News from Heaven (13 page)

She studies the photo. Her father smiles easily for the camera, his arm around Mae's shoulders, a gesture Agnes finds startling. Her parents had never, in her lifetime, shared a bedroom. She can scarcely remember seeing them touch. In his final years, when John Lubicki was breathless and wheezing from black lung, it was Agnes who combed his hair and shaved his handsome face, who pounded his back to help him cough.

The years underground had ruined his lungs, though by local standards he was considered lucky: to have a daughter who'd never married, a daughter who happened to be a nurse. Agnes, a strong girl, changed his oxygen tanks without fanfare; for many years a local company, Miners Medical, delivered them to the front door. She could strip his bedsheets almost without disturbing him, a magician's trick.

As miners did, he spent a long time dying. His wife, in those years, seemed sturdy as a tree. Then, ten years into his dying, Mae suffered a sudden stroke and went quietly in her sleep.

Two deaths in a single winter; two funeral Masses. After that Agnes lived alone, in the house her father had left her as payment for her devotion. Three days a week she worked double shifts at the hospital; the other days she slept endlessly. That spring she planted a large garden, as her mother had done. In September she canned sixty quarts of tomatoes.

The following year she planted nothing at all.

She lived on coffee and canned soup, sandwiches made with store-bought bread. Her uniform hung on her like a shroud. Taking in the smock seemed like too much bother, so she ordered new ones from a catalog. Clocks ticked in the quiet house.

This went on for years and would have continued forever if not for a thunderstorm the summer she turned fifty. A tall poplar in the backyard was struck by lightning. By God's design or His clumsiness, it tipped over onto the roof and brought Luke Garman to her door.

T
he day is vivid in her memory: the smells and weather, the trilling birdsong. She woke that morning in the narrow twin bed, hers since childhood, not imagining that everything was about to change.

For three days in a row, the roofers had appeared at dawn. When the noise of their hammering punctured her sleep, Agnes rose and dressed and closed the windows against their shouted conversations, their loud radio that played mostly commercials, the slap of shingles falling to the ground.

The roofers worked shirtless, and called each other by last name. Each hammered at his own pace. Wojick was scrawny and blond-haired. He worked fast but took frequent breaks; the lawn was studded with his cigarette butts. Garman had curly hair and a beard the color of caramel. He worked steadily and took his time.

The third morning, while Agnes was assembling her breakfast, Garman knocked at the kitchen door. He had put on a shirt but hadn't buttoned it. “Can I use your phone?” he asked softly, his voice surprisingly deep.

Up close he was baby-faced, younger than she'd imagined. The beard seemed like a disguise to make him look older, a prop attached with spirit gum, an actor's trick. And yet his grave voice did not belong to a boy. He had a man's voice.

“My partner fell off the ladder. He's all right, but he wants me to call his wife.”

Automatically Agnes went to the sink. “Let me see him,” she said as she scrubbed her hands. “I'm a nurse.”

She followed Garman to the backyard. Wojick lay stretched out on the grass, gripping his shoulder. No blood or abrasions, but his face was white with pain.

“Jesus Christ,” he said through gritted teeth. “I landed on my fucking shoulder.”

Agnes blinked. His gaunt face surprised her. She had seen him only from behind, his worn blue jeans sliding down his hips, and thought him a teenager. She saw now that he was her age.

“Don't move,” she said.

She knelt on the grass. Wojick's skinny chest was sunburned, the blond hair going gray at his throat. She slid her hands beneath his back. “Just relax. Let your body go limp.”

Wojick did, aided probably by whatever he'd been drinking. Leaning over him, she could smell the alcohol fumes rising from his skin.

In a single smooth motion, Agnes lifted his lower back from the ground.

His eyes snapped open. “Whoa. What the hell?”

“You dislocated your shoulder. I moved it back into place.”

She eased him into a seated position, remembering that one of her father's sisters—he'd had seven—had married a Wojick. This Wojick, if he was aware of the connection, seemed unlikely to care.

“Holy shit.” Gingerly he felt his shoulder, as if making sure it was still there. “That's some trick.”

