breath smelling almost as bad as the rest of him. He slid
his hand down what was once a silky flap of ear, now scarred from cuts and
tears, and lifted it tenderly, whispering inside it an intimacy meant only for
him, “God bless you whoever you are; and whatever you want, you got it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment