The Virtues of Oxygen (24 page)

Connor was putting prices on his individual X
box games.

“Hey, Phoebe,” he said. “I didn’t know you wer
e coming.”

Though Connor was thirteen and Phoebe was twelve, they looked like they came from two different eras. Phoebe had the battered air of a retired schoolteacher, while Connor still seemed like a child and sometimes watched cartoons on Saturday morning. Holly could attribute some of the difference to gender, but both had had to deal with adult issues like death and divorce, foreclosure and bankruptcy. She didn’t know why Phoebe had the kind of fatigue and resentment that wasn’t supposed to settle in until at le
ast forty.

Henderson pulled Holly aside as Connor showed Phoebe around the display of s
ale items.

“We’re in trouble,” he said, pulling on the collar of his crew-neck sweater. “It’s Aunt Muriel’
s casket.”

“I know. Desdemona told me she’s been getting calls from a collectio
n agency.”

“We’ve got to find the money. They can’t come after me right now because of the bankruptcy, but I know this kind of company. They won’t rest until they get it out of o
ne of us.”

“And there’s no way to get the money from Mom’s estate?” Holly said, wishing she didn’t sound so d
esperate.

“It’s too late. We should have thought about it before she had
a stroke.”

Holly looked around at the tables piled with the junk she hoped to sell that day. One table was completely filled with old music books that Marshall and Connor had been required to buy while learning their ins
truments.

“I’m looking at bringing in, what, a hundred bucks today?” she said. “I don’t think that’ll make much o
f a dent.”

Phoebe came up to Henderson, still holding her trombone case. “What do you want me to do,” she said
, sighing.

“First, put that down somewhere,” Henderson said. “Then ask Connor if you can man the money box or something. Look, here’s Aunt D
esdemona.”

Desdemona walked up to Phoebe and draped a gauzy scarf around her
shoulders.

“You look lovely, dahling,” Desde
mona said.

Holly was surprised to see Phoebe smile, but Desdemona had always had a special connection with her. Something about Phoebe’s awkwardness brought out Desdemona’s entertai
ning side.

“Keep it,” Desdemona said. “It s
uits you.”

A car pulled up, and Holly looked out the window. She thought her first customer had arrived well ahead of the 10 a.m. start time in her ad, but a teenager got out and waved the car off. It was the girl she had seen with Marshall at the mall. Marshall came bounding down the stairs and ran outside to bring his girlfriend into t
he house.

“Mom,” he said, “this is Emily. We’ll come back up when it’s time to start selli
ng stuff.”

“H
i, Emily.”

Emily, whose jet-black hair now had a bright pink streak in it, nodded at Holly and gave her a quick smile, then followed Marshall down into the
basement.

“Believe it or not, that’s progress,” Holly said to Henderson and D
esdemona.

Right then the first customers rolled up to the house, still well before the advertised start time, and the line of people in and out the door didn’t stop for several hours. Holly’s initial humiliation at having strangers pawing through her shabby belongings disappeared when she realized that the pickers made no connection with the people selling the goods and the goods themselves. They were simply looking for a bargain in whatever form it might take. When a bearded man asked her how much she wanted for her faux–Pottery Barn floor lamp, which wasn’t even for sale, she said “Fifty.” He peeled the cash off a large roll, unplugged the lamp, and walked out the door without even looking at the rest of the me
rchandise.

In the early afternoon, she made sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade and gave everyone turns in the basement to eat, which flushed Marshall and his girlfriend back into the light. He and Emily stood behind the table with Marshall’s possessions on it, looking as if they wanted to hold hands but couldn’t. Holly found it both sweet and sad that her son had moved into this painful stage of life, especially without a father to guide him. She worried about how he would react when this Emily broke his heart, which seemed inevitable, though she knew there would be other Emilys in quick s
uccession.

In the late afternoon, just as things seemed to be winding down, Holly heard another car pull up. Henderson looked out t
he window.

“That’s a pretty nice Jaguar,” he said, snorting. “This guy doesn’t look like he needs any secondhand f
urniture.”

Holly saw Racine coming up the walk just in time to run upstairs and shut the bathroom door. She needed a moment to prepare, to sort out her reaction, and to pull her hair out of its frazzled
ponytail.

“Holly,” Henderson called up the stairs. “There’s someone here to
see you.”

“Be right down,” she called, trying to sound nonchalant, though her voice broke in the middle of “down.” She couldn’t imagine why Racine had chosen this moment to reappear, especially without giving her som
e warning.

CHAPTER 29

A
s Racine walked in the door, the scene of strangers rifling through her family’s things receded into soft focus for Holly. Racine was smiling, and this alone made her feel better, despite all her questions, despite losing her home, despite how miserable she felt about the boys. She realized all at once how much she had missed him and how he energized the air i
n a room.

