The Goodbye Summer (15 page)

“Me,” said Dolores.

“That was another marriage that didn’t work out, my last—”

“Meaning I never saw my father after I was five years old,” Dolores said with some bitterness.

“My last, I swore, and I went through the sixties and seventies very happily without benefit of male companionship.”

“Did you have any other jobs?” Caddie asked.

“Well, since I had five children under the age of thirteen plus Lewis’s two, I guess I did. Different things, I sold Avon, magazine subscriptions, once I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners.” She started counting them out on her fingers. “I was a cashier at a lunch counter, I worked at a dry cleaner’s. Salad girl in a restaurant till my feet gave out, then I did phone solicitations. Then in 1963, I went on disability.”

“At least tell her how that happened,” Dolores said.

“An accident.”

Dolores sighed. “She was working as an elevator operator in an old office building downtown and the elevator dropped from the second floor to the basement.”

Keesha came back from examining a spiderweb behind the glider. “Did you get hurt?”

Mrs. Brill’s prominent black eyes softened behind her glasses. “Little bit, mostly my knees.”

“Were you scared? Was anybody else with you?”

“I was all by myself and scared half to death. One thing I learned, it doesn’t do any good to jump up and down—you remember that if you’re ever on a falling elevator.”

“Did it hurt when you landed?”

“Goodness, child, what do you think? It hurt like about if you jumped off the top of this building.”

“Did you pray?”

“I surely did. Not a very long prayer.” She winked at Caddie. “Like this: Oh, Lord
—bam!
” She chuckled and rubbed her knees. “Well, then time went on, and I met my third and last husband, Mr. Marcus A. Thompson.”

“A for Aurelius,” Dolores contributed. “Time went on? You left out seeing Martin Luther King Jr., you left out Lloyd’s death—that was her second child—”

“I’ll come back, just let me get through to the end first.”

“She has a
plan,
” Dolores said to Caddie, making a sarcastic face she was careful not to let her mother see.

“The third time’s supposed to be the charm, and when you get married again at sixty-two, it better be. Mr. Thompson was a retired bus driver—”

“And she called him that,” Dolores said in a soft voice, so as not to interrupt the flow, “ ‘Mr. Thompson,’ the whole time they were married.”

“A retired bus driver, a very handsome, sharp-dressed older man I would not have given the time of day to if he hadn’t been a deacon at my church.”

“Where you taught Sunday school,” Dolores put in.

“Yes, I certainly did, for nineteen years. Didn’t retire till 1989. What was I saying?”

“Mr. Thompson was a deacon,” Caddie said.

“Yes, and so when he invited me to come have coffee after service and school was over one Sunday, I said why, yes, I would, although ordinarily I would not have had any truck with a man who looked like he did or took such care with his dress.”

“Why?”

“Red flags to a bull. I had married two good-looking men, and I did not want a third, not at my age. But Mr. Thompson, who had recently lost his wife of fifty-one years, was sewed from a different cut of cloth entirely. Mr. Thompson was a gentleman.”

“
And
he was seventy-six,” Dolores mentioned.

“But fit and spry, not decrepit one bit,” Mrs. Brill defended, “and a hardworking man to boot. Dedicated. Saw his wife through her last illness like a saint. We courted very slowly—well, for our age it was slow, half a year—and when he finally popped the question I said yes.”

“Where were you?” Caddie thought to ask. “When he proposed.”

Mrs. Brill reared her head back. “Where were we? Well, gracious, we were in the graveyard, if you want to know. The man put flowers on his wife’s grave every Sunday, and I’d taken to going with him.”

“He proposed to you in front of his wife’s grave?” Dolores said, round-eyed. “You never told me that.”

“I didn’t think a thing of it. Didn’t seem peculiar to me, seemed natural. We got married on May the eleventh, a raining-cats-and-dogs day, and took the train up to New York City for a honeymoon weekend. That was a time, oh my.” She got a hankie out of the sleeve of her dress with fumbling fingers.

“We had three good years before his health began to fail. Peaceful, soft time. I’m blessed for that, and still grateful. But his heart, his lungs, his blood, they all let him down, seemed like all at the same time. He had a sister in Michaelstown, Juanita, who’d just lost her husband, and she said come on out here, the two of us women could take care of Mr. Thompson
better than me alone with my knees in Baltimore, so that’s what we did. We lived in her house on Acorn Street, me and Mr. Thompson on the first floor, until he passed away in 1994. His sister two years later. I ended up here, and there endeth the story. Just in time,” she said, blotting her cheeks with the handkerchief, “because I am about parched dry. Lamb, run inside and get me a big, tall glass of ice water.”

