Eating Heaven (26 page)

“Hey, she likes me,” Anne says.

“That’s her job.” I tap the pen, tap tap. What else? “Oh, Christine called while you were in the shower. She’s in Salem. We’re going to meet her at Benny’s; then we can all drive over together.”

“I can’t imagine her pregnant, can you? She’s so tiny.”

“She’ll look like Mom did, I guess.”

Silence, then Anne comes to sit at the table. “Did you call her?”

“Mom? She’s not speaking to me.” Anne looks worried. I say, “Maybe if you called her, worked your charms on her. Look what you did with Yolanda.”

“No,” she says. “If she doesn’t listen to you, she’s not going to listen to me.” She stares at her hands, long fingers splayed across the edge of the table.

“Well, she might,” I say, but would she? Do they get along any better than Mom and I do? “Are you going to see her?”

Anne shrugs, nods. “Sure, sometime. Not today.” She stands. “I’m going to get dressed. Is that really what you’re wearing?”

I look down at my T-shirt and khakis. “What’s wrong with this?”

“Nothing, I suppose, for Portland,” she says. “But you might consider ironing your shirt.”

“T-shirts were invented so we didn’t have to iron,” I say, but I stand, pull it over my head, and walk to the long-neglected ironing board she’s set up in the bedroom.

Benny’s house smells of industrial-strength cleanser, but otherwise looks normal. His bed has been made with fresh sheets, and the carpet in his room is damp from shampooing. If I were a religious person, I’d say “God bless Alice Desmay.”

Christine hasn’t arrived yet. Anne has parked her luggage and briefcase in the hallway while she wanders through the house, exclaiming, “I remember this!” and “I can’t believe he still has that.”

I gather fresh pajamas for Benny, his robe, slippers, toiletries, and a few books, then pack them into a small brown valise from the closet that looks as if it’s never been used. After pondering what else he’d want, I grab the white photo album and slip it in, snap the stiff latches, and set the case by the front door.

Next I pack my things to clear the sewing room for Anne, wondering when I’ll have time to return for the kitchen equipment and computer, sitting dark and silent on the sewing table. I turn it on and wait for it to boot up while I survey my work area: ruffled tablets filled with illegible scribbling, research files, signed contracts for Stefan’s piece, two new articles for
American Family,
and one for
Healthy Fit
. I check my incoming e-mail, but there’s nothing beyond Metabolife and penis-enlargement ads. I hit
COMPOSE NEW MESSAGE
and type:

I send similar messages to
American Family
and
Healthy Fit
. There go my best clients; there goes my spotless track record. It’s not like there aren’t hundreds of hungry freelancers out there just waiting to fill my shoes, but I feel such relief that I could skip through the house.

Half an hour later, Anne and I are sitting at the backyard picnic table, sweating in the heat, fanning ourselves with the junk mail we’re sorting, when we hear the chug and sputter of Christine’s car pulling into the driveway.

We look at each other and shake our heads, then go to greet her.

Out front, Christine is trying to wriggle free of the small car.

“God,” Anne mutters. “What if she’d had an accident?”

“Hi!” Christine calls, waving. Her hair has grown long and her cheeks are fuller, flushed as she arches her back and smoothes her hands over what looks like the butt end of a watermelon protruding from her midsection. She wears a form-fitting aqua tank top with B
UDDHAFUL
emblazoned in red script, and drawstring pants tied beneath her belly. And here I thought she’d be wearing Kmart. I should have known better.

“Look at you!” I rush over to hug her, leaning over her tummy. “You look great!”

“How is he?” she asks.

“A little better.” I can’t bring myself to tell her anything too real. Not yet. “How are you?”

Anne comes in for her usual sideways one-arm hug and says, “Geez, Christine. You could have died in that thing.”

“Good to see you, too.” Christine elbows her the way she always has. “Congratulations on the settlement.”

“And the resignation,” I say.

“Really?” Christine hugs Anne again. “Good for you!”

