13. Lance
Chapter thirteen
Lance
It’s a little after three on Sunday afternoon and my mother is on the phone from the Farmers’ Market, telling me that Shelley Bishop lives across the street from me. She is also, at the same time, trying to remind my skeptical father of That One Time He Liked Butternut Squash.
“Which apartment?” I ask.
“Twelve. Second floor.”
I look out the window at the facade of her building. It’s a big brick one with wide windows. I remember that Parker lived on this street nine years ago. But I never pinpointed exactly where he lived. Which is good, because if I had, I’d have spent nine years knowing exactly which window.
“Wear a decent shirt,” she says. “We were at your cousin’s house and you distinctly said that the butternut soup was good.”
For a second I wonder if she’s talking to me.
“Jackie, I do not remember that,” I hear Dad insist in the background.
“I’ll let you go,” I say before Mom can get me to testify to the veracity of this memory.
The box is heavier than it looks and the bottom’s gone soft with age.
By the time the elevator door opens on the first floor my good shirt looks like I’ve been sent to a coal mine.
I jaywalk across Flint Street and the aging cardboard shifts so much that I stop trusting the bottom.
I am still trying to juggle the box and press the buzzer when someone takes pity on me and holds the door open.
I back in, still trying to prevent the box from disintegrating onto the lobby tiles.
“Thanks,” I say as I shoulder my way in.
I get the fleeting impression of a man in a hoodie with a map open on his phone before I take the stairs up to the second floor.
By the time I hit the landing, I have serious opinions about this box.
The only way I can free my hand to knock on her door is by wedging the box against the wall with my body.
Shelley Bishop opens the door with reading glasses pushed up in her hair and a pen behind her ear. It takes her a second and a half.
“Lance?” she asks.
“Ma’am. Hi.”
She looks at me, and I watch her place me.
I open my mouth to tell her about Parker’s box, but then I look into the apartment and I don’t see him.
I don’t know why I thought I would, but somehow, I was just sure I’d catch him here, and he’d smile and look amazed to see me.
And now that he’s not, I just can’t give her the box.
“My mom said I should stop by because we’re neighbors now.
And…” I’m not sure how to finish this sentence.
She’s looking at the box. She’ll ask about it any second and I don’t know what to tell her.
“She thought that I should just let you know where I am in case you need someone to move boxes or open a jar or…”
Her eyebrows go up. “So, in other words, a single woman of a certain age needs a younger man to open the jars of pickles,” she says in a dry tone.
Shit. “No. I did not mean that.”
She waves her hand and cracks a broad smile. “I’m pulling your leg. It’s sweet of you to come by. Come in. Put that down anywhere. Do you want coffee? I’ve got coffee. It might be from this morning.”
“Coffee’s fine.”
The apartment’s crowded with stuff: a multi-armed Indian bronze goddess, a pastoral painting in an oversized gold frame, a china hutch that belonged to somebody’s grandmother. The front door opens onto the dining area. I set the box down by the door where it isn’t in the way.
“Sit,” she says. “You’ve filled out nicely. Was that the Marines or was that just always going to happen?”
“Bit of both, ma’am”
“Your mother says you’re back for good.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answer.
“She’s very proud of you.” She pours the coffee and glances at the box. “What’s that for? Are you bringing me something?”
I glance at it. This is my chance to come clean. And I can’t. “Not really,” I say, thinking fast. “I live up on the fifth floor across the way. It’s a studio and there’s not much room so I am kind of downsizing. Donating away some things that are eating up space.”
“Oh, I know. I used to live in that building. It’s pretty snug. Sometimes a little too snug.” She smiles at me and motions to the table. Behind her, the living area is tucked against the street-side windows.
I take a sip of the coffee. It’s black and strong. The silence descends on us. “So, how’s Parker?”
She checks her watch, makes an amused face, and looks up at me. “He’s well.”
“Were you timing how long it took for me to ask?”
“You did admirably.” She pats my hand.
“So, is he…happy? Is he seeing someone?”
She puts her cup down.
“Parker’s been a bit prickly,” she says. “I would love to sit around and talk about him all day long. But I think he’d be pretty upset if I volunteered information about him without talking to him about it first.”
“You mean, sharing it with me.”
She puts her hand on mine again. “You’re not a monster or anything, and I don’t think he’s ever believed you were, not even at his angriest. But there’s a lot of water under that bridge. You’re a special case.”
“Is he still…mad at me?”
“I don’t think he ever was. But it’s hard to say how he feels now.
” She turns her cup around. “There are some things that hurt straight to the bone, so you don’t talk about them.
Not even with the people that love you.” She looks up at me.
“That’s why he’s never talked about you.
Same as he’s never talked about Elliott, or my sister, or Mom. ”
I hesitate, because what she’s told me is too big, and if she meant it, I want to go home and unpack it like the one gift he could never give me. I clear my throat. “My mother said he went away. Where did he go?”
“Mostly India. A year in Vietnam somewhere in there.”
