Frederick Busch - The Stories of Frederick Busch

“What does that mean?”

“You said what you thought you should say, Momma. And it was nice to see you and Pop be friendly with each other.”

“And does something happen now?” she asked him. “Is that what you’re saying? Because I won’t leave here if it is. I won’t.”

Bernard said, “Me either.”

Patrick flushed very dark. His lips were set in a bitter line. In the underwater light of his awful room, with his gray-flecked hair and his unfamiliar eyes, he seemed to her to be a new creature she must care for. She knew that she didn’t know how. But she walked slowly to the cupboard, expecting each time she stepped that he would order her to stop, and she was breathless when she stood near Bernard and the gun she was afraid to look at.

Patrick said, “Please.” His voice was flat, as expressionless as his face.

Bernard shrugged. She watched him take a deep breath. She squared her shoulders and waited.

“I am warning you,” Patrick said in the flat voice.

“Dearie,” she called to her son, seeking a level, low voice with which to address him.

“No more conversation now,” Patrick said. “I warned you.”

After twenty-five years, she thought, all they knew was this: standing in their separateness to hold their ground against their son. And what kind of achievement did that amount to?

“I warned you,” Patrick said. He said, “Here I come.”

He leaned forward, but he was far less graceful than she’d expected. He tripped off the mattress and then he caught himself. And she remembered this. She remembered standing in a room on an overcast day. It had to have been in their first house at the start of a long winter. Patrick was little and grinning. His chin was covered with drool. He’d raised his arms to the level of his shoulders. Then he reached higher. He lurched and then he righted himself and he made his way across the room in a wobbly march. She remembered how they’d clapped their hands to celebrate their boy’s first step. She remembered thinking that there, stumbling across the room, came the rest of her life.

HE SAW HER at the start and finish of playschool mornings as the children gusted about her like blown leaves. She seemed to him to smile like an actress playing a part. He thought of her as the pretty girl in high school and college who had starred in every play but who hadn’t gone on to anything but earnest, sweaty civic little theater since she’d been condemned to grow up.

Her large dark brown eyes looked merry. He couldn’t tell if she was pleased or feeling ironic. She sat on the small, low child’s wooden chair in the center of the preschool playroom and indicated a little chair opposite. Her bent knees, parallel and pale, struck him as graceful. His long legs were locked, and he tried leaning back while he extended them.

She hiccupped a laugh and said, in a bright and ringing voice, “Poor man. Should we stand?”

“I’ve forgotten my preschool skills,” he said. “But I’ll be fine. This is fine.” He took a deep breath. He found himself staring at the silk scarf of cream and gold and black that was tied at her throat. He thought of it, or maybe he thought of her thinking of it, as a brave little scarf.

She nodded. She clasped her hands on the hem of her dark, figured jumper. She raised her brows, and he realized that he was supposed to begin.

He said, “My grandson—”

“Jeremy’s lovely.”

“Jeremy is,” he said. “But he’s shy.”

“Don’t worry. Look at you: you’re shy.”

He felt himself flush as he said, “I am?”

“And you’re a fully functioning grandfather. Shy’s all right.” She smiled as if he were Jeremy’s age. She might not have intended to, he thought. But what did it mean if she had?

“Yes.”

“Was that the problem you called about? I mean, that’s utterly swell, if it is. I’m happy to address it with you.”

He shifted his legs and felt that his knees had come to the height of his face. In the basement of the village’s Baptist church, on an errand that was sad and even ridiculous, but inescapably important, he addressed this younger woman on behalf of his daughter’s child and he was certain that he was a fool.

He said, “Someone took Jeremy’s cape.”

Her face creased in sorrow. She shook her head. “Oh, it saves him,” she whispered.

Jeremy’s mother, his only child, had cut the cape from a piece of white corduroy. She had stitched a red J on it and sewed the grosgrain ties with which she fastened it around him. He wore it every day. He had stood, solemn and invulnerable — less vulnerable, anyway — as Nora tied it on.

“And somebody took it,” he said.

The teacher responded as if to the child. “Do we know that someone actually stole it? Could we have mis placed it?”

“Mrs. Preston, he came home without it. He was as pale as a piece of paper. He couldn’t talk. He went to his room, he threw up his lunch—”

“Ill? Perhaps he’s ill.”

“Illness doesn’t jettison a cape. Getting the cape swiped made him feel sick.”

They sat too far apart for her to reach him, but she leaned in his direction with her arm out. “Of course. I understand,” she said. “You’re a good grandfather. Is Jeremy’s father back?”

“This is such a small place, this village,” he said. “No. No, he isn’t. I think that he won’t be.”

“It’s good you’re here visiting, then.”

“It’s why,” he said.

“You’re Pop-Pop, yes? He talks about his Pop-Pop. Your daughter, Nora, she’s lucky to have you. I understand the place she’s in.”

He wondered if he was supposed, now, to ask her for details.

She looked at the linoleum between them, then she looked at him from underneath her brow. His eyes skittered from hers but he forced himself to look again at her resigned, sad face. He thought, frighteningly, of slapping her to punish this theatricality. He thought next of holding her face between his palms. Looked away again.

She said, “Both my parents were dead when my husband left. My sister visited a brief little while, but of course she had a life to return to. What do you return to — ah, is there something to call you besides Pop-Pop? Do you prefer Mr. Royce?”

“Bing.”

“As in Crosby?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“It’s an upbeat name. You inspirit us all, Bing.”

He said, “You’ve been wonderful to Jeremy, Mrs. Preston.”

“Muriel?”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you ,” she said, smiling what he thought of as a gracious smile. He wished she would simply talk to him instead of demonstrating what she intended her words to mean. But he also liked looking at her, and she clearly wished him to.

“The cape’s gone. Nora and I looked at home. You didn’t find it here, or you’d have said so.”

“Poor man. And poor, poor Jeremy.”

“Muriel, would you mind terribly if I stood up? My knees are strangling.”

She made the hiccup of laughter again and put a hand over her mouth. She stood, saying, “Here.” She extended her cool, small hand and he took it and she tugged. When he was up, she slowly let go of his hand and said, “There’s so much of you. You just kept coming. Unfolding, I meant — you know.”

Her eyes met his. She was pleased to have said it that way, he was sure.

“Thank you,” he said. He looked away, at the walls decorated with pasted constructions on rough paper, at crayon drawings of towering stick-figure parents and little sheltered stick-figure kids. He was afraid of seeing Jeremy’s. He wanted Muriel Preston to find another reason for taking hold of his hand.