Town Burning (6 page)

The house began to come awake. The first sounds were floorboards creaking down the hall, then the bathroom door closing, then the toilet flushing. Another door opened. The bathroom cupboard closed with its glassy jingle and his father’s electric razor started its bee-buzz. They were not going to wake the returned traveler. All the necessary morning noises that he knew so well were a little hushed, as they used to be when he was a child and sick in bed.

He did not worry this morning about seeing his mother. She hadn’t been as bad as he expected the night before. No crying, no noises, except he suspected a certain artificial, brave look about her as if she had heard someone say that she was taking it like a soldier. No, she was too upset to put on an act. She really was worried and afraid for Bruce. She really loved him, if it were possible to love Bruce. Or perhaps it was now possible to love Bruce, because of the threat to his life. If there was anyone in the world who wanted to love, it was his mother. For some reason—perhaps because of this too obvious surplusage of love—he continually held her off. At least
he
did. Maybe Bruce never did. It was a mistake to credit Bruce with his own feelings—he’d learned that early—because no matter what he expected Bruce to do, Bruce probably wouldn’t do it. It was as if Bruce looked coldly upon each experience and only then figured out how he would react. He seemed not to carry anything over from the past. Nobody ever figured Bruce, and he could think of no one who really liked Bruce. Perhaps it was because Bruce never got away from this town and the ton of known things it made him carry, like a heavy pack: not horrible things, or even very shameful things; things people might have completely forgotten. But these were his own, not Bruce’s feelings. Did anyone remember, for instance, the time he, John, at the age of four, went down the schoolyard slide after he had filled his pants? Did they remember the expression on the face of the second-grader who followed him? He did, and he remembered who the second-grader was—Junior Stevens. The expressions that passed so quickly over Junior Stevens’ face: wonder, as he felt his behind, guilty fear for a second, and then the remorseless, inevitable logic that led to John. Accusation, disgust, loud and detailed derision. Perhaps it had been forgotten—that and all the other things—or maybe the doings of a four-year-old were not held against a grown man. That might be worse. In Paris he’d had a clean slate, and that made all the difference in the world. Maybe if Bruce had been able to get away from Leah he could have started over on a different tack. Maybe…

The doorknob turned slowly and his door opened wide enough to admit his mother’s head. She saw that he was awake.

“Good morning, Johnny,” she said, coming in. The flowers on her rumpled, quilted housecoat matched the flowers on the wallpaper. She was tall—taller than both her sons, and her long face was coy and girlish. Her gray hair, pulled taut to her head by painful-looking curlers, was partly covered by the top of an old nylon stocking.

“A beautiful day for your first day at home,” she said, sitting on his bed. She put out her hand to touch his forehead, and he involuntarily pulled back.

“I haven’t got a temperature,” he said. She looked at him fondly. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked.

“Anything you want. Ham and eggs? Pancakes? Waffles? You look thin, Johnny. Have you been eating well in France?”

“Sure, but they don’t eat good breakfasts in France. They more or less drink their breakfasts.”

“I hope you didn’t do that,” she said, smiling.

“I drank my lunch and dinner,” he said.

“Oh, don’t try to fool me, Johnnykins!” She got up and did an awkward pirouette as she went to the door.

“Ham and eggs?” she asked. He nodded. “Get right up now, and you’ll get a good breakfast for a change.”

She went down the back stairs to the kitchen, leaving his door open. This was to make him get up. She seemed always to do little things like leaving the door open, as if she realized that a simple request was not enough, and people had to be forced to do what she wanted. He could never ask her what time it was: if she wanted him to hurry she would add fifteen minutes to the time, and if she didn’t want him to hurry she would say it was fifteen minutes earlier than it was. At least she was consistently fifteen minutes off, and if her wants were known to him he could make a fairly good guess. One always had to know her motives.

He rolled over and looked out the window, seeing the leaves of the rock maple bright against a brighter blue sky. He was thirty years old and she called him Johnnykins. Oh, well.

His father came in, washed and shining, tying his necktie.

“Welcome home!” he said. He sat in John’s old leather chair and looked seriously at his son.

