"It was plainly there. Love." by Lucas Flatt
- Roi Fainéant
- 4 days ago
- 22 min read
Paul had reached, we hoped, the final leg of his dissertation on La-Z-Boy
recliners.
“Babe, help your mother,” Gracie said. She was a good one. Megan, Paul’s mother, looked to be in no particular need of help, but Gracie tried to push Paul always in the right direction. He needed it. Megan couldn’t do it anymore. She’d passed the torch.
“Hold on,” Paul said, “I’m mansplaining simultaneous recline and rock.” He said things like that, but I guess we still loved him.
By “we,” I include myself here only grudgingly. And for clarification, I’m Bev, shopping for furniture with the Browns, my oldest friends. There were five of us: the parents (Megan and Gerald), the kids (Paul and Gracie), and Bev. You’re welcome–now, keep up.
Megan surely loved her son. That moment, though, she stood transfixed by a natural wood-edge teak coffee table upholstered—festooned?—with the taut hide of a young deer. I’m not an expert on deer, but something about the skin suggested to me a poached doe or fawn. It wasn’t just a skin; a painted hide is more like it, because some droll, wistful man had painted cowboys and Indians chasing across hither and yon.
A young man who worked at the furniture store came to greet us. "Hello, Dr. Brown, Mrs. Brown. Got the kids with you?" The man was younger than Paul, but he called him and Gracie "kids." He had ginger hair and rusty stubble, was tall, athletic, and reached to take Gerald's hand.
Gerald has beautiful tawny hands, large with perfect, strong fingers. I’ve mostly lost the savor of masculine beauty, but you have to admire Gerald’s hands. The furniture salesman was strapping, but his hand looked dainty in Gerald’s.
He didn’t reach for Megan’s. One look at her poor hands and you’d understand. She’d had rheumatoid arthritis since before Paul was born. That day at the furniture store—the name’s going to come to me—Megan and I were 73, Gerald was 72, and Paul and Gracie were pushing well up into their thirties.
“Robert,” said Megan, who knew the salesman’s name, of course. “Did you make this?” She didn’t gesture to the table. She might have meant the world itself, for all Robert understood. I’ll never understand if Megan enjoyed confusing people, keeping people on their toes, or if she simply took no part in our understanding.
“Ma’am?” Robert asked, squinting, a little sweat beading on his pink forehead—it was hot in the front gallery; the glass entrance door had a handwritten sign warning of problems with the heat. This was January, but the day was pleasant; inside, the store was sweltering.
"The table," I said and did gesture. I didn't like it when people were confused by her. Mind you, this was something that spanned back most of our lives. It was getting worse.
“Ah, nope,” he said. “Sure is something, though.”
“I think,” Megan said, “it’s a little rustic for our living room. But we do need a coffee table. It really is something.”
She smiled in a way that put Robert at ease. She was good that way. You couldn’t find a kinder person. I didn’t know if she honestly admired the awful table. It was always her mystery that made you feel, no matter how well or poorly things were going in your own life, that you maybe only circled hers.
“I kind of like it,” Paul said. He gave Gracie a child’s pleading look, like, can we? She evaded with a funny kind of pirouette and went on into the larger showroom to the right of the entrance gallery. Shrewd.
But before he could follow, Megan took Paul’s arm and they admired the poor dead baby deer table for a while. I thought they both had something to tell the other, but I only knew for certain Megan’s hard news. And I wanted, awfully, to go away and let that moment last as long as it could. Paul rested his head on the top of hers. He kissed her crown, right there in front of God and everyone. He did it all the time.
Gerald, as ever, looked so confused—felt, I think, that he too risked interrupting something but had nowhere else to be. He was sweating, too, and stooped, rummaging a collection of cavalry swords and walking canes in a tall iron fireplace basket. The front room had a gentleman's motif, a few distressed leather pieces, a billiard set, a mahogany bar, and, lining a hallway back toward an office, some full-sized safes.
Nothing for me there, I followed Gracie into a larger showroom of mostly sofas and recliners. That’s where I fell briefly in love with a purple chair.
I hope this isn’t confusing. I’m not a storyteller. Let’s try to set things right. Others might try to steal the spotlight, but I mean this as a testament to Megan.
