Read Online Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories by Thomas Lynch - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Thomas Lynch
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and “Sensible Choices.” A woman’s right to choose, thought Harold, applied to the recently widowed as well as the recently impregnated, noting the coincident rise in the abortion and cremation rates. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” he told his bosses at Clarksville headquarters. “Give them plenty of choices.” They called their cremation catalogue Options by Clarksville and filled it with urns and cremation caskets.
Had it not been for the drinking and carousing that everyone knew about but no one mentioned, he might have been given a vice presidency, stock options, an office at headquarters in Indiana. As it was they thanked him for his insights and cut his territory. He didn’t care. Inflation kept his commissions high. He had nothing to save for. His dead daughter’s college fund went into a couple of mutual funds and swelled during the 1990s. He had more than he’d ever need. His place was paid off. After Angela had died, after Helen left, very little mattered until he met Joan at an AA meeting in a church basement in Topinabee.
She had looked to be about the age Angela would have been if she had lived. She always listened to Harold carefully when he talked at the weekly meetings. She nodded and smiled when it came his turn to tell how he was powerless over alcohol and his life had become unmanageable or how he’d come to believe that a power greater than himself could restore him to sanity or the particulars of his searching and fearless moral inventory. She would nod and smile and at the end she would squeeze his hand after the Our Father or the recitation of the Serenity Prayer and give him a hug and tell him, “Easy does it, Harold.” She was so happy, it seemed, so very happy. And whatever calamity or sadness brought her to AA, details of which she shared frankly on occasion, she seemed to inhabit a permanent present tense, free of the past and future, afloat on the moment she occupied. She was pretty and had a graceful body and eyes like the blue of the indigo bunting he had only seen once. When Harold asked her if he could ask her out to dinner, she said she’d rather bring him dinner at home. It was a chicken and rice casserole, and pecan pie for dessert. She stayed that night and the night after that and on the weekend they moved her out of the rooming house in Cheboygan, her entireestate fitting easily in the trunks of their two cars. There had never been any talk of marriage. They were companions and occasional lovers, generous with each other in ways that were new to Harold. He took her walleye fishing and built fires in the fall and winter. She read to him in bed and cooked him breakfast. He took her on sunset cruises along the lakeshore in an old wooden inboard he bought for such occasions, savoring the changing light and night skies and the silence that would sometimes settle between them. She quit her job at the marina where she did payables and receivables. He did most of his business by phone and fax. They went to dinner in Petoskey and Mackinaw City and Indian River, movies in Gaylord and Cheboygan. She abided his long walks, his long silences, his darker moods. Whenever she touched him, or talked to him, or looked at him, Harold felt alive. And though he never could figure out why she came and stayed—she was twenty-three years younger and might have had a more exciting life—his gratitude was manifest and he treated her accordingly.
He bought a small RV and they would leave just before Memorial Day, driving around the country on no particular schedule, returning after Labor Day when all the summer neighbors had returned to their downstate lives. He kept a list of the place names they had been to. She kept albums full of photos, each of them posing for the other, in front of some diner or park entrance or stop in the road. They had lived together there on the lake for over ten years. The best years of his life, he would always say. The best of hers, she would say in
Had it not been for the drinking and carousing that everyone knew about but no one mentioned, he might have been given a vice presidency, stock options, an office at headquarters in Indiana. As it was they thanked him for his insights and cut his territory. He didn’t care. Inflation kept his commissions high. He had nothing to save for. His dead daughter’s college fund went into a couple of mutual funds and swelled during the 1990s. He had more than he’d ever need. His place was paid off. After Angela had died, after Helen left, very little mattered until he met Joan at an AA meeting in a church basement in Topinabee.
She had looked to be about the age Angela would have been if she had lived. She always listened to Harold carefully when he talked at the weekly meetings. She nodded and smiled when it came his turn to tell how he was powerless over alcohol and his life had become unmanageable or how he’d come to believe that a power greater than himself could restore him to sanity or the particulars of his searching and fearless moral inventory. She would nod and smile and at the end she would squeeze his hand after the Our Father or the recitation of the Serenity Prayer and give him a hug and tell him, “Easy does it, Harold.” She was so happy, it seemed, so very happy. And whatever calamity or sadness brought her to AA, details of which she shared frankly on occasion, she seemed to inhabit a permanent present tense, free of the past and future, afloat on the moment she occupied. She was pretty and had a graceful body and eyes like the blue of the indigo bunting he had only seen once. When Harold asked her if he could ask her out to dinner, she said she’d rather bring him dinner at home. It was a chicken and rice casserole, and pecan pie for dessert. She stayed that night and the night after that and on the weekend they moved her out of the rooming house in Cheboygan, her entireestate fitting easily in the trunks of their two cars. There had never been any talk of marriage. They were companions and occasional lovers, generous with each other in ways that were new to Harold. He took her walleye fishing and built fires in the fall and winter. She read to him in bed and cooked him breakfast. He took her on sunset cruises along the lakeshore in an old wooden inboard he bought for such occasions, savoring the changing light and night skies and the silence that would sometimes settle between them. She quit her job at the marina where she did payables and receivables. He did most of his business by phone and fax. They went to dinner in Petoskey and Mackinaw City and Indian River, movies in Gaylord and Cheboygan. She abided his long walks, his long silences, his darker moods. Whenever she touched him, or talked to him, or looked at him, Harold felt alive. And though he never could figure out why she came and stayed—she was twenty-three years younger and might have had a more exciting life—his gratitude was manifest and he treated her accordingly.
He bought a small RV and they would leave just before Memorial Day, driving around the country on no particular schedule, returning after Labor Day when all the summer neighbors had returned to their downstate lives. He kept a list of the place names they had been to. She kept albums full of photos, each of them posing for the other, in front of some diner or park entrance or stop in the road. They had lived together there on the lake for over ten years. The best years of his life, he would always say. The best of hers, she would say in
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