April & Oliver (7 page)

“Crazy bitch,” he says. “Your brother is barely in the ground and all you can think of . . .”

“Get a condom,” she says.

He moves her back against the door and drives his tongue into her mouth until she almost gags. She gropes for the glove compartment
until it pops open.

“Fine, fine,” he says, reaching for the box. It’s awkward in the pickup but it’s never stopped them before. He finds his way
into her with a minimum of undressing. She wedges her hands over her head to keep from being pounded into unconsciousness,
though in her mind she lets herself free-fall backward, the way Oliver taught her to make snow angels, trusting the white
blanket to catch her.

T.J. clenches his eyes, his rage pure and clean. She’s too dry, but tells herself not to think about it. She’s seen plenty
of lovemaking on television where the man is tender and the woman enjoys it, the usual Hollywood bullshit. That kind of sex
is as unreal to April as snow on Christmas, one of those things that, while theoretically possible, simply never happens.

“Harder,” she says. “Make me cry.” But no tears come, not one. She thinks of Buddy dying alone in her car. His last thoughts.
She wants to know if he had a premonition. She wonders if she is having one now.

T
HE TRAFFIC TO QUEENS
is strangely light. April finds a parking space in front of Nana’s duplex, though cars are double-parked everywhere. The
spot would have been too tight for her old car, but Buddy’s slips in on a single try.
Lucky,
she thinks,
now when it doesn’t matter.

She turns the rearview mirror to assess the circles under her eyes. It’s hard to pull one over on her grandmother. She goes
over her story again in her mind. She’s driving Buddy’s car because hers is in the shop. She couldn’t make it last Tuesday
because someone called in sick at work. Yes, she knows she looks like hell, but it’s just that she’s tired. None of it will
work, April thinks. Her grandmother catches everything.

She gets out of the car. Dandelions sprout from cracks in the sidewalk, trees from squares of dirt. Above, the centers of
sycamores are cut out for power lines. Curls of bark litter the sidewalk. Up and down the street duplexes hug one another
for balance, like people overcrowded on a subway car.

Three boys play basketball in Nana’s narrow driveway. They grow quiet when April approaches. The basketball net was Nana’s
idea, to give Buddy something to do during endless holiday visits. It has been years since he last used it. April waves to
the boys, but they only stare at her.

Inside, she finds Nana in her bedroom, still wearing her nightgown, sifting through a drawer of nylons, her eyes raw and moist.

“Nana, what’s wrong?” April tosses her purse on the bed. Her grandmother’s hair is in disarray, half fallen from its bun.
She leaves the drawer open, stocking legs hanging out, and goes into the parlor without her walker, lifting her leg like a
piece of luggage.

“Nana?”

The secretary is open, contents sprawled, the coffee table stacked with yellowed copies of a Catholic newspaper. Couch cushions
lie in a corner.

“Were you robbed?”

Nana moves her fingers through the pockets of a housedress draped on the back of the recliner. “I had it yesterday,” she says.

“You’ve lost something?”

Nana skims her fingers along the mantel in and around the crowded picture frames. April notices one of Buddy, twelve years
old, a dead pheasant raised in his fist, their father’s hand on Buddy’s shoulder, both squinting in the harsh sun. Nana smudges
the glass with her fingertips. Has someone told her?

Nana reaches to the shelf, skin loose on her bones, biceps softly deflated. She removes a photograph and wipes the dust with
the hem of her nightgown. It is a picture of her, taken in Spain some twenty-five years ago, her only trip back since emigrating
as a teenager. In the photograph, Nana is in her early fifties, sitting on the edge of a fountain, her face radiant. Airborne
droplets of water catch the glint of the sun. Her legs are crossed, accentuating the curve of her calf. Her hair, still black,
is aloft in the breeze. Chin up, she grins at the photographer, daring him.

“Who took that picture?” April asks.

“Haven’t you been listening?” Nana’s eyes flash.

“I’m sorry. What did you lose?”

Nana looks into space, frightened. April follows her gaze but sees nothing. “Nana?”

“I can’t remember,” she says, bringing her hand to her chest. “As soon as you asked, it went out of my head.”

