The Living End Page 11

  “If you say so.” I cast him a glance dripping with doubt, or that’s what I’m going for at least, and he laughs, swiveling himself through the strap on his Yamaha.

  I mimic his movements, totally ripping out my ponytail. “Ouch!”

  He just laughs harder. So much for pity. But then sixteen-year-old boys aren’t big on that sort of thing. I’ve observed enough of them to know.

  “Okay, now. Grab the A chord. Ready?”

  “Ready,” I say.

  “I’ll do the intro, and you come in on the “Louie Lou-ay” part okay?”

  I nod.

  And he begins strumming the introduction, sounding exactly like the real song, only it’s acoustic. His eyes light up as he hits the final D before I come in with him on the A.

  We begin together. “A Louie-Lou-Ay!” And we sing the entire song, him dancing around the deck with his guitar, looking like a trained monkey who’s escaped the leash of the grinder, and me swaying from side to side, intent on the strings, afraid to move my feet even a millimeter.

  But I’m exhilarated. I’m performing. I’ve never performed. I feel layers inside me, hardened crusts, split open, and something bubbles out, something young and reckless and lapping up abandon, something melodic, something harmonic.

  When we finish the number, we throw back our heads and laugh, adding yet another layer of sound to a world that teems with song.

  “Isn’t it great, Mrs. Laurel?”

  “Oh, my goodness!”

  Matthew can’t possibly know how great. Matthew can’t possibly know what he’s done for me.

  “Maida?”

  “Yep?”

  “It’s Pearly.”

  “Hey, Pearly Girlie.”

  “Just checking in.”

  “How’s Virginia?”

  “Wonderful. We got snow this week, which is a beautiful thing. And I even treated myself to dinner at the Mimlyn the other night. It’s a fancy old inn, gracious Southern mansion-type place. Sure needs a coat of paint, though.”

  “You go alone?”

  “Nope. I took my music teacher.”

  “That nice boy Matthew?”

  “None other. You didn’t think I was ready to start dating yet, did you?” She snorts. “I didn’t think so, Maida. Believe me, I don’t think I’ll ever date again.”

  I know I won’t. That wouldn’t be fair. Establish a relationship, and then, crick, I’m dead. And with my luck, he’d find me and I’d scar him for life. That would be so terrible.

  “Guess what?” Maida says. “Shelby is pregnant!”

  “Past or present?”

  “Both!”

  “No! Wow. Is Brock the father?”

  “Of course. But remember that Damien Le Coeur guy? That villain who runs some kind of international firm that’s really a money-laundering operation?”

  “Yes. Who could forget a guy like that?” Actually, the man is terribly sexy.

  “Well. He’s claiming to be the father.”

  “Is there a possibility?”

  “That’s the thing. Shelby got really drunk one night at Brock’s club, and Damien found her wandering along the waterfront in a stupor, and he drove her home.”

  “Does she remember nothing?”

  “Conveniently, no.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  We catch up on Pumpkin, the school, and Maida’s latest home-improvement project: a new roof.

  “I got all the shingles on special at that big roofing company in Northeast. What a deal. They’re leftovers, of course.”

  “How many different colors?”

  “At least twelve!”

  I call the homestead next. “Peta?”

  “No, it’s Cheeta.”

  “Hey there! How you doing?”

  “All right, I guess. Still mourning our new Republican governor.”

  The first in some thirty-odd years.

  “Give him a chance, Cheet. You gave the Dems enough time to straighten things out, and the state’s still a mess.”

  She snorts. “Easy for you to say.”

  “Face it, Cousin, I don’t care about politics anymore. Not like the old days. How’s the farm?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. Ask Peta.”

  “She there?”

  “Peta!” she yells. “See ya, hon. Enjoy the mountains.”

  “Thanks.”

  Peta’s voice comes over the line. “Hi, Pearly. Didn’t expect to hear from you.”

  “Yes, well. I just called to invite you down here for a bit. I need to go to a rock concert, and I thought you’d like to come with me.”