Agnes helped him to his feet. “You should have an X-ray.” She glanced at Garman, who stood watching. “Can you take him to the emergency room?”

“My wife can take me,” said Wojick. “You called her, right?”

“Hold your horses,” Garman said.

Agnes led him back into the house and showed him the telephone, an old rotary model on the kitchen wall.

“My grandmother had one of these,” Garman said.

He dialed a number and spoke softly. Agnes closed her eyes and listened to his voice.

“Franny, it's Luke. Ken took a header. He's all right, but he wants you to come get him.”

Luke, Agnes thought.

L
ater, after Wojick's wife had come and gone, Agnes went outside with a glass of cold water. The afternoon was muggy and still, no breeze blowing. Luke was kneeling on the grass, collecting shingles into a pile. His back was tanned and freckled, the skin peeling at the shoulders. His beard looked very soft.

“Here.” She handed him the glass, struck by how easy it was. For three days he had labored in the hot sun. At any point she might have brought him a glass of water. Why had she waited so long?

He took it and drank deeply, half the glass in one gulp.

“What you did before,” he said. “My buddy didn't thank you.”

“That's all right,” Agnes said.

“He's not usually like that.” He stood. “Watch your step. There are nails everywhere.”

They both looked down at her bare feet—bony and white, the second toe longer than it should be. She felt a sudden urge to apologize for her feet. “He'll need to rest his shoulder,” she said instead. “For a few weeks, at least.”

“That's okay. I can finish without him. One more day should do it.”

Agnes shaded her eyes and looked up at the roof.

“Your gutters are shot,” Luke told her. “I can replace them if you want. I can work up a price tomorrow.”

“I thought you were a roofer.”

“I do everything.” He drained the glass and handed it back to her. His mouth looked moist and shiny. His fingers had left an imprint on the sweaty glass.

H
ow they became what they are is a question she's stopped asking. She accepts it as she accepts other miracles, the Resurrection and Ascension. A few she has witnessed firsthand—spontaneous remissions, children sick with leukemia who recovered without warning—but none involved her personally. Luke is the most remarkable thing that's ever happened to her, the only one, really. The great mystery of her life.

“I'm fifty years old,” she told him only once. “Old enough to be your mother.”

“My mother is dead,” he said.

She'd died young, an aggressive cancer. At the end she'd cried tears of joy, ready to meet her personal Savior. After that her boys had run wild, looking for trouble. In Baltimore, where the family had settled, trouble was easily found.

“We never should have left Bakerton” was all Luke would say about it. “From that day on, everything went to hell.”

It seemed unkind to point out that certain things would have happened anyway, that cancer didn't care where you lived.

In Agnes's room they pushed the twin beds together, the only possible solution. There were no double beds in the house.

Though she wanted to, she did not apologize for her feet, or any other part of her. She didn't tell him
, I've never done this before.
She imagined it was obvious enough.

The act itself was not quite what she'd pictured. The main difference was the presence of herself. Her fantasies, always, had involved other people: beautiful women desired, handsome men enraptured. They were late-night thoughts, unbidden and unwanted, secret movies playing in her head. She, Agnes Lubicki, never appeared in these films. Occasionally she wondered: did other women, normal women, have similar fantasies? Or did they dream only about themselves?

T
he summer unrolled like a satin ribbon. In the evening, after supper, they sat on the back porch until sunset. When the sky was dark, she followed him to the bedroom. Luke was an early riser: exhausted by nine o'clock, wide awake at dawn.

Was it strange that, lying in his arms, Agnes thought of her mother? Though hard to imagine, it was probably true: at one time, long ago, Mae had known a similar happiness. Agnes thought of her sister in the house across town, lying next to Andy Carnicella. They'd shared a bed for so many years that it must seem commonplace.

She thought of her own young womanhood, gone without her noticing: her twenties and thirties, her forties, even, each decade much like the last. It was pointless to wonder, now, how the years had escaped her. The hundreds of days—thousands—when she might have brought a man a glass of water, and changed the course of her life.

