Here to Stay (25 page)

The village cemetery was cool and green, with a small-town majesty. Neat rows of headstones dotted with a dozen tall monuments and few noble mausoleums.

The sexton was an old woman who apparently lived for visitors. A computer sat on her desk, but she ignored it in favor of the back-up leather ledger. She knew her shit, though, and in five minutes she had written names and locations on a slip of paper and was pointing them in the right direction from the step of her office hut. She waved goodbye after them as if they were off to climb Mount Everest.

“Nice people here,” Daisy said.

The caught hands as they walked along a neatly manicured path. Dragonflies and grasshoppers jumped away from their steps. A breeze blew through the pines piled up at the cemetery’s border. The world seemed to shrink and draw in tight around them.

My people are here,
Erik thought, his eyes sweeping the stones, consulting his slip of paper.

“I see it,” Daisy said, pointing.

He followed her finger to one of the monuments. A tall, stone obelisk, slightly mossy on its north side, where was carved
B. K. E. FISKARE, 1865-1920.

“It’s real,” Erik said, touching the blurred and weathered letters.
Hardly aware he was doing it, he reached up to his necklace and took the Saint Birgitta medal in his fingers. The flat square of gold with the identical initials and dates.

It was real. He was a real person. I knew he was real but he was here. He was mine.

On the opposite side of the base, in smaller, crisper letters:
Marianne Dupre Fiskare, His Wife.

Cozied up tight to the marker was a smaller stone. Prim, white marble with green moss collecting around the inscription:
Beatrice Klara, beloved daughter. 1893-1894

The marker and its companion held court in the center of the plot. Radiating around were more headstones.

Emil Erik Fiskare, 1891-1971.

Ingrid B. Fiskare, 1893-1940.

Close by these two was another stone with a bronze military marker at its base:
Bjorn Fiskare, 1924-1945

“He must have died in the war,” Daisy said quietly. “God, he was twenty-one. He was a baby.”

Erik turned his head and opened his mouth to agree, but nothing came out. Over Daisy’s shoulder he saw them.

Kennet Emil Fiskare, 1919-1987.

Astrid V. R. Fiskare, 1925-1981.

Daisy went up to them first. She crouched down, pulling a few weeds away from Astrid’s stone. She brushed her hands off, stood up and looked back at Erik, who hadn’t moved.

“I need a minute,” he said. He had no idea why he needed her to go away but he did. He had to do this alone.

She smiled, nodding. And pointed ahead. “See that little garden? It has a bench. I’ll be there.”

He waited until her footsteps on the gravel trailed away before he moved closer to his grandparents. He crouched down, put his hand on Kennet’s name. He felt utterly blank, like the back side of a gravestone. He reached up to touch his necklace again. He tipped back and sat on the grass, cross-legged, and waited.

A monarch butterfly tripped through the air, drawing drunk loops. It landed on Astrid’s stone. Its wings swelled and contracted like tiny lungs. It breathed. Then flew away.

Erik glanced up the path. Daisy sat on the bench, her face turned up to the sun. Composed and patient. Gentle with him.

He looked back at his grandfather, a smile beginning to lift the corners of his mouth.

“You gave me the money,” he said. “So I could go to school. So I could go to that school. I wouldn’t have met her if you hadn’t. So you changed my life.”

He glanced at Astrid. “And you made Pepparkakor. You taught me broken cookies are still sweet.”

He breathed in deep, let it out. Sure he could say so much more, but he was done for now.

“I came back,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

He got up. Leaving seemed so abrupt. He didn’t think to bring flowers. He could pick some from the grounds, but it felt irreverent. He knew in Jewish tradition you were supposed to leave a stone on the grave to show you had come to visit. He went out to the path, poked around and found two small, identical white pebbles. He put one on each marker.

“I’ll come back again,” he said. “It’s nice here. It feels good here.”

He touched each stone again and turned to leave. His eye caught two last graves in the plot.

