Everything Breaks (15 page)

I kept going out to the hoop house, harvesting anything that was ready. It was comforting to be able to make big salads to go with all those casseroles.

It's what happens when somebody dies. At least, I guess it is. People come over and bring food and say how sorry they are and maybe cry together.

I went to the clinic Saturday afternoon, got my bandages changed and set up an appointment for three days later. Then I tried to hang around downstairs, thinking it was the polite thing to do. But by late Sunday morning I couldn't stand it. I told Janet I was going outside and she could call me if she wanted me, I'd stay close enough to hear her.

She took my face in her hands. “You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, and I grabbed a spade and went across the street to even up the muddy ruts in Mrs. Brandywine's yard so it'd be ready for some new nasturtiums. Then I drove the Olds into our backyard and washed and polished it. Then I went inside and dug out the vacuum, brought it out to clean the vinyl floor mats. I couldn't bear to throw any of the junk on the floor away, so I stuffed it back inside the glove compartment.

Then I drove the Olds into the garage and drove Janet's Taurus into the backyard and washed and polished and vacuumed it.

Now what? I admitted to myself I'd been avoiding my room, but with the outside tasks caught up, it was either there or downstairs. Anyhow, what was I afraid of? Trey's rock was still on the windowsill, jiggling, but I'd slept up there for the past two nights with it doing that, so why did I dread going up there now, in broad daylight?

Because it was time to
do
something about Trey's rock,
that's
why.

Before I could think about it any longer, I took the stairs quickly, and once inside my room I jerked my desk chair over against the window, then immediately straddled it backward and stared down at the pebble with my forehead against the glass.

“So, Trey? What're you trying to tell me, buddy? Are you saying you wouldn't have let me drive, there at the end? Because you wanted to make an entrance? Did you really call me loyal, buddy? If I knew that was true, it would mean the world to me. But I could sure understand it if you're angry instead. But, well . . . either way, we both have to move on, and I can't do it until you do it.”

“Tucker?”

I jumped up, toppling the chair, and whirled around to see Mrs. Beetlebaum standing in my doorway. For a few seconds I couldn't remember how to think and I just stood there gawking at her, not truly comprehending who she was. For one thing, she wasn't wearing one of her long dark dresses or her black leather school shoes. She had on a pair of brown slacks and a light purple sweater and white socks with small cats embroidered on them and Birkenstock sandals, I think is what you call them.

“Oh, I'm so sorry to have startled you, Tucker!” She put up her hands, then she smiled and clasped them behind her and took a step forward. “I
did
knock, and your mother said it would be fine to come on up and pay my respects.”

“No! I mean,
yes,
thanks, come in!” I grabbed the chair and stood it on its feet.

Mrs. Beetlebaum began walking slowly around my room, her long hair trickling down her back like a silver waterfall. She looked at all my stuff with a bright smile. Even when she stopped to take in the shelf where I keep my collection of worn-out running shoes, she looked like someone studying a painting at some fancy art gallery.

“I keep . . . thinking I may need those,” I explained weakly. The best of those pairs looked like something that had been run over a few times by a bulldozer or something.

“Things contain memories,” she said. “They become more than mere objects.”

I nodded, glad she understood. I'd won a race in each of those pairs.

Mrs. Beetlebaum moved on to the bulletin board I'd had since third grade. I used to have it covered with stuff, but I hadn't used it in a while. Yesterday, though, I'd tacked the list I made at Bud's old house up there.

“Uh, Mrs. Beetlebaum?” I said to her back as she read the list. “I . . . don't need your coin any longer. I was going to give it back to you at school tomorrow. I've kind of, like, got some questions about it?” Only about a million.

“I'll bet you have,” she murmured, but she didn't turn, just kept reading. The list wasn't long, but the pencil had been pretty shoddy, so it was taking her a while. I walked to my backpack and yanked out the jeans I'd worn to Nebraska. They were stiff and rank, a total mess. I felt for Trey's lighter and found it easily, but the obolus was stuck by a glob of mud to the pocket it was in.

I finally worked it loose and put the lighter and the muddy coin together on my math book, which was lying with some other stuff on the side of my bed I don't use.

Mrs. Beetlebaum finished reading and totally surprised me by coming over and actually sitting on my messy bed, right beside the math book. She looked down at the obolus, then picked it up, holding it between her thumb and forefinger.