The house and the yard were their whole world. Luke had suggested, once or twice, going out to eat, but Agnes found reasons not to. Her mother had disdained restaurants. The prices offended her—Mae called them
highway robbery—
but the truth, Agnes knew, was more complex. Crowds, even small ones, had alarmed her. Each Sunday she'd given herself a silent talking-to, to work up the nerve to walk into church. I'm not like her, Agnes told herself often. All day long, at work, she spoke to nurses and doctors and patients. Restaurants did not scare her. She simply preferred eating at home.

August was a dry month, good for house painting. Luke was perched on a ladder when Terri's car pulled into the driveway. She came in without knocking and found Agnes in the kitchen fixing supper. She pointed out the window. “Who's he?”

“He's painting the house,” Agnes said.

“I can see that.” Terri's eyes narrowed. “I saw Mrs. Lipnic at the market. She says his truck is parked here at all hours.”

Agnes busied herself at the sink. “He's been doing some work for me. He replaced the gutters and the fence.”

Terri's eyes darted around the room, to Luke's boots lined up at the door, his can of snuff on the table, his jacket hanging from a hook on the wall.

“He's living here,” she said in a low voice. “You're living here together. In Mum and Daddy's house.”

“Go home,” Agnes said softly. Go home to your husband. Let me have something.

“Do you really think he loves you?” Terri asked.

It was the look on her face as she asked the question, the scorn and disbelief, that made Agnes say what she said next:

“I'm selling the house.”

Terri looked stunned. “You
can't.
Daddy wanted you to live here. That's why he left it to you.”

He's dead, Agnes thought. They're both dead. And I am still alive.

“Agnes, why?”

“I need the money.” The lie rolled easily off her tongue. For twenty-eight years she'd worked double shifts. The large paychecks had gone into a savings account. She had never paid rent or taken a vacation. Her car, a frugal Ford Escort, was bought in cash ten years ago. “Don't worry. I'll give you half.”

Terri stared at her, her face crumpling. She was near tears. “Agnes, what's happened to you?”

U
nderpriced, the house sold quickly. “What's your hurry?” the agent asked, disappointed by the small commission. “You're giving away the store.”

Agnes knew it was true. Her mother's voice haunted her—
You're throwing away good money—
but she was learning to ignore it. Her time with Luke was beyond price. Their life together was a stolen thing—the months of happiness, years maybe, though she couldn't imagine being that lucky. She had the sensation, often, of living someone else's life. Sooner or later its rightful owner would steal it back.

Knowing this, she paid attention. She noticed everything: Luke shaving at her bathroom mirror, drinking coffee in her kitchen; his clean shirts spinning in her dryer in a dance of wild joy. From time to time the thought ambushed her: Someday I will be alone again. When the time came, she would manage. Solitude was an ache she knew, as familiar as her own body. She could bear to be alone again, but not in her parents' silent house.

I
n the afternoon she vacuums the trailer, ignoring the telephone. She roasts a chicken for supper and takes Ore-Ida french fries from the freezer. They are her favorite food; she marvels at their uniform size and shape. Her mother grew potatoes by the bushel and stored them in the cellar. If she could see Agnes now, spending two dollars for a bag of frozen french fries! Made from scratch, they would cost twenty cents.

Again and again the phone rings. It strikes her as unusually shrill, an echo of her sister's voice. Certain telephones, she knows, can display the number of the person calling, but the phone company charges extra for this service. Her mother's thrift is an inherited disease, one she can't quite shake.

“Finally,” Luke says when she answers. “I've been calling you all day.” A large engine hums in the background. He shouts to be heard over the noise.

“I thought it was my sister,” says Agnes. “She stopped by this morning.”

“What did she want?”

To take me back, she thinks. To take me away from you.

“Where are you?” she asks. “I can barely hear you.”

“At the site. We finished early.” He's started working for an old buddy, Rick Marstellar, who gets state contracts to clean up contaminated lands. Unlike other businesses in Saxon County, Rick Marstellar's is thriving. There is a great deal here to clean up.