We were there at F. F. McFadden's Fine Furniture—sure, why not?—to buy a living room set for Gracie and Paul. They'd bought a house and had the kitchen and the upstairs covered. For their downstairs office, Megan had given them her oak bookcases. She'd given away all her hundreds of volumes of mysteries and switched over to a Kindle, paperback print too small for old eyes, anymore.
She had the most beautiful pale electric blue eyes. It’s the first thing anyone remembers. A rascally smile—Paul has it, too. I want to call her beautiful, but the arthritis had aged her early and by then, the best word I have is “small.”
This all happened before she died, obviously, and before Paul lost his mind, Gracie almost lost her baby, Gerald wilted like a rose, mostly gone in sad sweet petals, or crumbled like the flakes of chewing tobacco he left like breadcrumbs through his life.
This isn’t a story about Gerald, either. He’s an imposing, silent man. There may never be a story about Gerald.
But before you know any more about any of that, you have to understand I could not decide if this fuchsia button-tufted wingback chair clashed with the terracotta drapes and the turmeric throw in my nearly perfect living room.
It was not a perfect living room the way that sounds. I’m a poor retired teacher. I just almost had it the way I wanted. And now this chair came into my life and upended all of that.
As I stood enraptured by it, tracing tawdry fingerings along the supple stitchwork, Gracie and Paul played around the sectionals, giggling, goosing and grab-assing, because they thought no one was looking.
Let that be a lesson to you—Beverly is always looking.
Paul went for any couch wild or garish, distressed leather U-shapes and lime loveseats, a black leather Chesterfield with a Union Jack emblazoned all the way across. Surely he was joking with that. Patient, abiding Gracie reigned him back to the choice between a taupe modern L-shape and an ash transitional L—these faced off across the showroom’s central, widest row.
Paul considered, then pointed to the latter, because it was bigger. We’d visited the new house early that morning and there was certainly space to fill.
Gracie looked at the tag and balked. “Nineteen hundred? We can’t.” I noticed Gracie kept patting absently at her stomach.
Paul sat on various sections of the ash sofa, wiggling his butt. “Ah. We can.”
“We owe them so much already.”
“It’s cool.” Paul tried to be casual, but the two grand played a little in his eyes. “We’ll pay them with our tax returns. And I did all that yard work last month.”
“You picked up sticks in their front yard and put them in their backyard.”
“I also pulled the vines off the trees out front.”
“No, you pulled the vines off of two trees, and then you said it was ‘too hurty.’”
“To be fair, it was hurty.” Paul grimaced, wriggling his fingers in phantom pain.
“I know. I did the other five.” Gracie mimicked his wriggling, gave him the bird.
“So, they owe us both.”
“Not two thousand dollars.”
“I don’t know what you charge for your time, babe, but that’s about right for mine.”
The lights thrummed down for a moment and some commotion arose from deeper in the store, from a hallway leading off on the left side of the showroom. I went to investigate because I'm nosey, and because I didn't want to listen to the kids bicker anymore.
Except, it wasn’t bickering; that was how they spoke to each other all the time—Gracie serious, Paul aloof, and they stood very close and petted each other and you got the sense that if they were too long out of each other’s company, they’d perish like fruit. Megan told me she knew they’d get married the first time she met Gracie, because it was plainly there. Love.
Young love bores me. So—the commotion. It was much hotter in the hallway leading off the showroom, and down it on the left was a sort of alcove or cubicle.
“This dang heat!” shouted a young woman stuck behind a counter there in the tiled alcove squeezed in by wood paneling and guardian, one assumes, of the cashbox. She shouted, “Frank! I’m dying!”
“I know, Marla!” came the voice of some Frank from a door that led outside at the end of her alcove.
“Howdy,” Marla said to me. “How can we help today?”
"I'm interested in a fuchsia easy chair."
“I think we have a pink chair in the west gallery.” She pointed from where I’d come.
“You do. I found it.”
“Oh. Do you have the item number?”
I wanted to ask what it was she did there. “No. Do you offer any kind of layaway?”
“Well, we can talk to Frank. He’s the owner.” She hooked a thumb back toward the door.
I need to back up and add that the whole compound—the only real word for it—spanned 40,000 square feet, easy, with the front gallery, at least two large showrooms including where I’d left Gracie and Paul and a second beyond, and a vast warehouse adjoining at the rear of the property. We’d arrived at noon to an empty parking lot, the Saturday shopping traffic likely gone to lunch or scared off by the signage. A big razor-wire fence with a mechanized gate was set to close off what must have been north of 2 million in inventory, with the furniture—all high end—and the safes and outdoor patio sets and saunas, marble statuary and such stored in as-yet unexplored rooms and wings.
