The Mt. Monadnock Blues Read online

  “So this is a place you like to hang out,” said Tim.

  It was sheltered and peaceful here, the way it was intended. There was a clear prospect across a palette of greens to Monadnock—always Monadnock. You saw it from a hundred angles, in a dozen different towns. Wild crabapple trees, their miniature fruit hung like ornaments, marked the forest edge.

  “You can look, if you want,” said Billy, after emerging from a quick huddle with his sister.

  “I would like that.”

  “It’s not a real stone,” said Cindy, as she tugged him along by the hand. “It’s only wooden. Billy wants to get a real stone.”

  “I want them to really be here, too.”

  “Close to home,” said Tim.

  Billy nodded. Though the grim set to his face mostly reflected Billy’s quarrel with God, Tim gathered that he and Anne had incurred some blame for the Carolina burial.

  “They were made into ashes,” he reminded, gently. He had a thought, though, a way around that might prove helpful.

  “We know.”

  They appeared to know everything. And certainly they had done an impressive job. The short plank, roughsawn and weathered gray, blended in with the old slate markers. The orange chrysanthemums (planted as purchased, rootbound in plastic pots) were alive and bright. In an amateur stab at memorial calligraphy, one of them had inscribed accurate dates for Jill and Monty: birth and death.

  “How did you manage this? You didn’t even have the shovel.”

  “We took the old one, with the cracked handle.”

  “You did a beautiful job. And this is a beautiful place.”

  “Do you really like it, Unk?”

  “I love it, and I love you. You guys are way too great for words. And you know what? Maybe we really can bring them here someday.”

  “After Grandma dies? She’s old.”

  “You don’t have to be old,” said Billy, pointedly.

  “Are you going to die, Unk? From AIDS?”

  “I don’t have AIDS.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, sweetheart.”

  These two were up to some tough talking. And they knew more at their young ages than Tim had known, or been told, at sixteen. They studied AIDS and sex education, sat in ampitheatres watching condoms being waved about, scribbled notes on the warning signs of genital herpes. In Tim’s health class, there were spelling bees (he won one, with the word esophagus) and lectures on the proper care of the teeth and gums.

  “I never even catch cold,” he said.

  “Me either,” said Billy.

  “Christmas you did,” said Cindy. “You sneezed in the stuffing.”

  “Anyone can sneeze. You can sneeze from a flower, Simp.”

  “So we’re all healthy,” said Tim. “And your grandmother may be old, but she’s a tough old bird.”

  “I’m a tough young bird.”

  “I’ll say you are,” said Tim, poking her belly until she gave back a giggle. “But we don’t want to rush your Grandma into old age. So I saved some of the ashes.”

  Giving birth to this idea minutes earlier, Tim had felt inspired. (Karl wasn’t the only one with ideas!) The falseness, and the difficulty attached to it, seemed mere details. Now as he released it into the open, he could survey the boundless swamp he had entered. “Where are they?” asked Billy, and instantly the layers began to build around Tim’s white lie.

  “A friend has them,” he said. “I hired him to make a special box.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Peter,” said Tim quickly—the slightest hesitation would ring false—yet not quite randomly. He did have four friends named Peter. Before they could press for a surname, he plunged ahead: “I told him we need it soon. Before the first frost.”

  “Can we call him, when we get home?”

  “Sure. Though maybe tomorrow would be better, when he’s back in his workshop.”

  His workshop, no less, like one of Santa’s elves! This offering, this well-intended lie would grow like a grapevine until Tim could make it true by excavating the Berline ashes. A crime, no doubt, even if his family did own both the ground and the ashes.

  If this was a time for impossible topics, from AIDS to ashes, maybe it was as good a time as any for Unk-in-a-bunk too. If he was going to ask them, he had to ask them soon.

  “There’s something else we should talk about,” he said.

  “We know what it is.”

  “You do not. You’d have to be a mindreader.”

  “Uh uh, just a private eye. They want us to come there and live. Mac and Mrs. Mac. We heard them.”

  “You little sneaks.”