“Don’t get upset,” April says. “It happens to me all the time. I walk into a room and forget what I came for.”

“Don’t let me go senile.”

“You’re not.”

Nana blesses herself and touches the pendant hanging around her neck, a Christ the King crucifix. She kisses it and slips
it inside her nightgown.

April picks up sofa cushions, frayed and pilly, and stuffs them back in place. She hears the basketball bouncing in the driveway,
percussive as a heartbeat. She glances out the window. The hood of the car is strewn with bark.

Nana lifts the curtain. “Oh, my,” she says. “Buddy’s here.”

“No.” April’s throat thickens. “We switched cars.”

“Still? Isn’t he home from that trip?”

“He promised to get the blood off my roof,” April says, her voice higher than she wants. “I’m still waiting.”

“So he got his deer,” Nana says. “Tell him to bring some venison for Mr. Bergfalk. He used to be a chef, you know.”

April presses her fingers to her temples. “If he’s such a good cook, why don’t you marry him? I bet he’s asked.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He comes to fix the pipes.”

“Hm,” April says. “Leaks spring like clockwork around here.” April takes Nana’s hand, small and bony, knuckles hard as acorns.
“Come; let’s do your hair while the faucet’s still working.”

“Smart aleck,” she says. “Where did you get such a mouth?”

“Must be the genes,” April says.

Nana touches her thin, silken hair, trying to see her image in the glass of a picture frame. Her eyes, once black and piercing,
are filmy and translucent with age. April notices that, although forgetting to dress, Nana remembered to put on earrings.
Silver and onyx, they hang almost to her shoulders, stretching the lobes.

“Where’s your leg brace?” April asks as they move toward the kitchen.

“That ugly thing.”

“How about your walker?”

“I use it when I need it.”

“Suit yourself,” April says. “Your hip is yours to break.”

“Are you here to preach or set my hair?”

April stands beside Nana at the kitchen sink and pours warm cups of water over her scalp. Wet, her grandmother’s hair is even
more fine, the texture of corn silk. At the base of her neck, hidden beneath tufts of white, is the only remnant of her original
color, the flagrant black she held on to well into her fifties. At twenty-seven, April already has strands of white just above
her temple.

The window over the sink is spotted with water marks. Outside, barren tree limbs spring up and down like impatient horses
shaking their manes. A swirling blanket of leaves obscures the garden, oddly centered in the tiny yard and framed with blue
ceramic tiles Nana hand-carried from Spain. When April was a child, her father told her that the garden had once been a fishpond,
narrow and deep as a well. Come autumn, he said, the carp sank to the bottom and settled into a trance-like, winter-long sleep.
April would stare at the garden, mesmerized by the thought of the sleeping fish, their shiny orange heads nudging the surface
in spring. Later, she found out he had made the whole thing up. There had been no well, no fish.

“How’s that boyfriend of yours?” her grandmother asks.

“There’s no boyfriend, Nana.”

“Still taking the belt to you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Don’t
you
be ridiculous, missy. You think I didn’t notice that shiner last month?”

April shivers as she pours shampoo in her palm and lathers.

“Well?”

“I walked into a door frame. You know how clumsy I am.”

“Sure do. Always bumping into the wrong type of men.”

April smiles. “Keep talking and the soap will run into your mouth.”

“Spencer never raised a hand to me. They don’t make men like him anymore.”

“What about the first one?” April asks. Nana rarely talks about Nick Simone, her first husband, who ran out on her when April’s
father was young. Judging by the pictures on the walls, he never existed. Spencer Night is everywhere.

“Your father looked just like him,” Nana says. “Sometimes when he walked through the door, I thought it was Nicky back from
the dead.” She always speaks of him as dead, though no one knows what became of him.

“I’m going to rinse now,” April says. “Close your eyes.”

“Your father deserved better,” she says.

“Don’t cry, Nana. I have to rinse.”

“Remember the time Spencer found that mongrel tied to the railroad tracks?”

April has heard the story before. She can almost recite it.

