The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [61]
As usual, the Lamms’ psycho little dog is running back and forth just out of shock range of the invisible fence that rings the property. The thing looks like a filthy gray mop with eyes. It doesn’t greet her as she approaches the door, just keeps running its course. Rita answers and motions her in.
“Paisley will be so glad to see you. She’s in the ladies’ room. She’ll be right out.”
Iona waits in the den. Music drifts from the speakers: “Do you love me . . . Now that I can dance?” This is Iona-era music. She likes it, but it makes her want to shimmy around to the beat, which is probably inappropriate, under the circumstances.
She checks out the get-well cards instead, propped up on every surface as if they were celebrating some grand occasion. After half a dozen Iona realizes that only a few say anything meaningful and the rest have the standard cliché scribbled at the bottom saying, “You are in our thoughts and prayers.” These are the exact words Iona remembers from the sympathy cards that arrived by the hundreds after Richard died. Thoughts and prayers, bullshit. Dead or alive, you aren’t in most people’s thoughts or prayers. Most people don’t have prayers, and you’re probably in their thoughts only long enough for them to sign the card and get it in the mail.
Now Iona is pacing. Actually pacing. Okay, she knows it’s unfair to pass judgment on sympathy cards or get-well cards or any other kind of cards just because they mention thoughts and prayers. People don’t know what else to say. What do you say when your youngish neighbor is battling terminal cancer or a guy like Richard gets stuck in a drainpipe and drowns? The most sincere thing Iona heard in the early days of her widowhood was from a workman who showed up to edge the lawn and said, while rubbing the whiskers on his chin, “Well, if that don’t beat all.”
She hears the toilet flush. Then there’s Paisley coming across the hallway, smiling but jaundiced and thin, dragging an IV pole along toward the family room. “Do you love me?” the song asks again. Iona thinks maybe she doesn’t. Her cell phone rings, a loud explosion of African drums downloaded from a website. She checks the number. Jeff. Probably wanting her to run another of his damned errands. She doesn’t answer.
“Oh,” she says, too loudly, holding up the phone as Paisley rearranges herself to sit down in the recliner. “I promised Jeff I’d check his job site. I thought I had a little time. I wanted to wish you . . .” Well, what the hell can she wish her? “I wanted to say I’ve been thinking about you.” She thrusts the mums in Paisley’s direction. “I brought you this. But I’m going to have to run.”
“Of course.” Paisley indicates a table for the flowerpot. “The mums are beautiful. Thanks.”
Iona flees. She cringes at the memory of telling Marie that people are thrill seekers and gore seekers. She stands corrected. With Paisley there’s none of that. Paisley’s appearance is disturbing, not exciting, and Paisley’s cheerfulness is a tender rebuke with a nasty punch. Everyone in Brightwood Trace feels like they’ve been kicked in the stomach. It’s not fun. That’s the truth.
She doesn’t go home. The Lamms live at the top of the cul-de-sac, the highest point in Brightwood Trace. Beyond that, accessible through the Honeywells’ backyard next door to the Lamms (the Honeywells both work, won’t be home until later), there’s a fallow field surrounded by trees. Everyone thought it would have been developed years ago, but it wasn’t. Iona thinks of it as her private hiking grounds. She once saw Paisley back there, and a few other neighbors over the years, but not many. Heading into the open field, she hopes the trees in all their autumn glory will clear her head.
Big mistake. The first thing she sees is a trio of deer nibbling grass at the tree line. They give her one long, assessing look and then bound off, white tails bobbing. The sight takes her back to the year she and Richard lived out in the country—not a year she wants to remember—where the deer population far outnumbered the humans. The first thing Richard did was