Alexandre R. C. Fiskare, 1945-1968.

Elsa M. Fiskare, 1946-1968.

He stood before Xandro’s stone, hands on hips. His chin tilted, remembering the bodies were never found after the accident. He wondered what was beneath the ground, if anything.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m your nephew.”

He glanced at Elsa’s stone, thinking about it. “I guess I’m your nephew, too.”

The monarch butterfly fluttered past but didn’t land. After a moment Erik left the plot, starting up the path to where Daisy waited for him.

“WELL, I’LL BE DAMNED,” Mike Pettitte said.

He and Erik shook hands and then stepped back a little, giving the once-over. Mike was in his fifties, sandy-haired with a beard framing his red, ruddy face. The eyes looking Erik up and down were dark brown.

“I’ll be damned, too,” Erik said.

Mike crossed his arms. Then uncrossed them and put his hands on his hips. “This is nuts,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “You look just like…” He trailed off and scratched his forehead now.

“Like who?” Erik said.

“Like everyone,” Mike said. “Everyone I’ve ever known.”

Cassie came around the bar with a tray of beers. Daisy followed with a big bowl of freshly-made popcorn, which she tucked in one elbow so she could shake Mike’s hand.

“Come onto the porch,” Cassie said. “I lit the citronella torches so it’s not too buggy. You can sit and be comfortable and nobody will bother you. Including me.”

The three of them sat in the wicker furniture by the carved fish planter—Erik and Mike kitty corner, Daisy across from them. They raised glasses and clinked. Drank. Looked around at each other.

“This is just unbelievable,” Mike kept saying.

“How is Trudy?” Erik asked.

Mike put his glass down. “My mother is well. She and Aunt Kirsten live down in South Carolina.”

“Together?”

Mike nodded. “They’ve been best friends since birth, practically. Kirsten’s mother died when she was little and her father was out fishing all the time. She was at the hotel every day after school. Like a sixth Fiskare. Until she actually became one. I’m told everyone in the hotel knew she and Emil were in love before they did.

“Anyway, after Kirsten and Trudy were both widowed they decided to pool their assets and take over the world. I would have called them to tell about this little reunion, but they’re on a cruise in the Bahamas. Do you remember them?”

“Not really,” Erik said. “According to my mother, Trudy taught me how to play poker. I have a vague memory of a woman playing cards with me, but I always thought it was my grandmother. I guess I was wrong.”

“Astrid, play cards? No, no, no. Astrid would kick your ass at Scrabble. Backgammon or chess—Astrid was your girl. Card games were beneath her. My mother was lethal at poker. So was Kirsten.”

“Emil and Kirsten were the legal owners of the hotel?”

“That’s right,” Mike said. “Old Emil split the deed between his sons, but Emil Junior bought everyone out.”

“Did he and Kirsten have kids?” Daisy asked.

Mike shook his head. “No. Which made Kirsten the greatest aunt in the world. If you needed a shoulder to cry on, twenty bucks or a body buried, you called her.”

“People always call Erik when they need a body buried,” Daisy said.

Erik smiled. “I’m good with secrets.”

“And how is your mother?” Mike asked.

“You knew her?”

Mike laughed. “Oh man. Your mother… I got a story for you.”

“All right,” Erik said warily, wondering if they had dated. That couldn’t have been possible.

“The first time I ever kissed a girl was at your parents’ wedding,” Mike said.

“My parents?”

“They got married here at the hotel. You know it used to be all gardens in the back?”

“It did, didn’t it?” Erik said. “I keep looking at the parking lot thinking something’s wrong. It was all land in there, I remember, like a courtyard.”

“Exactly,” Mike said. “Kirsten and Astrid grew all the flowers for the hotel, then they had their personal garden plots for vegetables. They even had chickens back there for a while. Anyway, your parents got married in the lobby by the fireplace and the party was out back. I was fourteen. It was my first suit. This was nineteen sixty-nine, so I’ll let your imagination just run with it. God, what an ugly decade.” Mike took a pull of his beer and crossed one ankle over the other knee.

