Parallel
Right then, there was nothing more to do but sit there at the kitchen table and listen to it. Right then, it was almost comforting to hear it. Roaring. Roaring. Roaring, then rushing. And again. Then, the inevitable grunt and groan of engines straining to reach higher speeds so they could roll the cars and trucks they inhabited even faster, until, she imagined, they’d all be snapped up into Where The Road Ends. The sounds were always with her, no matter where she was in the trailer, reminders of others and other ways. Sometimes Brenda would hear a horn toot—toot—toot—toot—toot —TOOT—TOOT, and her mind would open wide—a solitary deer intruded upon while grazing in a field of high grass—considering all the possibilities such tooting could signify: Was it her mother, her brother, a friend, an acquaintance, an old lover, on their way Elsewhere, acknowledging her small-ly, but loudly? Such flights of fancy! But, no, Brenda would have called it the daily wonder—her words clunked along the truck route that ran parallel to the flight of fancy roaring down the turnpike at 85 mph—the road she could always hear, the road that was generating all the noise.
The boys were gone to school. Robbie was probably having his fourth cup of coffee at Evie’s. And Brenda was shifting from her wondering to more serious thought about where people died—and how she believed it was as important as how and why they died. In fact, she believed there was a reason why people died where they did. She needed to figure it out. And she couldn’t pussyfoot around about it, either. She was remembering that her great-grandma died in the doctor’s office. When she was eighty-nine years old. Right after the doctor had given her a routine physical (the family story was told) she’d suffered a massive heart attack and died—on the examination table. Now Brenda didn’t think people got to choose where they died, but she speculated that it was a good thing great-grandma had died where she did. After all, that way she hadn’t been alone like she usually was, in that tiny apartment above the garage of Uncle Gerald’s house; she didn’t need to have Uncle Gerald paw her bony elbow, pretending to be nice—as he helped her up those fourteen stairs. Great-grandma’s death-place suited the need, Brenda decided. It worked. She tried to think it through, and finally decided she’d look at it as if it were a math problem—she’d just need to find the connection—the way to put two and two together—so she could solve it. She could figure it out. That’s why she had always liked math—once you got the right answer you were done. You could forget about it and move on to the next problem. It was just a matter of doing what needed to be done today. And what Brenda needed to do was shower, get dressed, and go. She’d need to travel over the Timmons to get where she was going. She could then take the turnpike for part of the trip if she wanted to. The nearest toll booth was less than five miles way—she could see the turnpike if she walked down the road a ways. Funny, how some of her friends were afraid to travel the mountain. Afraid to use the turnpike—if they were driving without a man. She’d told her friend Tammy she ought to be ashamed to admit such a thing; then, after she said it, Brenda was the one who felt ashamed for being so critical—it was all how you looked at things. Tammy had never learned to look at things for herself. “That’s what Jared’s for,” she told Brenda. Brenda had selected her clothes the night before, after Toby and J.T. went to bed. A dress was appropriate; she didn’t own many—garbage collectors didn’t have many occasions to wear them—but she’d managed to find a suitable one: A gray shirtwaist dress with a black lace kerchief in its breast pocket. She knew Eddie, at least, would like it. She’d worn it once when they’d sneaked off for dinner, to celebrate her birthday. “Sure it’s pretty, B, but I like you better buck-naked,” he’d told her.Not many days before, Brenda and Eddie had been in bed on one of those rare occasions when they had a whole afternoon together. They’d finished their route early, driven into town, taken a room. “You’re a good-lookin’ woman, B,” Eddie was telling her. “And me? My pot-belly gets bigger every day, and I can only have hair on the top of my head if I do a comb-over.” His fingertips played with the nipple of her left breast. But Brenda was thinking about Sampson, her little black cat, who’d gotten hit by a car the day before. “Morons. If they would’ve slowed down, he’d still be alive.” “I don’t know, B,” he’d said. “Sometimes it seems like you can’t keep nothin’ nice in this fuckin’ world.” “Eddie, just love me.” She pulled him down on top of her. Afterwards, he’d started with the camper stories again. Started his dreaming. Started his philosophizing. “One of these days I’m gonna rent one of those campers, B. We’ll take the boys and go. And you can’t say they’re not old enough anymore. Hell, I was drivin’ Dad’s truck when I was Toby’s age.” “Yeah. And what about Robbie and Yvonne?” “Fuck ’em.” “Right. ‘B’s Big Adventure.’ That’s what he’d call it.” “You got enough shit at home, B. I’m not tryin’ to give you any. But this is different. This is right. Now, B, I can hear those wheels turnin’ around in that head of yours. And I suppose it’s somethin’ like this: You’re full of it, Mr. Edward Diffenderfer, if you think you can figure out what’s really right—any more than the rest of us morons who are just tryin’ to get through the day. But, B, ya know—it’s all about takin’ things away and findin’ out what’s left. And what’s left is what’s right.” Brenda laughed. “Is this one of those ‘your other left’ jokes, or something, Eddie? ‘What’s left is what’s right.’ You tryin’ to give me a headache? You’re like Mama with her philosophizing.’ I think the two of you ought to get together—it’d be worth it to see which one of you could ramble on the longest.” “Humor me, B, for once, okay,” Eddie said. The expression on his face was different, Brenda thought. His eyes looked tired—the whites were red. She kissed the top of his nearly bald head, ran her fingers across his cheek. His expression softened. “I’ve been thinkin’ a lot about you and me. About how things were before I met you and how they are now. I put all the stuff that’s a part of my life into a box—a mental box, and then I did some house cleanin.’ And what was left was you and me—and the boys, of course. That’s what’s right. And we’re gonna start it with this trip. We’ll get out there on the turnpike and roll with it. Wherever you wanna go, B. I mean it. Think about it: We didn’t get put on this earth to be miserable. It’s high time we get on with it. Enjoy it. You know, what I mean? Right, B?” “Right, Eddie.” “Okay, then. So let’s do it. Not just say we’re gonna do it. I’ll make a few phone calls this weekend. Enjoy it, B. Okay? ” “Okay, Eddie.”
Brenda’s cousin Silvie visited her thoughts while Brenda was in the shower. Was it seven years ago already since it had happened? Brenda had rushed in wet from rain and no umbrella to get the phone, to hear the news: The firemen and EMTs took Silvie and the girls out of the old Honda. They were already dead. The coal truck had hit the driver’s side. Brenda had slid her soggy back further down the wall in the kitchen with each word Mama said. But now she could see it. Now she knew. They’d always gone everywhere together, Silvie and Rachel and Tory. They always would. Brenda’s brain was in a hurry. Like the cars and trucks forever roaring just beyond. It needed to be. Next she considered her grandma, who’d died alone in the middle of the night in the hospital. If she wouldn’t have had that chunk of time by herself, Brenda believed, Grandma would’ve held on so she could keep telling everybody everything would be all right, keep chewing out the non-believers every time she had a chance. And her Daddy—he’d died in the hospital in the middle of a day when the rays of sun reached through the windows sharp and bright as a Star Wars light saber. And he’d had all the family around him. Brenda remembered when she was little how he would sit at the big round table in the living room, playing cards with the men. And after he’d had some beer, a few shots of whiskey, he would start. His hands would twitch a little, he’d tilt his head just a bit to the left, lower it, lower his voice, lean in like he was telling a secret, start telling his stories. They’d be different every time: “That’s right, boys, that steel beam dropped right on her. Lights out. Can’t even imagine it. Can you imagine it? There she was, just sitting there waiting for the light to change. Dumb luck she had to be on the road right under the bridge they were takin’ apart. And after the beam squashed her, where’d she go? Where’d her soul go, boys? No one knows that, for sure either, do they? Do they? You can talk about your God, your sweet hereafter, or Mama’s ‘still and always,’ but who the hell knows? Houdini said he was comin’ back … but did he?” And Brenda would lie awake later, unable to lose whatever image his story had conjured up in her head. In the hospital, he’d whispered, “I don’t want to die,” to Brenda not an hour before it happened. He’d needed to have her hold his hand, needed to have everyone pray him into whatever comes