Ribbons (4 page)

5

Matt loosened his tie. Then he tightened it again. He hadn’t planned on wearing a tie at all, but he was glad he had. Apparently there was a party going on or something. A couple passed him on the sidewalk and climbed the steps up to the large double doors. The man wore a black suit. The woman on his arm was half his age and wore about half as much clothing. Matt chalked that up to being in Las Vegas, but this place wasn’t really near the Strip.

The Victorian looked out of place, like a forgotten Hollywood set. It contrasted nicely with the barren landscape off in the distance behind it. The double doors were open, and Matt could hear the droning chatter of party guests, punctuated occasionally with bursts of laughter. He started to pull off his sunglasses as he climbed up to the entry, but when his hand brushed his cheek, he winced and remembered the bruise still decorating his eye. Better to leave the glasses in place, but he did make the snap decision to pull the bandage off his nose. The swelling was mostly gone now, and there was hardly any blood when he sneezed.

There was a kid at the door. He wore a suit, too, and was currently holding up his jacket pocket to get a closer look. He tried to poke a finger inside but frowned when he could only get about half his fingertip in.

Matt saw the problem. “They sew them closed,” he explained.

The kid replied without looking up. “Why would they do that?”

“To keep them looking nice, I guess.”

“Why bother adding pockets if you can’t use them?”

“Beats me. They make up for it by adding a secret pocket inside.” Matt patted his chest to show him where.

“Oh.” The kid looked inside his jacket with renewed interest. “Cool.”

“Yeah, perfect for your smokes.” Matt winked but forgot he was wearing sunglasses.

The kid looked Matt over and seemed to make up his mind about something. “We’re closed. There should have been a sign out front.”

Matt didn’t remember seeing a sign. “What’s going on?”

The kid was distracted before he could answer. He had a small stack of pamphlets in his hand and stepped forward to offer one to the couple coming up behind Matt.

He turned back to Matt. “I don’t know if we’re reopening.”

Matt offered his hand. “I’m Matt.”

The kid looked at Matt’s hand but didn’t shake it.

Matt continued to hold it out awkwardly. “Do you know Quentin? I need to talk to him.”

“Uncle Quent? Sure.”

The kid put a folded paper in Matt’s outstretched hand. It wasn’t a pamphlet. It was a program.

In Loving Memory of Quentin Bradley James

Please join us as we celebrate and honor his life.

The flowery script didn’t match the gruff portrait of Uncle Quent, who looked like he was doing his best not be in the picture.

Matt pulled his sunglasses down and took a better look around. Past the entrance was a small foyer with a staircase to one side. It was full of people wearing black, drinking cocktails, and snacking from little plates of food. By the staircase was a wreath of lilies.

“Huh, this must be really weird for you,” said the kid. “It’s weird for me, too.”

“He’s dead?” Matt sounded dubious. “That doesn’t sound like him. Who are all these people?”

“Mainly people he worked with,” said the kid. “It’s a wake. He didn’t pray much. But he did drink.”

“Okay, that does sound like him.” Matt turned back to the kid. “Did you know him well?”

He was handing out another program. “Sure, I had Cheerios with him every day.”

The kid started walking through the foyer. Matt fell in behind him.

“You said he was your uncle?” asked Matt.

“Yeah. But not really. He said I could call him Uncle Quent if I wanted to. It seemed to make him happy.”

“He was my uncle, too. But for real, I guess.” Matt paused to take a tiny quiche from a silver tray. Then he had to catch up. “We never had Cheerios, though.”

“He didn’t mention you.”

“So were he and your Mom . . . lovers?”

“I’m nine.” The kid stopped suddenly. “You’re talking to me like I’m old.”

“Oh. How do you talk to a nine-year-old?”

“Usually people just treat me like I’m really dumb. Or like I don’t know about sex. But I can do math better than most of them.”

Matt didn’t know how to respond to that. Thankfully, he didn’t have to.

“My mom’s over there,” said the kid. “She worked for Uncle Quent.”

The boy pointed into a large room that connected to the foyer through a set of open doors. Rows of chairs had been set up facing a small raised stage. On the stage was an open casket. Matt almost didn’t recognize the man inside. The Uncle Quent he remembered had always looked like he desperately needed to be somewhere else. This man just looked at peace. Most of the guests were still milling around and eating bite-sized food, but a few were waiting in line to pay their respects. The boy’s mother was at the front of the line. As Matt watched, she kissed her fingertips and then touched them to Uncle Quent’s forehead.

