Chapter Nineteen #2
How could he not have thought of that? Thank you again, Margaret. “Could we agree not to, for now? I don’t want Tom to suddenly think he doesn’t have me either. It would be my—his whole world.”
“I understand,” Becky said. “I do. You’re his father. Cal and I will, of course, stick to whatever you decide about what to tell him, and when. Both of them.”
“Thank you.”
There was no smooth way to end such an unusual conversation, but as he walked her out to her car, they felt the reverberations of their shared history—the one that had nothing to do with this current set of circumstances—and it made saying goodbye almost comforting.
—
Feeling sorry for yourself in a cemetery was a peculiar kind of callous.
If all the bones and hair and nails and dust of each of the departed could come together into their respective bodies again, and their spirits return, most of them would probably trade places with you and your troubles for a little more time topside.
Here was Lemuel Pickett, born in 1922, died in 1944 defending his country in France.
He’d probably welcome your troubles for a few more years.
Here was Baby Pickett, so much a baby that it hadn’t even been named, so short a life that the only thing on the headstone was Baby Pickett, Died 1917.
Surely Baby Pickett would want your life with your troubles—unless, like Mrs. Dodson, Baby Pickett found death to be wonderful.
Everett was on his feet when she next looked over. His hat was back on his head, his hands were in his pockets. He took one last look at his family’s graves, then turned and started walking toward her. She gathered her garden shears and whisk broom and stood.
Everett knew there was big trouble at home but had been respectful enough not to inquire.
Cal didn’t want him to know and had asked Becky not to tell him.
To Ida and Roman, she’d said only that she and Cal were having problems and were separating.
She’d made them promise they wouldn’t ask Cal what was going on, that they would respect her privacy—and his.
She was also trying to be practical; if she and Cal somehow happened to survive this, she didn’t want her parents hating him.
She didn’t hate him.
She just wanted him out of her sight.
There were no empty bedrooms left, with Everett living there.
For the first week or so, Cal had slept on the pullout couch in the basement.
Then one morning, he was back upstairs, where he still showered and shaved and dressed for work, when she walked into their bedroom and said, “I think I need you farther away.”
His mind ticked through the options. In all seriousness, he said, “The attic?”
Then he understood.
He’d started looking for a place that afternoon.
He was living now in a two-room apartment smaller than the place they’d shared when they were first married.
He still had some of his clothes at the house (because his apartment only had one small closet).
One of the blocks he’d stood on to level himself while he was barefoot and stationary was still under the foot of the bed.
The ceramic owls he’d given her over the years were still on the curio shelf.
He was everywhere she looked; she could trip over his shadow. But he was out of her sight.
Except when he came around, trying to be useful.
“I used to know him,” Everett said on their way back to the car, pointing a curled finger at one of the headstones. “He worked at the tannery out by the water tower. Played the violin.”
Becky looped her arm through his. “Was he good?”
“Better than me.”
“You play the violin?”
“Nope,” Everett said.
—
The apartment was over a bakery on Jones Street.
The wallpaper was the color of a penny and patterned with figs, and the back windows looked down on an alley used for deliveries and garbage removal.
For that first year—the worst of his life, so far—Cal functioned almost normally when he was out and about.
He shopped for himself, got his laundry done, kept himself presentable, performed reasonably well at work.
(Roman had catechizing eyes but stuck to his promise.) The instant he was back in the apartment, his energy left and he sank into despair.
Secrets, regrets, and apologies. These made up the stuff of his life.
But there was nothing to be done with them, apparently, and no filing them away.
Margaret had been overwhelmed by all the secrets and had spilled the beans—only to have those beans sprout and grow more secrets.
Skip wasn’t to know what had happened between them.
Becky’s parents and Cal’s father weren’t to know.
Tom wasn’t to know the truth of his lineage, for now—or perhaps ever.
And if Becky had made any ultimate decision about Cal in her heart, that was another secret.
He couldn’t undo what he’d done, and without being able to do that, he had no idea how he would ever convince her to take him back.
