What Was Mine: & Other Stories (22 page)

The buzzing behind his head this time was a mosquito. He turned and clapped his hands, then flicked the black body from his palm. He looked where it fell and saw that radishes had begun to sprout. He had grown them as a child: radishes and tomatoes, in a big cedar tub on his mother’s porch. He suddenly remembered his heartache—heartache!—when, on one of his infrequent visits, his father had pulled up radish after radish, to see if they had formed yet. Only swollen white worms dangled below the leaves. After his father pulled four or five, Chap reached out and put his hand on his father’s wrist. His father stopped. His father had been perplexed, as if he had been guaranteed a prize simply for reaching out and pulling, and he had gotten nothing. Chap had been named for his mother’s brother, Chaplin J. Anderson—the J. for Jerome. His uncle had been his father figure, coming every weekend until he moved to the West Coast when Chap was fifteen or sixteen. Sixteen, it must have been, because Chaplin had been teaching him to drive. He died mountain-climbing, when Chap was in his second year of college. After that, his mother was never the same. She turned to a cousin—crazy Cousin Marshall—who suddenly became, in spite of his belief in the spirit world and his railing against Ezra Pound as if the man still lived, a pillar of sanity. And now, since his mother’s death, he was saddled with Marshall, because he had been kind to his mother. He arranged to have Marshall’s road plowed in winter; sent him thermal underwear. But since Marshall’s dogs, Romulus and Remus, died, he had been increasingly sad and bitter. Would he have another dog? No. Would he take a little trip on the weekend—get away from the house with the dog bed and the sad memories? Not even if Chap sent a check for a million dollars. Didn’t his belief in the afterlife offer him some consolation? Silence on the telephone. Marshall was now eighty-one years old. He would not move out of his house but would not have it insulated because he thought
all
insulation was poison. Chap would barely have known Marshall if his mother had not sought him out. Now he was often vaguely worried about Marshall’s health, his depression, his naïveté, which could well get him into trouble those times he ventured into the big city of Hanover, N.H.

With his bag full of greens, Chap quickened his step as he walked toward the house. He saw that a wasp nest had begun to form next to the drainpipe. Inside, he heard the coffee machine perking. He had always had keen hearing. Passing the open window, he looked through the screen and saw Fran searching through a kitchen drawer. Even at home, she always misplaced the corkscrew, scissors, and apple slicer. Fran had a circular implement that could be placed over an apple and pushed down to core it and separate the apple into sections. She believed in eating an apple a day. Whatever else she believed in these days was a mystery. In saving the rain forest—that was what she believed. In banning pesticides. She also believed in cotton sheets and linen pants, even though they wrinkled.

He opened the door, knowing he was doing her an injustice. She was a very intelligent woman, gifted in more ways than she liked to admit. And, in fact, she was usually the one who took Marshall’s calls. She also wrote polite notes when he sent books depicting the archangels.

“Maybe in the daylight,” she muttered, still riffling through the drawer. He smiled; it had become a standing joke between them that everything in the house, and by extension everything, period, would come clear in the light of day.

On their third day in the house daylight had revealed one of Anthony’s jokes: a piece of rubber shaped and painted to look like a melted chocolate-covered ice-cream bar. Chap had peeked at blueprints rolled up on Lou’s drafting table. Fran had put fresh flowers throughout the house. She was reading
War and Peace
and listening to the Brunettis’ collection of classical CDs, though earlier in the morning she had been leafing through a
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
comic and listening to an old Lou Reed record. The elderly woman whose picture was on the refrigerator turned out to be a neighbor who cleaned house for the Brunettis once a week. She took an instant liking to Fran, once she saw the flowers set out in vases. She said the photograph on the refrigerator had been taken by Anthony during the strawberry festival the year before. He had wanted to catch her with a beard of whipped cream, but she had licked it away too fast. Chap had seen her—Mrs. Brikel—the other time he visited, and this time he had held his breath, hoping she would not remember their meeting. From the way her eyes flickered, he had thought she was going to say something, then decided against it.

Fran said, as if she had tuned in to his thoughts: “Mrs. Brikel called and said she wants to give us half an apple pie. Wasn’t that nice of her? We’ll have to think of something to do for her before we leave.”