“Holly,” he said, kissing her lightly. Though she had never noticed it before, she saw that Racine, too, had lines around his eyes when h
e smiled.

“What are you doing here?” she said. She sensed that she was smiling, but she seemed to have no control over
her face.

“I needed to see you,” Racine said. “Can we talk s
omewhere?”

“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. She ducked into the hall closet and emerged with a long coat, a scarf, and a hat over one arm, then noticed that Racine was only wearing a suit jacket. “Never mind. F
ollow me.”

She led him to the kitchen, which was at least outside the line of sight for all of the family members and estate sale stragglers in the living room. She offered him one of the four wooden chairs that surrounded the small kitchen table and took one of t
he others.

Racine reached into his pocket and pulled out a small ring case. He placed it on the table. After a brief moment of displacement when she thought he might be proposing, Holly picked it up and opened it. It was her moth
er’s ring.

“It’s yours again,” he said. “I’m sorry it took
so long.”

Holly took the ring out of the box and let the yellow kitchen light bounce off the facets of the diamond. The ring looked as if it had bee
n cleaned.

“I did some research, then I brought it to my boss and told him that the ring had been stolen,” Racine began. “From a rehab hospital of al
l places.”

Holly looked at Racine, whose brow was raised enough to show her he was sincerely troubled. She realized very suddenly, sitting in the unflattering light of her own kitchen, that he was not some wheeler-dealer who descended on small towns to suction up their gold without a look back. Maybe it was his slight accent that had given her the wrong impression. No, he was a middle-aged man with a smile that had made it a little too easy for him to get women. So easy, in fact, that he didn’t have to pick a place, a time, a relationship in which to invest. But she also sensed that he was searching for something more than wha
t he had.

“He denied it, of course, but I kept asking him to show me the paper trail,” Racine said. “So finally he admitted that his resale sources didn’t always have the paperwork to back up their merchandise, but he wanted the ring back, so I threatened to call the police. That’s when he
fired me.”

“No,” she said, putting a hand over h
er mouth.

“I would have quit anyway. But when he heard me say I was going to the police, he suddenly decided that I could keep the ring. No questions asked. As long as I keep my mo
uth shut.”

“So now we’re both une
mployed.”

“What happened to
your job?”

“The chain is shutting down,” Holly said, her mouth a straight line. “We’re apparently not making enough money to keep the investors happy. That’s what this sale is all about. I’m losing my house. I didn’t want to tell you, but the boys and I are moving in with Vivian. We have noth
ing left.”

Racine shook his head. “Don’t say that. You’ll figure this out. It’s only a temporary
setback.”

The words fell to the floor, burdened with uselessness. They both lo
oked down.

“What will you do?” she sai
d quietly.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, whisking away their seriousness with a wave of his hand. “I’ve saved a fair amount of money. I’ll look for another business to invest in, but I’ll run it myself t
his time.”

Holly looked at the ring again, wishing she could put it back on her mother’s finger but knowing what had to be done. “How much do you think this i
s worth?”

“We’d have to weigh it and have the appraisers look, but that’s a large, high-quality diamond. My guess is ten to twelve
thousand.”

“Enough to cover a casket that’s already in the ground. With a little l
eft over.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Holly said, racing out into the living room. She showed the ring to Desdemona, who sank into a chair behind her sales table wit
h relief.

Henderson nodded his head and said, “Aunt Muriel won’t be repossessed. One d
ebt paid.”

Holly had left Racine in the kitchen, but when she returned to bring him out for introductions, he was already standing by the b
ack door.

“I really need to get back to the city,” he said. “I have a lot of business to
wrap up.”

“Of course,” she said. “I un
derstand.”

Racine nodded, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, and then left. Holly, who didn’t really understand, watched him walk down the sidewalk in his thin European shoes, which must have allowed him to feel every pebble.
He’ll look back
, she thought,
and if he does, he’s not walking away from me forever. It’s me
ant to be
.

But Racine didn’t look back. He kept walking, his head bowed against
the cold.

A week after the tag sale, Holly sent her house keys to the bank in a padded envelope with a note explaining that she couldn’t keep up the payments. Dropping the envelope into the mailbox was both wrenching—failure and loss in equal measures—and freeing, since it meant she didn’t have a mortgage anymore. The hardest part was that she had let Chris down. She hadn’t managed to hold on to his dream. But then again the house was never really them. The boys were them, and their future mattered more than any inanimate structure, even one with great bones. She made six trips back and forth to Vivian’s house with the family’s pared-down belongings stuffed into he
r Subaru.

Vivian smiled broadly as they came in the door with the first batch of belongings. “Look in your room, boys,” she said. “I have surprises
for you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Holly said. “You’re already keeping us off th
e street.”

