Byrd Read online

  How long do African violets live? Is it possible the blue one in Janet’s window is the same one as before, that she’s kept it alive this long? The picture of Janet’s children is different, though the children haven’t changed much—older but still plain looking, in a plain wooden frame.

  “I was hoping you could give me an update,” Addie says. “I was hoping maybe you’d gotten another letter.”

  “I’m sorry,” Janet says. “I haven’t. The parents don’t have to send updates, and I can’t ask. I can’t contact them at all unless”—she gives Addie a meaningful look—“I have updated medical history for them. That kind of information can sometimes generate a response.”

  “Updated medical history like my father died?”

  “Yes,” Janet says, and makes a note in the file. “I’m so sorry. When?”

  “In 1994, of a heart attack. You can tell them that.”

  The Readery has moved from the old neighborhood to a strip mall on Holden Road. The new store is big and square and bright, with plate-glass windows and fluorescent lights and wall-to-wall carpet and a three-person staff. A smell not of books but of carpet deodorizer. No peeling wallpaper, no dusky yellow lamplight, no late-night hours, no professors camped in battered armchairs, arguing.

  “I had to sell the house,” John Dunn says. “Business exigencies.”

  He and Addie are in his office drinking Starbucks coffee. His walls are bare, his desk is metal. His padded chair swivels and rocks. He is different, too. His beard is gone, and his big glasses; his eyes look weak and tired. He’s wearing an ordinary blue button-down oxford shirt. Addie has to remind herself he is the same man he always was, her old boss, her old landlord, her friend who took her to the hospital and stayed with her and gave her gifts and made her laugh.

  Now he’s telling her about his divorce, how his English-professor wife moved to England with another woman. “She looks like me,” he says about the other woman. “I guess that should make me feel better.”

  “With or without the beard?”

  It’s late when she gets back to Raleigh. William brings over burritos from their favorite takeout. Also a ripe avocado, which he peels, slices, and arranges on a small plate. He drizzles on lime juice. He is always feeding her.

  “I’m not hungry,” she says.

  He sits down and unwraps his burrito. “When are you going to tell me?” he says.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Whatever it is you aren’t telling me.”

  His eyes are the saddest brown. She wonders if she will ever deserve him. “I don’t know,” she says.

  The next day she makes an appointment with a lawyer, a young woman reputed to be the most aggressive family lawyer in Raleigh. Thanks to a cancellation, the lawyer has an opening in her schedule that afternoon.

  The lawyer has short sleek hair and a sleek suit, red with black piping on the lapel. Her office is a gallery of diplomas and awards, all expensively matted and framed. As Addie talks, the lawyer narrows her eyes as if to demonstrate that she is listening intensely. It’s this intensity, Addie supposes, that justifies the lawyer’s hourly rate.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Addie asks after laying out her predicament.

  “To find your son? No,” the lawyer says. “Not yet, and you shouldn’t waste another minute thinking about it. But you have to tell the father. You have to tell him now.”

  Comfort Sweet

  “I almost didn’t come,” Addie says.

  “I didn’t want to,” Shelia says. “It was Danny’s idea. These people don’t bother him. Nobody bothers Danny.”

  “My store manager, Peale, says you should always go to class reunions because nobody can ever know you as well as the people you grew up with.”

  “That’s because nobody changes,” Shelia says. “Look around. Look at Danny.”

  Danny is across the room by the door to the patio, his glasses reflecting the lights. He’s laughing, shaking hands, slapping backs, saying loudly, “Far out, far out.”

  “It’s pot,” Shelia says. “Pot keeps him in a good mood. We’ve been married twenty-three years. We’ve lived in four houses and raised two daughters. I’ve had two surgeries to fix my eyes. And the whole time, Danny’s been stoned and in a good mood.”

  Dear Roland,

  I went to Carswell for our reunion thinking you might show up, all the way from Nevada. Traveled the Farthest to Attend. What took you to Reno? The class directory listed your wife’s name and your son’s; it listed your job as “show business.” I hope that means music.

