Call If You Need Me (6 page)

Betty and Sarah were clearing the table. I sat on the sofa and smoked while Pete talked. After he’d put up the screen he took a slide projector out of a box and set it on an end table. He plugged in the cord and flicked a switch on the projector. Light beamed onto the screen and a little fan in the projector began to run.

“We have enough slides that we could look at pictures all night
and then some,” Pete said. “We have slides here from Mexico, Hawaii, Alaska, the Middle East, Africa too. What would you like to see?”

Sarah came in and sat down on the other end of the sofa from me.

“What would you like to see, Sarah?” Pete said. “You name it.”

“Alaska,” Sarah said. “And the Middle East. We were there for a while, years ago, in Israel. I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska.”

“We didn’t get to Israel,” Betty said, coming in with the coffee. “We were on a tour that went only to Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon.”

“It’s a tragedy, what’s happened in Lebanon,” Pete said. “It used to be the most beautiful country in the Middle East. I was there as a kid in the merchant marines in World War II. I thought then, I promised myself then, I’d go back there someday. And then we had the opportunity, Betty and me. Didn’t we, Betty?”

Betty smiled and nodded.

“Let’s see those pictures of Syria and Lebanon,” Sarah said. “Those are the ones I’d like to see. I’d like to see them all, of course, but if we have to choose.”

So Pete began to show slides, both he and Betty commenting as the memory of the places came back to them.

“There’s Betty trying to get on a camel,” Pete said. “She needed a little help from that fellow there in the burnoose.”

Betty laughed and her cheeks turned red. Another slide flashed on the screen and Betty said, “There’s Pete talking with an Egyptian officer.”

“Where he’s pointing, that mountain behind us there. Here, let me see if I can bring that in closer,” Pete said. “The Jews are dug in there. We could see them through the binoculars they let us use. Jews all over that hill. Like ants,” Pete said.

“Pete believes that if they had kept their planes out of Lebanon, there wouldn’t be all that trouble there,” Betty said. “The poor Lebanese.”

“There,” Pete said. “There’s the group at Petra, the lost city. It
used to be a caravan city, but then it was just lost, lost and covered over by sand for hundreds of years, and then it was discovered again and we drove there from Damascus in Land Rovers. Look how pink the stone is. Those carvings in the stone are more than two thousand years old, they say. There used to be twenty thousand souls who lived there. And then the desert just covered it up and it was forgotten about. It’s what’s going to happen to this country if we aren’t careful.”

We had more coffee and watched some more slides of Pete and Betty at the souks in Damascus. Then Pete turned off the projector and Betty went out to the kitchen and returned with carameled pears for dessert and more coffee. We ate and drank and Pete said again how they would miss us.

“You’re good people,” Pete said. “I hate to see you leave, but I know it’s in your best interests or you wouldn’t be going. Now, you’d like to see some slides from Alaska. Is that what you said, Sarah?”

“Alaska, yes,” Sarah said. “We’d talked once about going to Alaska, years ago. Didn’t we, Phil? Once we were all set to go to Alaska. But we didn’t go at the last minute. Do you remember that, Phil?”

I nodded.

“Now you’ll go to Alaska,” Pete said.

The first slide showed a tall, trim red-haired woman standing on the deck of a ship with a snow-covered range of mountains in the distance behind her. She was wearing a white fur coat and facing the camera with a smile on her face.

“That’s Evelyn, Pete’s first wife,” Betty said. “She’s dead now.”

Pete threw another slide onto the screen. The same red-haired woman was wearing the same coat and shaking hands with a smiling Eskimo in a parka. Large dried fish were hanging on poles behind the two figures. There was an expanse of water and more mountains.

“That’s Evelyn again,” Pete said. “These were taken in Point Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost settlement in the U.S.”

Then there was a shot of the main street—little low buildings with slanted metal roofs, signs saying King Salmon Café, Cards, Liquor, Rooms. One slide showed a Colonel Sanders fried-chicken parlor with a billboard outside showing Colonel Sanders in a parka and fur boots. We all laughed.

“That’s Evelyn again,” Betty said, as another slide flashed on the screen.

“These were made before Evelyn died,” Pete said. “We’d always talked about going to Alaska, too,” Pete said. “I’m glad we made that trip before she died.”