Anne looks pleasantly embarrassed, and doesn’t mention the nature of her departure. “So, are you staying at Mom’s?”

Christine shakes her head. “Too far away. Plus, I don’t think she’s up for it. She’s pretty upset about Benny.” She sighs. “God. Isn’t this just like when Dad died?” Her eyes well.

Anne and I look at each other, but rather than saying anything cynical, we open the hatch of Christine’s car to retrieve her luggage.

“Jesus, how long do you plan on staying?” Anne says. The back of the car is filled with two hard suitcases, three duffels, and more than a few cardboard boxes.

“Christine?” I say, when she doesn’t answer.

“I don’t know,” she says, and her face turns bright red. “I might not go back.” And then she is crying into her hands, head bowed and shoulders shaking. “He wasn’t even going to let me come!”

I take her in my arms and look at Anne. She shakes her head and narrows her eyes, and I nod back, shrug, and sigh. When Christine is cried out, Anne and I each take a suitcase from the back of the car, and the three of us walk toward Benny’s house together, something we haven’t done in twenty years or more.

At his first sight of Christine, Benny purses his lips and shuts his eyes.

She must look so much like Mom.

He recovers quickly, drawing a shaky breath. “I see somebody’s been up to some hanky-panky,” he says. “Get over here, you.”

She laughs and goes to hug him, then pats her stomach.

“Touch it,” she says.

“Well, I . . .” Benny falters, his eyes blink. He shuffles his hands in his lap.

“Go on, Ben,” I say, setting his valise on the floor and walking over. I put the spice cake on his bedside table and lay my hand on the firm rise of Christine’s belly, just above her new outie navel. “It’s not as hard as I thought,” I say. “It’s kind of pliant, but not squishy.”

“Amniotic fluid,” Benny says, crooked fingers rising to cup the curve of the baby floating inside. “Sweet little girl,” he croons.

“Girl?” Christine says. “Uncle Benny, what do you know that I don’t?”

His eyes widen and he pulls his hand back.

“He was talking about you, Christine,” I say quickly. “Weren’t you, Ben?”

He nods slowly, and Christine chatters, and I pull Anne by the elbow.

“Anne and I will be back in a few minutes.”

“We will?” Anne says.

“We’re going to get a cup of tea.”

“I’d rather have coffee,” Anne grumbles.

“I don’t think so,” I say, pulling Benny’s door closed behind us.

We find Archie inside a cluttered office. He looks up from his computer screen. “Well, hey there. Can I help?”

“She’s giving me the tour,” Anne says.

“Also,” I say, “I wanted to ask you something.”

He raises his eyebrows; the wrinkles of his forehead stop just short of his former hairline.

“Would it be possible to have a barbecue outside in the garden? Just a family get-together kind of thing?”

He nods. “Of course. We have a grill in the shed, more lawn chairs. Help yourselves.”

“How about next weekend?”

He smiles that patient smile he did with me yesterday. “You might want to do it sooner rather than later.”

Is it going to be this way every day? Every time I think I have a handle on the situation, something or someone comes along and says, “Oh, no you don’t.” I thought Benny might be here for weeks, maybe months. Even creepy Dr. Krall said one of his patients had lived a year, but then Benny’s been off his protocol for who knows how long.

“Of course,” I say, forcing a light tone. “You’re right. Why wait? Do you think Wednesday would be good?”
Please,
I’m thinking,
please say yes. It’s only two days from now
.

“Great,” Archie says.

“Great!” I repeat with too much enthusiasm, then excuse myself and
walk quickly to the bathroom. I lock the door, switch on the fan, turn the faucet to full blast. The mirror is too close, so I back away into the middle of the small room, knowing how I must look. Every muscle in my face contracts, all pulling together tightly, clenched so hard I know my face will ache tomorrow. A sensation rises from my chest through my throat, so thick and hot and powerful I think I might be about to vomit, but then I open my mouth and scream with no sound, no words, just hot air and steam and blood squeezing through constricted veins. I cannot breathe for expelling this thing, over and over, and it’s only when Anne knocks on the door that I let myself draw a deep breath.