“I know. But I wanted to see their faces. They need a little joy r
ight now.”

Marshall emerged with tears in his eyes holding an
envelope.

“She gave me driving lessons, Mom. The whole package. All the classes and everything. I can get my
license.”

“Vivian, it’s too much,” Holly said, caught between gratitude and frustration that she couldn’t provide the classe
s herself.

“Hush now,” Vivian said, smiling at Marshall. “He’s a young man. He needs to get behind the wheel of a car and cause mischief. That’s what teen
agers do.”

Holly put an arm around Marshall, who sat down on the couch, clutching his envelope. Connor emerged next, holding a large box he had
unwrapped.

“It’s a PlayStation,” he said softly. “I can’t be
lieve it.”

“I want you to be happy here,” Vivian said. “I want you to feel like this is your home. Your friends are welcome
anytime.”

Both Connor and Marshall gave Vivian awkward pecks on the cheek as Holly wiped a
way tears.

“You are too much,” H
olly said.

“No, I’m just enough,” Vivian said. “Just barel
y enough.”

As Marshall and Connor left to haul another load of bags and boxes from the car, Holly and Vivian talked about Racine’s re
velations.

“I’ve already been looking into selling my interest,” Vivian said. “I can’t do business with
a thief.”

“I feel like it’s my fault,” Holly said. “If I hadn’t seen the ring, everything would have b
een fine.”

“Holly, in no way is this your fault. It’s a sign of how little you can trust people in the business world anymore.” Vivian sighed and turned her head so that she faced the window. “With the exception of you and your boys, I’m feeling very negative about humanity right now. Sometimes I just get tired of all the terrible things people do to each other, as if disease and the wrath of nature didn’t cause enough s
uffering.”

Holly could have countered her with all the generosity she herself had just shown to people who weren’t even related to her, but she mainly agreed with Vivian. Sometimes the pain people inflicted on each other in the name of money or fame or random willfulness was just
too much.

“You’re right,” she said. “Peo
ple suck.”

Vivian smiled and turned her head back to face Holly. “I love that you know when I can’t be talked out of a mood, no matter how irrational. We’re all going to get along j
ust fine.”

After a few days of settling into Vivian’s house, Holly arrived at the office with several large tote bags. The newspaper had two more weeks to operate, but she knew it would take her that long to sort through her office, which was a storehouse of memorabilia from all the stories she had covered over
the years.

She picked up a dusty eggplant-shaped ceramic dish, which she had bought at the opening of the Bertram Corners Farmers Market a few years ago, when farmers suddenly realized that people living near them might actually want to buy their fresh fruits and vegetables. She placed the dish carefully into the bottom of a tote bag. She threw a stack of old newspapers into the recycling bin and behind them found a round campaign-style button from when she had covered a wheelchair-rugby tournament. She remembered getting choked up behind the camera as the men in wheelchairs clashed and sweated harder than professional athletes, so determined were they to prove they had not lost their masculinity. She put the button into the tote bag, too, afraid to lose the triggers that held up her memory like magnets on a refrigerator. The tight weave of Bertram Corners was the only thing that kept her from complete despair, even as the shuddering economy might have pitted its residents against each other. And there was Vivian, their most valuable municipal project, and the spiritual center of a town that otherwise might have los
t its way.

“Holly, do you have a
minute?”

Darla came into her office with the Sister Sisters following clo
se behind.

“The sisters heard we would be closing soon,” Darla said. “And they wanted to stop by to show their
support.”

“We brought you muffins,” one sister said, placing a small, cloth-covered basket on Hol
ly’s desk.

Finally, Holly thought, after all these years, she was now the muffin recipient, the object of pity for two elde
rly nuns.

“Thank you so much, Sisters,” Holly said. “We really appreciate the
gesture.”

“It’s just so unfair . . .” both sisters started. They looked at each other an
d laughed.

“We’re always doing that,” said Eileen, the one with the green eye, whose name Holly could finally remember. “We start and finish each other’s s
entences.”

“Anyway,” said Eleanor. “We just think it’s terrible that your newspaper won’t be around anymore. We rely on it. How else would we know about the deaths and the births and when people are in need? It’s absolutely essential to
the town.”

“That’s so nice of you to say,” Holly said. “We feel the same way, but it’s all about the bottom line these days. The company doesn’t think it’s making enou
gh money.”

“We also heard you were selling your house,” Eleanor said. “We hope you’re not moving out
of town.”

It was a perfectly innocent remark, but Holly almost couldn’t find her voice to answer. She didn’t want the sisters’ baked goods, or Vivian’s extra bedrooms. She wanted desperately to be the giver—the dispenser of muffins and the owner of a much-used guest room with clean, crisp high-thread-count sheets and thick, warm
blankets.