next. The warm water poured over Brenda—rain washing down the mountain; the mist inside the shower curtain was the November fog in the valley during her and Eddie’s last pickup. The haul had been easy. People put out less trash when the weather was bad. By the time they’d reached Wedgewood, gray had overtaken the sky; ghostly fingers were dipping into the mountain ridges. Then the sky opened up. They’d no sooner pulled into the development when they saw the lady who owned the big Virgin Mary lawn ornament out in her yard. Eddie had maneuvered the garbage truck closer and rolled down the window. “Better get on in outta this rain, ma’am.” “I let my dog Cassie out to pee and she never came back,” she said. The rain had plastered her dyed-red hair to the sides of her bony white face; her deep-set eyes stared, then blinked through the wet. She wore no coat. “I’ll help you look,” Eddie told her. “Did you check under the camper?” “It’s an RV.” The woman looked at Eddie like he’d insulted her. “Go get me a flashlight. And something with a long handle—a broom,” he said. She ran into the house. “I wouldn’t help that bitch look for anything—even if she had a million bucks and offered me half of it,” Brenda said. But Eddie had pulled the truck off to the side of the street, turned on the 4-ways and, after he’d put the hood of his rain poncho up over his head, started walking down the driveway into rain that was sputtering against it like grease in a hot cast iron skillet. Brenda called out to him, told him to wait while she put on her poncho, but he went on, down to the RV. She was at the top of the driveway watching as he first looked under it, then, as he moved closer, put his hand on it to steady himself. He’d shouted out, tried to pull back. His body shuddered. Then he dropped to the blacktop, motionless, alongside the RV. The woman emerged from the house, broom in one hand, flashlight in the other. “What’s going on? All the lights down in the basement went out.” But Brenda was running down the driveway through a tunnel—black at her feet and gray all around—toward Eddie. When she got to him, his eyes were still open, his lips slightly parted. The palm of the hand that had touched the RV. was blistered slightly. No pulse. Brenda tried another place. The flesh was cool, wet under her touch. No pulse. She closed his eyelids. “Call 911,” Brenda shouted to the woman. Then she sat down in the driveway beside Eddie, held his now cold hand, leaned over to cover him from the rain. Before long, the police, firemen, and EMTs intruded—descending, rushing at them with their built-in noises, almost as ferociously as the cars and trucks devoured the turnpike—the EMTs’ attempts at resurrection futile as Eddie’s stab at jumping Brenda’s dead battery a few weeks earlier. There would, of course, be an investigation. But it appeared, the coroner said, that the preliminary cause of death was electrocution, after the victim came into contact with an ungrounded extension cord that connected the RV. to an electrical outlet on the outside of the house. Cassie, the woman’s dog, was found dead under the RV—electrocuted. By the time Eddie’s wife, Yvonne, arrived, the EMTs had put Eddie in the ambulance. She was standing in the yard by the statue when Brenda walked up to her, thinking how glad she was to have Toby and J.T.—wishing someone from Yvonne’s office had come along with her. At least Yvonne had the Virgin Mary beside her. At least the rain had stopped. Yvonne wouldn’t look at Brenda while she spoke. Her face was as shiny and inanimate as the cookie jars she collected. “He was dying, Brenda. Did you know? I’ve been after him to tell them at work.” “What?” “You heard me, you little whore. Cancer. That’s right. Wouldn’t go for the chemo. Wouldn’t go for the surgery. No. Just the booze and the painkillers.” Brenda felt like she did that time her heel caught the wet on the bathroom floor of the high school and she tore her kneecap out of place. Pain squared equals no pain. “If you don’t believe me, go look in his locker. I know that’s where he put everything—so I wouldn’t find it.” Yvonne turned then, walked away—toward the coroner, when she heard him ask where the wife was. By then, other drivers and collectors had heard what happened, started calling, started coming by; Lenny was one of the first. “Honey, you don’t have to talk about it now,” he told Brenda, putting his arm around her shoulder. “Listen, Lenny,” Brenda had told him. “You gotta do something for me.” “Sure, honey. Anything.” “Take me to the terminal. I’ve got to clear the stuff out of Eddie’s locker.” “You don’t have to do that today. Why don’t you just