“Are you okay?” she says through the door. “Can I come in?”

I fumble to release the lock on the door, and then Anne is beside me, face ragged with crying.

“What did he mean?” she says.

I shake my head, and she grabs me in a tight hug, sobbing. I can count on one hand the number of times my sister has allowed me to touch her with any affection, but I clutch at her bony form, so much like Dad’s, so awkward but tender in surprising moments. I remember that Dad held me once, just like this, when I found out my third-grade teacher had been killed in a car accident. He’d come into my room early, before I woke for school, and stood over my bed, saying softly, “Ellie.” He’d read it in the paper, and he wanted to tell me before I heard about it from anyone else.

I let go of Anne and pull streams of toilet paper from the spindle to blow my nose, but end up pressing them into my face at a new wave of crying, barely able to breathe, senses obliterated by the surprise of this grief, so much deeper than I knew.

M
mm, is this spice cake?” Yolanda says, dipping her pinkie finger in the icing to put in her mouth. “Oh, Benito, your favorite.”

I haven’t heard her call him that in years.

She’s arrived in time for lunch, making everyone feel better, swinging her lime green skirt through Benny’s bedroom door and packing a Styrofoam cooler full of soft, warm tamales from Chucho’s. As I peel back the cornhusk, aromas escape that I haven’t thought of in years: masa, lime, red chile. I remember a Christmas Eve party Benny and Yolanda threw one year, with her whole family there—siblings, cousins, grandparents. Their dining room table laden with plates of tamales, pans of enchiladas, and bowls of posole and menudo. The marionettes they bought all the kids that year. Mine was a French chef with requisite big hat and curly mustache; Anne’s was an old woman with a hook nose, like the witch from Hansel and Gretel. Christine’s was a princess. We’ve been typecast our whole lives.

After we’ve finished our tamales, Yolanda cuts large pieces of cake, loading them onto flimsy paper plates I found in the kitchen. Benny takes a plastic fork in hand, dodging and weaving it toward his plate on the tray. “Morphine,” Yolanda whispered earlier as I watched him try to negotiate his tamale to his mouth. His fork finds his lips and he slides the cake into his mouth, closing his eyes, face crumpling in the way that means it’s good.

Christine sits in an armchair with her feet propped up on the rails of Benny’s bed, cake plate balanced on top of her stomach. Anne stands by the window, having said no to cake, thumbing through back copies of
Newsweek
(I don’t ask if she’s looking for pictures of herself). Yolanda leans a hip against the bed, close enough to help should Benny need it, far enough away so that he doesn’t realize her intentions.

I take a bite of cake to make sure it tastes okay, surprised at the depth of flavor, the moist texture, and creamy frosting. You’d think I hadn’t eaten a piece of spice cake in years, when in fact I ate an entire pan full just four months ago, the day I found out Benny was dying. And then I understand; I didn’t taste it then.

Benny lays down his fork and says, “That’s about the best spice cake I ever had, Miss Roosevelt. Thank you ever so much.”

“But you’ve only had a bite, Uncle Benny,” Christine says, already halfway through hers.

“One perfect bite,” he says. “I don’t believe I’ll need to taste spice cake again.”

Anne looks up suddenly from her magazine. Christine draws a quick breath, and Yolanda
tsk
s Benny, giving him a look.

“Well, okay then, Ben,” I say, and everyone looks at me now. “Why don’t we make a list of things you’d like to have at least one more time?”

“Now you’re talking,” he says, and lies back to consider his list. “Let’s see,” he says, before slowly ticking off items: “Banana-nut bread would be good. Burgerville french fries, of course. Maybe a hot dog with mustard and onions.” He pauses, squinting, then smiles. “And pineapple upside-down cake.”

“That’s it?” Anne asks. “Out of everything in the whole world, that’s all you want?”

“Yup,” Benny says, closing his eyes as if exhausted. His fingers lace across his sternum. “I’m a man of simple needs.”

