Sweeter Life (45 page)

At the end of the second class, after the last of the students had gone home, Ruby Mitchell showed up. Janice immediately ran to embrace her. “I’ve been meaning to drop by,” she said. “I’ve so wanted to see you. Are you interested in the course?”

“Well, no. Art isn’t really my cup of tea, dear. It’s more my nephew. Do
you remember Hank? He had a spot of trouble a while ago, and according to the doctor hasn’t really healed the way he ought to. Tell you the truth, I think he’s feeling pretty down, and I was wondering if you thought this sort of thing might help him.”

“That’s hard to say, Ruby. Does he enjoy art?”

She shook her head dubiously. “I don’t imagine he enjoys much of anything anymore. It’s more I was wondering if maybe this would do him good—as therapy, I mean. Could I bring him to your next class?”

“Well, sure. You come, too. How’s Clarence holding up?”

Ruby looked away, her mouth a grim line. She started to say something and then stopped abruptly, her eyes closed, her index finger pressed to her nose the way people do when they’re about to sneeze. After a long moment, she swallowed several times and said, “He says he feels fine, but I think it’s back again. I can tell he’s in pain. He can hardly stand up straight. He’s going through Aspirin like they’re candy.”

Janice touched her arm. “Has he been to the doctor?”

“He talks about it but never makes an appointment. I don’t know if he’s just being stubborn or afraid of what they’ll find.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Ruby. Is there something I can do?”

“For Hank, maybe. Maybe you could do something for him.”

TWO NIGHTS LATER
Ruby brought Hank to the class twenty minutes early. She made the most general introduction, then hurried to the car.

Hank had a few simple categories into which he slotted the women he met—sluts, bitches and goody two-shoes—and the woman in front of him, his brother’s friend, was clearly option number three. She was pretty, he thought, in an all-American way, wholesome and well fed. Her teeth were straight and white, her eyes clear, her skin and hair squeaky clean. And while she was a little too solid to ever be considered a Miss Universe, he had always preferred women whose flesh exceeded his grasp. What qualified her as a goody two-shoes was her happiness and confidence—a bad combination for a woman to have. The world was a cruel and dangerous place, and Hank didn’t think women had any call to be that confident or at ease.

She kept holding his hand and staring into his eyes like there was
something there she wanted to understand. When he realized she was waiting for him to respond to her greeting, he said, “So you’re the artist.”

“And you’re Cy’s brother.”

He smiled appreciatively. “That’s—what’s the word—diplomatic. Some folks’d just out and out call me the murderer.”

“Is that what you’d prefer?” she asked, an eyebrow raised mischievously. “Or I suppose I could just call you Hank. That seems simple enough. You can call me Janice.”

He looked her up and down without pretending otherwise. Then he said, “I’ll tell you straight out, Janice, I know fuck all about art and pretty much couldn’t care less. But Ruby thinks it might be the cure for what ails me, and tell you the truth, I’ve always had a soft spot for the old girl. So between you and me, I’d be just as happy to sit off to the side somewheres while you and your friends do your thing.”

“Suit yourself,” she said. Then she walked over to the table where she continued to prepare blocks of clay for the class. Every time she looked up he was staring at her. That in itself was not so troubling. Back in her waitressing days, she got used to men watching her with mournful eyes. Even now, when she had a show, a few men would follow her every move, and she was neither flattered nor offended. She took it for what it was, an involuntary reaction from those who were not thinking clearly, if at all. What did trouble her, worming its way under her skin, was the feeling that Hank himself was a work of art, that his hard grey eyes and sensuous mouth, the scars on his face, his slouching posture and the mechanical efficiency of his chair were somehow iconic, as though the figure before her were merely a physical and symbolic manifestation of all the invisible elements of his life. In a way, we were all like that, she knew, wearing our broken hearts on our sleeves, our losses like so many pockmarks—but she had never seen it so clearly.