“Oh. Wow.” I don’t have anything more useful to say. “I thought when he said he was leaving town that he’d still be kind of—” I circle one hand. “—around. Like the Carolinas. Or DC. Indiana, maybe.”
“Parker was never one for half measures, I think. Probably he heard ‘Indiana’ and thought, ‘why not go to the original one?’” She laughs. I stare at her blankly. “That was a joke, sweetheart.”
“Right. Right.” I pretend to busy myself with my coffee.
“I’ve looked for him,” I say to break the silence.
“I wanted to just wish him well and keep in touch but he doesn’t have social media.
You’d think a name like Parker Bishop would be really easy to trace, but no luck.
” I make myself smile. It feels like a grimace. “So, India.”
She rolls her eyes. “He got on a plane at nineteen with a backpack and about four hundred dollars, and I have not had a full night’s sleep since.” She says it fondly. “He does all right for himself.”
India. Nine years. I’ve been in Oceanside and Twentynine Palms and a marriage, and he’s been on the other side of the planet.
“Can I ask you something?” she says. “How long did you two know each other? Before. I never got the whole of it out of him.”
“Since ninth grade, properly.”
“Properly. That’s an interesting way of putting it.”
“We met earlier but, honestly I don’t know if he remembers it, because he didn’t really act like he did when I sat next to him at lunch on the first day of sixth grade.”
“Do tell!” She sits back and folds her hands.
“My seventh birthday was at Captain Eddie’s,” I say. “Out on the highway. It was me and Mom and Dad and a paper hat.”
“Captain Eddie’s Fish Camp. Wow. Do they still have the pirate statue in the lobby? Used to scare me to pieces when I was a kid.”
“They probably do.” I smile.
“So, tell me about the birthday.”
“It was fine. It was over the summer. But there was a kid at the next table having his party in the back at the same time and he’d invited everybody, and I mean everybody, and they had a cake with a shark on it.
” I smile at the steam rising from my cup in spite of myself.
“And I got up to go look at it, because I was seven and I had no dignity, and I went straight into the corner of the counter with the side of my head.”
Shelley winces.
“There was a lot of blood. Head wounds. And everybody in that whole place turned around to look at me, and the owner came out with a towel, and every single person in there felt so sorry for my mother that she went red.”
“Oh, honey.”
“And I was more embarrassed than hurt. I remember that clearly. I wanted to be under the table.” I stop. “And then this boy came over from the other party.”
She’s very still.
“He had a Kermit the Frog shirt on. He came over, and he didn’t say anything about the blood, and he put his arms around me. Full hug. Total stranger.”
“Oh,” she says.
“And he greets me like we’ve just been raised together. Gets my name. Tells his friends from this totally different elementary school that we’re best friends, so they have to be nice to me because we don’t get to see each other that much.”
“He didn’t!” she gasps, scandalized. “Why, that clever little conman!”
“And then he steals a Matchbox car out of the other kid’s goodie bag and hands it to me and tells me, ‘I don’t really like that guy very much anyway. I like you better.’”
She makes a small sound and puts her hand over her mouth.
“And that was it. I spent that birthday with my new best friend. After that, when people would ask, who’s your best friend, because I was a fat kid and didn’t have very many, I would say, Parker Bishop, but he doesn’t go here.”
“Oh, Lance.”
“And then first day of sixth grade, they’d funneled Robbins and McGill elementaries together and there he was. And he didn’t remember me at all. I was mortified.”
“So, you know how kids are. I moved on. And then adolescence kicked in, and I lost the weight and moved up the social scale, and he moved to the bottom of it. I feel like I was the only one who noticed. So around the ninth grade, I’d decided I owed it to him to be a friend.”
“And that’s how you fell in love with him,” she says.
“Well, I don’t know about that. Who knows how much of what you’re really feeling when you’re that young is just hormones and uncertainty.” I feel acutely embarrassed by this line of conversation.
“You did. I watched you sit in a stranger’s living room and hold his hand in front of your own mother. You knew you loved him with a certainty that most adults can’t manage.”
“Well, it was a long time ago.”
“Inside, it never is. When I was twenty-four, I fell in love for the first and only time in my life, and my God, it was wonderful and terrible all at the same time. And it was enough to fill my heart for the rest of my days. The heart, unfortunately, has no word for time.”
“But I’ve become a different man. I don’t think he would even recognize me. Well.” I slap my thighs twice and stand up. “Thank you for the coffee. I’ll let you get back to your day.”
“Well, stop in anytime,” she says, accompanying me the three steps to the door.
I pick up the box and turn to her. “Miss Shelley, next time you talk to him…When he calls, or you do the video thing, would you tell him I was asking after him?”
She opens the door. For a second it looks like she’s going to say something else, and then she doesn’t.
“I’ll do that,” she says. “You’ve gone and done it now.”
“Done what?”
“Captain Eddie’s.” She shakes her head. “I haven’t thought about that place in fifteen years and now it’s all I want. Catfish and fries. That’s your fault.”
I laugh. I actually laugh.
“Get the hush puppies,” I tell her. “Don’t let anybody talk you out of the hush puppies.”