Richard Russo - That Old CapeMagic

Gradually, the dense Wellfleet fog in his brain began to lift, and then he noticed a woman sitting all by herself on a bench facing the ocean. Her scowl, together with how defiantly her arms were crossed over her chest, suggested that neither the hedge nor the crowd fixated on it was of the slightest interest to her. Griffin was aware he should know who this woman was, so he concentrated on her identity until it finally revealed itself. She was Dot, Harve’s second wife. Pleased with himself for recognizing her and anxious to test the coherence of his speech, he decided to join her. When he sat down, though, she said, “Go away,” without even glancing in his direction to see who it was.

Having only just arrived and feeling woozy from his journey, he was unwilling to depart quite yet, not until he’d discovered what she was doing all by herself, glowering at the unoffending ocean, when her husband had just been swallowed by a tree. An idea occurred to him that might explain it, so he said, “They can be tough…” He meant to go on but didn’t, his voice sounding remote in the echo chamber of his head.

She did turn to regard him now, her eyes narrowing. She seemed to be trying to decide if his sympathy was something she wanted, or if her misery was company enough. “That,” she said, pointing at his eye with her index finger, its tip sculpted to a frighteningly lethal point, “is what I feel like when I’m around those people. Like I’m being…pummeled. Bludgeoned. Battered. Cudgeled.”

That seemed to Griffin a tad overstated, but he knew what she meant, and having just struggled to construct a four-word sentence fragment, he envied her ability to summon so many impressive, violent synonyms. Clearly nobody’d punched her lights out recently. Together they swiveled on the bench to afford themselves a better view of what was transpiring at the hedge. People seemed to be taking turns talking to it. Had the bush been burning, the whole thing would have been biblical.

“All he ever talks about is that woman,” Dot said, as if she were able to see Harve at the center of the yew. “I want to scream, ‘She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead’ .” When she said this, the volume in Griffin ’s head went down, back up, back down again, a wire loose somewhere.

“They were married a long time,” he ventured, benignly, he thought.

But she turned quickly and glared at him. “Then why marry me ?” she demanded.

For the life of him Griffin couldn’t think of a reason for Harve or anyone else to marry her, and she must have seen this register on his face, because she was suddenly standing over him with her fists clenched. Good Lord, he thought, was she going to punch him, too? He barely knew her. “Superfluous,” he said, the word he’d needed earlier suddenly coming to him.

“Why don’t you just…”

When she paused, Griffin ’s mind raced ahead, supplying the words fuck off , though of course women in their late sixties didn’t say that.

“… fuck off,” she concluded, and strode away in the general direction of the parking lot.

He watched her go, then glanced at the spot where she’d been sitting, trying to decide if the woman had really been there, if the conversation had actually taken place. A couple minutes later his daughter, looking exhausted and despondent, sank down next to him on the bench and rested her head on his shoulder. Which was nice. “Where’s Andy?” he said, hoping that wherever he was he’d stay there for a while.

“He’s gone to get the car,” she told him, or at least that’s what he thought she said. She was sitting right next to him, but he could barely hear her. “You ready to go?”

“Where?”

She lifted her head to regard him. “The hospital?”

“Shouldn’t we wait until they extra… extratake…”

“Extricate?”

“… Harve from the hedge?”

“Dad,” she said, her mother’s sternness creeping into her voice, “we’ve already had this conversation.”

“When?”

“Ten minutes ago. You were supposed to wait for me by the tree.”

He was?

“Look at me,” she said, taking him by the chin. The sensation wasn’t nearly as pleasurable as having her rest her head on his shoulder. “Your eyes are dilated. Did you land on your head?”

He had no memory of landing at all, but the last thing he wanted was for her to be worried about him. “I’m fine,” he assured her. “People need to quit punching me and telling me to fuck off, but otherwise…” Unable to complete the sentence, he considered the word count impressive, nonetheless.

Behind them a chain saw roared to life, and its sheer volume reconnected something in Griffin ’s cranial circuitry. The world’s many varied sounds were again playing at their normal volume. Also, the earlier conversation with his daughter, the one in which he’d promised to wait by the tree, was suddenly there in its entirety. It was she and Andy who’d pulled him from beneath the hedge, he now recalled.

“I must be allergic to yew,” Laura said, scratching at her forearms.

“To me?”

She stopped scratching and looked at him.

“Oh. Yew . Gotcha.” Now that he looked at them, her arms were grotesquely swollen.

“You’re definitely coming to the hospital,” she said. “You’re concussed.”

“They’ll have Benadryl,” he assured her, still a beat behind but catching up fast.

“Yeah, right,” she said with a sweeping gesture that took in the whole resort. “Benadryl’s going to make all this fine.”

“Hey, it could’ve been worse,” he said.

She waited patiently for him to explain how, which took a minute. Then another. Among the crowd at the hedge was a pregnant young woman. He knew her, just not her name. Then suddenly that was there, too. “Kelsey could have fallen in with the others,” he said, pleased with himself for saying something that might, if closely examined, actually be valid. “The shock could’ve sent her into labor.”

“You know, I never thought of that,” his daughter said in a golly-gee voice. “Or a disgruntled hotel employee could’ve laced our dinners with arsenic, in which case we’d all be dead instead of just hideously maimed.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I was trying to cheer you up.”

Staring at her Popeye forearms, he finally realized she was weeping.

“Dad,” she said, “tomorrow’s my wedding day, and I’m going to be ugly.”

Over at the hedge, the chain saw sputtered and died. Taking advantage of the silence, he quietly said, “No, you’re going to be beautiful. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Andy pulled up then, and they climbed in, Laura next to her fiancé, Griffin into the back. The car was identical to his rental, right down to the color and features. It even had a copy of the same literary magazine on the dash. He patted his pants pocket, but felt no keys. Unless that was them dangling in the ignition. “So this is my car?” he asked, and they both turned around to stare at him.

“Yes, Dad. This is your car. You gave Andy the keys. You’re scaring me.”

Before driving off, they were treated to one last bizarre sight: Jared and Jason, shaking what remained of the mutilated hedge like madmen, until finally it surrendered from its dark center an elderly man in a wheelchair. Out Harve tumbled, somehow landing wheels down on the lawn, to wild cheers.

“He’s out,” Andy said, taking his bride’s hand. “See? Everything’s going to be fine.”

And she smiled, believing him, Griffin could tell. He’d just told her the same thing, but of course he was no longer the person from whom his daughter needed such reassurances. Which meant there was nothing to do but relax in the backseat, which was where you put people you don’t have to listen to, even when it’s their car.