“You met the ferryman, then,” she said with a mysterious smile. “I'm not
sure
how the whole thing works, Tucker, but I can tell you what I
think
happens.”

I yanked my desk chair over close to where she sat, then dropped into it like a little kid grabbing the last seat on the bus. I had never in my life been so ready to listen.

XV

BUT BEFORE SHE BEGAN
her promised explanation, she leaned close and squinted at me, looking me over carefully, especially my face. “Yes, yes, you look . . . clearer. Sad, of course. Yes, sad, maybe I'd go on to say heartbroken, but much, much clearer.”

I'd noticed that myself in the bathroom mirror. I was pale and sort of bruised-looking under my eyes, but the thing that had been living
inside
my eyes had moved out.

“My father-in-law, Karl, gave this coin to me, Tucker. In fact, he urgently
pressed
it upon me much as I pressed it upon you. He was an archaeologist and worked for much of his career on a group of islands in the Aegean Sea. One fateful day, when he'd been working in Greece for several months without bothering to visit home, he received a letter from the States sent by his wife, my husband's mother, telling him she was divorcing him and marrying another man. Karl said he realized too late that he'd ignored his family for the sake of his career, and he felt such bitter regret he could barely walk, or think, or remember to feed himself or sleep.

“Karl had a co-worker who became very worried about him, especially when he began making dangerous mistakes on the job, even causing small landslides at their work site two different times. This man, this worried co-worker, was Greek, and one day he came to Karl and pushed this coin into his hand.” She shrugged. “Karl was told that he must keep the coin in his pocket and not surrender it under any circumstances, just as I told
you
when I gave you the obolus.”

Mrs. Beetlebaum put the coin back onto its little nest of mud there on my math book. She folded her arms. “Picture a beautiful energy inside you. See it as a flowing golden ribbon, the unbroken ribbon of life that keeps one moving, making plans, laughing at jokes and smelling flowers, even feeling the sort of authentic, human sadness that eventually turns to memory and heals the heart. Now picture that precious ribbon snapped in two, broken quickly and cleanly, like anything else wound too tightly. Only drastic measures may realign the two ends to reconnect that flow.

“That's where the obolus comes in. There aren't that many of these around now, though in classical times they were common, placed in the mouths of practically everyone who died. The ferryman never got over wanting that payment, so these attract him, and once he comes for you, you're forced to, well, snap out of it. That is, you're forced to make the decision to reconnect with life. It's like a cosmic slap in the face. Yes, I think that's the best I can explain it. You must reconnect with life or . . .”

She left it at that, so I finished her sentence. “Or surrender the obolus and . . . die?”

She sighed. “Yes, I think that's about the size of it. Strong medicine, yes? But as I said, drastic situations require drastic measures. I doubt a person can live long anyway with that vital energy flow broken. One becomes almost, well, a sleepwalker, unable to respond to life's many demands and challenges. Karl, for instance, might easily have gotten co-workers killed with his inattention to the dangerous ground he and the other archaeologists on his team were excavating at the time.”

I frowned, confused. “But how do you think that ribbon thing gets wound too tight in the first place?”

She took hold of my wrist and leaned very close. “I think by a shock releasing too many powerful emotions—guilt, grief, regret? Karl gave the coin to
me
two weeks after my husband, his son, died of cancer. I would not say I was exactly suicidal, but I dreamed every night about going across the darkness to Theo, taking his hand and bringing him back up to the world of light with me. Or else in my dreams I'd stay with him there, wherever he was. I wished my days away, waiting only for night to come, when I could again live in my dreams. So yes, the ribbon of life inside me had snapped, though I was only aware of being in a sort of chilly daze. Someone who's been there must recognize the symptoms
for
you, you see. You're too numb to know anything yourself.
You
certainly were too numb, weren't you, Tucker?”

Mrs. Beetlebaum patted my hand and slid from my bed. She went to stand at my window with her back to me.

“The day after Karl slipped the obolus into my jacket pocket, I was in the public library, where I worked at that time,” she said. “I was listlessly pushing the book cart from aisle to aisle, shelving books, when I turned into the Mythology section and, well, there it was. The ferryman.”

She turned to me. “How did it appear to you, Tucker? As male? Female?”

“Female. A girl with knobby knees and a motorcycle jacket. Pink hair and attitude. Red cowboy boots.”

