Dreaming August (24 page)

The morning glory seedlings wouldn’t survive a transfer, and she didn’t have the heart to kill them, all things considered. She left them to grow through the summer and to die a natural death at first frost.

As she bent to the forget-me-nots, an engine revved on the street beyond the cemetery, lifting Benny’s head. A motorcycle whizzed by, one she had seen around town. Signs and signals made tangible in the living world—she had once been a big believer, and then lost all such faith. At the moment, Benny was content to keep her mind open in both directions, and in any other direction that presented itself.

She turned back to the forget-me-nots, digging them up carefully, taking a bit more dirt than she had with the others. She found an old plastic grocery bag containing the remnants of a lunch long-ago enjoyed in the bottom of her backpack, and placed two of the three plants into it. The third she took to Harriet Farcus.

“You already have a garden,” she said, “but I wanted you to have these, too. I’m not sure how any of this works, but I have a feeling there is no single way, no single afterlife, but a whole bunch that sort of overlap. Or maybe I’m just a little nuts-o. That’s okay too. Anyway, it’s time I let Henny go. There’s a road he wants to travel, and I am—was—holding him back. I hope digging up the garden freed him in a way words couldn’t, like Carmen said. You’d like her. She was pretty amazing. Anyway, it just seemed right. And it seems right for you to have these.”

Benny moved some of the petunia near Harriet’s stone and replaced it with the forget-me-nots. Sitting back on her heels, she patted the soil down. On her wrist, the forget-me-nots inked into her skin tickled just enough for her to notice. She wiped the dirt from her arm, traced the tattooed mural, her homage to Henny, and this time she smiled with the memories instead of wept.

Grief was so hard to let go of. She couldn’t count the years since his death as wasted. It brought her to this, to Dan, to their baby. It brought her Augie and Harriet. As her mother said, Benny was waking up from too long a sleep, but she was awake now. Wide awake. And that was the important part.

“I won’t be cemetery gardening much anymore. But these should grow back. They aren’t perennials, but they do re-seed. I’ll let Charlie know not to let the landscapers mow them down.” Rising to her feet, Benny brushed the dirt from her hands. She tucked the trowel in her back pocket, and picked up the plastic bag holding the other two plants.

“I won’t forget Henny. And I won’t forget you, Harriet. It’s a sworn promise.”

Benny placed the last two forget-me-nots into the carrier of her scooter. She drove slowly to the place she and Dan had watched the fireworks—and made some—the night before. Digging a hole near Miranda Greene’s tombstone, she smiled a little self-consciously. She planted the flowers.

“My mother misses you,” she said. “And sorry about last night. I meant no disrespect, but your son, well…whatever Dan said about this just being a place for bones, I have it on good authority it’s a bit more complicated than that. I hope we didn’t gross you out.”

Benny chuckled softly, her body aching with memory and quickly quelled. For now. Maybe later.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen with Dan and me, but I want you to know I love him. Gads, I really, really do love him. Crazy, huh?”

Back on her scooter, Benny had one last stop to make. No sorrow attached itself to this one, only joy so tangible she felt like soda in a glass again. She dug Flora’s cigar box of soil out of her backpack and brought it along with the last plant to Augie’s grave. Wending her way among the tombstones, Benny found a rock slab on the ground where there hadn’t been one before. Not a rock slab. A concrete one, embedded with tiny handprints.

Falling to her knees, only just saving the flowers and cigar box from toppling, she touched the slab of concrete once part of Augie’s patio. Little handprints, and the initials PF, VF and AF scratched beneath. Had Dan done this before leaving the note on her door? After? It didn’t matter. He had done it, not for Augie, but for her.

She sunk the forget-me-nots into the ground between the headstone and the concrete slab. Sitting back on her heels, Benny lifted the cigar box in her hand, flicked open the brass catch, and poured the contents into the hole. Soil from a small village in Campania, Italy mingled with the soil from Flora’s garden in Brooklyn, into the good earth of Bitterly, Connecticut. It covered the exposed roots of the flowers, closing the circle left open too long.

“She knew you, Augie,” Benny said. “Flora knew who you were all along, and she loved you. There is no forgiveness to be had, because there was never any necessary.

