Chapter Twenty-Five
They marveled at how they hadn’t emerged more scathed by the parents—or in Cal’s case, parent—who’d raised them.
They were sad that Skip would never be able to say the same thing about himself and them one day.
They were sad that Skip would never have children.
The Jenkinses had naturally assumed they’d be grandparents by now, and, over time, they had reset their hopes on Tom and Kathy, who drove in from Toledo every fourth Sunday to have a family dinner on Taft Street.
But this younger generation wasn’t shy about rejecting what they perceived as broken systems. The world was already crowded with children and unstable.
The kids, Cal and Becky were taken aback to discover, weren’t interested in making more kids.
In fact, as Tom had told them on a recent visit, young couples choosing not to procreate was one of the proposed topics of the new radio program he’d just gotten greenlighted at WKML, an interview series to be called The Salt Mine, about the unsung heroes and underdogs of Hancock County.
Kathy would produce. They also planned to do a segment on Toledo’s Vietnam War veterans and their experiences after returning home, since, more and more lately, stories were surfacing about vets being poorly received and struggling to reacclimate and get back on their feet.
“And a segment on librarians,” Kathy said, “maybe the least sung heroes of all.”
The Jenkinses congratulated them on the show and said they’d be sure to listen. “But the segment about the couples who don’t want children,” Becky said, “what will the story be, there?”
Tom glanced across the table at Kathy. “Well, it turns out some of them do want children,” he said.
“They want them and don’t want them?” Cal asked, trying to follow.
“They don’t want to bring more kids into the world. So they find kids who happen to need parents,” Tom said.
“You’re doing a segment on adoption,” Becky said.
“Yeah. But, specifically, on young, lower income couples who’ve adamantly decided not to bring more kids into the world. Like us.”
It took a moment for Cal and Becky to realize what else was being conveyed. A grandchild was in the offing, after all.
But when? The kids were mum on that.
In the Olds, merging onto Route 6 just past Portage, Cal told Becky he hoped Tom and Kathy didn’t wait too long, because he wanted to be able to watch his grandchild grow up.
Becky pointed out that they could adopt a teenager if they wanted to.
“Fine with me,” Cal said. “I’ll make him mow the lawn. ”
“She might tell you to mow it yourself,” Becky said.
They laughed at that, for it was more or less what Skip, at ten, had said to Cal, the first time Cal had told him mowing was to become part of his chores—a funny but sad-tinged memory that was suddenly sailing up the highway with both of them, clouding the inside of the car.
Perhaps, they mused, this was why they didn’t travel more: they brought it all with them whenever they left the house.
—
She’d never resumed her sessions after Skip died.
The spirits—even Mrs. Dodson—seemed to have accepted her retirement.
Becky wondered sometimes if they’d always known what she’d have to live through to understand: that all that contact over the years had been in service to the people who came to her in need, and to the spirits of people who had died—but it had also been vital training for her, so that she could learn to accept death and understand what grieving really was, so that, when the unimaginable happened, she would be able to survive losing her son—and should he want to reach out to her, she would be able to hear him.
—
It had finally happened on a Saturday afternoon, six months after Skip died. She’d been in the laundry room, folding clothes still hot from the dryer, when she heard his voice.
Mom!
Not in her head, like Mr. Shefflin’s voice, or any of the other spirits’ voices, but outside it, in the room with her. Clear as day.
Mom!
“Skip?”
Hey, Mom!
He sounded the way he had when he was little. When he used to tug at her sleeve, wanting something. Her heart quickened.
Let go already, would you?
Before she had a chance to reply, she felt him laugh and move through her like a wriggling fish. She gasped.
Over and over, she’d learned that what the dead most often conveyed was love and forgiveness.
She could only conclude that these were the two most important things in the world—so important that people carried them into the afterlife for the sole purpose of being able to hand them back to the living.
And then the living prayed to have them bestowed upon the dead.
Throughout all the joy and bickering and betrayal and abandonment, all the wars around the world and in America, all the human hardship, messages of love and forgiveness were being sent back and forth, across the divide between the living and the dead.
Those messages meant everything; they counterbalanced the world.
She yearned for a life wherein a woman could have an unusual talent and not be thought of as a nuisance (and for as outlandish as it had seemed at the time, she was sorry she hadn’t encouraged her mother to go to New York City when she’d had the chance).
But even more than that, she yearned for a life wherein all these messages of love and forgiveness were received, and heard, and put to use.
She’d been able to carry on with Cal because she’d trusted that something was going to come along in place of the forgiveness she’d fallen short of, and what had come along was what had been right in front of her the whole time: she knew with absolute certainty that she would be sending that message across the divide to him in one direction or another—so, as Everett had suggested, why not send it while they were both alive?
She’d climbed the stairs that afternoon with Skip’s voice still in her ears.
Cal had been doing yard work all morning and was just stepping out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist. He’d taken one look at her standing in the bathroom doorway and had known, somehow.
“You heard from him,” he said. A moment later, his arms were around her and her hands were pressed against his curved, wet spine.
She didn’t even have to tell him, and he believed her.
At the eleventh hour, when it mattered most.
—
Almost as soon as they were in the hotel room, they got undressed and climbed into bed, kicking the bedspread onto the floor as they rolled around.
After a nap, he took her to lunch at a grand seafood restaurant that had an outdoor dining area overlooking the water and a small marina.
The tables all had flowers. The stiff white tablecloths were secured against the breeze with thin metal clamps.
A cat, ash-gray and lop-eared, threaded around the feet of the diners, vying for food.
Cal ordered the trout. Becky ordered big, for her: perch, a salad, hush puppies, and lemon pie.
She ate almost all of it too (though a bite of fish went to the cat).
After their plates were cleared, Cal reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and brought out an envelope: letter-size, creased, and a bit worn around the edges, R.
H. written on the front in both the sender and receiver spots.
He dropped it onto the table between them.
“Oh, my gosh,” she said, “it worked!”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d forgotten about it! Just like I’d wanted to.”
“You don’t remember writing it?”
“Of course I do, but not what’s in it. That was more than fifty years ago.”
There were other presents wrapped and waiting for her back at the room, he said (he’d gotten her a cobalt blue beret, and a signed first edition of Cards on the Table he’d bought over the phone from a rare book dealer in Detroit). “This doesn’t really count as a present, per se.”
“It does, though,” Becky said. She picked up the envelope, met his eyes for a moment, and ran her thumb gently along the flap, easily breaking the seal of the old glue. She took out the wide-rule piece of notebook paper that she’d long ago so carefully folded.
The air was warm, promising summer. There were dark thin clouds out over the lake, but far off; a breeze stirred the corners of the page as she read.
He watched her face: her brow an overhang, like her father’s; her mouth pulled to one side.
Her eyes skated back and forth over the page, and when she got to the bottom, she smiled just a little.
She read the letter again, then refolded it and tucked it back into the envelope.
“Well?”
“Well,” she said.
“Any surprises?”
She set the envelope down and slid it toward him. “Read it, if you want.”
“Isn’t it private? I assumed it was private. I never looked—obviously.”
“I never said you couldn’t read it.”
“You did.”
“Actually, I said, don’t let me read it until I’m sixty—not knowing that was going to be five minutes after I handed it to you. I also remember saying I’d hold on to your letter for you, if you ever wrote one to yourself.”
“You know I didn’t. Weirdly, I regret that.”
“You still can.”
“And tell myself what? Remember to take your blood thinner?”
“Write to your younger self, then. If this all happens again, you might appreciate the mail.”