Keesha stared at her with wide, worried eyes, as if she’d never seen her grandmother cry before.

“Run, child.”

Keesha ran in the house.

“Are your other children nearby?” Caddie asked after a respectful moment. “Or scattered all over?”

“Mostly scattered. That’s the way it is with children nowadays.”

Dolores looked like she could say something about that.

“Lloyd, my second child, passed away over thirty years ago. He was only twenty-three. That’s still my life’s biggest sorrow, to this day.”

“How many grandchildren do you have?”

She worked her lips, thinking. “Eight.”

“Nine,” Dolores corrected. “Clarence and Virginia had another girl two months ago.”

For a moment Mrs. Brill looked shocked. Had she forgotten? Or had she never known? Then her face went stony.

“Mama was awfully strict,” Dolores said softly, quickly. “I was the baby, so I missed most of it. Compared to the others, I was spoiled.”

“What? Speak up, I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

“I was just—I was trying to explain why there’s some friction, you know, Mama, between you and Clarence and you and Belinda—”

Mrs. Brill took a sharp breath and drew herself up. “That is family business. I won’t have that written down.
I won’t have it.
”

“I won’t write it,” Caddie said quickly.

“She could just put ‘estranged,’ ” Dolores said. “She should put
something
in to explain why you’ve hardly seen your own—”

“Dolores, now, that will be
enough.
”

Keesha came out on the porch, holding a brimming glass with both hands. “It’s nice and cold, Neenie.”

“Thank you, lamb pie.” She took a few gulps and set the glass on the arm of her chair.

Caddie sensed the silence might go on forever unless she broke it. “What sort of songs did you and your partner sing? You and—” she looked at her notebook—“Ruth Nash.”

“All kinds. People think all black people can sing is blues or gospel, or nowadays rap, but we sang beautiful, tuneful songs, some written by black people, some written by white people. Ruth played the piano and I played the banjo and the ukulele, and our theme song was ‘Goodnight, Sweetheart.’ We loved all kinds of music. People would tell us we’d never get anywhere if we didn’t specialize, but we didn’t want to settle down to one style. We liked jazz, country, pop, swing—blues, yes, and gospel. We liked a barbershop quartet, and you can’t get much whiter than that.”

“No,” Caddie agreed. “But then you gave it all up for a man,” she said, hoping Mrs. Brill wouldn’t take offense.

“Yes and no. I knew Ruth from the time I was sixteen; we were best friends, just did everything together. Such dreams we had, oh my goodness. For a couple of years, 1941 and ’42, smack in the middle of the war, of all things, it seemed like they were all coming true. But Ruth took up some bad ways, habits she didn’t have it in her to shake, and we started to lose what we had. Innocence or whatever you want to call it. We were so young.”

She sighed and slipped her arm around Keesha’s waist. “Well, wasn’t anything else
to
do then except marry K.C.—who was not altogether a bad man, I don’t mean to say he was, and we had four wonderful children together. But he came from New York City and I came from Ossipee, North Carolina, and never the twain shall meet. Lord help us, Caddie, aren’t we about done?”

“Life lessons,” Caddie said hastily. Mrs. Brill was rubbing her knee as if it ached. “Words of wisdom to pass on to your descendants. Or—what would you change if you had it to do over again?”

“Gracious me, just because you get old doesn’t mean you get smart.”

“You’ve
always
been smart,” Keesha said.

“Child.” She laughed and gave her granddaughter a squeeze. “What are you angling for, another candy bar?”

“Life lessons.” Dolores eyed her mother with interest. “I’d love to hear what you’d do different.”

“I’d raise me some more sweet grandbabies like this one.” She and Keesha put their foreheads together and mashed noses.

“What else?”

“Hmm.” She sipped some more water. “Let me think.”

“Would you skip Lewis Johnson entirely?” Dolores asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Sakes, of course not. First of all, then I wouldn’t have you. Or Belinda or Lewis Junior—those are my stepchildren,” she reminded Caddie. “But second of all, just because they didn’t last doesn’t mean I wouldn’t marry both those two men again. But I don’t hold with thinking up things you’d do different, anyway. The Lord gives us just the one life, and we do the best we can with it. Which to me means living by the commandments and trying to put a distance between us and sin. Faith, hope, and charity, and the greatest of these is charity—that’s my favorite teaching. I suppose my papa didn’t preach it often enough in his church all those years ago, but they were different times. You learn it over your life, and the closer you come to the end, the clearer it gets, all the rest just fades away. Love and forgiveness, that’s what it comes down to.”