The Brunettis’ pictures and postcards on the refrigerator had been joined by two postcards forwarded from Fran and Chap’s: a detail of a stained-glass window at the Matisse chapel, sent by a friend of Fran’s who was traveling through France, and a picture of her niece’s new baby, propped up in her mother’s arm, eyes closed.

“Would you mind going over to Mrs. Brikel’s?” Fran said. “I said the least we could do would be to walk over and get our share of pie.”

He put the bag on the counter. “Drop all this in the sink and splatter it with water,” he said. “I’ll be back in a flash.” He had gone out the door and closed it before he thought to open it again and ask whether Mrs. Brikel lived to the left or the right.

“Right,” Fran said, pointing.

He closed the door again. Two or three mosquitoes trailed him, hovering near the center of his body as he cut across the grass. He tried to swat them away, quickening his step. A jogger went by on the road, a big black Lab keeping time with him as he ran. A car honked when it passed, for no reason. He looked after the dog, who reminded him of Romulus, and wondered briefly whether it might be nice to have a dog.

“Could you smell it baking?” Mrs. Brikel asked, opening the door. She was smiling a bright smile. Her eyes were not particularly bright, though, and the smile began to fade when he did not answer instantly.

“There’s no breeze,” he said. “Isn’t there always supposed to be a breeze in Vermont? If we had some wind, those mosquitoes couldn’t land the way they do.” He flicked one off his elbow. He entered the house quickly, smiling to make up for his lack of cheerfulness a few seconds before.

“I thought I’d bake a pie, and I would have made blueberry, but I came down this morning and saw my son had eaten every one for breakfast,” she said. “I usually don’t make apple pies except for fall, but your wife said apples were a favorite of hers.”

In the gloom of Mrs. Brikel’s back room, he saw another person: a tall boy, watching television. The shades were dropped. His feet were propped up on a footstool. Guns exploded. Then he changed the channel. Someone was singing, “What happened to the fire in your voice?” Someone laughed uproariously on a quiz show. The sound of a buzzer obliterated more gunfire.

“What’s your favorite pie?” Mrs. Brikel said. She had turned. He followed her into the kitchen. There was a wooden crucifix on the wood panel separating the windows over the sink. There were two rag rugs on the floor. A little fan circulated air. “All the screens are out being repaired,” Mrs. Brikel said. “I sure wouldn’t open the windows with these mosquitoes.”

In the kitchen, the aroma was strong. Chap could actually feel his mouth water as Mrs. Brikel cut into the pie.

“I’d give it all to you, but that it upsets him,” Mrs. Brikel said, nodding over her shoulder. Chap turned and looked. There was no one in the doorway. She was referring to the person watching television.

“I was all set to make two, but I ran out of flour,” Mrs. Brikel said. “That’s always the way: you remember to buy the little things, but you’re always running out of the big things like milk and flour.”

There were stickers of dancing dinosaurs on the window ledge. He looked at the refrigerator. Long strips of stickers hung there, taped at the top: stickers of birthday cakes and little animals holding umbrellas, pinwheels of color, multicolored star stickers.

“He knows you’re taking half the pie,” Mrs. Brikel said, tilting the dish. Half the pie slid free, landing perfectly on a plate. “That’s what he knows,” she said, talking to herself. She opened a drawer, pulled off a length of Saran Wrap, and spread it over the pie, tucking it under the plate.

“This is
very
kind of you, Mrs. Brikel,” he said. Without her saying anything directly, he assumed that the person in the living room was her son and that there was something wrong with him. The TV changed from muffled rifle shots to girls singing.

“I love to bake in the winter,” Mrs. Brikel said, “but come summer I don’t often think of it, except that we have to have our homemade bread. Yes we do,” she said, her voice floating off a little. He looked at the half pie. He knew he should thank her again and leave, but instead he leaned against the kitchen counter. “Mrs. Brikel,” he said, “do you remember me?”

“Do I what?” she said.

“We met, briefly. It was during the winter. Lou and I were backing out of the driveway and you and your son—or I guess it was your son, walking in front of you—were coming up the driveway …”

“In the car with Mr. Brunetti?” Mrs. Brikel said. “You were up here at the end of that big winter storm, then.”

