Year After Henry (24 page)

“I'll go get the popcorn,” said Lisa. And she was gone.

Jeanie reached for her reading glasses on the bedside table. She would need them for the game. She turned out the bedside light and the room fell into darkness. She could hear the voices of her children floating in from the den, filled with energy, their lives still mostly ahead of them. She and Henry had created this family. Jeanie wasn't sure if there were such a thing as an afterlife. She knew only about
this
life, the life she and her kids still had left. And that was enough.

...

It was still early, just eight thirty, when Evie stepped out of the shower and toweled herself dry. But it had been a long and exhausting day. She pulled on a clean pair of jeans and her faded denim shirt. This was usually the time of day when she would reach for a soothing joint, something to make her mellow enough to take on the rest of the night. But now, looking at the joint in her hand, she decided against it. Instead, she tossed it into the commode and flushed, watched it whirl around like a small white fish until it disappeared. She was fifty years old. It was time to rethink her recreations. And then, nothing but time on her hands, she decided maybe a walk would be a good way to wear off some of the day's tension. That's when her doorbell rang. Almost no one used the bell and that was because it was so hard to find under all the wind chimes Evie had hanging near the door. Larry Munroe was always teasing her about that.
I'm the only one who can find your damn doorbell, Evie.

Behind him, parked close to the curb, was Henry's black Jeep. Evie just stared at him. In the past two weeks she'd almost forgotten why she liked his face so much. It was a face that tried not to draw attention to itself, like Henry's face had always done. It was a quiet face that most people would never tire of seeing.

“Hello, stranger,” Evie said.

“How've you been?” he asked.

“Same old, same old,” she said.

Larry reached out and pushed some hair back from her face. She'd been looking for the elastic band she often wore, the one that held her hair back in a ponytail, when the doorbell rang.

“I like your hair down, did I ever tell you that?”

“I don't think so,” said Evie, “but I'll keep it in mind. You wanna come in?”

“Not tonight,” said Larry. “I thought I'd spend this night with Mom and Dad. I thought maybe they'd like that.” He knew they would. He was the only son they had left. Evie understood.

“Sure,” she said. She stepped out onto the porch and heard the crystals on the lamp shade jingle as the door closed behind her. Larry put his arms around her and Evie lay her head on his chest. She could hear his heart, a tiny
thump, thump, thump
. Larry's good heart. She lifted her face and let him kiss her.

“I have missed you so much,” he said. Evie couldn't stop the tears that came into her eyes. But she didn't cry. It had been a rush of love that she felt, a statement she had been trying hard to deny, that she loved this man too much to imagine life without him.

“I've missed you too,” she said.

“How about dinner tomorrow night?” Larry asked. “I got a lot of stuff to tell you, such as how I think you should plant flowers and a garden in the backyard.”

“I got a few things to tell you, too.” She would call Elmer Fisk, over at the bank, first thing in the morning. She and Gail still hadn't decided on a new name for the tavern. They might just let it stay Murphy's. After all, people are creatures of habit. A new name might make everyone nervous, everyone except Andy Southby. But Evie had already decided. Once she and Gail owned the place, a new sign was going up:
No
Knuckles
Popped
On
These
Premises!

Evie waited until the Jeep had pulled away from the curb before she went down the steps and out to where the sign stood on her lawn.
Evie
Cooper, Spiritual Portraitist
. Beneath the words was that same silhouette of a lone woman standing beneath a guiding star. She used both hands, one on each side of the sign, and quickly pulled it from the earth. There are many ways to stake a claim, ways to put down roots, nurse a dream. She carried the sign back to the front porch and into the house where she leaned it against the parlor wall. She knew Larry thought the faces of the dead came out of her own imagination. He had said so, once, and never mentioned it again. But Evie knew better. She knew the faces come from a long way
beyond
her imagination. They travel from a very great distance. She was certain of this. And being certain of it, maybe it was time to study the faces of the living.

