Alison's Automotive Repair Manual (25 page)

“We're two of a kind, Arthur,” Alison said.

“That we are.”

A few minutes later, as Bill and Sarah were herding everyone outside to the van, the phone rang. Sarah told Alison to let the machine get it. After the beep, Alison heard Max's voice saying something about the note from Tom, about missing her by fifteen minutes. She picked up.

“You're there,” he said.

“Barely. The parade is in half an hour.”

“Alison, listen,” he said, then fell silent.

“To anything in particular?” she said, smiling, almost crying with relief at hearing his voice.

“All this crap with my father, it just makes me nuts. It always has.”

“Yeah, I know. And I don't understand it.”

“Is he there now?”

“He's in the van, waiting with the rest.”

“Waiting for you?”

She looked out the window, saw Sarah's car roll forward in the drive a few feet. “Yeah, for me. Want me to wave them on?” She felt her rib cage rising up with her breathing.

“No, I'll meet you there, at the parade. Just give me forty-five minutes or so, okay? I have some things to say to you, but not on the phone.”

Nothing about the parades ever changed—Founders' Day, Halloween, Arbor Day, all of them featured the same attractions: fire trucks and police cars and the county's lone EMS vehicle, all with lights flashing; a quartet of VFW men in their woolen uniforms, marching with white wooden rifles; several antique cars ferrying beauty queens and the mayor; pickup trucks sponsored by Joe and Benny's and the Red Bird, filled with groups of children from the Catholic school, boys with their clip-on ties and girls in their plaid jumpers; a single car from the ham radio club; a few motorcycle riders in leathers (Tanner Miltenberger was among this group); the Falcons marching band, baton twirlers leading the way; and a group of stragglers waving little plastic American flags. Some of the details changed: New politicians would be elected to ride in the cars; last year's Harvest Queen had moved on to the state college to major in PE; a local business had failed in the last year, or newly opened. But for the most part, one parade looked pretty much like any other, with half the town turning out to watch the other half march down Main Street.

Alison helped Sarah get her dancers ready, gave Mr. Rossi a kiss on the cheek for luck, then found her place along the sidewalk, in front of the Red Bird. Mr. Beachy sidled up beside her, and she thought of that night when they had sat in the diner and had coffee, and she wondered now if they could sit in there again and she could tell him how much he reminded her of her late husband, or of what her late husband might have turned out to be, if he'd been allowed to turn out at all. Probably the idea would sound nothing but morbid coming out of her mouth, and he would be embarrassed on top of it. She commented instead about the parade, which had finally got going after a slow start. The town's four police cruisers rolled along, flashing and honking, followed by the EMS vehicle. Mr. Beachy leaned toward her and said that now was the perfect time to commit a crime on the east side of town. She laughed. Up and down the gently sloping sidewalks, teenagers from Pizza Express sold slices out of insulated bags. Duncan's Bar had a small area where patrons could drink beer outside, cordoned off with frayed rope and traffic cones. Rolling slowly behind the last fire truck was an old T-Bird the color of mint toothpaste, a Model T hot rod, and a convertible Mustang. All three carried teenage beauty queens in tiaras and spangly prom dresses, waving their gloved hands at the crowds.

“Looks like the year for Fords,” Mr. Beachy said. “Come next year, you'll be out there.”

“I'll be Miss Farm Bureau?”

“Your
car”
he shouted above the noise. “In the parade.”

The hay truck Sarah used for her dancers appeared at the top of the street, waiting its turn to join the parade, the dancers sitting awkwardly on the boards. Alison checked her watch, waiting for Max to arrive, standing on her toes to see above the crowd, looking for that almost metallic shine of his hair. Mr. Beachy bought a slice of pizza for each of them. The farm queens rolled on past, giving way to the feathered hats of the marching bands, the gut-shake of the bass drums and bright flash of the trombones in the sunlight, the fat kids and the short ones making the best of their ill-fitting uniforms, the baton twirlers happily showing off, ignoring the occasional drop. It was such a moment, a snapshot of an early September afternoon when a small town took the time to regard itself with nostalgia and love, such a perfect moment then that Alison, just a day later, would hold it in memory and turn it over like some relic, wondering at how an afternoon could be so innocent, caught up in a moment so fine, never knowing that the next could be so terrible.

The waiting area of the ICU at Sacred Heart Hospital looked like any other—vinyl furniture, a table full of Legos, magazines scattered across end tables, a potted plant, a soundless TV mounted on the wall. Like someone's rec room, Alison thought, cheerful and mundane, trying to fool us into thinking that we're home and comfortable, that everything will be okay. It would be more honest if they made it look like a dark alley, or if they made it rain. She tried to explain this to Sarah, but fatigue played havoc with her words.

“You aren't making any sense,” Sarah said.

“I know. I don't even know why I said it.”

“But I know how you mean,” Bill said.

“Does anyone mind, please, just shutting up for now?” Sarah said. She wadded a tissue in her hands. “Ali, go home and sleep.”

Except for her quick nap that morning, she actually hadn't slept since the night before she drove to Morgantown. Already, this day—the one that had started out so brightly at the parade—was edging into dusk, the fluorescent lights up and down the hall taking on weight as the light through the windows dimmed. Lack of sleep became a buzzing, popping thing centered somewhere behind her eyes, which felt scalded and dry. Lila Montgomery and Mrs. Skidmore had stayed until dinnertime, and then got a ride back to Seven Springs, promising to return soon.