A middle-aged, redheaded man, paunchy and clearly salesman Robert’s father, came inside the alcove shaking his head. “Wilkes thinks he’s got it.”
“Wilkes ain’t got sh—” Marla remembered me and smiled. “He hasn’t got anything. Call the HVAC people. Why can’t we just turn it off?”
Frank ignored Marla, looked me over once, and appraised me as a hopeless miser-woman. He had the gift. "Howdy," he said, shambling past me down the hallway.
From outside came a big clatter and curses. “I’m calling the HVAC guys,” Marla said to me or no one.
I went back down the hallway past the showroom to the front gallery, and as I passed a large open safe in an obsidian finish and bigger than a fridge, a hand reached out and grabbed my shirt sleeve.
“Damn!” I shouted. I’d almost peed my slacks.
Megan held my arm. She stood entirely in the safe. Her face was twisted up. Finally, she smiled weakly and let me go. “Close it.”
I squinted at her.
“Just for a minute.”
I didn’t have to ask. I did what I was told. I was afraid I wouldn’t hear her knock, but in six or seven seconds, she did, and I opened it again with a tug. She came out and took my arm and led me to see a cherry coffee table that looked identical to what she had at home. “It’s taller,” she explained, “and I’m getting shorter.”
Who the hell knows what that meant?
In the main showroom, Megan and I found Gracie fretting still over the price tag on the sectional.
Paul watched her, then secreted something between the couch cushions and said in a loud voice, “Drills!”
Gracie hopped to attention.
“It’s time for Jeopardy and where’s the remote? Move! It’s 5:02!”
They rushed around, Paul looking under pillows, Gracie patting along the couch, digging between cushions and furrowing her brow. She found it quickly—Paul's phone—and they sat together simultaneously as synchronized swimmers, tossed legs over knees in mirror-reverse, Gracie flipping imaginary channels.
“Not bad,” Paul said. “Workable.”
“My children are silly people,” said Megan, announcing her presence.
Paul winked at her. “Drills! Mom and Bev are over and everyone has chili. No spills!”
We pantomimed with our bowls and all fit easily enough. “I like it better without so many beans,” I offered.
Paul looked long into his bowl. He gave a forlorn stir and sighed. “The magical fruit.”
Paul and Gracie went to look in another showroom where Megan believed more couches lined the upper floor.
I led her on a shambling path toward the fuchsia wingback nearby in a corner of other misfit items, hoping she might notice it on her own. “Have you told him yet?” I had to ask.
She shook her head, mouth drawn into a tight line. “Later. Let’s buy their couch.”
“Paul wants an easy chair, too.” I ratted him out.
“I know, Bev.” I can be a tattletale. Megan never liked that. She loved her secrets.
"Hot damn, that's a chair." Gerald had found us. He went and sat in my fuchsia wingback and beamed at us. I'll always love that man.
Somewhere in the next showroom, Gracie squealed. “Stop it, Paul.”
Too much life, too much death. It can make you giddy. Not me, though. Giddy’s not in my repertoire. I leaned into Megan’s ear. “You need to tell them, honey.”
“You worry too much.” Megan gave me a long look. “It gives you cancer.”
She passed around me and went to Gerald. “Here,” she said, handing him her purse. “That’s better.”
He took it proudly, crossing his legs at the knee.
“I’m thinking of buying it.” I had to say it. It felt good to get it out there.
Megan frowned. “I’m trying to picture it in your house. The foyer? Upstairs?” Then, she had it: “Oh, out in your workshop. Sure!”
I shook my head.
“Not the living room?” She couldn’t see it there either, not with my father’s best pieces and the earth tones and the lowlight and the ferns. In terms of decor, my house is mostly a museum of my father, the carpenter, who died of lung cancer five years prior. He never smoked a cigarette in his life. Megan smoked two packs a day until after Paul graduated college. She was going tomorrow to get a mobile oxygen unit.
She’d be dead in three more months.
We drifted. In a soft-lit annex of bedroom suites with beds and lamps and dressers, Megan plucked a leather-bound volume from a writing desk and flipped pages. "I never read Sherlock Holmes," she said.
