Works and Days

The Works of Our Hands

5

“You broke the Evervirgin!” Patti pounced on Thom.

Thom Lewis looked up at his wife, the tendrils of her hair hanging in his face, and he nodded nervously.

“Oh my God, Thom! Why didn’t you tell me until now?”

“I thought that if I whispered it.... as you were drifting off to sleep, the news might settle on you gently.”

In their bed, Patti gave her husband an amazed look.

“I guess I was wrong.”

“And Russell was in on this too?”

But Patti ignored the rest of what came rolling out of her husband’s mouth. She sat beside Thom in her pink satin nightgown, unbelieving. She reached for her packet of Benson and Hedges, stopped, and just started to laugh.

“What?” Thom demanded helplessly.

“You just popped up behind them and said, ‘Aha!’ and boom! Poof! There goes the Evervirgin!”

“Oh, Patti, that’s not funny.”

“Five hundred years of tradition and at least a million dollars gone. Just like that!”

Patti threw back her head and laughed.

“Patti!”

“All this and a naked painting of you in City Hall!”

Thom was about to open his mouth when the phone rang.

Patti sobered and said, “I’ll get it. Hello? Kathleen, what’s wrong?.. You know what time it is? Oh. Okay. Yes. That’s right. What? What? Yes. Of course. You want me to tell—you want to. Okay. Good.”

Patti turned toward her husband. “It’s your mother. She wants to talk to you.”

“Hey, Mom. Um. Alright. Okay. Tomorrow. When. Well then, yeah. You too, Mom. Goo’night.”

Thom handed his wife the phone. Patti hung it up.

“So we’re going to see the rehearsal for Mom’s one woman show tomorrow night?” Thom said.

“Kathleen,” Patti stated with a smile. “On her own! For two hours.”

“Oh, we’re all just so funny to you tonight, aren’t we?” Thom sank under the covers while his wife kept cackling.

“Oh, Thomas,” Patti kissed her little husband on the head, “I love this family. It’s a good night to be a Lewis!”

    

“Yes, hello,” Thom in white shirt, blue tie, and good cologne, dark hair combed perfectly, looking full of business, was sitting at Patti’s desk in the living room.

“I am Thom Lewis. Yes, yes, the one in the painting. Thank you. You—you’ve got a great ass too. No. No, I wasn’t in the service. A Norman Rockwell quality to it? Why… Why thank you.”

“Thom, are you almost ready?” Patti was walking through the house in high heels, the black gown tight around her waist as she hooked in teardrop earrings.

“Almost, Patricia.”

Thom returned to his phone call.

“Say, I’d like to know when that painting’s coming down. It came down today? Really? Back in the gallery? It’s—It’s not. It’s been... bought. Bought?”

Thom’s voice grew cold and he sat up. “By who? Whom, I mean? Yes. I can write an address down.”

He scribbled the number and hung up the phone. Patricia stood before her husband looking devastatingly gorgeous.

“It’s a shame you look so beautiful,” Thom told his wife, “on the night I tell you I have to kill your father.”

 

“Oh, you came!” Abby cried out to Jackie, placing a long hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“You’ll be so proud of your mother tonight.”

There was a small, dimly lit lounge in the Arts Council building, and Abby was sitting at the table, sipping a martini as the Lewises came to join her.

“Dad’s back with Kathleen, warming up. You’ll love the show. Martini anyone?”

“I would love a glass of white wine, actually,” Jackie said.

“I’d love a distillery full of vodka—” started Thom.

“Thomas!”

“I can get the wine,” Abby told Jackie, “but the vodka is definitely out. You see, Thom, I drank it.”

Abby leaned back elegantly and belched before standing up.

“You, Patricia?”

“The martini sounds good to me.”

“And you, Russell?”

“Martini sounds good too.”

“It might sound good—” started Thom.

“Coca-Cola?” Russell amended.

“Oh, come on, be a drunk tonight,” Abby urged. “I’ll surprise you.”

She left the lounge for the bar.

“Bart won’t be here tonight,” Abby shouted back.

“Bart?” Thom mouthed, and Jackie mouthed back, “her brother.”

“He’s been busted for possession of coke again.” Abby continued, now pouring out drinks. “Not that I mind the stuff. I like a nice bump every now and again as much as the next girl, but I’m just saying hide the shit a little better.