  The party was at Comfort Suites (“comfort sweet”) in the ballroom. There were balloons and strings of white lights and a blue-and-orange banner welcoming the Class of ’74. There was a long table with hot hors d’oeuvres. The whole room smelled like Sterno.

  I wore black silk pants and a lacy blouse. I got a few compliments. When people compliment you now, they don’t say you look good, they say you look good for your age.

  It was BYOB and I hadn’t brought a bottle, so I drank cranberry juice and soda all night because setups were free. Nobody but the bartender and Shelia knew the difference. Nobody ever does. People who are getting drunk always assume you are, too.

  Shelia showed me pictures of her girls. She and Danny have twins, Mavis and Alice. I love the names—imperfect rhyme for non-identical twins.

  I showed Shelia pictures of my store.

  “I’d be a terrible parent,” Addie tells Shelia. “I worry too much.”

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” Shelia says. “We’re all terrible parents.”

  I don’t know who started the rumor, but people were saying you were coming, you were there. I kept looking around for you, wondering if I would recognize you. Have you changed much? I imagined you showing up late. You’d have just gotten into town; you’d be starving. You would ask me to come with you to the buffet. A Comfort Sweet lady in a brown uniform would be refilling the artichoke dip, stirring white sludge into white sludge. You’d say, too loud, “Are we supposed to make a meal on this stuff?” We would heap our plates with cheese cubes and meatballs and find a place to sit. We would try to talk but the music would drown us out. You would eat all the meatballs. You’d feed me cheese cubes on a toothpick. Finally the DJ would take a break and the blare would die down and I would work up the nerve to tell you what I’d come to the reunion to tell you, what I’m writing now to tell you. You’d stop eating. Your face would go blank. I wouldn’t know what you were thinking.

  The music would start up again, a slow song. We would dance to keep from talking. And people would see us dancing and say to each other, “Roland and Addie, at last,” not knowing we’d already had our at-last.

  But you didn’t come. Why not?

  So there I was, full of my news and no one to tell it to. Stranded with people like Little Bit, still so tiny I could pick her up. Even in stacked heels she could barely reach the bar to check her tiny pint of rum. She asked me all the usual questions (did she have a checklist in her tiny purse?)—marriage, family, why hadn’t I come back for the last reunion or the one before that? “J.C. and I would never miss one,” she said, meaning J.C. Green, her husband, who was on the dance floor shaking his ass and doing the arm motions to “YMCA.”

  Danny and Addie and Shelia all dance together to “Build Me Up, Buttercup.” “What I want to know,” Danny says, “is why this class can’t hire a DJ who doesn’t suck.”

  Remember Roy, our class president? Roy G. Bivens, like the spectrum? After he got good and drunk, he borrowed the DJ’s microphone and gave a speech. Good old Roy, so goofy and proud. “Aren’t we a good-looking bunch?” he said, though surely our class hasn’t lived up to his expectations. No doctors or politicians or astronauts or actors. One athlete, but he died. One lawyer, but he was disbarred. We’re a class of booksellers, set-builders, medical assistants, mechanics, mill workers, heating and air conditioning crack-asses. We have an average of two point five children. Half of us either stayed
in Carswell or moved back after college. Most who left didn’t go far.

  Still, when Roy smiles his class-president smile and says he’s glad we came, we can’t help but feel okay. Special, even, for having bothered to get dressed up and come out to see each other.

  There’s something I need to tell you. I should have told you a long time ago. I’d hoped to tell you in person at the reunion.

  The child, your child, the one you thought I wasn’t going to have? I had him. Ten years ago in September. I don’t know where he is now, but I’m told he’s with good parents. Better, I’m sure, than we could have been. I’ve thought of looking for him, but everyone says it’s too soon. I have never been known for my timing.

  Sorry for the long letter. Call me and I’ll tell you everything.