She seemed too young to be the boy’s mother. She looked like she was in her mid twenties, and if the boy was nine, that meant somebody hadn’t taken her Sex Ed class very seriously in high school. Her blond hair was tied back with a black ribbon, the bow drooping in wide loops. Her skirt was black, too, offset by her white blouse. She held a tissue in one hand. It was stained black at the corner where she must have been wiping away tears mixed with mascara.

Matt started to head down the aisle between the chairs. Before he could introduce himself, there was a high-pitched squawk from the PA system as somebody turned on a mike. The man testing it seemed to be a preacher of some sort, but Matt was pretty sure he had gotten ordained online. He had a peace symbol around his neck next to his cross. Both were framed by his unbuttoned jean jacket.

“Hey, guys, could you please find your seats? I promise I won’t keep you long. Just have a few words to say about Uncle Quent.”

People started wandering in. Uncle Quent knew some good-looking people. Matt caught himself staring at a woman in a black A-line dress. The bottom trim was black lace that acted as a veil for the tattoo on her thigh. It was hard to tell what it was because the lace kept sliding back and forth as she walked down the aisle toward him. When she stopped he made a silent
Aha
as he realized it was a skull. He was pleased with himself until he looked up and saw her eyes narrow at him. He quickly took a seat.

He wasn’t able to sit next to the boy’s mother, but there was a seat opened behind her. He leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder. When she turned to look at him, her eyes were glassy, a tear trembling at each corner. She held up her tissue and blew her nose. She was stunning.

Matt just stared for a second. Her eyebrows arched in a question, and he finally introduced himself. “Hey, I’m Matt. The, uh, small gentleman by the door said you knew Quentin.”

“His name’s Adam.” Her voice sounded low and sultry, but that was probably just the snot.

“He said you were living with my uncle?” Matt said.

“I’m Christy.” After another blow into her tissue her voice cleared up a bit. “I live here. In my
own
room.” She emphasized that last part with another raised eyebrow.

“Did he mention me at all?” Matt asked.

“You said your name is Matt?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“What?” Matt was confused.

“No, he didn’t mention you,” she said.

Matt pulled his uncle’s letter out of his back pocket and unfolded it. Christy must have thought the conversation was over because she turned back around toward the stage. Matt was about to offer her the letter when Preacher.com started speaking again.

“Thank you all for coming. I’m sure Uncle Quent would have been both surprised and amused by the turnout today.” This was met with a few chuckles and a couple of snorts.

“Quentin Bradley James was a son of a bitch.” The preacher paused for dramatic effect. “He told me so himself. He told me about the sins he committed and the people he hurt. He told me about the drugs and then the drinking. He told me about his regrets.”

Matt looked around. All the seats were filled now, and there were a few people standing at the back of the room. He saw Adam over by the doorway.

The sermon continued. “And he told me how thankful he was to have God slap him in the face about ten years ago. That slap landed him in a hospital bed surrounded by tubes and machines rather than family and friends.”

The woman with the skull on her thigh was sitting in Matt’s row. She sat at the aisle, legs crossed. She was facing forward, but her chin was tilted slightly toward Matt. He caught her smirking and watching him out of the corner of her eye. Something spun around between her fingers. It looked like . . . a bullet?

“He saw both God’s wrath and God’s love, and it changed him. These past ten years he devoted himself to running a business that makes people feel good about themselves, and to treating his employees like family. We can’t say he started living without sin, but we can say that at least he sinned in the right direction.”

Matt felt uncomfortable for the rest of the sermon. Thankfully it was short. He was probably Uncle Quent’s only blood relative at the service, but he felt like an outsider. The preacher didn’t offer any prayers, and he didn’t ask anybody to come up and speak. Instead, he placed a quarter over each of Uncle Quent’s eyes and ended with, “All right, that’s enough out of me. Let’s go get drunk and let Uncle Quent dine in Valhalla.”

Everybody else continued to dine on hors d’oeuvres. As Matt grabbed a plate, he saw Christy head to the bar. He tried his hardest not to look like a stalker as he caught up to her.