He’d apologized to her a hundred times, until she’d told him to stop, said she’d heard him, and reminded him that those two words, I’m sorry, were very easy to say and literally changed nothing.
—
That was a bleak prognosis for his predicament. Changed nothing? It provided him with a glimpse of understanding into why Margaret had just packed up and left. It also reverberated in his sole encounter with Felix to date, three months after it all went down.
He was sitting by himself at a table in the new Ferguson’s cafeteria, midday, the place nearly full, when he looked up and saw Felix enter the dining room.
Cal had dreaded encountering him, had dodged him on the street a couple of times, the same way he used to dodge Margaret.
For a while, at work, each time the bell jangled over the door, he worried that it was Felix come to confront him.
Watching that very person cross the terrazzo floor now, Cal detected no sign of the enraged figure who’d taken up residence in his imagination.
He saw a tall man with enviable, level shoulders doff his cap and smooth his hand over a full head of dark hair.
Felix said something to the hostess, who smiled at him and followed him with her eyes as he made his way over to the far end of the L-shaped counter.
There, he took off his jacket and sat. Ordered from the menu board.
Lit a cigarette. Glanced around the dining room—and managed to lock eyes with Cal for just a moment. His coffee arrived, and he looked away.
The encounter seemed inevitable to Cal, and he was tired of dreading it. Also, a crowded cafeteria might be just the place to dissuade an altercation.
He left his water glass, gathered his plate of meatloaf and his cane, and crossed the dining room to the empty stool beside Felix’s.
“Mind?”
Felix shrugged.
Cal put his plate down and sat. They both faced forward, the long leg of the counter and the sea of tables stretched out before them. Cal knew he was expected to speak, and he knew what he wanted to say, but his nerve wavered, now that they were inches apart.
A roll and a butter pat were set down next to Felix’s place mat. He picked up the roll, tore it in half.
Cal poked some meatloaf into his mouth.
“I think I’m supposed to hit you,” Felix said, without looking over at him.
Cal swallowed, cleared his throat. “Here?”
“Outside, I guess. In the parking lot.” He spread the butter until it neatly filled the area within the circumference of the crust. Then he set the bread down on its plate. “But, actually, I don’t want to hit you.”
Cal exhaled. He counted to five, then ten, and said, “For what it’s worth, I never meant for any of it to happen.”
Something—a blender—whirred loudly for a few moments, then stopped.
“Well,” Felix said. “You meant for some of it to happen.”
“Right. What I mean is, I feel terrible about it.”
“I would imagine so. Maybe you can explain something for me.”
“Sure. I’ll try.”
“Margaret said you two were involved before she got the telegram about the ship, and you stopped when she got it?”
“Yes.”
“But then you got together once more, after she found out I was coming home?”
“Yes,” Cal said, glad, at least, to be able to provide clarification. “We were—involved—but once she’d heard what happened to you at sea, it stopped. She was too distraught. Didn’t see or talk to me at all. But then—it happened once more. Just before you got back.”
“So you slept together while she thought I was alive, and stopped while she thought I was dead?”
It sounded especially bad, put that way. “If it’s any consolation,” Cal said, “I’ve messed things up for myself pretty badly.”
Felix shook his head—just barely, almost a shudder. “It’s not.”
There was a clatter in the kitchen, something hit the floor, and Cal spoke more loudly than was necessary. “What I really want to tell you is—I’m sorry. Becky said that doesn’t change anything, and she’s right, but I wanted you to know.”
The shudder again. But in the same level, matter-of-fact voice, Felix said, “What kind of person would you be if you weren’t sorry?”
Good question, Cal thought.
Felix touched his napkin to his mouth and, without having eaten anything, stood.
“Don’t,” Cal said. “I’ll move—” But Felix waved him off with the slightest motion of his hand.
He turned slightly to face Cal as he pulled on his jacket, and Cal could see how striking he was.
How smoothly he was stepping into middle age.
Felix said nothing else, took out his wallet and put several dollars on the counter.
As he watched Felix walk out, the thrum of the dining room returned to Cal’s ears like a distant rumble.
—