“Well, you’ve read more than about anybody else has, for what it’s worth.” I didn’t like the eulogizing, but it wasn’t my funeral, so to speak. It was true, though—Megan must have read at least a book a day. I always assumed she preferred mysteries because things resolved so neatly. Who knows her reason, though? I never asked.
It’s not a bad thought though—it’s worth considering. I like resolutions. It gives me an idea—but hold that thought.
“I don’t remember anything I read,” she said. “I’ve been re-reading the same three books all year long. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s a series about an earthquake in Siam. I think I’m stuck forever.”
“I think I read The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
“I wish I’d been a detective.”
“I can’t see that at all.” I was always honest with her; she always called me mean. It was a joke we had, though it hurt my feelings. “You’re very cryptic, but you’re indecisive.”
Normally, a person perks at hearing herself described, but she shook her head once, a new mannerism she’d have until the end, like saying, “There’s no time for that.”
“Listen, Beverly. I need to tell you something.”
I thought she was going to ask me to check in on Gerald and Paul, to extend some aspect of her presence, as if I could, but she knew I couldn’t, and she told me, “Please don’t be unhappy.”
And I couldn’t look at her, but I nodded.
“Don’t you be unhappy. Buy your purple chair. Make urns and vases like in those poems you used to make me read. The Ancient Greek stuff.”
I’d never made her read a poem in my life, Greek or otherwise.
We went back to Gerald dozing in my chair. The kids came back, no luck in the other showrooms. Gracie seemed resigned. “It’s hot in here, folks. Time for lunch?”
"Hey Mommy, buy us that couch," Paul said, pointing to the ash sectional again.
Gracie hit his arm, feigned mortification. Her blush seemed real, but her eyes gave away the plan.
“How much?” The kids jumped; they hadn’t noticed Gerald in my chair.
"Damn, Dad. That chair is really you."
He smirked. “How much is the couch?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Gracie said.
Suddenly Frank, the proprietor, barreled into the showroom and down our aisle—-probably he had the place bugged. At any rate, he surmised the situation by triangulating our proximity to the sectional. “We could probably do seventeen on that,” he said. “Howdy, Doc. That chair brings out your eyes.”
Some device on his belt beeped. “Frank? You there?”
He begged a moment with his finger and snapped up the device. "Yeah, Wilkes."
“This thing is fucked.”
“I’m with customers.”
“Yeah, I see.” A man in coveralls with one of those mullet hairdos and mutton chops came striding into the showroom with a Walkie Talkie, walking with his knees bowed like he’d been out busting broncos. As he passed Gracie’s couch, he brushed a grease stain across a cushion. Gracie squeaked.
“Careful,” Frank said. He smiled at Gracie. “A little Dawn and that’ll come right out. Just give me a moment.”
Wilkes chuckled at Gerald in my chair. “Hey, folks. Frank, the HVAC’s fixing to blow, gonna take the whole grid down with it, I bet. I did everything I could.”
“You broke my good socket wrench, is what you did.”
They sidled off, arguing in low voices.
We watched them go, except for Gracie, who stared at the grease smudge on the cushion.
“It is hot in here,” Gerald said. He rose gingerly from my chair, his knees cracking loudly.
Paul helped him up. “Well, let’s buy a couch and go.”
“What about your La-Z-Boy?” Megan crossed her arms as if she had him, but knew as well as anyone, no one out-schemed Paul.
"Actually, I have it covered." He scooped into his jeans pocket and flashed a roll of bills. "We just need a little help with the couch."
“What the hell, Paul?” Gracie asked. “Did you rob a bank?”
“I sold my Magic cards.”
“How much for?”
“Two grand.”
Gerald reached into Paul's pocket and took the money. He put it in his own.
Gracie shook her head. “We only need the couch, doofus.”
“Why not both?” Paul turned a beaming smile on his parents. “We’ll pay you back.”
Megan hemmed. “What about this one?” She pointed to a perfectly boring taupe sofa, just a three-seater with an orange sale sticker on the tag. Was she solving a problem or getting a rise?
Gracie nobly faked consideration. "It goes with the shiplap."
Paul grinned. He had everyone precisely where he wanted. "Nowhere to put the baby, not with guests."
Gracie blushed again. I checked a strong impulse to yell, “I knew it!” I’d gloat later.
“Well!” Megan shuffled over—she moved so slowly—and gave them both a kiss between the eyes. She stared past their shoulders into the showroom for a while. We watched her, those who knew and those who didn’t on either side of a thin divide too endless deep and mean for me to worry over anymore. Just goddamn aging, time creeping up the ass of everything.