“I used to be waitress,” she informed the Lewises, coming to the table with her tray. “By the way, you can all sit down. That’s better.”

“What’s this?” Russell asked as Abby slid the glass to him.

“Be surprised,” Abby winked at Russell.

He sipped. He gagged. Thom clapped his back. Russell was surprised.

“Does it hurt, son?”

“Only the first time.”

“Ah, virginity!” Abby murmured wistfully. “So, Russell, I hear you’re quite the singer.”

“And he plays guitar,” Thom added while Russell winced.

“Dad gave me his for Christmas.”

“Um,” Abby sat back pleased. “A family of artists. Just like the Rosettis.”

“Who?” started Thom.

“Or the Judds,” Abby shrugged, and downed the rest of her martini. She took out a Virginia Slim. “I need another drink,” she told them, sticking the long cigarette in the corner of her lip and rising for the bar.

“Why don’t you just stay there?” Jackie urged as Mason Devalara stepped out onto the stage and announced:

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” smiling toward Thom and Russell, “The Arts Council of Geshichte Falls is pleased to present, for the first time, Kathleen O’Donnell—”

“O’ Donnell?” Thom mouthed toward his wife.

“In her one woman show.”

They all clapped, the curtain opened and there, draped across a piano, was Kathleen in a gingham dress that stopped right under her ass, and her short blondish hair in pigtails around her fifty-seven year old face, her blue eyes staring Bette Davis like out of kohled lashes.

Thom clutched his wife’s hand.

“Yeah,” said Kathleen casually, and when she opened her mouth there was the next surprise, because her British accent was gone. “This is what I looked like when my life more or less began. I was a little younger, but this is basically the picture of what I was looking like on a daily basis in 1956 in Bottom Patch, West Virginia. My brother had just left home for... here, though here seemed a long way off, and I was staying with a cousin, finishing off high school. I believed I could go to college. Not that anyone else did. The world was changing.”

Kathleen sat down, carefully, at the piano bench.

“It was lonely that year, and sometimes... to stop myself from crying, I would remember my mother who had died when I was very young, and the song she used to sing to me.”

Then Kathleen lifted her head, and undid her pigtails and began to sing, and Russell and Jackie, in their seats, whispered it with her, because she’d sung it to them and they had sung it together.

 

The blackest crow

that ever flew

would surely turn to white

if ever I proved false to you

bright day

would turn

to night

 

bright day woudl turn to night

my love

the elements would moan

if ever I proved false to you

the seas would rage

and burn!

 

They did not know how long they had been there when Kathleen, now in a black dress, stood up and folded her hands before her.

“My daughter Jaclyn was actually a quiet child—in public, but never at home. The first time I ever heard her sing out loud she was twelve. It was at her uncle, my brother’s funeral. We were living here, on Kirkland then, and I remember sitting in Saint Adjeanet’s and watching my daughter sing:

 

Amazing Grace

how sweet the sound

that saved

a wretch

like me!

I once was lost,

but now am found

was blind

but now I see!

 

“Why don’t you come on up here with me, Jaclyn?”

Jackie’s chin had been in her fist, taken in by the show in a way she rarely was by her mother, but when Kathleen called her, she didn’t miss a beat. She sang, even as she rose to approach her mother on the stage, and the little theatre was very quiet as the two women chanted:

 

Twas grace that taught

my heart to fear

 and grace

my fears

 relieved

how precious

did

that grace appear

the hour i first believed.

 

“Admit it, Patricia, you thought I’d fuck it up?”

Patti wrapped an arm around her mother-in-law’s waist and said, kissing her, “If you know me that well, Kate, then you know how glad I am that I was wrong.”

“You’re the best daughter I never had,” Kathleen said.

“I’m your best daughter period. Now go look to your son.”

“Tommy?”

“Um hum.”

After the show, Kathleen came out in her street clothes, glowing, receiving kisses and applause from the small crowd, and a martini from Abby.

“Bart says he’s proud,” Abby added, and then Kathleen came to Thom.

“Honey, what’s the matter?” she said to her son. He was smiling, tightly, his eyes were shining and he looked a little as if he was in pain. Thom turned away from her and ran the back of his hand across his face quickly.

Thom’s smile widened and he said, “I love you, Mom.”