let me take you home? Maybe tomorrow.” “Not tomorrow. Now. Look, I just don’t want anyone else to do it. I don’t want to risk it.” Lenny first looked at her, puzzled, then he patted her arm. “Sure, B. Whatever you want me to do.” She wouldn’t allow Lenny to go with her when she opened Eddie’s locker, took out his things. It wasn’t until she’d cleared nearly everything from the locker that she uncovered Toby’s shoe box—the one she’d used to put Eddie’s birthday present in—homemade oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies and a little book of poetry called The Mercy by some guy named Levine. She’d been surprised to learn that Eddie liked reading poetry, and she had searched for a book just for him, about people like them:
She learns that mercy is something you can eat again and again while the juice spills over your chin, you can wipe it away with the back of your hands and you can never get enough.Inside the box were prescription bottles, a familiar flask (when Brenda unscrewed the top, she smelled whiskey), papers, appointment cards dating back nearly a year. She was trying to read some of the papers, but when she saw the picture she stopped: The writing below it identified the big black mass as a ‘blockage.’ Where was it? She rummaged, her eyes skimming over all the words. Colon. The rest … Resection anastomosis; surgery to remove the cancer and join the cut ends of the colon or to bypass the tumor. Surgery to remove parts of the liver where the cancer spread; Chemotherapy; radiation therapy; aspalliative therapy to relieve symptoms. ... meant nothing.
The late November rain had given way to sunshine by the time Lenny dropped Brenda off at the trailer. “Listen, if Robbie doesn’t show up, I’ll follow Sheila while she drives your car over, okay? I’m worried about you, honey. Do you want me to stay awhile, or get someone else to?” “No. Thanks. I’d rather just sit in the quiet—maybe get a quick shower before the boys get home.” “Okay. But we’ll call to check up later.” When Brenda got inside the trailer, her feigned composure broke like the egg that had fallen out from the butter compartment of the refrigerator that morning. She ran into the narrow hallway and beat her purse back and forth, hitting it against both walls until all the family pictures fell onto the floor, the glass inside the frames shattering as it hit the fake hardwood. Then she sat down right there in the middle of it and cried. She raged against the EMTs, even Lenny, the firemen, the coroner, the bitch with the dead dog. That bitch didn’t give a shit about Eddie. None of them did. They were already talking about him in the past tense. He was the obituary in yesterday’s paper. Even Yvonne—to Brenda, she was the whore—she’d put Eddie in the past tense long before today. People were false. Yet, there was much, much more to rage about—deeper things. If her mama had been there, Brenda would have told her what she could do with her ‘still and always’—her everlasting spirit. It was a lie. Brenda thought it must be something poor people made up so they could believe that even if they didn’t get what their hard work earned them in this life, their reward would magically appear out of nowhere when they died—in the place they called heaven. But really, they were nothing more than tools for the higher-ups who used and discarded them at will or whim. Lies. Brenda wondered if such a thing as truth even existed—and if it did, how could you know it? What was true? Just that very morning, it was true that she told Eddie to wait for her before he went to look for the dog. Why didn’t he do it? She wanted to go back and grab hold of him before he took off down the driveway. She wanted to shake some sense into him. But it was true—it was a fact—that Eddie was dead and she’d better get used to it. He would have been dead soon, anyway. And if he had waited for her. If she had gone down that driveway with him. No. she couldn’t think of those things. But what was true was more than just fact. It was what was left when everything else was gone. “Fuck ’em,” Eddie had said about Yvonne and Robbie—about everyone, really. Brenda screamed the same words then. And only the drone of the refrigerator and the fluorescent light above the kitchen sink softened them. It was after, when she’d spent everything in her like a dog who’s chasing a rabbit does when he gets stuck in a fence, that the thought came out of somewhere: In the end, the only thing we really have is who we are. Brenda wondered where that ‘thing’ came from. Was it in you from the time you were born—a ‘given’ in an equation? Were you born to be hung—like her daddy always