She said, “I just can’t believe it.” Then she perked up, came back into the room with us. “Which embryo?” I know she knew, but wanted to hear it.
“The girl,” Paul said.
It was Gerald who gave away the game, bursting into tears and sitting heavily on a chartreuse loveseat.
Megan made it to him first, somehow, and leaned as best she could and told him, “Stop it, please, honey. Now’s not the time.”
Gracie began crying, too. She held her flat belly. “Did I do something wrong?”
Paul kept saying, “Dad? Dad?”
And then came a thundering bang, and down went the lights.
In the darkness, someone shrieked.
No more than a minute later, the fluorescents flickered back to life, casting first an eerie, sepia pall, then bringing the room back up to technicolor.
British technicolor, mind you. Please adjust your ear to accents. The costumes have changed, too.
“Sorry about that!” Mister Franklin McFadden, the shoppe’s prim proprietor, called out from the doorway between the showrooms. “Wilkes? What’s happened?” Mr. Franklin looked around, confused.
“Oh my god!” Ms. Gracie jumped onto a couch. She pointed a thin, ivory finger down at the floor a few meters away where a form lay crumpled on the Pergo. It was Wilkes, prone, motionless, a cavalry sword protruding from between his shoulder blades and a dark stain swelling underneath him.
“Gads!” I shouted.
“Everyone, please be calm,” came the cool voice of the Inspector. “I’m afraid there’s been a murder.” Angela Lansbury herself would have swooned at Megan’s single-breasted henna blazer, her understated pearls, her box pleated skirt and crisp stockings. But it was her hand-blocked wool fedora with its jaunty upward lilting brim that put wrongdoers most on edge.
“Dearie!” Mr. Franklin came shuffling over, fretting nervously at his watch chain and peering queasily at his dead assistant. “I cannot abide blood,” he added, turning away.
“Father?” The young Mister Robert McFadden came into the showroom. “What’s all this?”
“Gads,” I said again, for I felt as if no one had heard me the first time.
“Everyone, please remain calm,” said the Inspector. “I’ll have to ask you to be seated.”
The Misters Franklin and Robert seemed at last to notice her. “Goodness,” Franklin exclaimed. “What luck! It’s the Inspector down from Shillingham.”
"What brings you to our village?" asked the son, who could not quite match his father's gracious affect. Already, beads of sweat formed along the rosy edges of his brow.
“I’ve brought my son Paul and his wife here in search of a new living room,” Inspector Megan said flatly, staring at Wilkes where he lay seeping. “I’ve given up waiting for a free afternoon. And work follows me everywhere.”
Franklin nodded. “I see you’ve got your assistant, too, and the good Doctor. A family affair! What luck.”
“Is it lucky, though? You’re down an odd-jobman.”
“No, of course.”
Young Robert had slipped away but returned now with a blanket with which he clearly meant to cover the cadaver. Inspector Megan put a halt to this with a stern look and insisted again that everyone be seated. She hated for anyone to interfere with the victim before she and the Doctor could give a full inspection.
“There’s someone on the telephone,” announced Ms. Marla, the fiancée of Mr. Robert, from the hallway that led away to the shoppe’s office. “Oh, what’s all this, then?”
“Better have a seat,” I told her. That was part of my job as the inspector’s assistant. Directing traffic, making tea. I glanced at The Inspector. “Shall I put on a kettle?”
"Afraid the stove's out," Marla said. Then her eyes settled on Wilkes, and without so much as a peep, she fled the showroom. We heard her padding down the hallway.
“Where’s that hallway lead?” the Inspector asked.
“The warehouse,” Franklin and Robert said in unison.
“Where else?”
“Just the employee lounge.”
“Let’s go,” Megan said to me. This was my cue, as I could far exceed her pace. Off I went down the hallway after Ms. Marla. Luckily, she hadn’t thought to lock the heavy doors into the warehouse, but inside, I became immediately lost in the sprawl of plastic-wrapped furniture and crates and boxes stacked high up, nearly to the tin ceiling.
“Marla!” I shouted. No answer. Then I noticed footprints—heel prints—in the dust and packing foam.
I found her in the lounge, kneeling before a locker bestrewn with broadsides of ill-clad women, much confederate iconography, and a pair of dirty dungarees and a shirt hanging from hooks. Marla knelt low, scooping from the bottom of the locker a packet of twine-bound letters.