“Uncle Quent sure has a lot of friends here.” Matt thought that was a safe opening line. He was wrong.

“You sound surprised.” Christy’s tears were gone now, and she was rehydrating with a beer. “Like you never visited.”

“Well, Uncle Quent and I both shared a desire to be far removed from our family. But obviously that didn’t bring us any closer.”

“Obviously.”

Matt set down his plate on the bar and wiped his mouth with a napkin. The napkin was decorated with a silhouette of a naked woman eating an apple. It would look right at home on a trucker’s mud flap. Matt fished out his letter again.

“Maybe you can tell me why he would have sent me this letter?”

Christy took a long drink, set down her bottle, and then finally took the letter. “He was a good man. And a good man to work for.”

“What did he do?” he asked.

She was frowning at the letter and eyeing it suspiciously. “He ran this place.”

“What is it? Is it like a funeral home or something?”

She was reading the letter and didn’t respond.

“Crappy part of town for a funeral home.” Matt looked around. He saw the preacher sitting on a red plush couch talking to the woman with the skull on her thigh. She was laughing and touching his knee. Another woman stood behind the preacher. Her hand reached around and stroked his chest underneath his jean jacket.

Matt had another aha moment. He turned back to Christy. “Wait, what did you do for Uncle Quent?”

6

Foster was trying to remember the words to the song. Everybody knew the tune. Any time a TV show or movie needed an old-timey barbershop quartet, that song would play. But it usually only went on for a couple of lines before the scene changed and the story continued.

Foster whispered to himself, unsure if he was getting it right. “All ’round the little farm I wandered.” He hesitated, then nodded and continued. “When I was young.”

Then the music box stopped, and he had to wind the key. It was an antique, or maybe it was made to look like an antique. Foster couldn’t tell. With the lid up, you could see the mechanism inside that plunked out the tune. A cylinder with spiky bumps flicked the metal fingers over the tiny sounding board. The cheery notes it played seemed out of place coming from the tarnished clockwork. The wood was stained dark, and there were very few decorations or embellishments on it, but if you turned it upside down there was a brass plate etched with the title of the song and its composer:
Old Folks at Home
by Stephen Foster
.

There was also something scratched into the wood next to the plate. Foster had wondered about it many times. It seemed like a doodle, but the scratches were deep and precise. Meant to last. Two parallel lines were joined by an arch, with a third line between them ending in a diamond shape under the apex. Above the arch was a kind of lopsided cross or
X
. The pattern reminded Foster of a logo or a symbol. He thought it might be a manufacturer’s mark of some kind, but he had never found any reference to it. That’s also where the tiny key stuck out.

He closed the lid and gave the key a few turns.

He was standing in the front of a condemned building. If he were twelve again, he would have been sure it was haunted. Now, in his thirties, he was more mature, and he only
suspected
it was haunted. Of course, he
had been
here when he was twelve. The weathered sign near the entry proclaimed that it used to be the
Tule Springs Group Home
. From the look of it, the building hadn’t been anyone’s home for several years. Foster hadn’t seen it in at least fifteen. Before the windows had been broken and the roof had started to sag; before the paint had started flaking and the birds came to roost; before the lawn died and the graffiti tags; this was his home.

He lifted the lid on the music box, and the tune started plunking out again. Foster tried to keep up with the lyrics.

“Something . . . something . . . days I squandered,” he whispered. “Many the songs I sung.”

The name of the building actually made no sense to Foster. A group home could be anything. It sounded like a place people went when they were waiting to die. Instead, it was a place you went when you were waiting to start your life. And if there was a Tule Springs, it was nowhere near here. Like it did everywhere in Las Vegas, if you didn’t water your lawn every day it would turn to dust and clumps of weeds. Even when the orphanage was full of kids, the playground lawn never saw a shade of green that wasn’t half-yellow.

“When I was playing with my brother,” he sang. The words were coming to him faster now. “Happy was I.”

The playground looked worse than the building. The teeter-totter looked cancerous with rust. He was afraid of the sound it might make if it actually teetered. He remembered busting a tooth on one of those little horses mounted on a big spring. That horse wobbled to one side now, and some of the paint had flaked off its face, making its eyes look wide and panicked. It seemed like it was trying to run away from a fire or something but got stuck on that damn spring instead. The swing set still had one seat intact, so he sat down and whispered his song.