“Good timing,” Sarah said.

“Evelyn was a good friend to me,” Betty said. “It was a lot like losing my sister.”

We saw Evelyn boarding a plane back for Seattle, and we saw Pete, smiling and waving, emerging from that same plane after it had landed in Seattle.

“It’s heating up,” Pete said. “I’ll have to turn off the projector for a little while to let it cool off. What would you like to see then? Hawaii? Sarah, it’s your night; you say.”

Sarah looked at me.

“I guess we should think about going home, Pete,” I said. “It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

“Yes, we should go,” Sarah said. “We really should, I guess.” But she continued to sit there with her glass in her hand. She looked at Betty and then she looked at Pete. “It’s been a very wonderful evening for us,” she said. “I really have a hard time thanking you enough. This has meant a good deal to us.”

“No, it’s us who should be thanking you,” Pete said, “and that’s the truth. It’s been a pleasure knowing you. I hope that the next time you’re in this part of the country you’ll stop by here and say hello.”

“You won’t forget us?” Betty said. “You won’t, will you?” Sarah shook her head. Then we were on our feet and Pete was getting our coats. Betty said, “Oh, don’t forget your doggy bag. This will make you a nice snack tomorrow.”

Pete helped Sarah with her coat and then held my coat for me to slip my arm into.

We all shook hands on the front porch. “The wind’s coming up,” Pete said. “Don’t forget us, now,” Pete said. “And good luck.”

“We won’t,” I said. “Thank you again, thanks for everything.” We shook hands once more. Pete took Sarah by the shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. “You take good care of yourselves, now. This fellow too. Take good care of him,” he said. “You’re both good people. We like you.”

“Thank you, Pete,” Sarah said. “Thank you for saying that.”

“I’m saying it because it’s true, or else I wouldn’t be saying it,” Pete said.

Betty and Sarah embraced.

“Well, good night to you,” Betty said. “And God bless you both.”

We walked down the sidewalk past the flowers. I held the gate for Sarah and we walked across the gravel parking lot to our house. The restaurant was dark. It was after midnight. Wind blew through the trees. The parking lot lights burned, and the generator in back of the restaurant hummed and turned the freezer fan inside the locker.

I unlocked the door to the house. Sarah snapped on the light and went into the bathroom. I turned on the lamp beside the chair in front of the window and sat down with a cigarette. After a little while Sarah came out, still in her coat, and sat on the sofa and touched her forehead.

“It was a nice evening,” she said. “I won’t forget it. So different from so many of our other departures,” she said. “Imagine, to actually have dinner with your landlord before you move.” She shook her head. “We’ve come a long way, I guess, if you look at it that way. But there’s a long way to go yet. Well, this is the last night we’ll spend in this house, and I’m so tired from that big dinner I can hardly keep my eyes open. I think I’ll go in and go to bed.”

“I’m going too,” I said. “Just as soon as I finish this.”

We lay in bed without touching. Then Sarah turned on her side and said, “I’d like you to hold me until I get off to sleep. That’s all, just hold me. I miss Cindy tonight. I hope she’s all right. I pray she’s all right. God help her to find her way. And God help us,” she said.

After a while her breathing became slow and regular and I turned away from her again. I lay on my back and stared at the dark ceiling. I lay there and listened to the wind. Then, just as I started to close my eyes again, I heard something. Or, rather, something that I had been hearing I didn’t hear anymore. The wind still blew, and I could hear it under the eaves of the house and singing in the wires outside the house, but something was not there any longer, and I didn’t know what it was. I lay there a while longer and listened, and then I got up and went out to the living room and looked out the front window at the restaurant, the edge of moon showing through the fast-moving clouds.

I stood at the window and tried to figure out what was wrong. I kept looking at the glint of ocean and then back to the darkened restaurant. Then it came to me, what the odd silence was. The generator had gone off over at the restaurant. I stood there a while longer wondering what I should do, if I should call Pete. Maybe it would take care of itself in a little while and switch back on, but for some reason I knew this wouldn’t happen.