  “Sounds good, but I don’t think I should leave Cheeta.”

  “Go! Go!” Cheeta yells in the background.

  Peta says, “I’ve been telling her how jealous I am of you for the past month.”

  “Come on then, Peta. It’ll do her good, and we both know why.”

  Peta arrives a few days later. Her appetite has dwindled, and her eyes look watery and lethargic despite her typical spunk in the attitude department. I let her sleep as much as she likes and try to make all her favorite meals. She tells me “no phosphates,” which rules out all the dairy foods we both love. Protein is limited too. No wonder she doesn’t want to live this way for very long. A life without cheese?

  “And it’ll be worse once I’m on dialysis,” she tells me one night as we sit drinking brandy before a fire.

  I want to tell her I’ll take care of her when she worsens, but there’s too much left to accomplish and I’ll be dead long before she is.

  Still, it fills me with regret to know I have discovered the wonderful light of my cousin only just as it’s beginning to fade.

  “The Goo Goo Dolls? What kind of name is that, Pearly?”

  I just shrug. “According to Matthew, they’re a great group.”

  “Why couldn’t we have gone to see an oldies group, like Chicago or something?”

  The landscape hugging I-66 whizzes by as we head to the MCI Center in D.C. “I wanted to go to a real rock concert again. If we go to an oldies concert, people like me will just sit there politely. I want lighters and body-surfing.”

  “You going to body-surf?”

  “With the seats I got? Hardly.”

  Peta adjusts her seatbelt. “Nosebleed?”

  “It was all they had left, unfortunately.”

  “Well, good. I don’t think my eardrums can take anything right next to the speakers anymore.”

  “If they’re anything like mine, they’d do better. I swear I’m lipreading half of what people say these days.”

  She smiles. “And you get it wrong half the time too.”

  “I do?”

  “Just jerking your chain, Cousin.”

  Jerking my chain?

  Good heavens.

  My eyes tear up at the look of awe, life, and joy on Peta’s face as the crowd erupts in applause after a song called “Slide.” She claps so hard I fear her hands will burst, and how in the world will I get the blood out of my suede vest?

  I clap too. Oh this lovely, wonderful noise all around. God bless Matthew for knowing!

  Look at them all down there, their lives open before them like a six-lane strip of highway, so many choices, so many years left before the lanes dwindle, one by one, into a narrow, lonely path, with only smaller, dead-end side lanes to offer temporary diversion.

  A haunting guitar begins to pick its way into a steady rhythm at the hands of the very good-looking lead singer.

  “Baby’s black balloon …” he begins.

  I don’t even pretend to comprehend the lyrics nowadays. I just allow my blood to flow and ooze along with John Reznik’s, for that is the boy’s name. And when he closes his eyes, I do too.

  Under the seat I stick a picture of Joey and me in London, right there in St. James’s Park. Joey and me and all the birds.

  June 2, 1997

  Havre de Grace

  A new student arrived at school today. LaJon Baker. He i
s fourteen and looks eight. His mother was killed by her pimp two years ago and he’s been with an aunt ever since. She arranged his acceptance to Lafayette School. I talked with her myself and heard how muck she loves the boy. “He’s a genius, Dr. Laurel. I can’t pry the books out of his hands even to come to the supper table!” He sat in my office with a stack of books on the table beside his chair. Eager. Bright. Scared. I cannot wait to see what LaJon accomplishes here. I hope I live long enough for him to return and visit me like Marvin Starling did today. I’d forgotten how much I missed Marvin until he came walking in the office, all six-foot-seven of him, looking like the moon was hung for him alone.

  I sit by the fire as usual, reading today’s journal allotment. Oh, Marvin Starling! What a wonderful boy. Could take anything apart and put it back together, too. He ended up at Virginia Tech and graduated with honors. Marvin dined at our house that evening after he visited the school. He told us of his young family and his new wealth—the result of an invention he’d dreamed up and manufactured, some sort of shoe-paging system for harried families. He told of a charity he’d begun that supplied coats and shoes to the needy. Joey glowed with pride and shook his head when Marvin said, “So thank you, Dr. Laurel. You deserve much of the credit just for loving this boy and believing I was worth something.”

  “No, no, no!” Joey held up his hand. “You did the hard work, Marvin, and God blessed you as He promised to do.”

  “Well, I can’t argue with that. God’s been good, that’s for sure. And I’ve got more plans.”

  “No doubt!”

  Marvin gushed about his dreams, all these years later, still bursting with trust in the person sitting across the table, knowing that his mentor, Dr. Joseph Laurel, would only, could only, believe the best for him.

  I think maybe I’ll give Marvin a call. He’ll want to know that Joey died.

  I sit down and list all the young men impacted by Joey. Yes, this is a bit overdue, but Joey deserves to have those who love him know he’s gone. Definitely Richard King, our doctor. Certainly he knows, but I have to write just in case. Oh, yes. Dr. King. Another one of the Lafayette boys who grabs life by the heart.

  I feel such triumph when I think of him. Men like him are what Lafayette, and Joey, were all about. Triumph. Victory. And life. And love. Such love.

  My goodness! Two notebook pages filled with names. And those are only the boys I remember! I’m sure there are many more I cannot call to mind. I do believe the worst part of grief is that my mind has regressed from calculator to adding machine. Or perhaps even abacus. Nothing runs automatically anymore. I try to remember if I’ve eaten lunch—click click go a couple of the beads upon the metal rod—well? And then I seem to recall a bowl of cereal, naturally, but what kind? I know I finished up the box of Froot Loops at breakfast, and I do believe I ate some Honey Bunches of Oats, and if that memory serves me correctly, then yes, I did eat lunch. I cannot even begin to think about anything important, and for the most part I simply make decisions on the fly.

  I call the school to get phone numbers.

  Joey’s administrative assistant, Tanya Michaels, a young woman with a propensity for French braids and bridesmaid-looking dresses, answers the phone. “Mrs. Laurel? This is really you?”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “We’ve all heard you’re taking Dr. Laurel’s passing hard.”

  “Yes, well.”

  “You two were so close. I’ve never seen a couple so close like you were close.”

  “He would want the old boys to know he’s gone, I think. Can I have a printout of the school’s alumni list? I want to send them personal notes and let them know.”

  “Okay. Sure. But the news went out in the latest newsletter.”

  “That’s okay. I still want to contact them personally.”

  I give her my address here at the cabin. “Thanks.” And I hang up the phone with a quick good-bye before she can ask any questions.

  Two days later the list arrives. I bought note cards yesterday in Luray. The front displays a shelf of books with lion bookends. Perfect for Joey. However, I forgot to buy a new ink cartridge for Joey’s pen, so I’m on my way back into Luray to buy a pen and have lunch. I’m tired of cereal. I’ve made my way through three quarters of the top shelf at the grocery store. Variety, variety. Perhaps it’s the milk. If I could eat it with juice instead, or even Sprite, it might help. There’s a thought. That’s pretty much all it is. Blech.

  I pull my car along Main Street. There’s the type I’m interested in, a real down-home looking place. Yolanda’s Rib Room. In Luray? She must be a transplant from south Georgia, or Memphis. But the thought of those bones between my fingers bears up well.

  This seems like a place that should have been on my list of things to do, so I walk in. Yes, I am the only paleface in the establishment. Yes, I am met with distrust. But still I move to the only vacant table, a booth for two, formed from orange melamine, midway down the long, narrow restaurant. Working men dressed in varied garb—suits and ties, shirts and ties, uniforms, and factory clothing—sit at a counter lining the opposite wall.

  “You want the lunch special?”

  I turn my head a bit to the right and back, and there stands a chocolate-frosted crème donut of a woman wearing jeans and a T-shirt that says, “Yolanda’s, Nothin’ But Ribs … So Don’t Ask for More.”

  “What’s the special?” I ask.

  “Half rack, greens, cornbread, and pinto beans.”

  “Sounds fine.”

  “Water?”

  “You got Coke?”

  She hesitates. “You look like a water person.”

  “Life’s short.”

  She lifts half her mouth. “That’s what my aunt used to say.”

  “Used to?”

  “Uh-huh. Hardening of the arteries.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Too many rib dinners.” She turns and shouts the order to the woman behind the counter.

  Now this woman is worthy of Joey’s memoirs. She must have been in the back when I entered, because now the score for the palefaces stands at a whopping two. And yet, she’s like no white woman I’ve ever seen. Everything about her shouts blackness except for her skin and her structure. I try to compute this. She wears an African-print shirt that wraps around her upper trunk, all sorts of animals traipsing in purple across yellow plains. Her draped purple pants remind me of that rapper who lost all his money. He had such a nice smile.

  This woman’s droopy pants, however, fall from a willow waist. Her thin brown hair, streaked with red and gold, is twisted into a mahogany comb at the back of her small head. Bracelets jangle on each thin arm. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a more beautiful woman before. Large hoops swing from earlobes drooping with overuse.

  “Yolanda!” a cook yells from back in the kitchen.

  She turns. “Yeah, Ray?”

  Her accent is ebony. What a juxtaposition. Now Joey wouldn’t hesitate to move his cutlery to the counter and start a conversation with this woman. Well, Dr. Laurel, watch this! And why not? Why not try my hand at pulling out a daisy of a story from the weed-sprouting garden most of us call our lives? I tap the face of the winding-down wristwatch.

  “Something wrong with the booth?” Yolanda asks. She fiddles with one of the many rings on her left hand. She wears heavy, large gems that swirl around the bases of fingers whose knuckles are too big for their tiny girth. Size four. That’s what I’m guessing.

  “The booth is fine. I just enjoy the company of a counter.”

  “So do I! I stand behind here and talk to all sorts of folks. That’s why I took over this place to begin with.”

  “Not to cook?”

  “Oh, heavens no! I’m a vegetarian! Gave up meat for Lent one year on a whim and never looked back. I have a counseling degree. Just undergraduate. Couldn’t afford to go on for the master’s after my Grandmom Mabel died. I actually inherited this place. So here am.”

  “Really? Why didn’t you sell it
and finance your schooling?”

  “I figured all I wanted was to help people anyway, and I could do just as good a job at that here and not have to worry about malpractice or keeping up a license.”

  I screw up my mouth. “Not to mention the fact that some people would never lie down on a couch in a million years.”

  “Or they couldn’t afford to even if they wanted to.”

  The waitress sets down my Coke and moves around the counter to take the order of a well-seasoned gentlemen in coat, sweater vest, and tie. He shakes, every movement a tremolo of motion. He sits in the booth I deserted.

  Yolanda nods in his direction. “That’s Cerius Monroe. Too proud to see a doctor about anything. His wife’s been gone a hundred years. No kids, no nothing. Comes here every day for lunch. Sits in that booth.”

  “Good thing I moved.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t make much of a fuss. It’s downright sad.”

  “Order’s up!” Ray hollers from the kitchen.

  Yolanda hurries in and emerges a few seconds later beneath a loaded tray the size of a kiddie pool. “You get the special, honey?” she asks me after depositing all but one meal.

  “Yes.”

  “Well all right then.” She sets my plate down and puts the tray on a stand near the kitchen door. “Enjoy it. You look like you could use a decent meal. You been through a hard time lately?”

  “You could say that.”

  “I can always tell.” She rests her elbows on the counter, her face near mine. “You need an ear?”

  I shake my head. “Maybe someday.”

  “I’ll be here. Shoot, I’m always here.”

  “Do you have anybody you talk to?”

  “Heavens, yes. My pastor!”

  “Where do you go to church?”

  “The Apostolic Church of Holy Joy.”

  About to stab my greens, I set down my fork instead. “Oh, my goodness. That’s a mouthful!”

  “I’m a deaconess there.”