When the others arrived, she handed everyone a block of clay, even Hank, and gave one sentence of instruction: “Mould a figure that represents the most important thing your father said to you.” Then she left the room, returning every few minutes to see how they were progressing and to offer words of encouragement. When anyone asked a question about technique, she answered them; but for the most part, she let them find their own way.
Near the end of the class, she noticed that Hank had left the room. At the table where he had sat, she found his piece of clay, which bore the perfect imprint of a man’s fist.

She scanned the class again, then stepped outside, where she found him in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette and staring at the moon and stars. “Your sculpture,” she said, “it’s very powerful.”

He flicked his cigarette butt into the air. Without looking at her, he said, “Maybe ’cause it’s not art, it’s true.”

Those words filled her with hope. She touched the cold metal of his chair. “Art has to be true, Hank. Always. Or else it’s not art.”

He turned to look at her. “Does your art tell the truth?”

“Well,” she said, “yes, I think so. At least I hope it does.”

“I’d like to see it, then. See what you think is true.”

ON THE NIGHT OF HANK’S
first art lesson, Isabel went to dinner with Ross and had too much to drink. Afterwards, she stopped at her office to pick up a few papers that she needed for a meeting in Keppel the next day. While she was there, she took a moment to file away some of the documents that had been cluttering her desk for weeks.

Above the filing cabinet was a map of the deeded property of Wilbury. She’d coloured her own properties bright red, each little square another step away from the past and into her own brave future. Taken together, those red spaces should have been the very image of her independence, the very shape of her dreams. And yet as often as she had studied the map, it had never once given her the sense of satisfaction she craved. Aside from her home on Orange Street and this lovely office, the properties were hers in name only. True, they offered a kind of financial security not to be downplayed, but they didn’t speak to her in a single voice, didn’t whisper the words she needed to hear.

She sat on the corner of her desk and picked up the framed photograph she kept there. It showed Izzy and her parents and brothers posing in front of the house on a summer day. In the background were the barn and the fields and, beyond that, the old chicken coop. Riley and Catherine had their arms around each other. Hank was flexing his muscles like Charles Atlas.
Cyrus, a mere infant, was nestled in Izzy’s arms, trying to grab one of her pigtails. Everyone was smiling, Izzy most of all.

HANK INSISTED ON FINDING
his own way home from the rec centre, and Ruby wasn’t ready to go back to Orchard Knoll just yet (she had imagined these outings as a chance to unwind a bit), so she drove out to the dock and bought herself a cup of butterscotch ripple from the concession stand. She sat at a picnic table and watched sailboats skate along the horizon. But after a few minutes she started to feel self-conscious, as though she were only pretending to relax. Clucking her tongue at her own foolishness, she got in the car and headed to the farm.

Five minutes later she was back at the house. As she hung her jacket in the front closet, she saw Clarence limp out of the bathroom, wincing with each step. He was struggling to catch his breath and was so unsteady that he had to lean against the wall. She hurried to his side and helped him into his favourite chair in the living room. She knelt beside him, and he placed a trembling hand on hers and said, “Better get me to the hospital.”

IT WASN’T LOST ON RUBY
that churches these days were empty while hospitals were overcrowded. Those who live by the flesh, die by the flesh, she figured. For that reason she generally kept her distance from doctors and hospitals. She didn’t believe in annual checkups or running for help at the first sign of a cold or ache. She trusted in the Lord and common sense.

Fortunately, with Clarence’s first two bouts of cancer she’d been able to get him home quickly and on the mend. But this time was different. Right away the doctors had him plugged into monitors and had tubes running down his throat and into his arm and even hooked up to his you-know-what. She wished she could take him back to the farm and nurse him in private. That’s what he needed, what he would have demanded if he were even half himself. Always such a proud man, so proper, he never went anywhere without looking his best, wouldn’t even go to Farm Supply without cleaning his fingernails. It was agony for her to watch him lying in that hospital bed with his disease right out in the open for all to see.

That night she didn’t leave his side to make so much as a single phone call.
But someone spread the word, and first thing in the morning Isabel arrived, looking stern and businesslike. Ruby figured she was about to get a scolding.