Along the wall, a woman sat knitting, bands of green and white spilling out of her lap and onto the floor, while her little boy played under one of the tables. He kept stacking Legos and knocking them down, methodical as a production line. His face was smeared with something dark—grape juice, it looked like—his hair spiky and dirty blond, quivering as he muttered to himself. Someday, he might be famous, Alison thought. He could be president, or could pitch a no-hitter in the World Series, or could kill twenty people, and in her mind he would always be the Lego boy with juice on his face, even though she would never be able to connect who he was now to what he might become. That's what always seemed wrong about history, that you could never link the president to the boy he'd once been, except in the most general terms. The time he sat under the table knocking down Legos would never make the biographies, because that moment wasn't important, and yet at the same time it was vitally important because as the grape juice dried and the Legos made another tumble, Mr. Rossi was down the hall, unconscious, hooked to machines. Someone should write
that
down, how much hung on every moment, but you could never do that, could never get in even a tenth, a hundredth, a millionth of it, because
everything
happened in that moment. If you devoted your entire career to the history of the human race during one minute, from 4:00 until 4:01 on some Wednesday afternoon, your efforts would be folly, because you would never exhaust your subject, never get to the bottom of anything. You could pare it down the way Ernie did, reduce it to a time line, and say,
Here is what happened
, knowing it was nothing like what had happened. Or you could do what she'd done and pick and choose, land on whatever flashy bits of history appealed to you and hoard them away—bring them to your students, instruct a whole generation of Mr. Rossis ready to take on the world through trivia games. She decided then that when he woke up, she would tell him this, how his own throw-away knowledge was as important as any other.

When he woke up.

She saw it all again and again, a tape loop through her brain. The flatbed at the top of Main Street had eased along, just barely moving, brakes squealing as it drew to a stop, the Try to Remember Dancers' banner strung along the side, wind slapping it against the truck, the banner decorated with music notes and spangly stars and the outline of a champagne bottle spilling bubbles. The high school band, well ahead of them, stopped playing and marched in formation, and Mr. Kesler propped the boom box in the truck window from his place in the driver's seat and pushed the button to start the music. Alison pulled Mr. Beachy to a better spot, for a better look. In the street were the crushed remains of the Jolly Ranchers that had been trampled by the band and the discarded crusts of pizza slices. Threads of steam rose from a manhole cover, and the music came out scratchy and distorted, “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman, a fast one, and just three couples, all that would fit on the flatbed, got up to dance—the Harmons, Bill and Sarah, and Mr. Rossi and Lila Montgomery. They moved in quick loops and shuffles that bounced the truck on its shocks, Lila gorgeous in a slinky little pleated dress, Mr. Rossi in his silver-buttoned vest, and the Harmons, as always, in matching pastel shirts and white pants. They all looked better than they had at the Arbor Day Parade, smoother, more practiced. Sarah was gorgeous, and really so good, she and Bill both. It was easy to forget that, and Alison thought that they never seemed more happily married than when they were dancing. Mr. Rossi spun Lila, cupped her tiny waist in his wide hands, his big red face smiling and sweating. As he stamped his foot on the floor and gave a loud
whoop
, Mr. Rossi flung Lila out from himself and spun around to mirror her, then crumpled over the side of the truck. He didn't teeter at the edge or wave his arms or try to catch himself; he just went over, frozen one second on the bed of the truck and the next tumbling backwards to the road, his head making a hollow sound on the pavement, his glasses clattering off his face, the steam from the manhole rising up from between his ankles.

The marching band crowded onto the sidewalk, holding their instruments overhead while the EMS vehicle backed up the hill to where Mr. Rossi lay sprawled. The back doors fell open, the workers still clutching their bags of Jolly Ranchers to toss out the window, the wheels of the stretcher dropping out from beneath it. Down at the west end of the street, the front of the parade was still going on, unaware of what had happened. Alison ran around the circle of people who crowded near Mr. Rossi, trying to see him, trying to find Mr. Beachy, listening for Sarah's panicked wails, which kept rising above the other voices, and watching, still, for Max. When finally they had Mr. Rossi on a board and loaded, a heavy brace around his neck, the ambulance had made its way silently downhill, parting the parade as it went.

The day of Marty's accident, she had spent several hours in a waiting room similar to this one, though she was waiting for nothing: He'd been pronounced dead in Lem's yard, the swing set strung with yellow tape. Just as she thought of this, the silver doors swung open and Dr. Tabor made his second trip out to where they all sat, shuffling down the hall with paper slippers over his shoes. He was pale and wispy-haired, with a young, almost doughy face. He spoke in a low, tired voice, employing the language of doctors in hospitals; the only parts Alison really heard were “head trauma” and “stroke,” and “cerebral hemorrhage.” FDR had died of a cerebral hemorrhage, his last words a complaint to his aides about his “tremendous headache.”

“Wait, I'm confused,” Sarah said. “Did a stroke cause him to fall, or did he just fall and have the hemorrhage?”

“Well, who can say?” Dr. Tabor said. He pulled his glasses off the top of his head and looked at the lenses. “Something caused the bleeding. The trauma, if he just fell. Or maybe a stroke caused the fall. Hard to say unless someone saw him exhibiting stroke symptoms.”

Sarah turned to Alison. “You were watching, did you see him exhibiting stroke symptoms?”

Alison shoved her hands in her jeans to stop them from shaking. “I don't know. What are they?”

The doctor scratched his chin. “Dizziness, confusion, loss of balance…”

“Well, yeah, he lost his balance. He fell off the truck.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, “but sometimes a loss of balance is just that. Did he seem disoriented?”

“He was dancing, twirling around,” Alison said. “How are you supposed to tell?”

He shrugged. “I suppose you can't. Anyway, let's concern ourselves more with his prognosis.”

“Which is?” Sarah said. Bill stood beside her, rubbing her back. Where the hell was Max?