By two o’clock, Yolanda has gone back to work, Anne has borrowed my car to run errands, and Christine has disappeared. They’re not used to this yet. They have no stamina.

Benny’s sleeping, so I carry the cake pan and paper plates into the
dining room, offering pieces to a group of three women playing cards and an older couple drinking coffee. The tiny old woman from the horrible family sits in a wheelchair by the window, gazing out at the street.

“Is your family coming to visit today?”

She stares at me blankly, then back out the window.

“Would you like some spice cake? It’s homemade.”

“She doesn’t talk,” says a teenage girl sitting nearby, and I recognize her as the granddaughter. She’s reading a book.

“Oh. How about you? Cake?”

She nods. “Gram would probably eat some, too.”

I cut two pieces, trying to remember the vilified Burgerville-working daughter’s name. “It’s . . . Amanda, isn’t it?”

“Amber,” she says, setting down her book. She has stringy strawberry blond hair and eyes so light they almost disappear into her pallid face. “How’d you know?”

“It’s a small place.” I smile, sliding a plate toward her. “What are you reading?”

She lifts the library-issue paperback to show me the cover:
Love in the Time of Cholera
. How old was I when I read it—twenty-four, twenty-five? Older maybe. This girl isn’t the gum-snapping bimbo her mother makes her out to be.

“Have you read
One Hundred Years of Solitude
?” I ask.

She nods, shrugs. “I like this one better.”

“Me, too,” I say. “What’s your grandmother’s name?”

“Hazel,” she says. “Gunderson.”

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Gunderson,” I say to the old woman, putting a piece of cake in front of her on the table. She turns to me, looks at the plate, and picks up the fork.

“See?” Amber says. “She loves sweets.”

“Who doesn’t?” I say. “I’m Eleanor. You can usually find me in Room 4B with my uncle Benny.”

“Cool,” she says, picking at her cake with her fingers despite the fork I’ve given her. Mrs. Gunderson blinks hard at her piece, then digs in.

I don’t see Doris anywhere, so I head down the long hallway of rooms, toward the back, finding Room 6A at the end of the corridor. The door is ajar. I tap lightly on it, hearing a TV at low volume.

“Hello? Doris?”

The TV mutes.

“Come on in,” she says.

She’s sitting on a double bed, filling most of it with her girth, wearing thick glasses to knit what looks like a complicated orange-and-yellow garment. A can of diet ginger ale sits on her bedside tray, along with a box of tissues and a stuffed toy poodle. She doesn’t appear to be dying anytime soon.

“Hi,” I say. “I thought you might like some cake.”

“Oh, honey, thank you,” she says, clacking her knitting needles, “but I can’t have it.” She smiles and nods toward a chair. “Sit and visit awhile?”

“Oh,” I say. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your TV show.”

“I just have it on for company.” She picks up the remote and snaps it off. “Did you see my view?” She twists slightly toward the window. I move to see better, and there’s Christine in the garden, sitting cross-legged on the grass with her back to us.

“Sit a minute, honey,” Doris says again, looking over the tops of her glasses.

“Well, okay, for a little bit.” I perch at the edge of a green vinyl chair, cake pan across my lap. “Where’s your son today?”

“School,” she says. “First person in our family to go to college. Smart kid. He got his GED last year when he was just seventeen.” She nods in time with her knitting, then looks at me.

“How’s your uncle, honey?”

“Better. He’s on some medication now, so he’s a little . . . better.”

“Going home soon, then?”

“Actually, he decided to stay.” I press my lips into a tight smile.

“Well, God bless him. And you, too.”

“Thank you.”

We sit quietly, then I ask, “So are you . . . I mean, how are you?”

“Well, I’m not about to die, if that’s what you’re asking.” The knitting
needles click, two three, then stop. “Not to be indelicate,” she says, looking up and winking at me. “Some of us are just regular nursing home patients.”

“Oh. Of course. Right.”

I tap the edge of the cake pan with my fingers in time to her knitting. “But isn’t it hard to . . . you know. Be around it so much?”