said? Certainly, that seemed to be true for him, had been true for Eddie. Or was it possible that the ‘thing’ was a variable that would be revealed to you over time—based on the choices you made—so that the equation was always being resolved but never would be solved? She was still sitting there in the hall thinking about this when the boys got home. “Don’t come out here,” Brenda hollered at them. “I made this mess. I’ll clean it up.” “You broke our pictures?” J.T. couldn’t figure it out, but Toby understood. “She’s sad about Eddie. I’m sorry, Mom.” At first, Brenda couldn’t figure out how they knew what happened. Then she remembered how everybody had scanners. Everybody had cell phones. Everybody knew about everything the second it happened. They must have told the boys. They were pigs at the trough—scarfing down juicy morsels they didn’t even taste. It would give them something to talk about. They made her sick. Toby ignored Brenda’s orders not to come into the hallway; gave her a brown grocery bag for the big chunks of glass, got out the vacuum cleaner and ran it after she was done to make sure there was no glass left on the floor. J.T. put the brown paper bag into a garbage bag and took it outside to the trash. “Mom,” he said when he came back inside, “I won’t ever go near a camper.” Lenny’s promise to check up later came when he called to see if Brenda needed a ride to the viewing, to the cemetery. There had been no decision to make, really. “No,” she’d said simply. “I want to go alone.”
Mama had always teased her, “Brenda, you’re mixin’ your dreamed-up words with your math-figurin’ again. It don’t work that way,” she’d say, walking away, shaking her head. “What way?” Brenda remembered asking once. “There’s lots of ways of everything.” But her mama didn’t answer. While she was dressing, Brenda remembered when she was in seventh grade and she got called up to the blackboard to draw a trapezoid and tell what it was. After she’d drawn it she’d tried to explain how sometimes things (like the pair of opposite sides in the trapezoid) just weren’t meant to connect—no matter how hard they tried. Or else they’d turn into something different. It had taken her too long to do it—the kids’ tapping feet, the teacher’s exaggerated sighs had broken her concentration. And when she’d finished, the kids had laughed and Mrs. Ramsey had knotted her eyebrows and said, “How interesting.” She had erased the board before Brenda got back to her desk. Brenda wondered what she was trying to prove with her death-place parallels. Besides, it was time to go. The old Cherokee Eddie had helped her pick out rolled alongside the cars and trucks on the turnpike for a while. When Brenda was on the truck route, she had the habit of trying to keep up with them as long as she could. As she was passing McCafferty’s farm, a flock of grackles were foraging the field. The next thing she knew they were up and moving, a dark-winged cloud, in between her and the turnpike, joining in the race. Then, just as suddenly, they broke clean, ascending, gone. Soon after, the truck route edged into the Timmons, and Brenda could no longer see the turnpike. By the time she reached the top, the rain showers that had been falling through hushed sunlight had turned to snow showers—wet, white spiders, their legs melting down over the windshield. A momentary fear seized her, then passed as she descended. Brenda wouldn’t go to the church. Just the cemetery. She’d need to know where it was. She’d be spending some time there. The stretch of road from Evie’s to Hawthorne was tedious, unknown; still, somehow she got there, pulled in behind the other cars. Who were those people down there? What did it matter? The world seemed to sigh then and stretch out in front of her like one of her lazy cats—unlike the view from her kitchen window of mountains that trapped her, of roaring cars and trucks that taunted her—unlike the top of the Timmons that simultaneously scared and exhilarated her. Brenda knew she’d take the turnpike the next time she came here. She started down the hill, first smoothing her dress, then pulling the belt of her coat tighter, walking toward the group whose white faces and black clothes made them look like dominoes lined up close—the way J.T. set them up when he wanted to make sure they all toppled with one touch. A wind strong enough to do just that was blowing. Faded leaves fell, muted against the gray sky, matting into the little gullies the recent rain had carved. She was getting closer now. The dominoes were turning, the dots melting—like the snow spiders on her windshield at the top of the Timmons—right before her eyes.