  “You can’t help hearing from Henry’s closet.”

  “Oh, right. When you hide in the closet, quiet as a mouse, and eavesdrop.”

  “Quiet as four mice,” said Cindy.

  “The twins do it all the time. It’s their crow’s nest.”

  “Anyway, you’re way ahead of me, as usual. And I don’t even know the other part of this—whether you’d rather be stuck with me or with your Aunt Erica.”

  “Get real, Unk. We’d much rather be stuck with you.”

  “We like being stuck with you,” said Cindy.

  “Well I like being stuck with you, too. The thing is, I’m just me…” (Unlike Just Ed, Tim did not intend a self-deprecation nor did the children hear one. They understood him to mean quite precisely that he was something other than a parent.)…“whereas the Macs…”

  They understood and, moreover, had been wrestling with the problem for days. It was clear to Billy they had to bail Tim out and he had been able to make it clear to Cindy; that was the easy part. The hard part would be doing it. Living in someone else’s house, with someone else’s ways. But they had to act excited about it, had to be convincing, or The Alien could send them to Earl and Erica.

  “I can dosss it,” Cindy had said, because Billy kept needing her to say everything three times. “I just don’t want to leave my room, or listen to Hugh and Henry argue all day, or bake a million brownies with sappy Mrs. Mac—”

  “I thought you said you could do it.”

  “I can. But can’t I even say the truth to you?”

  “Don’t cry, Simp. I’m really sorry.”

  “…whereas the Macs,” Tim was saying, “are real parents. They know how to be real parents.”

  “Is that where you want us to go?” asked Billy, maintaining discipline fiercely; not ripping into his uncle’s incredibly dumb theory. As if Mr. Mac or anyone else was ever going to be their “real” parent.

  “Only if you do. You two generally seem to know what you want.”

  “Mr. Mac said you could have the apartment.”

  “He said that to me too.”

  “It’s pretty cool,” said Billy, who all spring had tried to extract a promise from Monty to make him a clubhouse over their own garage.

  “Did Mr. Mac say we could get our own dog?”

  “He didn’t mention a dog, sweetheart. We didn’t go into a lot of details. He just wanted us to know they’d be happy to have you there, if you liked the idea.”

  “He said you would be there on weekends.”

  “That would be up to us. If you guys got sick of me—”

  “No, Unk.”

  “Or if I got sick of you—”

  “Of him. Not of me.”

  “Weekends would be good, Unk,” said Billy. “But maybe sometimes we could come to Boston. Without the twins.”

  “That’s the thing. We get to make up the rules.”

  “Or school vacation. We could come for the whole week sometimes.” Billy was hammering out terms, and this was an aspect that appealed to him, keeping a foothold in the big city. Boston was fine by him. “Maybe we could see the Celtics at the Garden.”

  “Whatever we wanted. School vacation? Hey, we could decide to tour Kansas and Nebraska. All up to us.”

  “Why Kansas?”

  “I just mean we can go anyplace we c
hoose to go—take trips together. We’ve never done that.”

  “We have so.”

  “Travel trips, though. To Paris, or London.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Why not? Camp White Sneaker on London Bridge!”

  “It’s good by us,” said Billy.

  “London Bridge? Or this plan?”

  “Both.”

  Was it a plan? Billy seemed to think so, and the way they all were talking it seemed a wonderful opening-up in their lives. But Tim did notice that no one was talking about Al and Alice. They were concocting a dream world, pretending the McManuses would not exist, or have a say. They would, though. That was why it was a question, not a plan.

  “You don’t sound so sure.”

  “No, it’s good. It’ll be pretty weird if some other kids move into our house. But maybe we’ll like them.”

  “Probably you will. Cynthia, what do you want?”

  “I want you to call your friend.”

  “Karl? Or do you mean Ellie.”

  “The friend who’s making the box. Peter.”

  “Oh, Peter. But what about the Macs? We need your vote on that, one way or the other. You can say no, if you don’t like it.”

  “We like it, Unk. I would have my own room.”

