The Best of Good Page 18

“Right here,” she said, coming through the kitchen. “Are we going to do more?”

  “Yeah, where’s your guitar?”

  “I’ll go get it!”

  Mike sat down again in his seat and took his harmonica out of his pocket. A few seconds later, Elise joined him.

  “Now,” I said, “where were we? OK, Mike, listen to this.”

  We finished our lesson. It took only fifteen more minutes. Elise’s hands were still pretty tender, and Mike’s attention span was short. But they were making progress, which I found almost as amazing as the fact that they kept coming back for more.

  “OK, you guys are great!” I said, “Now, practice whenever you can, and we’ll have another lesson in a couple of days.”

  “Thank you, Good,” they said together.

  As soon as they were inside their own house, I could hear them calling, “Mom! Listen to this!”

  “Ellen,” I said. “We’re done out here.”

  “Tom!” she said. “Your place!”

  “Oh, yeah, I got some new—”

  “It looks so much better! I love the kitchen table. And you have a working color TV! You’ve come a long way! Do you have cable?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The works. So where’s the sewing machine?”

  “It’s in Bonsall,” she said quickly, not making eye contact. “I think it will fit in your car if we put the backseat down.”

  “Bonsall! That’s, that’s, like, well, it’s far!” I thought a minute. Dinners Ellen had made me came to mind, time she had spent with me when I was at my worst. I always begged Ellen to ask me to help her do something. I said, “But I’m not doing anything, so what the heck.”

  She smiled.

  It was a good thing to see my sister smile. About something I’d said. It didn’t happen all that often. I opened the trunk. “OK. Let me see if I have any junk back here.” I took out a denim jacket and some trash. We lowered the backseat. I had never been to Bonsall. I had to dig out a map, which I handed to Ellen.

  Ellen was giving me directions as we drove. “OK, get in the right lane. Now turn right. She said to look for a bridge over a—there it is—now turn right. OK, now its, oh, these condos on the right. This driveway. Great. It’s the fifth garage door. There’s a parking spot!”

  She opened the door before the car stopped moving. She said, Come on.

  I followed her to the front door. She rang the bell.

  A woman in her sixties opened the door. She had curly gray hair and wore a jogging suit. “Is this my sewing machine girl?” she said.

  “Yes. I’m Ellen. This is my brother, Tom. He has a bigger car than I do, so he drove me.”

  “I’m Kathy. Nice to meet you both. Come in.” We followed her into the condo, which was neat enough for a military inspection and contained quite a few old black sewing machines. There were needlepoint pillows here and there with sewing machines, needles and thread, and pincushion designs on them.

  “Here’s your baby!” Kathy said.

  This ancient black sewing machine was perched on top of a wooden cabinet with three righthand drawers. It reminded me of an old black-and-white textbook photo about the industrial revolution. The cabinet looted like a desk, except for the sewing machine. “Here’s how she folds up,” Kathy said. Gently, she tipped the sewing machine forward into the top of the cabinet. A piece of wood covered the opening. “Pretty neat, huh?”

  “Wow,” Ellen said. “Wow! I’ve always wanted one of these!”

  This was the first I’d heard of it.

  Her hands were pressed to her cheeks and she was shaking her head as though she had just won a million dollars.

  “Let me show you some other ones, just for fun. Did you see the one that I listed yesterday?”

  “The 401A?”

  “Yeah. She’s a beauty. Want to take a look?”

  “Of course!” Ellen said.

  This could be a while. I looked for a place to sit down without messing anything up. Not finding one, I stood in the middle of the room. I ran my hand over the top of the sewing machine cabinet, as if I were interested in the finish. I tried to picture my sister sitting there, sewing something. The things you don’t know about people!

  She had to look at twelve sewing machines that were stationed all over the woman’s house.

  “Where do you find them all?” Ellen was asking in awe.

  “You have to get up early every Saturday morning and get out to those garage sales! You have to hit those swap meets without fail! But it’s a labor of love, let me tell you!”

  “How many sewing machines do you think you’ve sold on eBay?” Ellen wanted to know.

  The inside of my head was screaming, “Who cares’?” On the other hand, I hadn’t seen Ellen this happy since—well, I couldn’t remember when.

  “About a hundred,” the woman calculated, “maybe more.”

  After hearing more information about old sewing machines than I ever imagined existed, my sister and I each took one end of the table, turned it on its side, and loaded it into my car.

  Kathy was standing there with a screwdriver. “Sure you don’t want me to take those legs off?”

  “Not necessary,” I said. “But thank you.”

  On the way home, my sister kept looking fondly back at her sewing machine.

  “What’s up with you?” I wanted to know. “Since when did you get so nuts about sewing and sewing machines?”

  “It’s just something that I always wanted to do. I mean, I’ve done a little bit of it. In junior high, we had to take home ec. I made this hideous skirt. But quilts are different. I just like everything about them. The way they feel, the way they look. You know how many different patterns you can make with triangles?”

