Works and Days

Happy Returns

3

“Felice, look at this shit!” Jackie stopped typing, shut off the tape and chewed on her pen in lieu of a cigarette.

Felice came over to the computer.

“Here it says, patient had no problem but that he occasionally likes to throw furniture down the stairs.”

“Should you really be sharing those, Jaclyn. Aren’t the cases confidential?”

“Then it goes on to say, patient finds great satisfaction in his daily routine. His current goals are relearning to tie his shoes. Recently the goal of telling time was achieved. The way they talk on this shit, you think all these crazy people are sitting around in top hats from a Dickens’ novel, nodding their heads, saying, “Why yes, I feel that my rehabilitation into the world of ambulation is a great personal achievement. Who the hell uses the word ambulate!”

Felice sat down on her sofa in the living room. Jaclyn was at the computer before the window overlooking Hasling Street and asked, “What’s ambulate?”

“Walk,” Felice said.

“Then why don’t they just say...”

Felice nodded. “Exactly.”

The phone rang. Jackie looked at Felice and Felice said, “I’ll get it.”

“Well,” Jackie murmured, going back to work, “It is your house.”

“Jaclyn, it’s for you!” Felice said in amazement.

Jackie scowled. stopped the tape she was transcribing, and came to the phone.

“Hello?”

“Jaclyn.”

Jackie paused a bit, cocked her head.

“Kristin? How did you know I was here?”

“I called your place first, then Patti and Thom, then I decided you must be here.”

“And you were right, God, I thought you were John.”

“I know I’m sounding a little froggy today, but really—”

“No, I thought he’d be the only one calling here for me.”

“I heard you were....”

“Knocked up. Um hum. I am.”

“Mother told me. Oh my God, Jackie, we’ll be having babies together.”

“How weird is that? How’s your’s coming along?”

“I’m starting to show now. Reese wants to touch my stomach all the time, and he thinks my pregnancy is a turn on. He wants to have sex all the time! It hurts my back. I’m about to tell him no. But it actually feels really good. Despite the pain. I think the whole pregnancy is turning me on, too. I love the way that man feels inside of me.”

“God, Kristin!”

“But that’s not what I’m calling about, I’m calling about you and John. What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Mother told me he proposed to you.”

“And I told him no.”

“I know! Why, Jackie?”

“Because, because he was like—now that you’re knocked up I guess I have to marry you.”

“He said that?”

“No. But that’s what it felt like.”

“I heard he came in a three piece suit looking hotter than usual. And I have to say John’s pretty hot in overalls—and he got on one knee and stuck out a bouquet.”

“Yeah,” Jackie admitted.

“And then you decked him!”

“Because I knew why he was saying it.”

There was a long pause on the Minnesota end of the phone, and then Kristin said. “Now, Jaclyn, if you actually believed that it would be okay. But we both know it’s not true. John’s loved you for years. And, if this is the spur that it finally took to make something happen that should have happened long ago,” Jackie could hear her sister shrugging, “then so be it.”

Jackie was quiet now.

“Jaclyn? What is it?”

“He hasn’t come back. He hasn’t come to talk to me since then. Since, when he proposed.”

“Jaclyn, John’s a good man, but you give him a lot to live up to. You don’t tell him something you’ve known for a very long time. When you tell him, instead of anger, he comes to you, perhaps awkwardly, and he asks you to be his wife. And then you punch his lights out. Jaclyn, he loves you but... Chances are he’s scared.”

Jaclyn lay against the wall. Felice, on the sofa, had the grace to pretend she didn’t see this.

“No one ever thinks that I might be scared.”

“Of the baby?”

“Only a little of that... That’s not it.”

“I think,” Kristin went on, “that what upsets you is the first betrayal.”

“What betrayal?”

“You loved John. Nothing happened, but you knew he loved you too. You thought there was an understanding between you too, and there probably was. We all thought that. Then he came home with Kim, and you knew he was sleeping with her. He married her, had all these kids by her. He broke your trust.”

“I wouldn’t say it like that—”

“But you’d think it like that, Jackie. And you still do, and you need to tell him, and that’s the reason you’re lashing out at him now. That’s what I think. And I also think you better tell him soon, Little Sister. Because if you don’t, you’ll lose him again.”

When Russell arrived at 1421 Curtain, he was surprised to see a well dressed, slightly nervous but very pretty white boy typing away at a table turned desk near the front door.

“You must be Russell,” he said. “Chayne will be gone for the afternoon. I am Robert Keyes.”

Because nothing was too unusual in Chayne’s house, and in this house courtesy was the first rule, Russell simply said, “It’s good to meet you. I’m getting something to drink. Are you thirsty?”

Rob said that he was, and it was while Russell found himself making lemonade for a well dressed stranger that he learned all about how Rob had met Sharon Kandzierksi and—“That was my mom and my aunt”—in Chicago.

“That foxy white lady with the golden brown hair,” Rob said.

“Yup,” Russell said, handing Rob a glass of lemonade. “In fact, call her Foxy White Lady all the time.”

“And the other one, the sassy one is your aunt?”

“Yup. She’s pregnant now.”

“Well, damn,” Rob said in a low voice,

There was loud knocking on Chayne’s door, and while Rob raised an eyebrow, Russell went to answer it.

“First,” Anigel said without breath. “We went to your house. Then your mother told us you were probably at the Quickie Burger. Then someone mentioned you were here, and now we found you.”

Anigel Reyes ashed into the small tray she carried. Even though it was barely sixty degrees, she made it feel seventy. On the street the El Camino was rumbling.

“Com’on,” she said. “I’ve already caught up with Gilead. Now I have to catch up with you.”

The car horn honked, and Russell squinted to see Gilead in the passenger’s seat.