  “Me too,” said Billy, “if I go to the basement.”

  “The basement? You don’t want to do that.”

  “Guess again, Unk. It’s really cool down there. There’s a pool table and a TV.”

  “What about windows? Would you have a window?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, it’s a basement.”

  “There’s two windows,” said Cindy. “They’re little, but they work. Remember? They always plug the Christmas lights in through there.”

  Erica stood in the doorframe eyeing Tim’s approach quizzically, mistrustful, as though he might prove armed and dangerous. “Am I expecting you?” she said.

  “I came on an impulse.”

  “We’re not always home, you know.”

  “Hey, I’m not always impulsive,” said Tim, though in truth he was famously impulsive. His evening activities aside, Tim was a man who once spent three days freezing his ass in Reykjavik simply because a free courier trip turned up.

  “Well, anyway, Earl’s not here.”

  “Of course not, he’s out buying up real estate.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know where the hell he is. But I’m going to Montreal in a half an hour.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t mean anything. It’s a trip, with a friend. A girl friend, if that’s what you’re looking so fretful about. She’ll be here any second.”

  “If you’re really going, there is something important we need to discuss. To decide.”

  “I am really going, Tim. That is a fact.”

  “Jill’s neighbors, Al and Alice. You know them?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “With the twin boys.”

  “If you say so.”

  “They were best friends with Jill and Monty. Their kids are best friends with Billy and Cindy.”

  “Can we do this inside? I’m not done packing.”

  “Sure, Ric.”

  “I’d offer you some coffee, but Jody is going to show up on high holy fire to hit the road.”

  “No coffee,” he said, trailing her through a kitchen where even the instant coffee might have been a difficult proposition. The sink was overflowing pots and dishes, the gold-fleck formica was littered with beer cans and empty Chinese food cartons.

  “There was a little party last night,” explained Erica as they trooped through to the bedroom. Tim was startled to see they slept on a waterbed. When was that, 1975? He watched Ric trying to fold a slippery red dress. Silk. She could have just put it in her pocket.

  “Al and Alice made an offer. Which would impact you and Earl.”

  “Nothing impacts Earl.”

  “You had a fight. You’re pissed at him.”

  “No. No big deal if I was, though.”

  “Anyway, they think they can make things easier on everyone—mostly the kids—by, I don’t know, taking them in.”

  “Taking them in how?”

  “It’s a bad phrase. Makes it sound like charity. Not adopt them, exactly, but care for them at their house.”

  “Alice and Al.” Erica reiterated the names like a joke, a whoopie pie of words. “You know these people.”

  “A little, yeah. The kids, of course, know them very well.”

  “Myself I don’t know them from the Marvelettes.”

  “I know why you guys want the kids, by the way. I did figure that part out, finally.”

  “Glad to hear someone has.”

  “Seriously. I found out about the Wal-Mart.”

  Erica stopped fiddling with the zipper on her suitcase and stared. For this one second she could believe her brother completely insane. Not the usual, crazy as in flaky, but crazy as in straitjackets and shock therapy.

  “What has effing Wal-Mart got to do with the price of green apples?” she said.

  “Come on, he must have told you.”

  “If you mean Earl, I can tell you he hates Wal-Mart worse than the Shanghai Flu. Thinks it’s the biggest house of crap ever assembled. Earl wouldn’t shop there if he had to stand naked on a stage carving the Christmas turkey.”

  “It’s not about the shopping.”

  “Down South, in Bushel City? He bought a pair of pants that snagged him in the crotch and left his backside flapping in the breeze. That was it for Earl and Wal-Mart.”

  “I guess he wants his money back,” said Tim, trying to steer her. But Erica wouldn’t steer.

  “Oh he got his money back, don’t worry about that.”

  Hoisting the suitcase, she marched from the bedroom. Fearful she might keep going straight on to Canada, Tim pursued her to the kitchen. There, he was tempted to pitch in, start washing pots; conversely tempted to send polaroids of the squalid mess to the little ad litem. With time collapsing on him, though, he stuck with the question at hand.