“It’s like pulling teeth to get answers around here,” Isabel said with some heat. “I had to chase doctors and nurses for half an hour before I got someone to tell me what’s going on.” Then she stopped talking and hugged her aunt. “Poor Ruby,” she murmured.

Isabel had never hugged her aunt, and on some level they both registered that fact. She didn’t regret the show of affection. On the contrary, it seemed to be part of a general trend in her life. With Hank’s return to Wilbury, she was rediscovering her natural sympathies, her need to ache for others, to comfort them beyond the level of friendship. Now, in that grim medicinal space, she felt a sudden and irresistible urge to take care of her aunt and uncle, the closest thing she had to aging parents.

She turned to Clarence then and cupped her hand over her mouth, the message in front of her unmistakably clear. Each of us contained the same terrible truth, and in her uncle, it was rising quietly to the surface.

J
im isn’t exactly thrilled with the way things have worked out. He’s been in New Mexico for a year now and it hasn’t been the sanctuary he anticipated.

At first he’d found reasons to be hopeful. His wife, Elysse, by her own account, had remained faithful, and father and son appeared to have interests in common. Daniel worked at the local radio station as their all-night DJ and resident jingle writer. He played the piano in his spare time and expressed an admiration for Fats Waller. Even so, Jim’s return to the family fold was, in most respects, too late. Elysse and Daniel had no room in their lives for such a complicated shape. They had other plans he was unaware of, and wanted nothing more from him than his name and his shine.

He tried hard to make up for lost time. Every night he went to the radio station with his son. They talked about music but also about family. Daniel had the idea that they should get it all down on tape, father-and-son dialogues. At first Jim was reluctant to do so (he had come to hate microphones and tape machines and mixing consoles), but he agreed for the sake of his son. Each night for weeks he sat in the voice-over booth, with Daniel in the control room, and talked into an ancient Sennheiser until he was hoarse, talked about everything really, about Erie and New York and life on the road, and a million other things, too, from the price of gas to the probability of life on other planets.

Eventually Daniel lost interest in what Jim had to say. When he wasn’t introducing a song or voicing a commercial break, he was splicing tape in a world of his own. Eventually Jim got the feeling his presence was no longer welcome and that, on some level, he’d given his son everything he required.

It was much the same with Elysse. When she opened the door to him that first day, it was like her prayers had been answered. She hugged him and kissed his cheek, ushered him excitedly into the house. She fixed him his favourite meal. She touched his face and hair and, that very first night, even held him in her arms and let him snuggle with her. But soon the bed was off-limits, and anything more than a good-morning peck on the cheek was out of the question. Food started to come from a can. He was relegated to a cot in the drafty bedroom off the back of the house. When he complained, she told him, “This is all the family you deserve.” And those words hurt him terribly because they seemed so true. He deserved little. He had made a mess of everything and knew he was just like his daddy, a dreamer with a madness for leaving.

He had hoped the reunion might turn out differently. He had first come to this place in the desert seeking primary satisfactions—family, love, silence, stillness—but they were not to be. Within weeks of his disappearance, reporters showed up asking questions. They said people wanted to know why he’d abandoned them. And because he was a good man at heart, because he felt responsible, he tried his best to describe what he did not understand. He told them he’d given everything he had, that he no longer possessed words or music. The only thing left was the silence. Yet such was their hunger that they wanted even this, they wanted his silence to be theirs.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. He had always been their tool. When his feelings were raw and hurtful, he gave them The Solo; and sure enough, there were those who created worlds with it, carved paths out of the wilderness. When his ideas were feverish and muddled, he gave them The Door; and lo and behold, empires rose and fell. Now he is an empty shell, with nothing more to give; and his own son, his own wife, wield that emptiness to conjure Heaven. It has been months since he has spoken a word to anyone. The father-son dialogues are a distant memory, and yet his voice goes out each week across the nation. More surprising still, people respond. His son and wife have taken him to see the bonfires, the towering black columns of smoke,
crowds of people gathering with vinyl and tape and even book, building mounds of hand-held radios and turntables, speakers and components. He is afraid to ask what these people believe.