She smiled and nodded. “I perceived it as a platinum blond woman of about thirty years, dressed in an inappropriately filmy and low-cut silver evening dress, bloodred lipstick, heavy false eyelashes, and what appeared to be real diamond jewelry, a bracelet and earring set. Marilyn Monroe was all the rage then, and this entity turned to me and said, in a breathy voice
exactly
like Marilyn's, ‘In six minutes, using your human measurements, the window beneath the big clock in the library reading room will be hit by a rock thrown up by a lawn mower. It'll shatter just all
over
the place.' And then, as if this weren't strange enough, she winked one of those heavy-lashed eyes at me and asked, ‘Do you think I'm as glamorous as a movie star? Or do you think I'd be even
more
glamorous with different eyes, maybe diamond ones?'”

I jabbed the air with my finger. “Yes, absolutely, Mrs. Beetlebaum! That was
her
!”

Mrs. Beetlebaum laughed. “You know, it's interesting that she wore red cowboy boots when she appeared to you, because she wore red high heels when she appeared to me. And Karl, before he died, told me she appeared to him in a ruffled black and purple dress that was short enough to expose red velvet lace-up boots of the sort generally worn by women of his generation, though in black, certainly not in scarlet. He said she looked like a dance hall girl. It embarrassed poor Karl to even say ‘dance hall girl' to me.”

I shook my head, still boggled by all this. “So what'd you do when you came face-to-face with her?”

Mrs. Beetlebaum turned back to the window. “Well, at first I assumed she was just some kook,” she said. “A library must expect and welcome even the most eccentric people, so I simply pushed my book cart back out the way I'd come, thinking I'd wait until she'd gone away before I shelved the books in that aisle. Oddly enough, though, something
did
make me go into the reading room, where I asked the two young men seated there to move into a different location. When the window in that room was hit by a rather large rock about three minutes later, all the ivy plants kept on that windowsill were shattered, as was the goldfish bowl on the desk beneath it. We barely managed to retrieve the three little goldfish in time. Once we settled them into a new container of water, the white one appeared not to feel well. So of course I took him between my thumb and forefinger and gently pinched his little sides pepeatedly as I sailed him slowly through the water, giving him artificial respiration. He rallied, I'm happy to say.”

Mrs. Beetlebaum suddenly bent forward and crossed her arms. “Tucker, it's the strangest thing, there's a pebble on your window ledge that's been . . . moving, dancing around. Would you come over here and take a look?”

I skulked over and glanced down at the pebble, trying to seem casual. “Well, see, that's Trey's rock. He had a can of those in his car, and he used to throw a handful up at my window when he wanted me.” Then suddenly, panic and sorrow ambushed me and I blurted, “I don't know what I can do for him, Mrs. Beetlebaum, and he can't
tell
me! I want to just . . . well, to just flick the rock away so it won't haunt me like it's doing, but I can't do that either because it would be like flicking Trey away! So I just have to leave it out there and Trey keeps . . . keeps jiggling and jiggling it like that!”

Mrs. Beetlebaum stood straight and looked up to meet my eyes. I thought I'd see ridicule or disbelief in her expression, but she just seemed puzzled by how upset I was.

“But isn't it obvious? Here. Open the window.”

I hung back, biting my lip like a scared little preschooler.

“Tucker, please, just open it.”

So I did, I jerked the window up, bracing myself for the rock to, what? Attack me?

Mrs. Beetlebaum reached down, picked up the rock, then lifted one of my hands. “Trey just wants you to treat this memento of your friendship like one of those prized racing shoes of yours.” She put the pebble on my palm. “Keep it somewhere special and think of him when you see it.
That's
all he wants from you.”

I stood there staring down at my hand as a tidal wave of relief and new grief surged through my tangled brain and began making its way into my bloodstream. After a couple of minutes, I very carefully closed my fingers around Trey's last rock.

I didn't even notice that Mrs. Beetlebaum had left my side until she asked from across the room, “Tucker, what
is
this extraordinary document you have posted?”

I jerked up my head to see her reading Bud's list again. “It's some stuff Bud told me about driving and cars.” I cleared my throat and asked, “Mrs. Beetlebaum, do you think that list might be called, well, a code Bud went by when he drove?”

