“The funny part is,” Irene was saying, “back in those days I didn’t even wear lipstick. And anyhow, I could perfectly well have paid for it. I did get an allowance. I can’t explain what came over me.”
“But did he find out?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Did your father find out you shoplifted?”
“No, Aaron. How could he do that?”
“Oh. No, of course not,” I said.
“Sorry!” Nandina caroled, and out she popped from her office. “That was Hastings Burns, Esquire. Remember Hastings Burns, Esquire? The Beginner’s Legal Reference?”
“Beginner’s Nitpicking,” Irene said.
“Beginner’s Pain in the Butt,” Charles put in.
I was just glad to have the subject switched before Nandina learned what we were talking about.
· · ·
Then I was walking toward the post office on Deepdene Road and Dorothy was walking beside me. She didn’t “pop up” or anything. She didn’t “materialize.” She’d just been with me all along, somehow, the way in dreams you’ll find yourself with a companion who didn’t arrive but is simply there — no explanation given and none needed.
I avoided looking over at her, because I worried I would scare her off. I did slow my pace, though. If anyone had been watching, they’d have thought I was walking a tightrope, I proceeded so carefully.
In front of the post office, I came to a stop. I didn’t want to go inside, where there would be other people. I turned to face her. Oh, she looked so … Dorothy-like! So normal and clumsy and ordinary, her eyes meeting mine directly, a faint sheen of sweat on her upper lip, her stocky forearms crossing her stomach to hug her satchel close to her body.
I said, “Dorothy, I didn’t push you away. How can you say such a thing? Or I certainly didn’t mean to. Is that what you think I was doing?”
She said, “Oh, well,” and looked off to one side.
“Answer me, Dorothy. Talk to me. Let’s talk about this, can’t we?”
She drew in a breath to speak, I thought, but then it seemed her attention was snagged by something at her feet. It was her shoe; her left shoe was untied. She squatted and began tying it, hunched over in a mounded shape so I couldn’t see her face. I lost patience. “You say I’m pushing you away?” I asked. “You’re the one doing that, damn it!”
She heaved herself up and turned and trudged off, hugging her satchel again. Her orthopedic-looking soles were worn down at the outside edges, and her trouser cuffs were frayed at the bottoms, where she had trod on them. She headed back up Deepdene to Roland Avenue and turned right and I lost sight of her.
You’ll wonder why I didn’t run after her. I didn’t run after her because I was mad at her. Her behavior had been totally unjustified. It had been infuriating.
I kept on standing there long after she had vanished. I no longer had the heart to see to my business at the post office.
Once, we had an author at work who’d written a book of advice for young couples getting married. Mixed Company, it was called. He ended up not signing with us — decided we were too expensive and chose an Internet firm instead — but I’ve never forgotten that title. Mixed Company. I’ll say. It summed up everything that was wrong with the institution of marriage.
“Here’s a question,” I said to Nate. We were seated at our usual table, waiting for Luke to finish dealing with the salad chef’s nervous breakdown. “Have you ever had a visit from anyone who’s died?”
“Not a visit in person,” Nate said, reaching for the bread basket.
“You’ve had some other kind of visit?”
“No, but my uncle Daniel — actually my great-uncle — I came across his picture once in the paper.”
It seemed to me that Nate might have misunderstood my question, but I didn’t interrupt him. He broke open a biscuit. He said, “They had a photo of these government officials in South America. Argentina? Brazil? They’d been arrested for corruption. And there he was, along with a row of other guys. But in full uniform, this time, with a chestload of medals.”
“Um …”
“It was strange, because I’d definitely seen him in his casket several years before.”
“Really,” I said.
“You couldn’t mistake him, though. Same bent shape to his nose, same hooded look to his eyes. ‘So that’s what you’ve been up to!’ I said.”
Then he set his palms on the table and looked around the room. “Any butter in this place?”
I didn’t pursue the subject further.
Gil was the only person whose answer made some sense to me.
And I didn’t even ask him! I’d have had to be insane — right? — to walk up to my contractor and ask if he’d ever communed with the dead.
All I said was — I was looking at the new bookshelves in the sunporch and I said—“I’m just sorry Dorothy can’t see these.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Gil said. He was squatting to adjust the time on the clock radio on the floor. His men had a habit of plugging it in wherever they were working and just letting the numbers flash 9999 all day, which seemed to irk him.
“She always did want more space for her medical journals,” I said.
“Well, these should have made her happy, then,” he told me. He stood up, with a grunt. “Damn. I’m getting old. Did I ever tell you how my dad liked to come back from the dead and check on my work?”
“Uh, no.”
“He passed away when I was in high school, but after I went into the building trade I’d catch a glimpse of him from time to time. Just here and there, you know? Kind of shambling around a project, looking to see what was what. He’d grab hold of a corner stud and shake it, testing it out. He’d bend down and pick up a nail that had dropped. Couple of times I got to work in the morning and found this little bunch of nails laid in a row on a sill. God, he did hate waste.”
I tried to make out Gil’s expression — was he joking? — but he was tipped back on his heels now, squinting up at the frame above one window.
“Must have been a couple of months or so he did that,” he went on after a moment. “He never said anything. Me, neither. I’d just stand there watching him, wondering what he was after. See, the two of us had not been close. No, sir, not at all. Not since I was a little fellow. He’d disapproved of my riotous manner of living. So I wondered what he was after. Anyhow, he moved on by and by, I can’t say exactly when. He just stopped coming around anymore, and eventually I realized. Know what I think now?”
“What,” I said.
Gil turned and looked at me. His expression was perfectly serious. “I think I was his unfinished business,” he said. “He was sorry he’d given up on me while I was sowing my wild oats, and he came back to make sure I’d turned out okay.”
“And so … do you figure he accomplished what he wanted?” I asked. “Was he satisfied, in the end?”
“Was he satisfied. Well. Sure, I guess so.”
Then he wrote something on the Post-it pad he carried in his shirt pocket, and he tore off the top sheet and slapped it onto the window frame.
I was sitting on a bench in the mall while Nandina was in the Apple Store. I hate malls. I wouldn’t have gone with her except her errand was business-related. But the Apple Store was packed, and I started getting restless, so she ordered me out. I sat there all itchy and grumpy and annoyed, but gradually I calmed down. And then I began to understand that Dorothy was sitting next to me.