It was written in Frances’s frilly hand. The card came as regular as the sun every November 18, written by Frances, signed for them both, and always with a twenty tucked inside.
He picked up the twenty. It was only then that he noticed the piece of white paper that had fallen to the floor. He stooped to pick it up and unfolded it.
The note was in black ink, the handwriting heavy and unfamiliar.
Dear Louis,
Frances does not know I am writing this to you, and for now I would ask that you don’t mention it to her. I suppose I should have called you about this, but every time I picked up the phone, I couldn’t quite figure out what to say. Writing things down has always been easier for me. Although nothing about this is easy really.
I have a friend whose grave I have been tending for sixteen years. The cemetery is being relocated and since my friend has no family, I made arrangements to move the coffin. But I was told it is empty. As you can imagine, I am quite upset and do not know where to turn. No one will help me and I feel I owe this to my friend. There is no way I can fully explain all this in a letter, so I hope you will just trust me when I say I need help. I am sorry to have to burden you with this, but I am quite desperate.
Please don’t tell Frances anything about this. If you were able to come home for Thanksgiving, she wouldn’t suspect anything and I could explain it all to you then. But if you have other plans, I understand.
— Phillip
Louis stared at the letter, rereading the middle paragraph, then the final line. If you have other plans. .
It was the first time Phillip had ever asked anything from him. Except the night when he was eleven, caught again going out through the bedroom window.
Where you going, Louis?
I don’t know. Just away.
If you keep running off like this, they’ll take you away from me. Do you want that?
I don’t care.
But I do. Promise me you won’t run away again.
All right.
And he hadn’t.
Louis folded the letter and sat there for a moment, listening to the whisper of the surf. He picked up the phone and dialed Joe’s number in Miami. He got the machine and left her a message asking her to call back. Then he called American Airlines and made a reservation to fly to Detroit in the morning.
CHAPTER 2
Phillip Lawrence turned the Impala into the driveway and cut the engine. Louis looked up at the yellow brick tri-level.
The first image that usually came to him when other people started talking about their childhoods was a house. Other things came, too-smells, emotions, mental snapshots of events. But those kinds of memories were fluid, changing for good or bad, depending on how, and when, a person chose to look back on them.
But a house was different. It was solid and permanent, and it allowed people to say I existed here. My memories are real.
His image of home had always been a wood frame shack in Mississippi. It was an ugly picture, but one he had held on to for a long time, convinced it symbolized some kind of truth about who he was or what he should be.
But all during the flight up to Michigan, it wasn’t the shack he was remembering. It was this house. And now, here it was before him-unchanged, real.
Almost. The shutters were brown this year, and the silver maple in the front yard had grown taller, its stark, black branches stretching high against the gray sky. A short row of flat evergreens lined the cracked sidewalk, and the birdbath was still there out front.
Louis smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Phillip asked.
Louis looked at Phillip. “Nothing. It’s just nice to be home.”
He pushed open the car door and climbed out. Phillip brought his suitcase to him, and they walked to the front porch, Louis automatically slowing in deference to Phillip’s limp.
Christmas lights were strung around the eaves, and a wreath hung on the door. He recognized the wreath. Old newspapers stuffed into an oval of chicken wire, spray-painted red and green, and covered with gobs of shellac. He knew the back read: Louis, Age 11.
“It scares me what else Frances kept,” Louis said, nodding toward the wreath.
Phillip unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Don’t look in the attic then.”
Louis paused in the front hall, the assault to his senses almost bringing a sting to his eyes. Pot roast and lavender air freshener. Three steps leading down to the living room and kitchen were just to his left. To the right, more steps leading up to the five bedrooms. The pale yellow walls of the hallway were covered with a montage of framed photographs.
Phillip asked for his coat and Louis shrugged out of it, his gaze moving slowly over all the photographs. Boys. Dozens of different faces, at all ages. Some in Little League uniforms, some Boy Scouts, some standing outside a camper-trailer, some around the big blue DoughBoy pool that once dominated the backyard. Boys. . all the foster kids who had passed through this home for more than twenty years.
“Leave your suitcase here, Louis,” Phillip said. “Frances is anxious to see you.”
Louis followed Phillip, the pot roast aroma growing stronger. She was standing at the stove, her hands clasped in front of her apron. She had put on a few more pounds, her face round and flushed from the heat of the oven. Her hairstyle was the same, a halo of light brown hair, a few curls sweat-plastered to her forehead.
“Louis,” she said, coming to him. She crushed him to her soft chest. “Oh, it’s so good to see you.”
Another sensory flood. The feel of her cheek, soft as wilted rose petals, the smell of the Johnson’s Baby Powder she always used and that he, as a boy, assumed was peculiar to all white women. A memory rushed up to him, of Frances’s face coming close in the dark as she tucked him in bed and kissed him good night.
Louis finally pushed from her embrace.
“You look too thin,” she said. “You’re not eating.”
He smiled. “I make do.”
She gave a snort and turned to the counter, coming back with a tray. “Here,” she said.
The tray held a container of Win Schuler’s cheese and a plate of carefully fanned crackers and tiny pickles. There were two blue cloth napkins and a silver cheese spreader.
“How long until dinner?” Phillip asked, pulling two beers out of the fridge.
Frances wiped her forehead. “A while. Why don’t you two go downstairs and have one of your visits? I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
Phillip nodded his head toward the basement door and Louis followed, carrying the tray. Louis slowed as he neared the bottom of the stairs. Knotty pine paneling and a bar. Blue-tiled linoleum he had helped Phillip install. Christmas lights twinkled in the mirror behind the bar. On the bar itself was an old radio, a blue rotary dial phone, a bowl of walnuts, and a miniature aluminum tree.
“Is that the same tree that was here when I was a kid?” Louis asked.
Phillip took a seat at the bar. “Yup. Probably twenty years old by now. Every year, she drags it out again.”
Louis slid onto the stool next to him. “Please don’t tell me those are the same walnuts.”
Phillip smiled. “Could very well be. Want one?”
“I’ll pass.”
Phillip reached for a nut and the silver cracker. Louis knew Phillip was fifty-six, and except for the limp from the Korean War, he was lean and healthy. His face was still striking, and as Louis watched him now, he had a memory of one afternoon when he was twelve and was watching TV and happened upon the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. He had looked at Michael Rennie and wondered what his foster father was doing playing a spaceman in some corny old black-and-white movie. It was a full year before he finally worked up the nerve to ask, and Phillip had just laughed and laughed. It was years later that Louis stopped thinking of Phillip Lawrence as some mysterious alien presence in his life.