“I was pretty surprised to find myself here,” he said. “Lou called me when Pia went in for surgery.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Brikel said, bowing her head. “That was an awful day.”

“Not as bad for us as for Pia,” he said. He looked at the plate covered in Saran Wrap. He wanted to say something else, but wasn’t sure what.

“But now she seems to be coming along well,” Mrs. Brikel said.

“My wife doesn’t know I was here,” he said. “I was quite surprised, to tell you the truth, that Lou asked me to come. I told my wife I was visiting my cousin in New Hampshire.”

“Well, you were good to do it,” Mrs. Brikel said. She ran her hand along the counter edge. She thumbed away an imaginary spot of dirt.

“My wife doesn’t know about the trip because Lou asked me not to tell her,” he said. “It’s a funny thing, but I guess there are some things women don’t want other women to know.”

Mrs. Brikel looked slightly perplexed, then dropped her eyes. If he was going to continue, he would have to think of what to say. The TV was changing from station to station in the other room.

“Lou thought Pia wasn’t only upset to be losing a breast, but worried that with her breast gone, she’d …” He let his voice drift, then started again. “She was worried, Lou thought, that she’d lose stature in my wife’s eyes. That’s not true, of course. My wife is a very kind woman. Pia apparently worshiped Fran, and she must have thought the operation would …” He faltered. “Would distance them,” he said.

He had never tried to articulate this before. He had tried, many times, to remember exactly what Lou had said, but even a second after he heard it, it had seemed confusing and puzzling. This was the best paraphrase he could manage: that Pia had taken some crazy notion into her head, in her anxiety. To this day, Pia did not know that he knew she had had a mastectomy. Lou had not wanted him to visit Pia, but to go to the bar with him at night and have a few drinks and shoot pool. On the way back to Fran, he had detoured to Marshall’s house in New Hampshire, taken him on errands, left him with a new jack for his car and with new washers on the faucets. He told Fran that he had spent four days there, when really he had spent only one. He had been at the Brunettis’ the other three days. Anthony had been sent to stay with a family friend. At night, Lou had ducked his head through Anthony’s bedroom door, though, before turning off the downstairs lights. Chap did not know whether Lou had any other close friends. Until Lou called, he had assumed that of course he did—but maybe they were just acquaintances. Couples in the community.

“It’s a strange reaction,” he said, pushing away from the counter. He had kept Mrs. Brikel too long, imposed on her by making her listen to a story that wasn’t even really a story. He looked at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Well, I don’t know,” Mrs. Brikel said. “I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of these matters. I think Pia’s doing much better though, now that the treatments she’s had have been successful.”

He followed Mrs. Brikel to the door. He had not intended to ask any more questions, and was surprised to hear himself asking one more.

“Do they seem happy here?” he said.

She dropped her eyes again. “Anthony loves it,” she said. “So much to do in the winter, and all. I don’t know Mr. Brunetti very well because we go to bed early around here, and he’s a late one coming home. But Pia, you mean? Pia I wouldn’t say likes it very much. Of course, she’s had a very bad year.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” he said. “I think I’ve been upset about the past year myself, and Lou isn’t the most talkative man.”

“He isn’t,” Mrs. Brikel said.

“Where’s my pie?” a voice called from the dark front room. The TV went silent. There was a long pause, and then it started up again. Mrs. Brikel looked in her son’s direction. “Pie’s on the counter,” she said quietly to Chap, as if he had been the one who asked the question.

“Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Brikel,” he said, holding out his hand. She shook it and smiled slightly. “Keeps me with something to do while the Wild West is won every day,” she said. “I’d relive all the wars and hear nothing but gunfire if I didn’t play the kitchen radio and make some pies and bread.”

“I sneak cigarettes,” he said. “Fran doesn’t know it, but after lunch, at work, I light up. One cigarette a day.”

This brought a bigger, more genuine smile from Mrs. Brikel.

“Okay, then,” she said, as he started down the walkway.

He would tell Fran, if she asked, that he had done some minor repair to help Mrs. Brikel. The coffee would still be hot; he would have some coffee with the apple pie.

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