“You know, we all have to go and see Bruce this morning. They may have to operate right away. That is, if Bruce gives them the go-ahead. When did you start smoking before breakfast?”

“I don’t know exactly when. Don’t they have visiting hours?”

“Not in Bruce’s case. It’s too serious, I guess, Johnny. I guess they think we may not have much more time to see Bruce. You know, he made out his will the other day.”

“Jesus!” John said.

“You said it.”

They both stared at the flowered wall. Finally William Cotter got up.

“I smell ham and eggs,” he said. “How about you?”

They ate breakfast in his mother’s specially constructed breakfast nook, cramped into a corner of the big kitchen.

“We’ll eat a good breakfast and then we’ll go and see Bruce,” she said. John and his father went on eating.

“He wants to see you, Johnny,” she said.

“He wants to see me?”

“Of course he does! What’s the matter with you?” She suddenly started to cry as she bent over the toaster. The toast popped up and made her jump. “What’s the matter with this family? What’s the matter with it?”

John and his father looked at each other quickly and went on eating.

“He’s your own brother! I don’t understand any of you people!” She left the toast unbuttered and worked her long legs out of the breakfast nook, then went to the window and stood with her back toward them.

“It’s O.K., Glad,” William Cotter said, “Of course he wants to see Johnny. And Johnny wants to see him. Don’t you, Johnny?”

“Sure I do,” John said. “I haven’t seen Bruce for two years now. Got to see how the old boy’s getting along.”

This was the lie she wanted. Now one of them, John or his father, would have to think of something to do to get her back to the table. John put two pieces of bread in the toaster and pushed down the lever. A little bell inside tinkled and attracted his mother’s attention.

“I’ll attend to that,” she said. “You two finish your breakfast.” She buttered toast and poured coffee, her long fingers expert at it.

They took the river road, William Cotter driving. John watched the sluggish river, low and dead between high mudbanks and mud-encrusted stones. He had never seen the river so low. Twisted tree trunks lay half covered, stubby branches reaching out of the muck. Even the hills were different; a lighter, dustier green. The fields along the river flats were overdue for the second cutting, but the sparse stalks of hay would not be much meat for a cutterbar.

“It’s been cold, nights,” William Cotter said, “but no rain and this everlasting wind…” He easily passed a pickup truck and swung back into his own lane. “I’m going to drop you two off and head back to the office for a minute. Got to get things going. Then I’ll come back.”

“It seems to me they can get along for a while without you this morning,” his wife said.

“No, I’d better be there. Nobody knows what to do now Bruce is gone—in the hospital. Got to start things going,” he said, looking straight ahead.

“I don’t understand you,” his wife said, waving away the office. “This morning! Your own son!” Her voice turned ragged.

John decided not to take sides.

“Now, Glad. I’ll come right back as soon as I can! Bruce wouldn’t want things all messed up. Now, would he?”

“I can’t understand you. You know the decision he has to make about operating! And you want to get out of it! Oh,
goodness!”
She lost control of her voice and put her head down to cry. John put his arm around her and patted her shoulder, but this didn’t seem to help. William Cotter, his forehead beginning to sweat, finally reached over and patted her.

“All right, Glad. All right, Gladdie. Take it easy now. Of course I’ll stay if you feel that way about it. It’s just that business…”

“Business!” she said, sobbing.

“I’m sorry, now. Everything’ll turn out O.K. You wait and see. We’ll have him back before hunting season, you wait and see. Of course I’ll stay!”

She raised her head and took a Kleenex out of her purse.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but today…” She started to cry again, but braced herself against it and this time managed to stop. “There!” she said. She reached up and tilted the rear-view mirror so she could see her face in it, and got to work with the Kleenex.

They came into Northlee and went around the square, past the college buildings. John noticed that the palms of his hands were wet. He felt that he was in a mild state of shock. His face, in the still-tilted rear-view mirror, was pale and unhealthy, and he had to go to the toilet. His father didn’t look very good, either.