  “This custody business gets decided Monday, Ric. You go to Montreal for the weekend, you come back, it’s Monday. See the problem?”

  “It’s just too new. How can I tell you anything about this when I’m hearing it for the first time?”

  “It’s new to me, too. It’s not like I’ve been keeping secrets.”

  “Talk to Earl.”

  “I thought you didn’t know where he was.”

  “I know he’s not in Timbuktoo. He will be sleeping in this house tonight. He had better be.”

  “You can’t blow this off, Ric. We need to get it sorted out.”

  “Isn’t that what that smug little judge is for? And the sweetheart in the powder-blue pants suit?”

  They both heard a new commotion outside: car wheels grinding gravel, car doors slamming, dogs barking. It sounded like pandemonium with a cast of thousands, but it was just Earl and a tall woman (her hair dyed brick red) patting a golden retriever.

  “Well look who’s here,” said Earl. “If it isn’t The Defendant.”

  “Tim, this is Jody,” said Erica. “And vice-versa.”

  “Hi, Jody. I like your dog. She’s a real beauty.”

  As Earl stroked the dog’s forehead, Tim was gratified to see that behind the pompadour, The Plaintiff had his own saucer of baldness. This was a critical time (he should bear down, bear down) but Tim’s one thought was to maybe shave his head. Why not turn it into a virtue, the smooth look, like Michael Jordan?

  “He,” said Earl. “He’s a he.”

  “And he is a beauty, but he’s not mine,” said Jody.

  “This is Hammett, named after Earl’s favorite writer. The guy who wrote The Big Sleep.”

  “No, babe, Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon. Big Sleep is by Raymundo Chandler. Someday we’ll name a dog for him too.”

  There was some question whether the smooth look worked on a white man’s head. Then agai
n, it did not always work on a black man, either. A few of those guys looked like passengers on a flying saucer, cartoon characters from the planet Ebony.

  “Ready for pushback, old lady?” said Jody.

  “She’ll need to kiss me goodbye, Red, then she’s all yours. Right this way, babe.”

  While they were sorting through comings and goings (exchanging reminders, shifting keys), Tim resolved on letting Billy make the call. Maybe he and Billy would both shave their heads, in a gesture of White Sneaker solidarity.

  Erica hugged Earl, Earl hugged Jody, Jody hugged Hammett. No one hugged Tim, though Erica did remember he was there. “See you soon,” she said, waving to him from a distance of three feet.

  “Have a nice trip,” he said, then gave way briefly to the travel agent in him. “You might check out the Bras D’ors on St. Catherine Street. Best wine list in the city.”

  “Wine list,” said Jody, laughing. To her it was a punchline.

  “Thanks for the tip, but I’m sure Jody has our every breath planned out.”

  Tim and Earl stood side by side waving and not only did Tim feel zero urge to attack, to coldcock Earl, he felt not a ripple of anything like hostility. There stood poor Hammett (whom Earl would blow away next summer, would he not?) and Tim saw no need to bring in the A.S.P.C.A. He had grown too accustomed to these Sandersons. Possibly he had been too long in New Hampshire, the “Live free or die” state.

  “Those two will be lucky to hit Montreal before midnight,” he said conversationally.

  “You have never driven with Big Red. They could be there before you finish your first beer.”

  “Beer?”

  Tim found himself sitting on the deck with Earl, summarizing once more the McManus offer, and sipping a can of Coors Lite, a beverage he normally would not allow anywhere near his tongue. This one tasted pretty good, though. Nice and cold. To Earl, the stuff went down so fast it need not have a taste.

  “You’re saying these folks believe they can handle the job. Al, and his wife.”

  “Are you willing to consider it?”

  “Hell, son, I have been considering it for at least ten seconds by now. Show me a burning house and I call the fire department, not convene a meeting to discuss it. The plan has obvious promise.”

  “What about Wal-Mart?”

  Earl gave Tim a blank, questioning look, then took down an eight-ounce swallow. Crushed the first can and snapped open another.