He must have noticed it too, for suddenly I saw a light go on over at Pete’s, and then a figure appeared on the steps with a flashlight. The figure carrying the flashlight went to the back of the restaurant and unlocked the door, and then lights began to go on in the restaurant. After a little while, after I had smoked a cigarette, I went back to bed. I went to sleep immediately.

The next morning we had instant coffee, and washed the cups and packed them when we were finished. We didn’t talk much. There was an appliance truck behind the restaurant, and I could see Betty and Leslie coming and going from the back door of the restaurant, carrying things in their arms. I didn’t see Pete.

We loaded the car. We would be able to carry everything into Eureka in one load, after all. I walked over to the restaurant to drop off the keys, but just as I got to the office door, it opened and Pete came out carrying a box.

“It’s going to rot,” he said. “The salmon thawed out. It was just starting to freeze, then it began to thaw. I’m going to lose all this salmon. I’m going to have to give it away, get rid of it this morning. The fillets and prawns and scallops, too. Everything. The generator burned out, goddamn it.”

“I’m sorry, Pete,” I said. “We have to go now. I wanted to give you back the keys.”

“What is it?” he said and looked at me.

“The house keys,” I said. “We’re leaving now. We’re on our way.”

“Give them to Leslie in there,” he said. “Leslie takes care of the rentals. Give her your keys.”

“I will, then. Good-bye, Pete. I’m sorry about this. But thanks again for everything.”

“Sure,” he said. “Sure, don’t mention it. Good luck to you. Take it easy.” He nodded and went on over to his house with his box of fillets. I gave the keys to Leslie, said good-bye to her, and walked back to the car where Sarah was waiting.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah said. “What’s happened? It looked like Pete didn’t have the time of day for you.”

“The generator burned out last night at the restaurant and the freezer shut down and some of their meat spoiled.”

“Is that it?” she said. “That’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear it. You gave them the keys, didn’t you? We’ve said good-bye. I guess we can go now.”

“Yes,” I said. “I guess we can.”

My wife is in the habit of telling me her dreams when she wakes up. I take her some coffee and juice and sit in a chair beside the bed while she wakes up and moves her hair away from her face. She has the look that people waking up have, but she also has this look in her eyes of returning from somewhere.

“Well?” I say.

“It’s crazy,” she says. “This was a dream and a half. I dreamed I was a boy going fishing with my sister and her girlfriend, but I was drunk. Imagine that. Doesn’t that beat everything? I was supposed to drive them fishing, but I couldn’t find the car keys. Then, when I found the keys, the car wouldn’t start. Suddenly, we were at the fishing place and on the lake in a boat. A storm was coming up, but I couldn’t get the motor started. My sister and her friend just laughed and laughed. But I was afraid. Then I woke up. Isn’t that strange? What do you make of it?”

“Write it down,” I said and shrugged. I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t dream. I hadn’t dreamed in years. Or maybe I did but couldn’t remember anything when I woke up. One thing I’m not is an expert on dreams—my own or anybody else’s. Once Dotty told me she’d had a dream right before we got married when she thought she was barking! She woke herself up and saw her little dog, Bingo, sitting beside the bed looking at her in what she thought was a strange way. She realized she’d been barking in her sleep. What did it mean? she wondered. “That was a bad dream,” she said. She’d added the dream to her dream book, but that was that. She didn’t get back to it. She didn’t interpret her dreams. She just wrote them down and
then, when she had the next one, she wrote that one down too.

I said, “I’d better go upstairs. I need to use the bathroom.”

“I’ll be along pretty soon. I have to wake up first. I want to think about this dream some more.”

I left her sitting up in bed, holding her cup, but not drinking from it. She was sitting there thinking about her dream.

I didn’t have to go to the bathroom after all, so I took some coffee and sat at the kitchen table. It was August, a heat wave, and the windows were open. Hot, yes, it was hot. The heat was killing. My wife and I slept in the basement for most of the month. But it was okay. We carried the mattress down there, pillows, sheets, everything. We had an end table, a lamp, an ashtray. We laughed. It was like starting over. But all the windows upstairs were open, and the windows next door, they were open too. I sat at the table listening to Mary Rice next door. It was early, but she was up and in her kitchen in her nightgown. She was humming, and she kept it up while I listened and drank coffee. Then her children came into their kitchen. This is what she said to them: