 and Mia snatches it up and says, "Get Me Hiiiiiiiiigh!" She sets my drink in
front of me and I lay a twenty on the bar. "No," she says into the phone. "Well,
daaaang. Well, fuck you, too." She whomps the receiver back into its cradle like
she's dunking a basketball. Mia stands looking pissed off for a few moments,
then lights a Pall Mall and blows a huge cloud of smoke at me. "Oh, sorry." The
musicians troop over to the bar and she serves them beers. The rest-room door is
on the stage, so I take advantage of the break between sets to take a leak. When I
get back to the bar Mia has set another drink in front of my bar stool. "You're
psychic," I say.
"You're easy." She plunks her ashtray down and leans against the inside of the
bar, pondering. "What are you doing, later?"
I review my options. I've been known to go home with Mia a time or two, and
she's good fun and all that, but I'm really not in the mood for casual frivolity at
the moment. On the other hand, a warm body is not a bad thing when you're
down. "I'm planning to get extremely drunk. What did you have in mind?"
"Well, if you're not too drunk you could come over, and if you're not dead
when you wake up you could do me a huge favor and come to Christmas dinner
at my parents' place in Glencoe and answer to the name Rafe."
"Oh, God, Mia. I'm suicidal just thinking about it. Sorry."
She leans over the bar and speaks emphatically. "C'mon, Henry. Help me out.
You're a presentable young person of the male gender. Hell, you're a librarian.
You won't freak when my parents start asking who your parents are and what
college you went to."
"Actually, I will. I will run straight to the powder room and slit my throat.
Anyway, what's the point? Even if they love me it just means they'll torture you
for years with 'What ever happened to that nice young librarian you were
dating?' And what happens when they meet the real Rafe?"
"I don't think I'll have to worry about that. C'mon. I'll perform Triple X sex acts
on you that you've never even heard of."
I have been refusing to meet Ingrid's parents for months. I have refused to go
to Christmas dinner at their house tomorrow. There's no way I'm going to do this
for Mia, whom I hardly know. "Mia. Any other night of the year-look, my goal
tonight is to achieve a level of inebriation at which I can barely stand up, much
less get it up. Just call your parents and tell them Rafe is having a tonsillectomy
or something."
She goes to the other end of the bar to take care of three suspiciously young
male college types. Then she messes around with bottles for a while, making
something elaborate. She sets the tall glass in front of me. "Here. It's on the
house." The drink is the color of strawberry Kool-Aid.
"What is it?" I take a sip. It tastes like 7-Up.
Mia smiles an evil little smile. "It's something I invented. You want to get
smashed, this is the express train."
"Oh. Well, thank you." I toast her, and drink up. A sensation of heat and total
well-being floods me. "Heavens. Mia, you ought to patent this. You could have
little lemonade stands all over Chicago and sell it in Dixie cups. You'd be a
millionaire."
"Another?"
"Sure."
As a promising junior partner in DeTamble & DeTamble, Alcoholics at Large,
I have not yet found the outer limit in my ability to consume liquor. A few drinks
later, Mia is peering at me across the bar with concern.
"Henry?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm cutting you off." This is probably a good idea. I try to nod my agreement
with Mia, but it's too much effort. Instead, I slide slowly, almost gracefully, to the
floor.
I wake up much later at Mercy Hospital. Mia is sitting next to my bed. Her
mascara has run all over her face. I'm hooked up to an IV and I feel bad. Very
bad. In fact, every kind of bad. I turn my head and retch into a basin. Mia reaches
over and wipes my mouth.
"Henry-" Mia is whispering.
"Hey. What the hell."
"Henry, I'm so sorry-"
"Not your fault. What happened?"
"You passed out and I did the math-how much do you weigh?"
"175."
"Jesus. Did you eat dinner?"
I think about it. "Yeah."
"Well, anyway, the stuff you were drinking was about forty proof. And you
had two whiskeys.. .but you seemed perfectly fine and then all of a sudden you
looked awful, and then you passed out, and I thought about it and realized you
had a lot of booze in you. So I called 911 and here you are."
"Thanks. I think"
"Henry, do you have some kind of death wish?" I consider. "Yes." I turn to the
wall, and pretend to sleep.
Saturday, April 8, 1989 (Clare is 17, Henry is 40)
Clare: I'm sitting in Grandma Meagram's room, doing the New York Times
crossword puzzle with her. It's a bright cool April morning and I can see red
tulips whipping in the wind in the garden. Mama is down there planting
something small and white over by the forsythia. Her hat is almost blowing off
and she keeps clapping her hand to her head and finally takes the hat off and sets
her work basket on it.