“Oh, take me to my kind old mother. There let me live and die.”

He let it play on a little longer before clicking the lid closed. They had told him that when he’d come to the Tule Springs Group Home, the music box came with him. He was too young to remember, but he liked to think that his mother had left it with him. Some last act of love and desperation. Foster imagined her telling herself that she would come back for him someday. When things were better. He guessed things had never gotten better.

The double doors in front were chained and padlocked together by the handles. He gave them a tug, but they seemed pretty solid. He walked around the side of the building. It stood on the outskirts of a residential area, but nobody saw him. That or nobody cared. A fence followed the property line on three sides—one of those chain-link fences with the green plastic slats weaving through the wire. The plastic was starting to crack, and several slats were missing. Foster wasn’t sure why anybody would’ve taken them. It’s not like you would want to see
more
of this place if you lived next to it.

Some of the windows were boarded up, but not all of them. One window had a sheet of plywood lying next to it, covered in shattered glass. Maybe somebody else got nostalgic for the closest thing they had to a home. Or maybe they were just looking for a place to get high and have sex. The graffiti suggested the latter. The broken window was low so Foster didn’t have to pull himself up to get inside. He just had to hike one leg up, and hop high enough to avoid smashing his nuts on windowsill. He surprised himself by making it in with a full complement of nuts.

He landed in a TV room . . . from the eighties or close to it. In fact, when he landed he stumbled a bit and almost fell down on a beanbag chair. Instead, he ended up kicking it and sent beans spilling out all over the floor. The floor had a sticky feel to it. Foster might have blamed the stickiness on the water damage he saw in one corner, but then he remembered the floor had been that way back when he used to watch
He-Man
in here after school. There had always been more kids than seats, so you were lucky to get a beanbag or even one of those miniature plastic chairs that always seemed ready to collapse. The place hadn’t changed much since he’d left, and he wondered if it had closed down right away, or if it had just never gotten any new stuff.

There were toys here, too. Or things that used to be toys. Foster picked through the remains until he found something recognizable. He put the View-Master up to his eyes and looked toward the window. He found himself between slide frames and gave the lever a pull. There was a cracking sound, but the lever didn’t break. The cardboard slide-wheel turned, and a frame locked into place. It was an undersea picture. A puffer fish was all ballooned out, its spikes acting as a warning to whoever had taken the picture. Half the frame was coated in mold, and it took Foster a few seconds to realize what he was looking at. When he figured it out, he quickly dropped the toy back where he found it and wiped his hands on his pants. Being a janitor, he knew what caused mold like that to grow.

He let his hands drift over stuffed animals with missing eyes, a Lite-Brite with a handful of discolored pegs, and a snow globe that was so hazy he had a hard time seeing the faces on Mount Rushmore. They finally landed on a book. He didn’t remember reading this one:
The Woman in the Garden
. The cover was plastic and strangely thick. He opened it to find a cutout that held a cassette tape. The book seemed mostly intact, and he flicked through a few pages. It looked like one of those storybooks that read itself to you when the adult in charge needed a break. On the same bookshelf was a cassette player.

There was no way that thing was going to work, but Foster slid in the cassette and pushed “play”. Nothing. He turned the player over and popped open the lid to the battery compartment. Inside were the mummified remains of two D batteries. They had corroded and burst long ago, coating the compartment with whitish-green sludge. The batteries made grating sounds as he pried them out. He blew into the compartment and then immediately coughed as he inhaled a cloud of ancient battery dust. His throat burned. He leaned over and spit to get the metallic taste out of his mouth. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through, but Foster could use a story right now. A calming voice to tell him everybody would live happily ever after.

He had brought a flashlight in case the lights didn’t work, which, of course, they didn’t. He unscrewed the bulb and let the two D batteries slide out into his hand. He slotted them into place in the cassette player and snapped the lid closed. He pushed “play.” Nothing happened. He gave it a whack, because that’s what you did to technology from the eighties that was being stubborn. The pins started to turn. They caught the teeth of the cassette tape and hesitated. Then with a warbling lurch, the story began. The woman’s voice started out distorted but had smoothed out by the end of the title page.