Rob was standing in the living room looking stupid.

“This is Rob,” Russell introduced the young man.

“Pleased to meet you,” Rob put out a hand.

“He can come too,” Anigel said, smiling, and turned around to head back to the El Camino.

“This is my sister, Caroline, and this is my brother-in-law, John.”

If Anigel had not been in denim capri pants, hoop earrings and a white top, her black hair in a pony tail and a packet of Marlboros in her right hand, if she’d been a decently dressed pregnant house wife, she would have looked like Caroline.

John, who shook Gilead’s and then Russell’s and Rob’s hand was a small man with a shaved head that was just growing blond spikes and a not unhandsome, slightly monkey face with blue, almond shaped eyes.

“You all. You two...” he pointed to Russell and Gilead, “Go to Our Lady of Mercy?”

“Um hum.”

“I went there.” John took up his own cigarettes and cashed them, but didn’t open the packet. “You all know my brother, Ralph?”

Well, yes, this would have been Ralph’s brother.

“Yeah,” Russell said. “I know Ralph.”

John and Caroline lived on the other end of town, a little south of Keyworthy and the mall, north of Thompson Street and the slums. They had a little shop on Versailles Street, a white general store whose back and upstairs and attic were living space. All of them sat in the living room which overlooked an enclosed porch that in turn overlooked a good sized back yard, then the backs of the houses on Royce Street.

John and Caroline were good hosts. They had food ready. They talked about growing up around here, exchanged pleasant stories about high school and how they had both gone to Notre Dame and gotten engaged their, but married at Saint Celestine’s. Then, after the minimum chatter, they got up and got the hell out, sensing that the young people would want to talk to each other.

“The look on your face when John said he was Ralph’s brother,” Anigel chuckled to Russell. “I forgot you all didn’t get along so well.”

“Oh, you’ve been out of the loop for a while,” Gilead said.

“Meaning?” Anigel eyed Gilead.

“Of course,” said Gilead. “So was I. Russell and Ralph were—are... I’m not sure.”

“Me neither,” Russell muttered.

“Friends,” concluded Gilead.

“What?” Anigel looked confused. “Russell, he doesn’t seem like he’d be your type at all.”

“It happened after the party. Something about us not being suspended when everyone else was.”

“It’s a little more than that,” Gilead said, soberly. “I think he always liked you. Him and Jason Lorry.”

“Is that the Indian boy? I forgot all about him.”

“You remembered a little,” Gilead said.

“Well, he’s kind of fine.” Anigel added: “For a kid.”

Rob gagged on his drink, and Anigel shrugged.

“I’m honest,” she said. “At least I’d like to think I am.”

Meanwhile, Russell was looking around the living room, and after his third amazed gaze at the ordinary room and Anigel, she finally said “What?”

“What?” she said.

“I never expected to be here. I never expected to see you again.”

“I told you I’d see you and find you one day.”

“Yeah,” said Russell. “But lots of people say lots of things.”

“And lots of people are full of shit,” Anigel pronounced. “But I’m not. I’m full of surprises, though. I didn’t expect to end up here.”

“What happened?” Gilead asked her.

Anigel shrugged. “I got tired of seeing everyone else go to school while I was waitressing or working in the bookstore. I thought, maybe there’s something to this school business. Then I thought, I don’t want to find out in Barrelon. I don’t like Barrelon.”

“So are you going to the state school in Saint Gregory?” Russell said.

“Naw,” Anigel shook her head. “I don’t wanna fuck with that. I’m going to Soubirous.

“The only thing is I love John and Caroline, but this place isn’t big enough for two babies and an Ani. I lived with them before, but they don’t need that now.”

“Can you cook or clean?” Russell said.

“Yeah,” Anigel looked at him suspiciously.

“I’m sure Chayne would love to have you.”

“Chayne?” Anigel said.

“Well, as long as we’re all living together we might as well all go out together,” Chayne decided.

They were in the station wagon, and Anigel sat beside Chayne while Russell, Rob and Gilead were in the back. Behind them Shannon and Jewell were driving with Diggs and Ann Ford.

`When they had all parked, Shannon came up to Chayne, and pointing back at Ann and Diggs who could barely stand to be separated, she demanded:

“Do they fuck?”

“I certainly hope so,” said Chayne.

Saint Gregory was northeast of Geschichte Falls and north of Saint Gregory was Soubirous College.

“When I was a little kid, the nuns used to bring us here,” Chayne told his friends.

The chapel was off to the side of a main building with a courtyard with a wrap around porch. The wrap around porch led into a red tiled empty lobby.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Gilead asked.

“This is Soubirous,” said Chayne. “We just gotta find the right place. The coffeeshop, isn’t it?”

“That’s what Nehru said.”

They went walking through the lobbies and the empty study lounge of the college until they saw a girl sitting in a large wing backed chair studying, and Chayne said, “Excuse me? Do you know where the coffeeshop is?”

She was not familiar with it, did not go often and so did not explain where it was very well except that it was in the basement of the church.

“What a weird place,” Robert remarked.

“Right back where we started,” said Russell.

They walked around the church until they saw, at their feet, windows, and then they rounded the chapel until they saw, under one side, a door in the ground and the door led to a small hall with a door at the end and the door opened onto music.

    

When I wake up early in the morning

lift my head

—I’m still yawning

when i’m in the middle of a dream

—stay in bed

 

float up stream

—float up stream

 

please don’t wake me

no, dont shake me

leave me where i am

i’m only sleepping!

“Beatles,” Anigel noted, smiling at Gilead and Russell. “Can’t go wrong.”

It was not a bright place. The light from very old lamps was mellow, and there were chairs and couches lined up along the muraled walls. Tables were in the middle of the floor, and though there weren’t many people, the room buzzed with excitement.