I haven't seen Henry in almost two months; the next date on the List is three
weeks away. We are approaching the time when I won't see him for more than
two years. I used to be so casual about Henry, when I was little; seeing Henry
wasn't anything too unusual. But now every time he's here is one less time he's
going to be here. And things are different with us. I want something...I want
Henry to say something, do something that proves this hasn't all been some kind
of elaborate joke. I want. That's all. I am wanting.
Grandma Meagram is sitting in her blue wing chair by the window. I sit in the
window seat, with the newspaper in my lap. We are about halfway through the
crossword. My attention has drifted.
"Read that one again, child," says Grandma.
"Twenty down. 'Monkish monkey.' Eight letters, second letter 'a', last letter
'n'."
" Capuchin." She smiles, her unseeing eyes turn in my direction. To Grandma I
am a dark shadow against a somewhat lighter background. "That's pretty good,
eh?"
"Yeah, that's great. Geez, try this one: nineteen across, 'Don't stick your elbow
out so far. Ten letters, second letter 'u'."
" Burma Shave. Before your time."
"Arrgh. I'll never get this." I stand up and stretch. I desperately need to go for
a walk. My grandmother's room is comforting but claustrophobic. The ceiling is
low, the wallpaper is dainty blue flowers, the bedspread is blue chintz, the carpet
is white, and it smells of powder and dentures and old skin. Grandma Meagram
sits trim and straight. Her hair is beautiful, white but still slightly tinged with the
red I have inherited from her, and perfectly coiled and pinned into a chignon.
Grandma's eyes are like blue clouds. She has been blind for nine years, and she
has adapted well; as long as she is in the house she can get around. She's been
trying to teach me the art of crossword solving, but I have trouble caring enough
to see one through by myself. Grandma used to do them in ink. Henry loves
crossword puzzles.
"It's a beautiful day, isn't it," says Grandma, leaning back in her chair and
rubbing her knuckles.
I nod, and then say, "Yes, but it's kind of windy. Mama's down there
gardening, and everything keeps blowing away on her."
"How typical of Lucille," says her mother. "Do you know, child, I'd like to go
for a walk."
"I was just thinking that same thing," I say. She smiles, and holds out her
hands, and I gently pull her out of her chair. I fetch our coats, and tie a scarf
around Grandma's hair to stop it from getting messed up by the wind. Then we
make our way slowly down the stairs and out the front door. We stand on the
drive, and I turn to Grandma and say, "Where do you want to go?"
"Let's go to the Orchard," she says.
"That's pretty far. Oh, Mama's waving; wave back." We wave at Mama, who is
all the way down by the fountain now. Peter, our gardener, is with her. He has
stopped talking to her and is looking at us, waiting for us to go on so he and
Mama can finish the argument they are having, probably about daffodils, or
peonies. Peter loves to argue with Mama, but she always gets her way in the end.
"It's almost a mile to the Orchard, Grandma."
"Well, Clare, there's nothing wrong with my legs."
"Okay, then, we'll go to the Orchard." I take her arm, and away we go. When
we get to the edge of the Meadow I say, "Shade or sun?" and she answers, "Oh,
sun, to be sure," and so we take the path that cuts through the middle of the
Meadow, that leads to the clearing. As we walk, I describe.
"We're passing the bonfire pile. There's a bunch of birds in it-oh, there they
go!"
"Crows. Starlings. Doves, too," she says.
"Yes...we're at the gate, now. Watch out, the path is a little muddy. I can see
dog tracks, a pretty big dog, maybe Joey from Allinghams'. Everything is
greening up pretty good. Here is that wild rose."
"How high is the Meadow?" asks Grandma.
"Only about a foot. It's a real pale green. Here are the little oaks."
She turns her face toward me, smiling. "Let's go and say hello." I lead her to
the oaks that grow just a few feet from the path. My grandfather planted these
three oak trees in the forties as a memorial to my Great Uncle Teddy, Grandma's
brother who was killed in the Second World War. The oak trees still aren't very
big, only about fifteen feet tall. Grandma puts her hand on the trunk of the
middle one and says, "Hello." I don't know if she's addressing the tree or her
brother.
We walk on. As we walk over the rise I see the Meadow laid out before us,
and Henry is standing in the clearing. I halt. "What is it?" Grandma asks.
"Nothing," I tell her. I lead her along the path. "What do you see?" she asks me.
"There's a hawk circling over the woods," I say. "What time is it?"
I look at my watch. "Almost noon."
We enter the clearing. Henry stands very still. He smiles at me. He looks tired.
His hair is graying. He is wearing his black overcoat, he stands out dark ag