A Little Hope(35)
Why didn’t she call him earlier from the wedding? Before he got into the car, before he took whatever route he took and swerved along the long, black road, those patches of ice, those oncoming cars. Poor Betsy never stood a chance, did she? Why didn’t he know better? She wonders when the autopsy report will come out. She already knows what it will say: alcohol and probably more. She wonders if this information will destroy Mrs. Crowley and Mary Jane, but they must already imagine the worst.
Her mother asked her when it happened if Ginger thought Luke had wanted to die, but Ginger shook her head. She knew he’d never do that—she would bet her life on it. At his lowest point, Luke always had hope. He must have been in over his head with some bad stuff, trying to seem normal under the fierce grip of something terrible. Did he know he could have told her anything? Did he know she would have done anything to help him?
I should. That was what he said to her that day in the toy store when she said he should come by. Almost two months ago. His hand holding the white shopping bag with the gifts for his niece inside. His hopeful stare as she made her way to the back of the store. Did she wave to him?
Ginger smiles politely while Darcy talks to the seamstress, Freddie Tyler. Both women cry a little together, Freddie touching Darcy’s shoulder, patting her hand. “Call me even if you just want someone to watch television with,” Freddie says, and Darcy nods.
“You’re a gem,” Darcy says. “And the carrot cake was lovely.” Ginger turns to the side and sees Hannah a few rows back. Her thin face is drained, and her friends sit beside her, trying to make her smile. Hannah stares straight ahead, her eyes swollen. She wears a skirt that’s too big, and a white silk blouse. Ginger can see what Luke saw in her. She’s a pretty girl. She has kindness to her—Ginger can feel it. Then Hannah turns her way, and they are caught in a stare. Hannah’s expression doesn’t change, and Ginger doesn’t look away. She wants to say she knows what this girl knows, she fought for him the same way. She wants to go talk with her, to say he was wonderful, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he as good as they come? Wasn’t he just a tragic soul, stumbling around in an ill-fitting costume?
Hannah turns away then. Ginger thinks of Luke, of holding his young-forever face one last time. She hears someone say, “All our sympathies,” and she feels so sorry, especially for Luke. Sorry that he couldn’t make his way. Sorry that he couldn’t live this out. Living is fixing, living is working on everything that’s wrong—or at least trying your hardest to. And she feels free in that second with the line of people waiting for the Crowleys, with the priest getting ready to say a few words. She looks at the twenty or thirty arrangements of flowers, green and yellow and white and pink, at the mass cards placed on the side table, and Ginger Lord decides then she will fix all this for Luke. She will live for him.
12. A Single Question
A Saturday in mid-February, Damon Savio freezes his ass off on the front porch waiting for his friend’s truck to come down the driveway.
He sits on one of the green Adirondack chairs that his wife, Suzette, ordered from L.L.Bean two weeks ago. They came in these massive boxes—all slabs and bolts and packing foam. “Three-hundred-dollar chairs, you’d think they’d come assembled,” he said. But she looked at him hopefully with those sparkling gray-blue eyes, wavy hair pulled up in a ponytail, and there he was minutes later with his drill while she held the chair parts in place. In a few hours, they had four green chairs on the big porch of their white clapboard house. The honeymoon cottage, as Suzette’s mother, Marie, calls it.
He imagines how grown up he’ll seem when his buddy turns onto their private road, the bare birch trees, the sturdy pine and holly, the long driveway twisting from St. John’s Street to their secluded property with the old barn in the back. He has nothing to put in the barn, so it only holds a lawnmower, two bikes, and a rake. He blows warmth into his hands. His ears sting from the cold. He sits on the Adirondack chair and feels something that seems like embarrassment. What right does he have to this wife, this honey-I’m-home house, all this land, when his friend he’s known since he was four is still a bachelor? Ahmed would make a great husband, a great dad. Damon grips the sides of the chair and waits. He notices the smell of woodsmoke in the air, and hears the sound of a twig snapping in the distance.
After a few minutes, he sees Ahmed rambling toward him in the truck he’s borrowed: a four-wheeler in the pickup bed and another four-wheeler hitched to a small trailer on the back. When he sees Ahmed’s expression, always excited, he starts to feel better. Ahmed gives him the finger, a loving gesture they use to greet each other. It seems to take a long time for him to reach the end of the driveway, and Damon wonders what Ahmed thinks of him sitting there on his damn preppy chair, the house with its new brass mailbox and topiaries on either side of the door. The sign above the window that says Pine Place because Suzette always wanted to name a house.
The wide front yard is faded green, and somewhere in the distance, a neighbor’s dog barks. Ahmed kills the engine, and it’s quiet again.
“Hey, Romeo,” Ahmed says. “What are you daydreaming about?”
Damon stands. “Just waiting for your sorry ass. Since when does noon become twelve twenty-five?”
Ahmed smiles and shakes his head as he walks toward the porch. “Since I had to haul these heavy beasts. I couldn’t drive more than thirty. When I went around the circle, I thought the one on the back was going to snap off. Tell Suzie I don’t have a third, so we’ll have to take turns.” Ahmed holds a pair of gloves and reaches for Damon’s hand, then pulls him into a hug. At some point during their friendship, they moved from handshakes to hugs. Damon can’t remember when that started. Ahmed looks around. The wind blows the chimes they got as a housewarming gift from Mr. and Mrs. Lionel, friends of Suzette’s parents.