Evie flicked out the porch light and closed the front door. It was just as she turned back into the little parlor, with its potted palms and Boston ferns and incense bowls, that she noticed a movement in the mirror, the one she had put on the wall behind the sofa where her clients always sat. She had put the mirror there when she'd read in a magazine that it was a perfect way to make a tiny room look larger. A mirror would “open it up,” the article said, would reflect hanging plants and paintings and lamps as if “another whole room existed.” Evie liked that notion. And it must have opened the room up more than she ever dreamed, for there was Henry, standing behind her left shoulder. Of course Henry would appear on the night of his memorial service. As Evie had always said, the subject had to be about
him
or Henry just wasn't interested.
Henry.
He looked younger, more rested than she'd ever known him to be in life. And that was one thing Evie always liked for her clients to know about their loved ones, that heaven seemed to be a place where they could get a good, long rest from the weary blues of earth. Heaven might even be a great big Days Inn, with all the soft beds you could ever ask for, and pillows stuffed with angel feathers.
Henry
Munroe!

Evie reached for her sketch pad and pencil and then, seeing something in Henry's eyes, knew that this was not to be recorded. This was private, between just the two of them, as it had been those steamy nights at the motel. And besides, Henry looked different now. There was something in his eyes as he stared at Evie from his reflection in the mirror. She knew that look well, had seen it many times. But it was only when Henry was sound asleep, his head resting on the pillow, that he was at peace. Being the center of attention is a long, hard job. Evie smiled, for it was good to see Henry again. He leaned forward, in that same way they all do, all the faces of the dead who come to visit Evie Cooper. He leaned forward as if looking into the mirror at his own reflection.

“I don't pretend to have any answers to any big questions about life and death,” Evie said aloud. She knew Henry couldn't hear her, and that was fine. She'd been giving this warm-up speech to her clients for a lot of years, and now, for the first time in her life, she was saying the words for her own benefit. “I just believe that when we die we do not cease to exist. I believe we live again. As a matter of fact, I know it, for I have seen the faces of the dead since I've been a very little girl. For some reason, God—or whatever power may be—has seen fit to give me this talent. I do not ask the dead questions. Instead, I study their faces, their eyes, and in this way, they are able to tell me what is still in their hearts.”

Henry's heart was talking all right. So were his eyes. If Evie had wanted to sketch him, it would be her masterpiece. It would be the crowning point to a long career, a rare talent that she would never use again.
Can
I
go
now?
the eyes were asking Evie.
Is
everybody
fine?

“Sure, Henry,” Evie whispered. “Everyone you love is doing just fine.”

Evie put her pad back down on the sofa, then lay the pencil on the table, causing the little crystals to jingle again. She would tell no one about this visit, not even Larry. But she knew what it was that had given Henry the strength to do such a remarkable thing, and it is
remarkable
for the dead to come this far, to make this journey. It's love that brings them, a love so pure and fine that even they don't understand its pull. There will never be anything man-made, there will never be a rope, or a net, or a wire cable invented by the best minds that will ever be stronger than love.

And now that Henry Munroe had appeared, now that he had traveled that great distance, it was Evie Cooper's last job to tell him he could
stop
being remarkable. He could go in peace, for the earth would spin on without him. He would exist now only in flashes of memory, just sparks and electricity. His old life was nothing but a field of fireflies. And Henry seemed to understand this, for when Evie looked again he was gone.

Author photo by Doug Burns

Cathie Pelletier was born and raised on the banks of the St. John River, at the end of the road in northern Maine. She is the author of eleven other novels, including
The
Funeral
Makers
(NYTBR Notable Book),
The
Weight
of
Winter
(winner of the New England Book Award), and
Running
the
Bulls
(winner of the Paterson Prize for Fiction). As K. C. McKinnon, she has written two novels, both of which became television films. After years of living in Nashville, Tennessee; Toronto, Canada; and Eastman, Quebec, she has returned to Allagash, Maine, and the family homestead where she was born.