I heard her open and close a closet door somewhere down the hall. When she walked back into the living room she wore a jacket and carried a small umbrella, her purse slung over her shoulder, the blacked-out sunglasses still on.
“Are you ready?” she asked. She stood there as if waiting for an answer. When none came, she leaned forward as if trying to smell me, and then she leaned away as if she’d discovered something she didn’t want to know. “Well,” she said. “You can say something.” She waited. My eyes followed her purse as it slid slowly down her right arm, stopping at the bend in her elbow. She held her umbrella in front of her with both hands. Her posture made her seem like someone who was used to waiting and was willing to wait forever.
“Where do you think we’re going?” I asked.
As soon as the words were out she dropped her purse at her feet and her right hand shot up and spread itself out across the bridge of my nose, pushing my sunglasses up against my eyes. The touch of her hand was shocking, and I pulled away from it, but her hand moved too, and her fingers kneaded my lips and cheeks, slowly working themselves up to the bill of my hat.
I realized that she couldn’t see me. The muscles in my body relaxed, and my face leaned heavily toward her.
“Who are you?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
“A friend of your son’s. Of Wade’s.”
“What’s your name?”
“Pruitt.”
“I’ve never known him to mention you,” she said.
“He wouldn’t have. He hasn’t seen me in a long time.” Her hand came to a rest on my left shoulder, and she left it there for just a second before touching my chest, right above my heart.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” she said. She took her hand from my chest and lifted up her glasses so that her eyes could be seen; they were both covered in a murky blue film. “These don’t let me see as well as my hands do.” She smiled and dropped the glasses back into place. “I thought you were someone I’d already arranged to take me to an appointment on Friday morning, but I knew today is Thursday, and I was confused because of that.” She bent down and felt along the floor until her hand closed around the strap of her pocketbook. She stood again and put the strap over her shoulder, and then she turned away and walked back toward the middle of the room before stopping. “It is Thursday, right?”
“Yes. It’s Thursday.”
“Humph,” she said as if she’d discovered something. “Then my doctor’s appointment is tomorrow. They will come tomorrow, and they will pick me up then.” She gestured toward the sofa. “Please sit down. Be comfortable.” She walked through the living room and into the hallway back to the room she’d been in earlier.
Dust motes floated up from the sofa cushions and drifted through a shaft of sunlight shining through a gap in the curtained windows behind me. The light disappeared as the curtains were pulled tight. My body sunk down into the old cushions, and the gun dislodged itself from my waistband. My back leaned against it so that it rested nose down behind me.
She walked out of the hallway and stood in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips. “Let me get us some tea,” she said. “And then I want to hear all about how you know my Wade.” She turned to walk into the kitchen that was off the right side of the living room, but she stopped and turned back. “Is sweet tea okay with you?” she asked.
“Yes. But this won’t take long.”
She waved her hand as if dismissing my words. “Nonsense,” she said. “You stay as long as you’d like. I have nowhere to be; we’ve already decided that.” Her shoes squeaked over the linoleum in the kitchen, followed by the sound of her opening cabinets and getting down glasses, opening and closing the refrigerator and getting ice out of the freezer. “Would you like coffee instead?” she asked, her voice curving around the half wall that separated her from me.
“No.” But her question made clear the smell in her house, and a memory forced itself into my mind. It was not the smell of freshly brewed coffee but the stale scent of coffee after it has permeated everything. And it is there in my mother’s kitchen, the smell of stale coffee in a hot room with the windows closed. My mother has dropped the glass coffeepot and the sound of its shattering has made me cry. And the smell of that memory lived here in this house now.
When she walked back into the living room she carried a small wooden tray with both hands; on it sat two tall glasses of tea and a small stack of napkins.
“I was confused when I heard you at the door because my appointment is on Friday,” she said. “And I knew today is Thursday, so I couldn’t understand why someone would be at the door.” She laughed to herself. “Even when I’m right I think I’m wrong. Old age can be a very good prankster.” She stopped walking when her knees brushed against the coffee table. “You’ll have to set this down for me,” she said. “There are some things I cannot trust myself to do.”
When the tray was out of her hands and had been set down, she moved around the coffee table and sat in one of the armchairs. She reached forward and picked up her glass from the tray and brought it toward her. Her hand shook and the ice cubes clinked together softly. She took a drink from her tea and picked up a napkin and wrapped it around the glass. She crossed her legs and smoothed out her skirt.
“So, Mr. Pruitt,” she said, “you know Wade.”
“We played baseball together.”
“If I were a betting woman, I’d bet you played first,” she said, smiling. “You’re tall. Most first basemen are tall and right-handed, and usually very strong. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make it to the majors, Mr. Pruitt?”
My fingers had closed around one of the napkins on the tray, and now it was balled up in my hand. “No.”
“That’s too bad,” she said. “I’m sure you wanted to become a professional ballplayer. I’m sure you worked very hard.”
“Very hard.” The napkin had become rock-hard from my squeezing it, hard enough to be thrown through the glass window behind me or tucked into a fist to make the fist heavier and more solid. The memory wasn’t of me crying after all, but of my mother crying instead. Her forehead is bleeding from where the coffeepot has been shattered across her face, splattering me and the walls and the floor with cold, stale coffee. The old man has slammed the door behind him, and now the lawn mower is sputtering, finally catching and firing. My mother doesn’t look up from where she cleans the floor, but each time the lawn mower passes the windows it kicks up gravel and sticks against the glass, and my mother ducks lower as if my father has aimed those things at her.
“Well,” she said, reaching out and setting her glass on the tray. “Sometimes you need a little luck. Wade didn’t have the career he wanted to have either, certainly not the career I wanted him to have. Especially not considering his talent.”
“That’s too bad.” But those were just words, and she knew it. She leaned forward as if preparing to ask something or say something that no one else should ever hear, even though there was no one else in the house and there probably hadn’t been for a long time.
“Does he owe you money, Mr. Pruitt?”
“Money?”
“Does Wade owe you money?” she asked. “Is that why you’re here?”
“No. He doesn’t owe me money.”
“Well,” she said, smiling, “good for you, because he sure owes me money.” She leaned away and opened the palm of her left hand, showing that she’d balled up her napkin too, and she tossed it onto the table before picking up her glass from the tray. “I ask you that question because he owes a lot of people money,” she said. “They’ve come here looking for him over the years.”