“This is the story of
The Woman in the Garden
. Please read along with me and turn the page when you hear the owl say,
Hoo hoo-hoo.
”

Foster left the tape deck playing on the shelf. He took the book over to the beanbag chair a flopped down into it. The chair gave a hiss as it settled under his weight, and a couple of squeaks as he shifted around to get comfortable. Then he opened the book on his lap.

“Once upon a time, in a forest that time had forgotten, there lived a beautiful woman who tended a garden.
Hoo hoo-hoo.
”

The illustrations were interesting. They looked pre-Disney. Realistic depictions of a fantastic world. No gigantic eyes, no gigantic breasts. Foster fumbled around in his pocket. The way the beanbag chair folded him up, it was impossible to get his hand all the way in. He arched his back so that he could straighten his legs and finally managed to grab what he’d been looking for. Then he relaxed and had to make himself comfortable all over again.

“The woman planted her garden in a nice, quiet clearing by a stream and an old oak tree.
Hoo hoo-hoo.
”

He held the box cutter up in from of his face and slid the blade open with his thumb. It was new, gleaming and sharp. The blade had a wet looking sheen to it from the light coat of machine oil keeping it rust free.

“In the oak tree perched Mr. Owl who helped her look over the garden to make sure none of the creatures of the forest defiled it.
Hoo hoo-hoo.
”

Foster’s eyes filled with tears. He stifled a sob as the blade slid across his wrist. It burned a bit, but he barely noticed the pain once he was done. He sniffed back his tears and held the book up in front of him. It turned out to be a pop-up book, and that made him smile.

“One day a scaly old snake slithered into the garden, whispering lies and secrets.
Hoo hoo-hoo.
”

Beads of blood started to trace a line down his forearm to his elbow. From there, they dripped a steady rhythm onto the floor next to his music box.

“The snake said a man was coming to help tend the garden and to give the woman a child.
Hoo hoo-hoo.
”

Foster thought he should be trying to think of something important. Trying to answer some last question he had, or maybe relive a good memory. Nothing came to him, though, and he was happy to let the storybook fill his mind with images.

“Mr. Owl said, ‘This snake tells nothing but lies. This man doesn’t come for you. He’ll ruin the garden.’
Hoo hoo-hoo.
”

Foster tried to pull the tab to make the owl’s wings flap, but his hands were starting to get very cold. His eyelids drooped, and he thought he heard a distant buzzing sound. He wanted to look and see what was making the sound, but his eyes weren’t cooperating.

“The woman said, ‘Now, now, Mr. Owl. We mustn’t judge somebody we haven’t met yet. Besides, I’ve never met a man before. Tell me, Mr. Snake, what is this man’s name?”
Hoo hoo-hoo.
”

Foster couldn’t turn the page. He was missing the story.

Turn the page when you hear the owl say, “Hoo hoo-hoo.”

The buzzing sounded closer.

Foster, turn the page.

Buzz.

Turn the fucking page.

Foster’s eyes snapped open.

The buzzing had stopped and was now replaced by a pounding in his head. He lifted a hand to rub his forehead and the pain in his wrist made him suck in his breath. His mouth was dry, and the room smelled like pennies. The storybook that Foster had been reading was on the floor next to his music box. Both were stained red by the small pool of blood forming around the beanbag chair. The book was on the ground, but the Woman in the Garden stood in front of him.

She stood in her garden, but that garden was now in the TV room. The oak tree looked real. Its roots dug into the cracked linoleum, and its branches pushed up into the ceiling. As Foster tried to take this in, a leaf fell off one of the branches and fluttered lazily to the ground. Something shifted in the branches, and Foster saw an owl rotate its head from the Woman in the Garden to him and back again. The bird looked flat and empty, like a poster of an owl tacked up in the tree. Except that it moved and hoo’ed.

There were plants in the room, as well. Foster recognized some but not many. Vines or maybe some kind of ivy looked like it had been painted on the wall. Where the wall ended, the vines leaped out and started creeping along the ceiling. Bushes hid the bookshelves. Some leaves looked vivid and waxy, some looked dull and spotty, as though they had been hastily colored in with crayon. As he watched, a rose unfolded from the ground, like origami being formed by invisible hands.