  “No idea whatsoever. So why didn’t you get a new sewing machine. Surely, the ones they make these days would be better than that old—”

  She gasped. “You mean you don’t just love that sweet little beauty? You don’t just adore the way it looks? You’ll just have to wait to see the way it sews.”

  “Honestly, I never—”

  “Triangles are really my favorite thing. It’s so amazing! You wouldn’t believe how much you can do with triangles. Flower baskets and pinwheels and Ohio stars.”

  She’d lost me. It didn’t matter, though, because she didn’t really care what I had to say on the topic of triangles. She was off in her own little quilt world, and she was so happy there that she didn’t notice she was all alone.

  At her place, she’d cleared a space for the sewing machine table. She set it up and plugged it in. “I’m so happy!” she squealed and threw her arms around me.

  I drove home thinking about my sisters newfound joy. If everybody had something that made them that happy life would be better all around. Wouldn’t it?

  I kept thinking about happiness, where people find it, and how little it has to do with the things you expect it to.

  Jeanette was that way about her “projects.” Every year, she would bring me hideous things she’d made as Christmas decorations. I had to display these in plain sight in my house because she would be sure to stop by to check if I was using the thing. Once she made me a Christmas tree entirely out of hard candies. She stopped by three days later on the pretext that she had gotten some of my mail in her box. But I knew she was checking to see what I’d done with the Christmas tree. Fortunately, I hadn’t gotten around to throwing it in the trash. I saw her little gray blue eyes darting around my apartment looking for the thing until she spotted it on my kitchen table. She showed me the directions she’d followed from some magazine. “Easy Christmas Tree Table-Topper!” was what the article was called.

  She explained that you had to start with a Styrofoam cone. I wondered where in the hell you would get one of those, but I didn’t ask her, as I was afraid she might actually tell me. It would take a long time. She would give directions and everything, blanking out on street names. She showed me the supply list and the steps numbered one through sixteen. When
she paused, I figured she must be done, so I said, “Well, you certainly did a lovely job.” I thought I sounded completely insincere, as if I was just trying to get rid of her, which I was. But somehow this inane comment made her look as happy as she could be. Now that I thought about it, though, I wished I had something like that. I wished I could affix something to a piece of Styrofoam and be satisfied and pleased with myself for days. I really did.

  thirty-five

  I stepped through my front door to take my garbage out back. There was Robin, snapping a picture of me. Jeanette was behind her, smiling.

  “What’s—”

  “First day of school, Good!” Jeanette said. “You wrecked the picture!”

  To my right, the four Gunther kids were lined up in front of their door. They all had fresh haircuts and new sneakers.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Robin. “Let me get out of the way.”

  I went to stand with Jeanette.

  Robin said, “One, two, three.” They all made their fake photo smiles. She snapped the picture.

  Jeanette clapped. “Now, here’s something for each of you! It’s for recess, now! I want you to save it for recess!” She gave them each a package of Fig Newtons.

  “Thank you, Jeanette,” they all said. They looked at their mother, who smiled and winked at them, letting them know they were doing the right thing by not announcing they didn’t like Fig Newtons or handing them back.

  “You’re welcome!” Jeanette smiled.

  “OK, now get in the car!” Robin said. “We can’t be late on the first day!” She put the camera into her big purse.

  “Bye, everybody,” I said. “I hope you—Good luck, I mean— I hope you get nice teachers!”

  They all climbed in the car. Jeanette and I stood by the side of the driveway, waving as Robin backed out.

  “There they go!” said Jeanette.

  “There they go,” I said.

  A heavy, sad feeling settled over me then. What was it? A lingering memory of not wanting to return to school? Hard to say.

  I went to the trash can, and Jeanette started back upstairs. “Have a nice day!” she said.

  “You too, Jeanette,” I said.

  • • •

  That evening my phone rang. I was watching something idiotic on television at the time, I still didn’t turn it on very often, but it was there if I wanted it. I had more than a hundred channels now, all in color, of course.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hi,” said a little kids voice, and I thought at first that it was Mike. But he never called. He lived next door—why would he? Wrong number, maybe. “It’s Jack,” said the voice.

  I know this is crazy, but first I thought of my brother, Jack, as a child, calling me from when we were small. Human brains are so easy to fool. And then I remembered the other Jack, my kid, Jack.

  “Well, hi,” I said, and then I panicked. “What—are you—is everything OK?”

  “Fine, thank you,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s right here. Do you want to talk to her?”

  “No, I—no, that’s OK. How are you? Oh, you just said you were fine. What’s up?”

  “I wanted to call you. I have to ask you something.”

  “Sure. Shoot.” My heart started pounding. “Why didn’t you try to find me?” he would want to know. “Why didn’t you ever get me any birthday presents?”

  “OK,” he said. “Hang on a second.” I heard papers rustling. “OK, um, at my school, there’s this thing?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “It’s—my class is learning to play music, and I thought you would want to come. Because you like music.”

  “Of course!” Did I say it too loud? Was I too enthusiastic? “When is it?”

  “It’s, um”—more paper sounds—“December second.”