“Imagine someone doing that to his own pup!” Nana says. “If Spencer hadn’t untied him, imagine! Poor thing, all skinny and
beaten up. Spencer brought it home, nursed it back, taught it tricks. He loved that dog. But you know, whenever they went
for a walk, the pup searched every face on the street, looking for his master. After all the love Spencer gave him, he still
wanted the face he knew best, the one who tied him to the tracks.”

April gathers Nana’s hair in her fists and squeezes out the water. “We’re done.”

“Spencer loved your father like his own. Treated him no different from Hal. He wanted them to feel they were both his boys.
But your father remembered his father. When the phone rang, he was always the first to answer. It was never the voice he hoped
for.”

April wraps Nana’s head in a towel.

“Ay,” Nana says, straightening. She holds her back, glancing at the photograph hanging above the table. April’s father and
Uncle Hal, nine and three, in matching children’s sailor suits. Hal’s smile is shy and impish, his legs swinging from his
chair. April’s father, standing behind him, has the stance of a little man, one hand on his hip, the other on his stepbrother’s
shoulder.

For part of her childhood, April believed that her father and uncle were half brothers. Nana concocted stories about Hal’s
birth and infancy that changed with each telling. One night he was born in a snowstorm; the next it was during an eclipse.
“Her memory’s gone to hell,” April said to Oliver one spring afternoon when they were twelve. “I guess it’s true what they
say; you only remember the firstborn.”

They were sitting on Nana’s stoop, waiting for their parents to come out so they could go home.

“Sometimes it seems like she really believes those stories,” Oliver said, nudging a loose brick. “I think she’s convinced
herself.”

“Of what?”

“You know, about my father.”

“What are you talking about?”

Oliver laughed, and when she did not join in, he stopped. “I wonder what’s keeping them,” he said quickly. “I’ll go check.”

She grabbed the leg of his jeans and stared up at him. Oliver sat down again. He rubbed his face in his hands and looked at
her over his fingers. “Don’t tell me no one told you.”

She didn’t speak. Blood drained from her face. She hated being the last to know.

“When Nana married Spencer, he was widowed, right?”

April nodded.

“And he had a son. Eighteen months old. My father.”

April leaned away from him. She closed her arms across her chest. “Nana’s not his mother?”

Oliver shook his head.

“So she’s not really your grandmother?”

“Of course she is. Just not if you’re talking blood.”

“What does that make us?”

“Strangers, I guess.” He laughed.

April stood, stone-faced.

“Stepcousins,” he corrected himself.

“You’re lying. My father would have told me.”

“My father only found out when he got married and needed a birth certificate. Who knows? Maybe your father doesn’t know.”

“And when were you planning to tell me?”

“Tell you what? Nothing’s changed. She’s still my grandmother.”

“I want to go home,” she said. “What’s keeping them?”

“I’ll go see,” Oliver said, rushing into the house.

They never spoke of it again.

April leads Nana to a chair. “They certainly don’t look like brothers, do they,” April says, nodding at the photo.

“The uniforms are adorable, aren’t they?” Nana answers.

“It can be important to know who your blood relatives are,” April says. “If you get sick, for instance, and need a kidney.”

“Lucky we have such a big family.”

“Hm,” April says.

“You think I’m an old fool, don’t you. You think I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“An old wizard is more like it.”

“I had my reasons, let’s leave it at that.”

April sorts the curlers on the table, the back of her neck prickling. She didn’t expect Nana to concede so quickly.

“If you think Hal is any less my son than your father was, you’ve got another think coming.”

“I’ve never thought that,” April says.

“Think of your father, all his life thinking
his
father deserted him. You think that did him an ounce of good?”

“Hal’s mother didn’t abandon him. She died.”

“Do you think there’s a difference to a one-year-old?”

“He’s not one anymore.”

“He knows.”

“But you never talk about his real mother. Wouldn’t she have wanted him to see a picture, hear stories about her, something?”

“His real mother?” Nana says, her voice rising. “I raised him from when he was a baby. Just who do you think his real mother
is?” Nana has switched to Spanish, a sign of how upset she is, and although April’s comprehension is generally spotty, this
time she catches every word.

“Lo siento,”
April says, but Nana shoves the box of curlers across the table.