“Love doesn’t have to be shouted,” she quoted. “Sometimes, love can just be. You loved Flora and she loved you, no matter the circumstances. Let go, Augie. Let go and see where the road goes next. Maybe she’s waiting for you, with Katherine. Maybe they’ve both been waiting for you all along.”

A slight buzzing in her ears became a sensation that began in her midsection and spread. Up to her shoulders, her cheeks, the roots of her hair. And down through her legs, calves, toes. Not the soda-in-a-glass sensation, but warm and fluid, like maple syrup on pancakes. It seeped into her blood, her bones, her beating heart. It surrounded Cricket, soothing her incessant wriggling. Benny wrapped her arms around herself, rocking side to side. Love. That was all it could be. Like her earlier and lingering happiness, it was pure and untainted by life or death, by sorrow or fear. It bridged the intangible, made it real. And when Benny closed her eyes, that flash of Augie she’d accidentally seen superimposed itself over the image from Carmen’s album and for an instant, held. Benny kept her eyes closed tight, drew the instant out as long as possible.

“Got it, Augie,” she whispered. “I’ll never forget you, either. Now go, while you can.”

The image faded from behind her eyes. The maple-syrup warmth absorbed completely, but didn’t vanish. It would never vanish completely. Cricket, kept still for too long, gave a good kick Benny felt on the outside as well as in. She gasped, and then she laughed softly, cradling her belly and the baby inside.

“Do that when we go see your daddy,” Benny crooned, “and he’ll be the happiest man on earth.”

Benny rose to her feet, brushed herself off, and tamped the soil around the forget-me-nots on Augie’s grave. Tomorrow, she’d get her mother started on finding Augie’s children, or grandchildren if that was all who remained. Tonight, right this moment, she was going to see Dan and tell him she’d been a fool, she loved him, and they were having a baby—all of which he already knew, but she’d tell him anyway. Benny picked a stem of forget-me-nots from Augie’s bunch. She tucked it into the buttonhole of her shirt, got back on her scooter, and left the cemetery just as evening twinkled into night.

* * * *

“That’s it then, eh? Another one gone. Good riddance, I say. Bah! That’s a lie. I’ll miss the fool. He was good company. There used to be so many more. Now there’s just me, here inside the gates. I can see others out there, in town. I can feel others nearby. I wonder what it’s like, remembering enough to step out. I don’t even remember why I don’t try, only that I’m a’feared too.

“I’ll miss the girl, too. Benedetta. I’ll miss her jabbering. She’ll come back now and then, bring the little one to see me, but it won’t be the same. She knows too much now. If anyone understands knowledge isn’t always a good thing, it’s me.

“Oh, too close. Entirely too close to remembering. Augie wearied me, made me want things I shouldn’t. It’s time to get my senses back. It’s time to get some rest.

“Maybe a year.

“Maybe ten.

“Maybe just until Benedetta comes back with her wee one.”

Only They Who Walk With Dreams

Daniel Greene washed his shovel. Again. He checked his cell. Again. The shovel was as clean as new and there were no missed calls or texts from Benny. She hadn’t been at Savvy’s, or at home. Neither was Clarice, so that was something. He imagined Benny so angry or upset her mother took her out of town for the day, to get away from him. He wouldn’t consider he’d blown it completely, even if he kicked himself over and over for the way he bolted. Dan didn’t even know why. He saw the sonogram picture stuck to the refrigerator door and it was all a blur from there, right up until the moment he sank the slab of concrete into the ground covering August and Katherine Fiore’s graves.

The calm, then, had been serene. There in the cemetery, during those ghosting hours when most of Bitterly slept and only crickets sang their songs, Dan had sat on the edge of the tombstone and laughed. Softly, at first, then great lungsful of joy that might have sounded mad, coming from the cemetery after midnight. He almost went back to Benny’s, but it was late and all they had to say to one another would wait until morning. Dan was exhausted, both mentally and physically. Instead of going home, where Paul and Evelyn were, he parked his truck behind the old cottage currently serving as the cemetery office, found the key under the frog sculpture where Charlie had been hiding it since it was a secret they all kept from his parents, and let himself in. He fell face-first onto the cot in the back room, and was asleep before the dust settled.

It was late when he woke, after eleven in the morning, and he only did so because Charlie kicked one of the cot legs out from under him.

“You’re an idiot,” Charlie said when Dan told him why he was there. “Get over there now and ask her to marry you.”

