Kathryn Davis - Duplex

Cindy XA had brought him the Yellow Bear earlier that morning; though she always came at the same time of day on the same day of the week, Eddie never failed to be surprised to see her. “How’s Roy?” he would ask, and Cindy would inform him, gently, that Roy had passed away some time ago. He died in the announcer’s box in the middle of a game — with his boots on, was the way Cindy put it.

“See if this will cheer you up,” she had said, handing Eddie the bear. The fact that it was yellow threw Eddie off at first. Like many people he associated the color with sunshine and happiness, the old stories never having made much of an impression on him. Since he’d come to live in Woodard Village Eddie had been depressed, even after the kitchen named a drink in his honor. Rum Rocket, they told him it was called. Some of the people he lived with could still remember the way he used to be — like he had rocket boosters on his feet, everyone used to say.

He glanced up and noticed that Downie was pushing the same old woman toward the table where he was sitting. By now the room was filling with other residents, old people sitting in groups of four or six around tables covered with white tablecloths. It was a pleasant room with artificial floral centerpieces and aproned wait staff, almost like a restaurant except all the wait staff could perform CPR. Eddie put the bear on the table beside him. There was a plate in front of him with a piece of fish in the middle of it and a pile of peas at three o’clock and a pile of rice at noon but he had no appetite.

“What have you got there?” the old woman asked.

“You have to speak up,” Downie said. “Otherwise he can’t hear you.”

“It’s a combination plate,” Eddie said. “I’m not deaf. I got one of these before and I didn’t want to eat that one, either.”

The old woman reached across the table and put her hand on Eddie’s and held it and he could feel a tremor run through his whole body that either came from him or from her, he couldn’t tell the difference.

He also couldn’t tell where he was but he thought he could see approaching headlights. He seemed to remember something about a sorcerer named Body-without-Soul, but that was in a fairy tale he’d heard in his childhood. There was the smell of electricity; Eddie’s hands were shaking so hard he couldn’t pick up his napkin.

“See if he can manage this,” the old woman said to Downie. She slid her bowl of broth across the table.

“Here, let me help you,” Downie said, propping up Eddie, who had slid so far down in his chair he couldn’t reach the table. “I’m going to break an egg into it to give it more body,” Downie explained. “If I may?” He took the knife from the old woman’s place setting without waiting for her to answer, then picked up the Yellow Bear and gave it a whack, separating the two halves of the shell and dropping the contents into Eddie’s broth.

The room grew very quiet. Shadows padded along the walls, poured over Eddie like rain.

The old woman leaned closer and took off her sunglasses. “Uh oh,” she said. “It looks like he’s wet himself.”

When she lifted her eyes to his he could see that they weren’t cloudy the way he’d expected them to be but alive and silver and lit by the fire of her spirit, which, like the sun, couldn’t be confronted directly but had to be filtered through the vitreous humor of her material self.

“You look like you just saw a ghost,” the old woman said.

It was the last thing Eddie heard before his soul flew back into his body.

AS FOR JANICE, SHE KEPT TREATING US LIKE GIRLS LONG after we were grown women. One of us went so far as to die — the last time we saw Janice was at the funeral. The service was over and people were milling around outside the chapel, some of them sobbing, some of them swatting at flies. It was a small chapel made of stone, the charming building in which Mary and Walter Woodard had exchanged their marriage vows and not far from the Italianate mansion where his father lived until he died or disappeared — even now there continued to be contention around this subject. On the other hand, everyone agreed Woodard Village had to be the greatest money-laundering venture ever.

What are you waiting for? Janice asked. She had climbed behind the wheel of one of those large beige vans mothers of six tended to drive, though as far as everyone knew Janice had remained childless. If you don’t mind crowding together, she told us, I can fit you all in.

The reception was at the house where the deceased lived until she died; it was attached to the house in which a widower named O’Toole had gradually turned from man to ghost before escaping up the chimney. Most of us had gotten off the street years ago, though you could hardly call that an advantage. After a while the mere fact of being able to move from place to place supplanted the wish to conquer time but it was a poor substitute. Everyone knew the meaning of a thing didn’t emerge until there’d been an ending and you could finally see how all the parts worked together.

I hope you remember what I told you about Pangaea, Janice said. The giant lump of stone, the giant sea? The black locket, the friendship rings, the socks? Because if we hadn’t figured it out by now, it was the dead woman who’d been stealing things from us. Doll dresses, trading cards, you name it.

She always thought she was better than everyone, Janice said. You know that, don’t you?

What we knew by now was that for as long as we’d known her Janice had suffered under the impression that everyone thought they were better than she was. Since the last time we’d been together Henry had gotten a divorce and married a former gymnast, and Janice had remarried twice. Her latest husband had been unable to attend the funeral — he needed to have some part of himself replaced.

Being better doesn’t do you any good, Janice said. I hope you all know that by now.

As the sweet apple reddens on a high branch, high on the highest branch the apple pickers forgot — no, not forgot: were unable to reach. She didn’t say it aloud, the way she would have before; instead the curly-haired girl nodded, even though Janice couldn’t see her from where she sat. Janice was right, the girl thought. She was sitting in the way back, between the girl who had become a chemist and the girl who lived on a farm. The chemist was telling them that some molecules were unusual in that they were able to form bonds that couldn’t be broken and were called exquisite, and that gold had the unusual advantage of being neither left-nor right-handed. Just like my goats! said the other girl. She had turned out prettier than everyone expected but also not so very bright.

Of course none of us were girls anymore. We weren’t really old yet, but we were having trouble from time to time remembering things like what we’d had for dinner the night before. Most of us had married, some more than once. Some of us had children, one of us had a grandchild.

It’s not easy to have a good marriage, Janice said — she seemed to be addressing herself. Then she sighed and honked her horn at something no one else could see. Had any of us heard about the worm addicted to grape leaves? she asked, letting up on the accelerator and giving another little honk of the horn. Of course we hadn’t, as Janice well knew — no one had heard of it. There was a worm addicted to grape leaves, she continued, and suddenly it woke up. Call it a miracle, whatever, something woke it up and it wasn’t a worm anymore. It was the whole vineyard, and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, an ever-expanding joy that didn’t need to devour anything.

She sped up, driving the van down the third of the three hills, past the school and the water tower and across the railroad bridge.