“I’ll tell my stepsister,” Dolores murmured.

“What’s that?”

“I said, tell about seeing Sonny Liston. And Martin Luther King—Mama took the bus down to Washington to hear him give his ‘I have a dream’ speech, Caddie.”

“Indeed I did. Gave me the chills. If you want to talk about famous people, I once saw Eleanor Roosevelt, too. Do you know who that is, Keesha?”

“No, ma’am.”

“A great, great woman.
Unappreciated
woman.” She wiped the condensation from her glass with her handkerchief. “I always felt in tune with her, myself. Connected under the skin, even though Mrs. Roosevelt was a white lady.”

Soon after their return from the weekend in Washington—which was idyllic, magical,
rapturous
as far as Caddie was concerned—Christopher stopped calling.

She didn’t think much of it at first, didn’t even particularly notice, because he’d already told her he was in a crazy time at work; a lot of things that had been in the planning stages were coming to a head all at once, and he was the only one who could deal with them. Caddie sympathized and admired his dedication all the more. His office was criminally under-staffed. Except for Phyllis, the woman she’d met that night at the softball game, Christopher was the only paid employee at the Michaelstown office of CAT, and he was already doing the work of at least two people.

One of the nicest things that had happened over the weekend was that Christopher had let his hair down, so to speak, and confided to her what he really wanted to do with his life. It was their last night, and they were having dinner in a restaurant near the hotel when he told her: he wanted to be a national spokesperson for the CAT cause.

“You mean, not work with dogs anymore?”
What a waste,
she’d thought,
what a loss!
But she was thinking too small. He’d explained it to her, how much broader his influence could be and how many more people he could reach if he put his energies into public relations. Headquarters was all for it; in fact they’d been grooming him for a bigger role for some time. They wanted him to spearhead a new public awareness campaign that would be nationwide and
start next year. It would mean a lot of media exposure, and not just print interviews but radio and TV, too.

Caddie was impressed, then enthusiastic. “Absolutely, you’d be fabulous. You’re so articulate and smart. And passionate and committed. I can’t think of anybody who’d be a better spokesman than you. Oh, I can just
hear
you on NPR. Christopher, you could be
famous.
”

“The point isn’t to be famous, Caddie, it’s to draw attention to issues of fund-raising and grant money and grassroots educational programs. Growing the organization.”

He might disapprove of being famous, but he was ambitious, she knew from his intensity when he spoke of his prospects. In fact, that was what they’d mostly talked about while they were in Washington, approaching it from different angles and perspectives, but always coming back to the subject of Christopher’s professional future. He’d had a good time—she was sure, because all weekend she’d monitored his happiness and well-being like an ICU nurse. So when it first began to sink in that he wasn’t calling or returning her calls, she knew it wasn’t because of the weekend. Good, because if it wasn’t the weekend, it wasn’t
them.
But then, what?

Wednesday turned into Thursday. Could he be out of town? No, because late in the afternoon, thank goodness, she finally reached him at his office.

“
Hi,
” she said, letting a note of amazement harmonize with the gladness, a vocal invitation to explain why he’d been all but mute for four days. “How
are
you? What’s been happening?”

He sounded harried, but as soon as she heard his voice she calmed down. Oh, everything was fine. She pictured him at his desk, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder while he sifted through files and papers. Her Christopher, the same as always, and she’d been an idiot to get so worked up. “Hi,” he said, “yeah, it’s really been nuts around here, everything coming down at once.”

“Well, I
figured.
I’ve missed you. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, fine, just incredibly busy.”

“Sure. Sure. Well, would you like to do something? Come to dinner tonight or something? I
can
cook, you know.” He never came to her house; they always ate at his place or went to a restaurant.

“No, sorry, it’s impossible tonight. I’m snowed.”

“Oh, okay. Well, maybe one night over the weekend. Hey, I could
bring
you dinner,” she realized. “You have to eat sometime, and that way you wouldn’t waste time—”

“Let me call you, okay? It’s so hectic right now, I can’t plan.”

“That’s fine, I love spur of the moment. Well, so. How are you? I’ve been playing some of the CDs you lent me. I love the Saint-Saëns especially. It’s really—”

“Caddie, I can’t talk right now.”

“Oh!”

“I’ll call you.”

“Okay!”

“I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“Great.”