And that’s what Dan did, but she wasn’t home. Neither was Clarice or Peadar, but Peter pulled up as Dan was coming down from the second floor, having left a note there for Benny.

“Any idea where your sister is?”

“I’m just getting back from Cape May, so no.”

“Oh, right. How was it?”

“Great. It would have been better without Charlotte’s new boyfriend. Asshole.”

“Tough break, Pete.”

Peter shrugged and Dan left, and now it was after eight o’clock and Benny had still not returned his call or responded to his note. The certainty he’d earlier felt was beginning to flag.

“Hey, didn’t you hear me calling you?” Evelyn’s voice startled the rag from Dan’s hand.

He bent to pick it up.

“Apparently not.” She moved closer. “You okay? You angry with me?”

Dan hung the wet rag on a peg to dry. He put the shovel back in its place. Finally, he looked at his sister. “No. I’m happy for you. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I’m completely clueless,” she said. “But I’m happy. This feels right. I have to try, you know? We have kids, and we still love one another.”

“He seems different. Paul.”

Evelyn smiled a dreamy smile. “This is who he’s always been behind the costume he wore for his parents and the business world. He reminds me a lot of Henny, actually.”

Dan scrunched up his nose. “I thought he reminded you of me.”

“Both of you. More surfer-dude than wildman-biker, but easy-going at the core.”

“I’ll take your word for it. If this is what you want, you know it’s what I want for you.”

“What will you do?”

“About?”

“You going to keep the house? Stay here in Bitterly.”

“To the bitter end.” Dan grinned. “I’d like to keep the house. We’ll come to some kind of buy-out arrangement. But…”

“But?”

Dan took a deep breath, let it go. The joy wiggling in his gut made it quiver. “I’m going to be a father, Ev.”

She paled.

“What? Who?”

He rolled his eyes.

“Okay, dumb question. Details, fella, and I mean now.”

He told her everything from that blissful week in February to his amnesiatic freak-out after finding the ultrasound picture on Benny’s fridge, except for making love to Benny in the cemetery instead of actually watching the fireworks. There were some things he would keep to himself.

Evelyn listened without saying a word until his story was finished. “It’s like a movie. On the Hallmark channel. Give it a Christmas theme and you can sell it for the holiday season.”

“Thanks. Your compassion really touches me.”

“It’s a lot to take in.” Evelyn bit her lip. “You watched the fireworks with Mom every year?”

Dan shrugged. “It’s just something I do.”

“I’d like to think I’d have gone with you, if I knew.”

“But you wouldn’t have.” He smiled. “It’s okay. We deal with it differently, is all.”

“Did you ever think…?”

“Think what?”

“Never mind. It’s dumb.”

“Tell me. Come on.”

Again she chewed her lip. “I’ve always kind of wondered if she did it on purpose. Crashed the car, I mean. It was Dad’s side of the car that took the brunt.”

“Maybe she did it on purpose,” Dan said. “Could be, or maybe he’d already started smacking her and she lost control of the car. We’re never going to have any real answers, Ev. Let it go.”

“But you’ve thought it.”

“Sure.”

“Then you haven’t let it go, either.”

“Yes, I have. I can think a thought without it eating me up. Like right now, I’m thinking how great it would be to tickle you till you pee. But I won’t.”

“Well, thanks for that.”

They laughed softly together, old demons once again quelled in the old, familiar way. Evelyn took his hand and tugged him toward the garage door.

“I saved dinner for you. Come in and eat.”

“What did you make?”

“Fried catfish and corn on the cob.”

“Sounds like I’m hungry.” And he was. Dan was starving. Had he eaten all day? He had no idea.

Outside, the distinct whine of a four-stroke engine got louder, closer. His heart flipped and his belly tumbled. Then tires on gravel. The tinny engine struggling. A headlight coming up the driveway.

“Looks like your baby-mama is here to see you.”

“Looks like it.”

“You love her?”

“More than I ever imagined possible.”

Evelyn kissed his cheek.

“You’re going to be an amazing father, Danny.”

He might have nodded, or said words of thanks. The blur he’d flown through descended again, but this was not the prior night’s mad dash. It was slow. Torturously slow. Yet Dan found himself standing at the top of the driveway, completely incapable of doing anything else.