“Drat,” she said, noticing me behind her. “Please, just let me take these, before Robert…”
But it was too late. The proprietors had followed and young Robert demanded this correspondence with a pitiful sigh. "You swore it was over," he added in a querulous voice, clearly never having been assuaged of his suspicions. "Ah, Marla," he said and deflated there before us in a most loud and unmanly fashion. Now it 'twas I who needed to turn away.
We left them to their lovers’ quarrel. Franklin and I returned to the showroom where I reported the goings-on to the Inspector, as ever inscrutable in her reaction, her blue eyes sparkling, her brow furrowing, the poor knotted hands working idly at the stitchwork on her jacket.
“Interesting,” she said. “But that woman is no killer.”
“What about the boy, Robert?” the Doctor asked. He liked to guess, though he never came near the scent.
Inspector Megan shook her head once. “No. Too vain. He’d never admit it to himself, not without the proof. It’s all out of order.”
I raised my hand. “I think it was Master Paul.”
“Poppycock,” said Paul. “And I’m a Mister, thank you.”
"You always think it's Paul," said the Inspector. "He can be three hundred kilometers away, aboard a ship and flat out with a fever, and it's 'Paul, Paul, Paul.'"
“Poppycock,” Paul said again. He laughed at the word and repeated it until Ms. Gracie elbowed his ribs.
“I hate to interrupt,” said Mr. Franklin, “but there is the matter of the grease stain.” He stared cooly at Gracie, who seemed to wilt, ducking behind Paul.
“Doctor,” the Inspector said, “does anything strike you as off with the body?”
“As a matter of fact,” Doctor Gerald said, bending gingerly to poor Wilkes there trying in vain to cool despite the infernal heat of the showroom, “it does.”
“The blood?” the Inspector asked.
"Indeed, my dearest. This is mere seepage. A sword wound of this magnitude should have expelled all kinds of arterial spray all over this fine upholstery." He gave a general flourish to the couches nearby, then pantomimed blood spraying from his own back and made a sputtering sound with his tongue and lips. No wonder Paul had never learned his mother's sense of propriety.
“Precisely,” Inspector Megan said. “The blood’s wrong.”
“If you knew it,” the Doctor retorted, “why have me kneel? Someone, help me up.”
Paul leapt to.
“So,” Mr. Franklin said, doffing his cap, the wheels behind his eyes rolling slowly over. “If the sword wasn’t the true implement, then?”
“Paul,” said the Inspector, “please lift the second cushion on that ash sectional.”
Underneath was a bent and bloody socket wrench. We all gasped.
“Gads,” I said.
"My wrench!" Mr. Franklin shouted. He scanned us wildly. "Treachery! I've been set up! I'm no killer, but 'twas in the other showroom, concealing flatulence!"
Inspector Megan wrinkled her nose. “It’s true, I’m afraid.”
“So, it was Paul,” I offered.
Everyone looked at me.
“What? You’re not telling me it was Gracie?”
Megan put her arm gently on my elbow. "Dearest, it's time to give up the charade. You nearly fooled me. I thought it was Gerald after that look Wilkes gave him in the purple chair. And that certainly is his sword work. That I'd know a mile away."
Gerald shrugged. “I panic easily in the dark.”
“But, Beverly, I also saw the way you rankled at Wilkes’ reaction to your chair. You missed the macho undertones completely, so worried about your precious sense of fashion.”
“I think it’s pretty,” said Gracie, a good girl, much too good for Paul.
I backed away, but Paul and Gerald cut off my exits. How did I ever hope to foil the greatest mind in the commonwealth? With some relief, I exclaimed, “Ooh, you bitch. You’re good.” I sat in my wingback and offered up my wrists for the hobbles. Thankfully, someone had left them in the car.
While we waited for the constabulary, the entire Brown clan teased Gracie about names for the baby.
“I still think it was Paul,” I said, but no one listened.
OK, Megan, I tried. Surely, in Heaven of all places, you can find it to forgive whatever the hell that was.
But, honestly, you’re not here, and I like my story better.
By the time the actual power returned, Gerald had regained composure and was able to pass off his outburst as a reaction to Gracie’s good news and the heat. Paul and Gracie didn’t seem to believe him, but as he brought out the Mastercard and led the kids to Marla in the office, followed by Frank, practically skipping, they let it go.