They parked in the parking lot beside the ambulance entrance and walked in line around to the front, John’s father and mother slightly ahead, walking as people walk to see the very sick—carefully picking their steps, aware of the fragility of their own bodies. He felt stiff, yet tired, as if he had run a long race and had his wind back, but not his strength. The doors were ahead, up stone steps. It was the first time he had gone to the hospital for such a reason. Before, he had always entered the place in strength and youth—even with his broken ankle the visit meant youth and vigor; the ankle had been broken skiing. But now his brother lay rotting, weakened by his disease, out of shape, in the hospital because of some internal corruption.

“Hello, Johnny,” said a girl whom he had seen in his preoccupation only as a flash of white. Her name. In the neighborhood of Leah he must remember names.

“Hello, Charlotte.” It was Charlotte Paquette. He looked at her out of his nervousness and saw that she had become less pretty, remembered that she had been in nursing school a long time ago.

“You look different,” he said.

“Well, I’m older.”

“Are you married yet?”

She blushed a little. That hadn’t changed, but where was the quick answer she always had for such questions? Her five brothers had asked many embarrassing questions, and she always had an answer.

“No, not yet. Maybe I look tired. I’ve been on duty all night.” She straightened her uniform. “Mike Spinelli got hurt on his motorcycle—very bad. They brought him in last night.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. Mike Spinelli had sat next to him in home room one year. That was the year Mike had managed to be kicked out of school three times in one week. “He married Jane Stevens, didn’t he?”

“You know that, Johnny.”

“I know. I never could figure out why she married him. She didn’t have to. They don’t have any kids, do they?”

“No, thank God.” Charlotte looked back toward the desk, then to the door. “He’ll probably die. He crushed his chest. On a mailbox. The damn’ fool!”

This startled him. Charlotte, among her five profane brothers, never used to swear at all.

“I’m glad to see you back, Johnny. Are you going to stay for a while this time?”

“I guess so.”

“You’ll be out to see us,” she said. She had gone before he realized that she hadn’t mentioned Bruce.

His mother and father had gone ahead. He asked at the desk and followed the directions to his brother’s room, down cream-colored halls, past trays on stands and sudden views of people in bed, past an old man in a bathrobe walking stooped and slow. Bruce’s door was open, and they all looked up as John entered.

“So he did come,” Bruce said. His bed was tilted so that he could sit up, and his round face, pale, with the eyes dark and burning in it, and the blue of his shaven beard below, turned, after he had spoken, toward his father. John looked away, out the curtained window.

“How are you, Bruce?” he managed to say, and then realized what he had said. He waited for Bruce’s sarcastic answer. But it didn’t come. A man moaned down the corridor, long and windy, then moaned again.

“He always does that,” Gladys Cotter said. “The nurse says she’s disgusted with him.”

“It must hurt bad,” William Cotter said. His forehead was wet. He sat in a deep chair with his knees together and his hat and coat ready on his lap.

Bruce smiled, and as they furtively looked toward him he carefully lit a cigarette. John stood at the window and saw his brother reign over the room as he had always tried to dominate any room; strong, this time, in his sickness. A nurse came in with a tray of medications, picked out a jigger of colorless oil and fed it to Bruce.

“Agh!” Bruce said loudly. She tried to smile. “Would you have somebody bring a chair for my brother?” he said, pointing at John. Her smile became professionally fixed.

“Surely,” she said, and as she left Bruce called to her.

“Hey, Miss Pease J Hey, PeasyJ When are you going to give me a back rub?”

“You just had one,” she said. “My, you’re spoiled!”

“I like your touch, Peasy. I love your lovely touch.”

“Bruce!” Gladys Cotter said.

It was necessary to smile. John made his face smile until the old man’s moan grew in the corridor again. Bruce didn’t seem to hear it.

“Do you have any more of those headaches?” William Cotter asked shyly.

“They keep me doped up,” Bruce said, and then went on quickly, turning to John. “Well, how’s the prodigal son like it back in the sticks? Pretty dull after Paris?”

“Now, Bruce,” Gladys Cotter said, “let’s not start arguing now. Johnny just got home—came home to see you.”

“Ran out of money, you mean. Just made it for the funeral.” Bruce grinned at John, his eyes glaring—the old expression that asked for a fight.