The loud one is at it again, filling everyone in on the details. The same grim facts the papers and the New York and Connecticut news stations repeated for months. A gas leak, an explosion, four people dead, a young couple to be married later that day, the mother of the bride standing on the lawn watching it happen, her ex-husband asleep upstairs and her boyfriend in the kitchen, an ex-con, she makes sure to emphasize, and black, not that it matters, she adds in a whisper.
My God, she can hear one of them say quietly. What a nightmare, she hears another mumble with what Lydia imagines is a slowly shaking head and crossed arms.
Finally, the fourth woman speaks. She must be the only one not from around here, Lydia thinks, and it must be for her benefit that these women are so painstakingly reporting the story. How do you recover from that? How would you even begin?
Lydia puts both hands in her lap and closes her eyes as the loud one winds up.
You don’t, that’s how, and she didn’t. Now can you imagine watching everyone you love just disappear? Have you ever even heard of such a thing?
There’s nothing she can do to stop them. Nothing she can do to shut them up or shut them down. They are like the horseflies that circle her head when she walks along the town green in the summer. They dart and poke and buzz and dive, keeping pace no matter how slowly or quickly she moves.
She’s left town, apparently. West, or south, or something. After the funerals she just vanished.
For a few long seconds there is silence. The clang of lunch dishes being washed and stacked in the kitchen. The gentle beeping sound of a delivery truck backing up, somewhere.
There was an investigation, says the woman who does not sound at all familiar but who must be from Wells or nearby to assume the role of storyteller. There’s no hard proof but it looks like it was that black boy she was seeing. And forgive me, he was a boy and on the one hand good for her, but look what happened.
Do you really think it was his fault? the younger one asks nervously. Since she spoke about her brother earlier, she has remained silent. Silas says Luke was a good boss. Our mother disagrees but Silas liked him.
Now… c’mon… I don’t think anyone really doubts that it was his doing. He was the one in the kitchen. Everyone else was asleep. And besides, he’d been in prison. For using drugs, dealing, the whole shebang. Cocaine or crack or methamphetamines or something. They were quite a pair. She ran art galleries in the city and I think she moved up here full-time. To be with him, no doubt.
How would a woman like that end up with a local thug like him anyway? the fourth one asks, as if on cue.
How do you think?
NOW HEAR THIS, Lydia has shouted, the words not even hers. She is standing, her chair scraping like a scream as she rises, turning to face these women. NOW, she shouts again, her voice a shock to her ears, the loudest sound she has made in many months. When was the last time she even spoke? Yesterday? Last week? She is standing in front of these four women, three of them near her age, midfifties, early sixties, and one of them much younger, in her twenties, the only one she recognizes. Her name is Holly, and Lydia grew up with her mother, who was a few years older and never friendly. Seconds pass as she stands in this now-almost-empty coffee shop before a table of women, who, besides Holly, she imagines have not once worked a day of physical labor, who have been attended by loving parents and friends and colleagues and boyfriends and husbands and children and grandchildren every pampered, taken-for-granted minute of their lives. These are comfortable women, cherished women. They look at her as if the forks in their hands have told them to be quiet.
I’m sorry, who are you? The loud one, attempting to impose order, breaks the silence and deflates Lydia’s momentary authority. Who am I? Lydia thinks. I’m nothing. I’ve never been anyone except someone’s housekeeper, daughter, wife, girlfriend, or mother, and in all of those roles I have failed and now I play no role. Her knees are twitching and she can smell her sharp body odor. She is standing before these women with nothing to say beyond the demand that they listen. Holly begins to speak: Lydia… I mean… Mrs. Morey, I’m so…
As she speaks her name, Lydia’s face flashes with heat, and a panic that registers as physical pain knuckles through her chest. Before another word is spoken, she turns away, shakily places a sweaty five-dollar bill on the table, and, as she does, mumbles, That thug is my son.
Excuse me, what did you say? the loud one asks, her voice high, tight, scolding more than curious.
Lydia turns to face her. My son, you stupid bitch. He is… He was my son. She steps toward her as she says the words, and when she sees the woman flinch, she realizes that her hand is raised, her palm open. She stops abruptly and hurries as quickly and as steadily as she can manage toward the door, out across the shopping-center parking lot, and onto the sidewalk that leads home.
She has heard, finally, what she feared people believed. It took more than six months for the words to reach her ears, and now that they have, she needs to get as far away from them as she can. She has no one to call, no one to rush home to. But when has she? She reviews the few possibilities — Earl; her mother; her father, who died before she knew him; Luke’s father, for only a little while; Rex, for too long, for which she will never forgive herself; Luke; June. None of these people were ever hers. They either belonged to someone else or had lives or lies that put them out of reach, or should have. This is not news, but what surprises her, after being alone for so long, is that it’s only now that it feels unbearable.
The sidewalk that leads to town is slick with leaves. They turned color late this year, some as late as Halloween, and clung to their branches until a nor’easter blew in and finally knocked them to earth. They are everywhere. She wants to run, but instead walks slowly, careful not to slip and cause another scene as she passes in front of the auto shop, the hospital thrift store, the flower shop, the historical society, the fabric store, the town library, the elementary school.
Each day, even in the rain, she walks. Her car, an old, light blue Chevy Lumina, parked behind the apartment building where she lives, hasn’t been driven in over a month. She only ever used it for cleaning jobs, and if she needed to go somewhere in town, she always saved gas by walking. The grocery store and the coffee shop are her only destinations now and she goes to both on foot.
She walks past St. David’s, where Luke’s funeral was held, the same church her mother took her to on Christmas Eves and Easter Sundays when she was growing up. Whether God is or isn’t, we cover the base, is what she’d say. And for that reason insisted she and Earl get married there, too. Luke’s funeral was the first time Lydia had stepped foot in the place since her wedding day and it surprised her that nothing had changed in over thirty years. The same dark wood, the same gloomy stained glass. God isn’t, she whispered that day, to herself and to her dead mother. And if He was, Lydia knew He’d long ago looked past her.