“My brother and I, we were out back in the garden where the tables were set up. Where we weren’t supposed to be. Every table was beautifully set and at each setting was half a grapefruit. With a maraschino cherry in the center. Can you guess where this is going?”

“Oh God,” Daisy laughed.

“I’m guessing twelve tables were out there,” Mike said. “I cleared one of cherries and Dan cleared the other eleven. Then he proceeded to upchuck grenadine into the hydrangea bushes. So being a good brother, I got the hell out of there because screw that, he dug his own grave. Anyway, I wandered around the hotel, itching in my suit and bored to death. I went past this little room in the upstairs hall. Almost like an alcove with tall windows. And I saw your mother. In her white dress and veil. Beautiful cool blonde, like Honor Blackman, and—”

“Hold up, time out,” Daisy said. “Did you just compare my future mother-in-law to Pussy Galore?”

Erik choked on his beer while Mike gave a great belly laugh and high-fived Daisy. “I’m telling you, I stopped dead in my tracks and stared like an idiot. I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life. She turned her head back over her shoulder and saw me. She said, ‘Oh hello, Michael.’ And if she had followed it with, ‘Please saw your leg off for me,’ I would have gone in search of a butter knife to do it.

“Well, the evening only got better from there because one of the party guests was just my age, cute little brunette in a pink dress and a little more accessible. Usually my brother was the one to charm the girls, but he was still retching on cherries. So I snuck off with her to the riverfront and she was the first girl I kissed. Never forgot it. Kind of got all mixed up in my head and after a while it was that girl’s face superimposed on your mother in her white dress. You know, like it was all one combined female ideal.”

“Are you writing this down?” Erik said to Daisy.

She tapped her temple. “I won’t forget it. Trust me.”

“But your mother,” Mike said. “She’s all right?”

“She’s good. She’s a speech pathologist and works with deaf kids. Lately she’s been dividing her time between Rochester and Florida, following the good weather. She has part-time work in both places.”

“Married?”

“No, but she’s been with a really nice guy for a long time. You could probably consider them common-law spouses.”

Mike nodded and drank his beer and a slightly awkward pause squeezed past them.

“You know,” Mike said. “To continue on the theme of firsts, because your family seems to have a lot of mine, you were the first baby I held.”

“Really?”

“At Emil’s funeral. He died in early seventy-one. You were a tiny thing, when were you born?”

“October of seventy.”

“Right, you were just a few months old. Your father was holding you, but he was one of the pallbearers and he had to go get in line with the others. We couldn’t find your mother. So he gave you to me. I was all of fifteen. You give a baby to a fifteen-year-old boy, he holds it like it has leprosy.”

“Did he cry?” Daisy asked.

“No, he was cool. I had on my wool overcoat. It had big buttons. He found the one on the collar and started chewing on that. And he closed his fist around my finger and then we were buddies.” Mike looked over at Erik, looked through him. “At one point you kind of leaned your head on my jaw and I smelled your hair. A baby is pure heroin, man. When they grab your finger and lean on you and trust you. And their head is soft and it smells amazing. It was this small revelation of
All right, I see why people want to do this.
And I remember having to give you back to your Mom just when I was getting used to you.” He drained the last of his beer, as did Erik.

“I’ll fill these,” Daisy said softly, taking the glasses and the tray and heading back inside.

“She’s lovely,” Mike said. “You been together long?”

“We met in college,” Erik said. “We were together three years. Then we were extremely un-together for about twelve. Long story short, we found each other again.”

“When are you getting married?” Mike said, lacing his hands behind his head.

“End of July.”

“Fantastic. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

Mike cleared his throat. “I hope it wasn’t insensitive, telling a story about your parents’ wedding.”