They arranged delivery for next week on both the ash sectional and a La-Z-Boy for Paul, and before we loaded up to head for lunch, I saw Gerald return Paul’s wad of cash in a furtive handoff.
They gave him everything, but that’s their business. In fairness, he appreciated them. I imagine that’s all there needs to be. They made a wall with it, one the rest of us couldn’t enter. You liked to be near it, though. Gracie and I might have shared a few looks as Paul got everything he wanted, but it made you happy, knowing someone did.
Then again, I guess he didn’t.
Do I need to tell you that in the parking lot after lunch at the Gondola pizzeria, Paul and Megan shared a cigarette and she must have told him then about her diagnosis because he took her cigarette and stomped it out and was loud and then quiet and then they held each other for a long time there between my truck and her Toyota and the rest of us decided we'd take a walk down to the liquor store a block away?
There. What does it change?
I could add that because this was Paul, and because this was Megan, some barely teenage boys saw them hugging and carrying on in the parking lot and one must have said something, because Paul shouted at them, not even words, just a roar, and the boys ran to their car, and Megan held his face in her sore hands and told him something and that’s when Gerald suggested we should go and get more wine, as if there might be enough in the world.
Megan did not approve of drinking, and Gracie couldn’t. As for the rest of us, we drank all evening. Paul made a lovely dinner. He’s an excellent cook. I’m hard on him because I’m jealous.
Late, after Megan had gone to bed, I found Paul and Gerald passing a joint on the back steps. They were telling stories about Megan as if she’d passed already, having no idea of everything that was coming, but they were laughing and standing close together. I didn’t want to intrude, but they insisted I join them, and it seemed like they wanted me to tell a story, too.
Stars above their woods made a pale gauze of the clouds. It was cold and the smoke of their breath and the joint piled above them. I had to think a while for one they wouldn’t know.
“When we were sixteen, your mother played the flute, and she loved a boy named Harold. He was the first chair and she was second chair and she’d learned all these songs he liked—he listened to jazz, like Bennie Goodman. Megan hated jazz. But she would play the songs when they were warming up and it annoyed him. I think Harold was gay, but that’s beside the point. He didn’t love her back, for whatever reason.”
“I was in band, too, and I teased her about it. She wouldn’t admit to anything. She claimed not to care at all about Harold and to love Bennie Goodman. So, I guess it was the fall or the very end of summer and they were going to decide the chairs again and we know they’re going to evaluate us that afternoon and Megan just won’t stop playing Bennie Goodman, it was “Sing, Sing, Sing,” I think. She’s working it into the marches. It’s throwing Harold. She’s getting looks, the tall blonde girl with the flute bopping along, out of sync with everyone—and she was a good player, normally.”
They watched me, expectant, shivering, but I couldn’t finish the story. My voice had simply gone away. I’m not an emotional person and I was embarrassed. They went inside and soon enough, we all went to bed.
Early next morning, I was pulling on my shoes on the couch. Gerald and Megan were still asleep—they always sleep in on weekends. Paul burst in through the kitchen door and smiled and waved me over. He put his finger to his mouth, knowing his parents would be asleep. But at the kitchen door, he stopped me and took a deep breath and told me like he'd worked up a speech: "You've always done so much for my mom. I saw how much you wanted your chair, so I…" And he just gestured out to my truck, where he'd already moved the fuchsia wingback from his own.
"I returned the La-Z-Boy. I didn't want it." His smile went watery, but he wanted very much for this to be a happy thing.
I put my hand on his shoulder, though I’m not much of a touch-er. And I told him, “Paul, you cannot do this. It’s too much.”
“No.” He shook his head. He had to wipe away tears. “I just think…I know. Everybody should have whatever they want.”
And that was his speech. He went to wake up his parents or to go sleep in the spare room, I don't know. I got in my truck and left, wishing I'd told him something better than just "thank you." When I got home, I took the chair to a friend. She loves it.
I never finished the story. Why did Megan play Bennie Goodman all through that rehearsal? She lost second chair and had to win it back. It took all fall. I never heard her play that song again. She lost interest in Harold, too.
When I asked her, she only smiled. She told me, “That’s why we’re friends, Bev. You ask all the right questions.”
Maybe Harold was like the purple chair. How do you know what the thing you really want is? How do you?
I’m really asking.
I’d really like to know.