That was on Thursday. He didn’t call that night. She skipped her usual Friday morning visit with Nana in case he called then, but he didn’t. Not on Saturday, either. She couldn’t believe it; if one of her students hadn’t called to reschedule a lesson, she’d have thought her phone was broken. She spent Saturday evening reconstructing everything they’d said to each other—which was almost nothing—since he’d dropped her off six days ago, kissed her goodbye on the front porch, and driven away, promising to call. “I’ll call you.” He’d said that after she’d told him what a lovely time she’d had, the
best.
He’d agreed—“I had a great time, too, Caddie.
I’ll call you.
”

Sunday morning, she woke up with a headache. Rain sluiced down the kitchen window from a stopped-up gutter, and on the bird feeder a thrush or a sparrow or something huddled under the slanted roof, pecking at damp seed. She was washing the greasy popcorn pot from last night’s dinner, not thinking about anything, when all of a sudden she turned off the water and reached for the phone, hands dripping. Christopher’s number rang four times before his machine picked up.

“Oh, hi, it’s me. Caddie. Just calling to say—hi, hope you’re fine. Call when you get a chance. See you. Bye.”

Maybe he was on his way over. Sunday morning—he was probably either out walking King or on his way over. “I look awful!” she said to her reflection in the watery window, and she ran upstairs to get dressed. She put on jeans and the dark green blouse he’d admired once. She washed her face and put on lipstick. “Bleck.” She looked like a corpse with a red mouth. She wiped the lipstick off.

She took Finney out, hoping he would take care of his business among the sculptures in the yard and scamper right back inside; that’s what he usually did when it rained. But not today, oh no, all he wanted was to drag her behind him down the sidewalk, and he didn’t mind strangling himself to do it. She’d come out without her umbrella; by the time they returned from a trip around the block, she was as soaking wet as if she’d taken a shower in her clothes. Drying Finney off with a smelly old towel, the thought came to her that she might’ve just missed Christopher. He’d had exactly enough time to arrive, run up to the door in the rain, knock, get no answer, race back to his car, and drive away.

She waited fifteen minutes, plenty of time for him to get home. Then she dialed his number again.

No answer. She didn’t leave a message.

Wake House was quiet, practically empty downstairs, and no one was on the front porch because of the rain. She waved to Cornel in the Red Room and started for the stairs, but just then Brenda came into the hall from her office, heading for the kitchen. She had a wrench in one hand and a plunger in the other. The plumbing was always on the fritz somewhere, and unless it was a major breakdown, she was the plumber.

“Hey, Caddie. Looking for Frances? She went to church. Good thing, because the elevator’s acting up. I’ve got the man coming any second.”

Caddie paused with her foot in midair on the first step. “Nana went to church?”

“Yeah, Claudette took her in the van with Bea and Edgie and the others. Mrs. Brill, Bernie—”

“What church?”

“Unitarian.”

Ah.

“It’s the only one they could agree on.”

“Is Thea here?”

“She’s sleeping.” Brenda looked wistfully out at the gray day. “Isn’t it a perfect day for a nap?”

So then Caddie didn’t know what to do with herself. She’d have tidied up Nana’s room, but she’d been forbidden to touch anything—so had the cleaning staff; they were only allowed to change the sheets and clean the bathroom—so there was no point in going up there.

Magill—he must be here. Except when he went to see Dr. Lieberman, he was always here.

Through his open door, she saw him lying in bed with the covers up to his chin. “You asleep?” she whispered under the sound of an old movie on his TV set.

He smiled even before he opened his eyes. “Caddie. Hey.” He hoisted himself up by the elbows. “Come on in.”

“Just for a minute, I have to—Oh, no! What happened to you?” Through his shaggy hair, she could see a bandage over his right eyebrow half covering a swollen, plum-colored bruise. He had a black eye, too. “Yikes, what did you
do?
”

“Fell. It’s not interesting.” He patted the side of the bed. “Sit.”

“How? Where?”

“Second-floor landing. Missed a couple of steps,
whap.
”

“Why didn’t you take the elevator?” She sat down on his bed gingerly, in case he’d injured parts she couldn’t see. “I bet you weren’t wearing your helmet, either. What else did you hurt?”

“You left out, ‘Were you drinking?’ Then you’d
be
Brenda.”

“Yes, but she’s probably worried about a lawsuit.”

“And you’re worried about me.” When he lifted his eyebrows hopefully, he winced.

“Well, look at you. Look at all this
food.
” The tray on his bedside table hadn’t been touched. “How are you going to get well if you don’t eat?”

“Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in a month.”

“You saw me last week. What else did you hurt?”

“Nothing, my knee. How was your weekend with Timmy?”

She studied her fingernails. “Great. We saw the monuments, went to some interesting restaurants. Walked around.” She met his eyes for a second, then looked away. “It was great.”

“What went wrong?”

“Nothing, I told you. Don’t call him Timmy.”

“You don’t look so good.”

“Thanks. Look who’s talking.” Both of his eyes, not just the black one, were bloodshot. The pillow had pushed his hair up in patches, and the disreputable beard stubble on his cheeks made him look more unstable than rakish. Thea didn’t believe his problems were physical, or not all of them. She thought he’d shut down his senses after the accident to punish himself. That’s why he couldn’t hear sometimes, couldn’t taste or smell his food, literally couldn’t see straight—he thought he belonged in prison, she said, so he’d made one out of his own body.

“What good does making yourself sick do?” Caddie blurted out.

“What?”

She looked down, afraid she’d crossed a line. “I just want you to…straighten up.” She laughed, to show she knew that sounded unsympathetic but that she meant well.

He didn’t smile back. “Oh, thanks. I’ll be out of here tomorrow. I’ll straighten up and be on my way.”

“Sorry.”

“No, thanks, thanks for the advice, this is great. Hey, when I think of all the time I wasted on Lieberman when I could’ve come straight to Caddie Winger.”

“I just—I know you’ve got guilt feelings, but—”

“Look, don’t psychoanalyze me. I can hardly afford one shrink.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I wish you weren’t here. That’s all, I wish you were in your factory making feet.”

He slid down on the bed and pulled the sheet over his head.

“Don’t do that.”

“So what went wrong with you and your boyfriend?” With each word, the sheet puffed up under the narrow wedge shape of his nose. “Trouble in paradise?”

She turned away. On the television, two women in shoulder pads were exchanging staccato bursts of words. Outside, rain plopped in heavy, stolid splashes on the concrete floor of the porch, puddling in the cracks and gurgling in the leaky gutters. Caddie sighed, feeling dreary and wilted.

Magill pulled the sheet down to his lips. “What happened?” he said in his normal voice, not the sarcastic one.

She took a long time answering, thinking of ways to phrase it. But then she just admitted, “I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea.”

“Sometimes guys…”

“What?”
Tell me,
she thought,
give me the answer.
At the same time, though, she had no hope that somebody like Magill could know what was going on in Christopher’s mind.

“Sometimes we act like jerks. Women don’t even have to do anything to make us feel, you know…”

“What?”

“Crowded.”

“I
didn’t
do anything. I didn’t
do
anything. Just the
opposite.
”

“Okay, okay.”

She and Christopher had stayed in bed late on their last morning, reading the papers and eating room service breakfast. Caddie had showed him a feature on married couples having their golden anniversaries—because it was interesting, it had the wedding photos right next to pictures of the same couples today. “Before and after,” Christopher had called them, and she’d had to agree; it was both fascinating and appalling to see what time had done to the natty, hopeful, sweet-faced brides and grooms. Some were completely unrecognizable, but most were simply vague, bleached-out versions of their younger selves. They’d turned white. Their
close-mouthed smiles weren’t jaunty or cocky anymore, as if faith in the future was something else they’d run out of in fifty years.

“Imagine being with the same person for
half a century,
” Caddie had marveled. “I’m not even sure it’s
natural.
”

“My grandparents have been together longer than that,” Christopher had said, sounding proud.

“Do they still like each other?”

He’d thought for a second. “Not much.” They’d laughed.

“You see? People shouldn’t have to promise each other their whole lives. If we lowered our expectations, we wouldn’t have to disappoint each other.”

“So you’re against marriage?”

“In its present form,” she’d declared. “We should have renewable contracts, every five years.”

“What about kids?”

She couldn’t tell how seriously he was taking this. But she wasn’t saying it to please him, hadn’t been trying to paint a picture of herself as an independent woman with no hidden designs on his freedom. She’d been trying to confide something it was hard for her to admit, something she’d never even told anyone before: she
was
against marriage. Not because it wouldn’t be grand—how wonderful to be one of the old ladies in these pictures in the newspaper, standing beside one of these bald, portly, doughy old men, still going strong, still holding hands on the way to their certain future. It was just that that kind of permanence wasn’t for her. Winger women lived their lives without long-term partners, and Caddie fit comfortably in the family tradition.