She took off her glasses and dropped them to dangle on this chain she had around her neck. “I once lost twelve dollars to Bud, playing poker at the senior center downtown. He was such fun, and it's a shame his heart kept him cooped up at home in his final years. Yes, this sounds like his rules of the road, the code he drove by, and lived by.”

So she'd known Bud? I don't know why that surprised me, but it sort of did.

She walked to my desk chair and sat down, then sighed and straightened her shoulders. “Well, Tucker, let me quickly finish telling you about Marilyn Monroe. I find myself tiring easily lately.”

I went to sit on the bed, close to the chair so she wouldn't have to talk very loud. Also, I could hand her the obolus in case she forgot to take it with her.

“Well, let's see,” she began. “It was closing time that same day at the library, about five o'clock. The head librarian sent me to look for tardy patrons in the restrooms, down all the aisles, in the basement children's section, the usual places. I remember I came upon someone trying to finish reading an article on tennis in the periodicals room and urged him along, but otherwise the place was empty except for the three of us workers and the library cat, Dickens. My co-workers both had places to be, families to take care of, but I did not. I was utterly solitary and could only look forward to a dinner of fish sticks and asparagus, then an evening of watching public television as I yearned for bedtime and my dreams of Theo. So I told my boss I would stay for a few minutes and lock up after the tennis reader had finished. Presently, he did just that, finished the article and left through the turnstile. I locked the front door behind him, as I had already locked the back entrance to prevent late patrons from slipping in unnoticed.

“I decided to give the poor traumatized goldfish a final pinch of food, then I took my own coat and scarf from the little closet behind the circulation desk. I walked the length of the library as I wound my scarf, checking things once more, then I went through the lobby toward the front door, which was actually a double door, made entirely of glass. I mention this because I suddenly saw the reflection of the ferryman in that glass. It was following close behind me, gliding across the floor as though on wheels. It was huge, perhaps nine feet tall, all greenish in color, a shadowy presence concealed within a moldy cloak. I felt its cold breath as an icy wind along my neck, felt it right through my heavy scarf. My skin crawled and my heart raced, and though I was tempted to run that last several feet to the door, I knew I could not hope to escape my . . . pursuer.

“So I stopped and turned to face it, and in that split second it was able to slip into its glamorous facade again. The red heels, the filmy dress, the wild and loose platinum hair, the eyelashes—everything was the same except for the eyes. Its two eye sockets were now fitted with huge multi-faceted diamonds. No pupils, no irises, just two dazzling rocks. It came very close to me and said, in a breathy little-girl voice, ‘Diamonds are a girl's best friend, know what I mean?' And then it fastened those diamond eyes on me and
mesmerized
me, I guess you'd say. I don't know how long I stood there mere inches from it, locked in place while it probed my deepest, most aching memories of . . . Theo.”

Mrs. Beetlebaum suddenly slumped forward and covered her face with her hands.

I was pretty sure she was just upset, not really sick or anything like that, but I had no clue what to do for her. “Uh, Mrs. Beetlebaum, are you okay? I could go get you a drink of water, or how about a snack? Somebody brought some of those sliders, like little tiny hamburgers with picante sauce all over them?”

Too late, I remembered eating the last three or four of those. But she didn't want them anyhow. She shook her head fast, almost like she was shivering.

“No, thank you, Tucker,” she whispered as she took a tissue from her sweater pocket. She dabbed at her eyes, then blew her nose. “I'll be just fine in a moment.”

I nodded and waited. “The crazy hitchhiker girl did that to me too,” I told her quietly. “I mean the ferryman, that Charon? She, it, I mean? It somehow locked into my thoughts through my eyes so I'd tell it my . . . memories of the wreck and stuff.”

Mrs. Beetlebaum blew her nose again, then smiled at me in a sad way.

“Well, Tucker, I suppose that's just . . . what happens, yes? The ferryman reads your life after a combination of sadness and the obolus draws him to confront you. And what he sees there helps him figure how to get you to surrender the coin. I don't know how long I stood there, reliving the best days of my life, when Theo and I were so happy, and also reliving the worst, the dark days since Theo's death. But I remember while I was still locked into that strange state, I began to hear the ocean, first faintly and then more and more insistently. It was the sound of my most wonderful memory, the sound of our honeymoon, mine and Theo's, there on the Gulf of Mexico, in Florida. We had a tiny cabana for two weeks, right on the beach. A little green rowboat came with the package. And always, day and night, there was the mysterious, delicious sound of those waves.”