Howard Norman - Next Life Might Be Kinder

“He sends some money down our row to the vendor. The vendor sends the hot dogs back. My uncle hands me a hot dog. Then he reaches past me to hand my father a hot dog, and when my dad reaches out, I see there’s handcuffs connecting his wrist to the other guy’s wrist. My dad gets a kind of weird expression on his face, like, ‘Oh, I forgot,’ and leans back and pushes his sleeve down over his wrist and goes back to watching the game. So my uncle’s got this hot dog in midair, so he hands it to the guy my dad’s attached to by handcuffs. So now that guy’s got two hot dogs.”

“A criminal, your dad,” Elizabeth said.

“Definitely, but I never learned the details. My mother was shut of him by that time.”

“Not a good memory, Samuel. That hockey game.”

“Mostly I remember the fedoras.”

We had talked about visiting Lizzy’s parents in Hay-on-Wye, and had even marked possible dates on the calendar. I had spoken with Elizabeth’s mother and father only once, on the telephone. It was on the day after we got married, accommodating for the time difference. The conversation proved not at all stilted; there was lots of good humor. “Welcome to the family,” her father said, “though it’ll be a better welcome when you visit here and the aunts and uncles get a look at you, and a few of the neighbors.” Her mother said, “There are a thousand things to know about Elizabeth. I mean, other than the things you’ve already gotten to know.”

I said, “Just start with one, please. We have to start somewhere.” It was nice to hear Elizabeth’s father chuckle on the line. Lizzy said they had a telephone in the kitchen and another in the upstairs bedroom.

“All right, then,” her mother said. Elizabeth, sitting on the chaise longue, was looking at me quizzically. “When Elizabeth was nine years old, the constable came to the house to deliver a summons for Elizabeth’s arrest. Nine years old almost to the day. I say, ‘Well, what’s this all about?’ Constable Teachout says, ‘It so happens that your daughter Elizabeth failed to properly sign out a book from the Hay-on-Wye Public Library, just by the Swan Hotel, center of town.’ Constable Teachout was all in a huff. ‘Well, we certainly know where the library’s situated,’ says I in a huff right back to Constable Teachout. Well, by ‘failed to properly sign out’ he meant that our Elizabeth stood accused of stealing a book. Which turned out to be true, she had stolen it, but it didn’t lessen the pain of the accusation. And from Constable Teachout, a man we’d known since he was a boy!”

After I’d cleaned up after dinner, the weather cleared, so I walked to the beach. When Elizabeth arrived and set out her eleven books, I said, “Why’d you steal a book from the Hay-on-Wye Library, Lizzy?”

“Have you been speaking with my mother? She hasn’t been telling you tall tales, has she?”

“No, the day after we were married and we talked from the hotel, she told me then.”

“But you decided to bring it up tonight, of all things?”

“I’m very curious about it.”

“Why? Because you think these books here on the sand — that I stole them?”

“Not at all. I’m just curious.”

“I was only being polite. Mrs. Kelb, the Hay-on-Wye librarian, had a bad cold that day, Sam, and she had the fireplace all blazing. It was a one-room library, and it got overly warm in there some winter days. Anyway, Mrs. Kelb dozed off at her desk. I was already late for piano, and she’d fallen asleep, head down right on the desk, and I didn’t want to wake her. So off I went with the book. Later, she caught me out to the constable. A little overboard, don’t you think, sending a constable to a child’s house? It was done to put the fear of God in me, I’m sure. You know what part of that story my mother couldn’t tell you, because she didn’t know? See, I had to write out an apology to Mrs. Kelb and deliver it in person, which my mum and dad insisted on, the honest way. Mrs. Kelb accepted my apology. And when she went over to the card catalogue, I drooled some spit into her teacup. Tea which she’d just poured.”

I was laughing so loudly I thought Philip and Cynthia might’ve heard me inside their house. “Want a divorce,” Elizabeth said, “knowing what I’m capable of since age nine?”

“No.”

“Sam, I can name the very book.”

“I can’t wait.”

“ Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“I loved that book as a kid, too.”

“Tell me how Maximus Minimum is. How does he like the cottage? Where is his favorite place to sit?”

“He prefers the kitchen counter and at the foot of the bed. Since we left the hotel he’s gone kind of inward. He seems to be thinking more. Or something. He’s enjoying the countryside, though. A few days ago, a mouse was in the kitchen. He practically did a midair somersault to get after it. The mouse wiggled out under the kitchen door.

“While Maximus sat staring at the door, I drove to Vogler’s Cove. When I came back, he was still staring at the door. Also, I forgot, he’s no longer interested in the catnip toy. But generally I’d say he’s acclimated well, Lizzy. So much more room to move around in the cottage.”

“I guess he couldn’t come down here, huh?”

“Well, you know, he’s an indoor cat.”

“He likes his routine, doesn’t he? Does he still sit close to the radio, like he’s listening to it?”

“Since he got to the cottage, if the radio isn’t on, he yowls. Loudly. So I leave it on, tuned to one station or another. In the kitchen. And I mean day and night. He’s like a still life, Cat with Radio. ”

Since we had so little time left this evening, we only spoke about this.

With Dr. Nissensen, January 23, 1973:

Dr. Nissensen was nursing a cold. He had a humidifier on, but the sound didn’t interfere with our conversation. He was wearing a woolen vest under his sports coat.

“I saw this program on television,” I said the moment I sat down. “It’s called They Crossed Over. The guy whose show it is, he’s a charlatan.”

“I’ve never seen it. Describe it for me.”

“This guy’s name is David Korder, about forty, average-looking. But so obviously average-looking. Supposed to be a kind of everyman, I suppose. Regular fellow with this astonishing gift of being able to contact loved ones who have—”

“Crossed over.”

“And the dead are sending messages, sending signals of some sort, exclusively to this David Korder. He’s the only one who can hear these messages and deliver them to the grieving family’s attention and decipher the messages for them. I hate the guy. He’s such a fake, and he’s got all these vulnerable people in the palm of his hand. I can’t even imagine how much money he makes off this. I mean, he’ll never run out of messages, will he? His show will run for a century.”

“And the grieving people, do you think they are chosen beforehand?”

“Have to be. Maybe they have to audition, prove they’re the most desperate to contact their loved one who died. The thing is, David Korder’s pet word is ‘closure.’ ‘Let’s see if we can find some closure here.’ He shuts his eyes. He ‘sees’ a mailbox, so he says, ‘Did your father’—or sister or wife or whoever’s crossed over—‘did he have a mailbox?’ A mailbox! And the family falls apart. They look at each other and can’t believe their ears. ‘How could he know that?’”

“I think you’re equally disgusted by the charlatan David Korder and the people who volunteered to expose their neediness and naïveté on television.”

“All of the above.”

“You appear to distinguish yourself from these television grievers.”