  “It just so happens that I’m free. What time?”

  “Um… It’s, oh yeah, here it is, ten-thirty. Do you want the address?”

  “That would be great, yeah.”

  He told me the address.

  “What instument will you be playing?”

  “Recorder,” he said. “We’re learning three songs.”

  “Great,” I said, “I’ll be there. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “OK,” he said. “See you. Oh, wait. My mom and I were watching this movie?”

  “Yeah,” I said

  “And there was this song? My mom told me you wrote it.”

  “Oh, well, yeah,” I said.

  “She said you don’t do that anymore.”

  “Sure I do,” I said. “Every day.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you want to hear a tape of some of my more recent songs?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll make you a tape.”

  “This is going to be my first time playing anything,” he said, back to the recorder. “We just got them today, so I don’t know if I’ll really like it or anything. I don’t like to practice things.”

  “I see,” I said. “I can understand that.”

  “You can? But you probably practice all the time.”

  “But I’m old. When I was your age, I almost gave up the guitar because it was too hard. I wanted to sound like George Harrison, and I didn’t.”

  “Who’s George Harrison?”

  “Guitar player. Anyway, my brother talked me out of quitting.” “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  I had to bring that up, didn’t I? Just when things were going so well. Now I was going to cast this big black shadow over the whole conversation, depress the kid the first time he’d ever called me. “He died,” I said. “A long time ago. I don’t think your mom and I ever talked about him.”

  “Was he nice?”

  “He was very nice. He was an excellent musician too.”

  “Oh,” he said. “What was his name?”

  “See, this is kind of weird. You’re going to find this pretty surprising. His name was Jack.”

  “So I’m named after him.”

  “No. Your mom named you, and, see, your mom never heard of my brother.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “OK, well. I’m going to go now,” he said. “I have homework.”

  “OK, hey, call me back anytime!” I said a little desperately.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  That was good. That was hopeful. We had contact. I couldn’t sit down. I was too excited. I called Ellen. “He called me!” I said. “The kid called me!”

  “Jack?” she said. “He did?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I was laughing. “He invited me to hear him play his recorder at school. December second!”

  “Wow, he gave you plenty of lead time,”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Today was the first day of school.”

  “It was? Oh, yeah.”

  “They just got their recorders.”

  It took me three days to put a tape together. “Self-Destructive Tendencies” wasn’t on it. I chose ten songs that I thought a kid in the sixth grade would like, not that I knew much about it. I Just didn’t put on any slow ones or sad ones. I made a copy for Mike and Elise.

  I mailed the tape to Jack in care of Diana.

  thirty-six

  Ellen had me over for dinner and to show me the quilt she was working on. She was taking a class at an adult-education center called the Institute of Affirmation. “It’s every Monday night,” she explained. “You just bring in whatever you’re working on, or they help you start something. It only costs seven dollars! That’s all! Some of the ladies have been going for years. There are old ladies, middle-aged women, a few teenagers. No men, not even one. The teacher is so nice. So helpful and supportive.”

  I looked at Ellens pieces. Complicated. There were all these little squares sewn together to make bigger squares. It kind of made my head ache
when I thought of all the cutting and sewing and lining up that went into it.

  “Yikes,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s not done yet. There are these ladies in my class who have made hundreds—literally hundreds—of quilts. Can you imagine that? They’re so good. I’ll probably never get that skilled. But I’m improving. It feels good to me just to hold the fabric.” She squinched her eyes shut with pleasure. “Then I like to spread it out on the floor, and stand on the couch to look at it from above,” She arranged all the squares in a pattern on the living room carpet. Slipping out of her shoes, she hopped up on the couch to look down on the design. We both stood silently for a moment and admired her work.

  “It’s really excellent,” I said.

  Then she showed me all the mistakes she’d made. “See right here. That didn’t quite meet up right. See that? This is supposed to be a point, and it’s flat. And over here, I don’t know why I got this puckering. And look! This strip came out just a little too short and I had to add this! So annoying!”

  I didn’t see anything wrong with any of it. “It looks fine to me,” I said. “But it looks so hard! How do you know how to do all that? And how can it be fun when it’s so complicated?”

  “It’s not hard. Really.”

  We were having burritos, which I had picked up on the way. After we were finished with the quilt topic, I put one on each of our plates. Ellen poured Diet Coke from a big bottle for her and water for me. She sat down.

  “Ellen,” I said. “Something happened. Something big.”

  “You told me. Jack called. It’s great. Now you can—”

  “This is something else. And it happened awhile ago. Listen. I’m in love.” She put down her burrito. “I am. I’m in love.” I nodded, confirming what I had just said. Then I put both my hands over my face, as if someone had turned a bright light on me in the middle of the night.

  “Diana again,” she said. She sighed, as if she didn’t know what to do about me, hopeless me.

  “No, not Diana,” I said. I didn’t uncover my eyes when I said this. “You know that woman who lives in the front of my house?”

  “With all the kids?”

  “Robin,” I said.

  “Isn’t she married with three kids?”