  Love, Addie

  At midnight the DJ summons everyone to the dance floor, and people line up and put their hands on each other’s backs to form a love train, love train. Addie stands behind Shelia and latches on and they go chugging around the room. And maybe it’s the song, or all the cranberry fizzes, or sheer relief at having made it through the reunion without having to confront Roland, but Addie doesn’t want to let go. She doesn’t want the train to stop moving.

  Claree, Knitting

  Claree knits to keep her fingers limber. On the backs of her hands are thousands of tiny creases; she doesn’t know when they happened. The hands of an old woman. At least she doesn’t have liver spots like some of her friends.

  Her friends are all grandmothers now. They’re always telling stories about their grandchildren, at church, at Biscuit King, in the grocery store. They act like the only reason to have children is to have grandchildren. They open their pocketbooks and take out pictures. Claree smiles and pretends to be happy for them. They mean no harm.

  Sam’s Margaret isn’t able to have children. Neither is Addie, but for different reasons: no husband, and now, she says, too old. “Some single women adopt,” Claree has pointed out more than once.

  Knit four, yarn over, purl two.

  She has always been careful with her hands, putting on lotion after washing dishes, keeping her nails trimmed and filed in perfect crescents, keeping the cuticles pushed back. If you’re careful with things they’re supposed to last longer. But she is only sixty-two and her hands hurt, so much sometimes that she’s afraid to use them, afraid of the mess she’ll make. She rubs ointment on them—a friend told her about a brand that doesn’t smell like Bengay. She massages them. Wears gloves to bed at night. During the day, she knits.

  Slip two, yarn over, knit two together, purl one.

  No grandchildren. How can she not in her deepest-down heart take that as a judgment?

  She is working with a fluffy pink yarn Addie sent, starting a complicated lace pattern. Addie says the yarn was made by a woman in Chatham County who raises her own sheep. Always the romantic, Addie.

  Sometimes Claree thinks about the child she lost. This was four years after Sam. She and Bryce hadn’t planned another child and couldn’t afford one, so at the time she’d told herself it was just as well. A girl, she was sure, another daughter. One who would have grown up to be clever and good like her other children, but quieter, more content, more like Claree. One who would have stayed close to home, married a local boy, had a child. A grandson for Bryce.

  What does the Bible say? Thou shalt not feel sorry for thyself.

  Repeat row five.

  Even though thou must live the rest of thy days alone.

  When Bryce died, she thought at first she should keep the house exactly as it had been, his chair and ottoman in the middle of the living room, the TV under the picture window. Then she realized it didn’t matter—no one was around to notice if she changed things. The TV went first. She moved it to the den, then got rid of it altogether. Now she listens to the radio. She keeps it tuned to WCSL. The announcers can be irritating but they’re company. She likes the call-in shows best, Talk of the Town, The Birthday Club. She always calls in for Addie and Sam on their birthdays, to hear their names read on the air. Last year Addie’s name was picked in the drawing, a steak dinner for two at John Wayne’s. But Addie was on one of her vegetarian diets, so she told Claree, “You use the coupon. Take a friend.”

  When Claree was first learning to live alone, Addie used to come home almost every weekend. Then she bought her store and moved to Raleigh. Now it’s four, maybe five times a year. She sends mail instead: cards, recipes, newspaper clippings, books of course. She sends yarn and patterns for scarves she hopes Claree will knit for her. She calls. She calls a lot, checking up on Claree, usually with an edge in her voice like she’s in a hurry.

  If Claree should ever really need her, if something should happen, if a fire broke out, if—God forbid—Claree should fall, it would take Addie two hours to get here. A local daughter could rush right over. A local son-in-law could fix the things around her house that keep breaking. Unstick her windows and doors. Replace light bulbs when her hands are stiff.

  This weekend Addie is in town for her class reunion, but she isn’t staying with Claree. She’s rented a room at Comfort Suites, where they’re holding the reunion. It’ll be a late night, Addie says, and she doesn’t want to wake Claree when she comes in, or keep her up waiting. Claree appreciates the thought. Of course she’ll leave the front porch light on anyway, just in case.

  Knit one, purl three.

  Claree would let a grandchild do all the things she never let her children do. Jump on the bed. Stay up late. Make messes. “You’re a mess,” she would say, and gather the child in her arms, and her hands wouldn’t hurt, or if they did it wouldn’t matter. “A little old mess.”

  Rich, Part One

  The first time Elle went fishing with her parents, her father caught a long golden spotted fish with a red gash under its jaw. A cutthroat trout. He pulled out the hook and showed the fish to Elle, his hand pink with watery blood. “Look at its eye,” he said. “See? A fish doesn’t feel.” And threw it back into the lake.

  Elle remembers the eye, that flat look, the trout’s fear that it was already dead.

  She’s been pawning things—jewelry, her mother’s silver, things she thinks no one will miss. The last thing was Roland’s guitar, the one he’d had since high school, an old Strat he hadn’t taken out of the closet since their last move. She’s been borrowing money from her aunt and uncle. They never ask questions. This is their way of being kind.

  She wishes they would ask questions.

  If they asked, she would tell them the truth. I’m losing, she would say. I’ve been losing for a long time. She practices in her mirror, silently, watching her mouth form the words.

  The only way to change her luck is to quit playing. She decides this will be her last morning at her machine. She’s only come to say good-bye.

  She has to wait. There’s another woman in her seat, a tall woman with white hair and perfect posture. The woman is perfectly calm, even when she hits a four of a kind. She plays the way Elle never learned to—as if she’s used to winning.

  The Reno post office is a big stone building, cool as a tomb. For Elle, picking up the mail is more than a routine errand. She’s intercepting evidence: late notices, collection letters. Today, two yellow envelopes with glaring red past-due stamps. Also a pale blue envelope addressed to Roland. The return address—Raleigh, North Carolina—is unfamiliar. The handwriting is a woman’s. Small, delicate, controlled.

  She puts the letter in her purse to read later. For now, she has more important business. She is going to see her aunt and uncle. She’s going to tell them the trouble she’s in. They won’t be happy but they will forgive her; they’re forgiving people. They won’t let anything happen to Dusty.

  It’s a hot day. She’s sweating all over, even her hands and feet. She rolls down her car window. Is this what it means to be brave, to do the thing you’re most afraid of? Reveal the thing you’re most ashamed of? She feels dizzy, buoyant, the way you feel when you’re in the deep
end of the pool and you’ve just touched bottom and you’re starting to come up for air. You can see the surface, the light above the water.

  When she arrives at her aunt and uncle’s house there’s no car in the drive, no answer at the door, no note on the kitchen table. Is she supposed to know where they are? Did they tell her; did she forget?

  She drives home in a daze. Her house, she knows, will be empty—Dusty is at school, Roland at work. She turns into the driveway, presses the remote for the garage door, and pulls in.

  The garage has always made her feel rich—the metal door that closes behind her, the automatic overhead light. She parks and sits for a minute, savoring these little luxuries. The car is idling, the window still rolled down. The blue envelope is sticking out of her purse. She opens it and reads the signature first.

  Love, Addie.

  Roland’s North Carolina girlfriend. The woman she had to move out for. It was New Year’s, the year before Dusty was born. They were living in Venice Beach. She had to move in such a hurry she forgot things—record albums, liquor, her favorite blouse.

  Remembering that time makes her head ache. She is suddenly tired. The heat in the garage is suffocating.

  The letter looks intimate, two pages filled to the margins with tiny blue script. She can’t read it word for word—the words are too small and crowded and she is too hot and tired. Something about a class reunion. But you didn’t come.

  Roland never mentioned a reunion. Did he know about it?

  Pet would have told him, surely. She would have offered him plane fare home. Anything to get him back.

  The garage light blinks off; the garage goes dark. Elle puts the letter down, leans her head against the back of her seat and takes a deep breath. There’s almost no air in the air, only heat. She’s drowning in heat.

  But you didn’t come. Why?