“Not really, no,” she says. “Actually, I like it here. I feel useful.” She shrugs. “I’m easy to talk to. People here don’t seem to mind the way I look.”

“You look fine!” I say too quickly.

She chortles, leans over to take swig of ginger ale. “I know how I look, honey. It’s all right.”

“No, I mean, really. I know what it’s like to feel . . .” I stop, then start again. “The way I look disgusts my mother.”

“Lord. Why on earth? I’d give anything to look like you.”

I wince, shake my head. “No, don’t say that. You’re—you’re lovely. I noticed the first time I saw you how much care you take in your appearance, how much you love your son. It makes you kind of, I don’t know. Shine.”

“My goodness,” Doris says, eyes widening. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m sorry; I’m babbling. It’s just that everything’s . . . I’m so . . .” I wipe my eyes, laugh. “Emotional. About everything. God.”

“You come visit any time you want, honey. You’re a good person, I can tell. Your mother must be a damn psycho or something.” She revs up her knitting needles again, clacking and maneuvering them through the yarn with ease. “Not that my mother was any better.”

I step from the door leading to the garden and walk across the patio, onto the lawn.

Christine turns and looks at me, eyes swollen, nose red. “You should take your shoes off. This grass is so soft.” She sweeps her hand across it, petting it like a pony.

I slide out of my sandals, dig into the lawn with my toes. “Nice,” I say. “Benny would kill for this lawn.”

“How do you do it?” she asks, pinching a blade of grass and pulling it
out at the root. We used to love eating the white tip, a delicacy from our childhoods like honeysuckle nectar pods and marigold petals. “How do you act so normal? So, I don’t know. Not devastated?”

“I am devastated.” I hear the defensive tone, try to soften it. “I’ve been with him every day. You start to get used to it.”

She leans back on one arm, using the other to cradle her belly. “I just mean that you have this way of still being normal with him. You can say things about his—his condition or whatever, and it seems so easy. I can’t even imagine talking to him about it.”

“Spend more time with him. It’ll get easier.”

“But what if I’m too late?” Her eyes fill. “He seems so tired, so sick.” Her thirty-six-year-old face is still cherubic, more so with the roundness of pregnancy. She looks so much like the six-year-old version of herself. “I still wish I could have talked to Dad, just . . . you know.” She sighs heavily. “One more time.”

“Benny’s still here.”

“I know,” she says, then her chin begins to tremble. “He’s going to die, though, isn’t he? I mean, pretty soon.”

“I think so.”

She begins to cry in earnest, lying back on the grass and covering her face with her hands. I lie on my side next to her in the grass, smooth a long strand of hair from her forehead.

“My baby won’t know him or Dad. I won’t have a father or a grandfather for my child. God, I don’t think I can stand this!”

I move closer to wrap my arms around her. I can’t say it doesn’t occur to me how odd we look—two grown women lying in the grass, embracing—but this place is full of the terminally sad. Surely, we don’t look that strange.

Later in the day, Anne is back from her mysterious errand, carrying a small but insanely expensive stereo system and CDs for Benny: Hoyt Axton, Glenn Miller, Sarah Vaughan, Vivaldi.

“How do you know what music he likes?” I ask, holding the front door open for her.

“You’re not the only one who ever spent time with Benny,” she says. And I see that, when she sets up the system next to his bed and pops in a CD, and Sarah Vaughan’s voice fills the room, singing “Lover Man.” Benny closes his eyes, shakes his head. “You have outdone yourself, Miss Annabelle. Is this the 1955 version?”

Anne nods. “Of course. Only the best.” She sits in the chair by the window, laces her fingers together behind her head, and closes her eyes, nodding in time to the song.

“John Weinert.” His tone never changes; he always sounds pleasantly assured. How is that possible?

“John, hello. It’s Eleanor. How are you?”

“Fine, fine, thank you. And you?”

“Well . . . fine. Listen, is my mom around?”

“Yes, let me—”