IMOGENE
DAILY SPECIAL
Rhubarb Pie with melted Tillamook Cheddar .50¢
THE MAHOGANY DOOR to Mamaí’s cottage was open; bread crumbs were all over the porch. Everything was a mess. Mamaí’s precious Persian carpet had fish food on the corner by the aquarium, the china cabinet was now home to books and socks. I stepped in and called, “Theo?”
“In here.” He strolled into the kitchen from the back porch—no shirt, dabs of iodine on his chest, holding an ice pack to his wavy brown hair. The screen door slammed behind him.
On the dining room table was the Tillamook Tribune with his picture prominently featured on the front. I snatched it up and said, “Why didn’t you knock that pissant out?”
He pulled his sweatshirt over his muscular frame, quickly covering the scar above his heart and that tattoo that was forbidden conversation, and tilted his head at me. “Immie—”
“Oh shush! I’m so mad I’m thinkin’ ’bout beatin’ up a priest myself!” I threw the ice pack in the sink. There was dried blood on the counter. In the window was Kiernan’s tin soldier. It looked so small, no bigger than my ring finger. It had fresh red paint on its arm, but every other bit of it was chipped or rubbed bare, down to its grey cast iron. My heart sank.
“You coulda really been hurt,” I said, moving a stack of books and plunking down on a dining room chair. “You make it through Korea and now you’re pickin’ fights?”
He stood, quiet and confident, waiting for me to calm down. Despite his façade of patience, there was something unsettling about him these days. Behind his drooping, sleepy green eyes there’d always been an alert intelligence, but now there was something more, something deeper, darker, something lost, something irretrievable.
“Do you have anything at all to say for yourself?” I asked.
“I know that fighting with you is like thinking an umbrella will protect me in a flood.” He smiled and tucked his chain with the dog tags and our grandmother’s jade ring beneath his shirt.
“True,” I said. “Shit, Theo.” I tugged my pack of Salems from my dress pocket and put one in my mouth, a thing never dared while Mamaí was alive. I looked around as if she’d come barreling around the corner and slap them out of my hand—then, staring at Mrs. B’s portrait of her, I lit up.
He reached across the table and said, “I’m fine,” then yanked the cigarette out of my mouth and continued, “but you still can’t smoke in this house.”
I took it back and said, “Toreck’s not sane. He won’t just ‘forgive and forget,’ ya know. When he gets out he’ll come lookin’, wantin’ payback . . . So do ya plan on not fightin’ back? Cause I’d like to have some notice—gotta call the ambulance in Tillamook, or the coroner. Then, well, pick out a dress for the funeral, and then there’s the food for the wake and the—”
“Alright, alright,” he said. “Let’s just jump off that bridge when we get to it, shall we.”
I opened the bandages and handed them to him as he patched himself up. “This is war . . . He hates you, anyway.”
Theo tore open a bandage and said, “It’ll be fine.”
He had a familiar look in his eyes. He tended to zero in on an injustice with single-minded abandon until the issue was rectified. He had that same distant gaze now.
“You’re a war hero, for God’s sake! And was there nothin’ in your vows about fightin’?”
His smile faded and he said, “It’s all a fight. Everything’s a fight. Hell, I wake up every morning fists clenched, ready for something. Anything. It’s all a fight. But it’s a rare treat when you actually know what you’re fightin’ for. And I’m no hero, Imogene. Just a survivor.”
“Maybe. And maybe I don’t understand,” I said. “Maybe because you don’t talk to me ’bout anything real.”
“Real? Okay, here’s real,” he said. “Saint Patrick’s was no challenge. Swallow the dogma, keep my head down, just keep moving. No different than that North Korean prison camp, no different at all. But here, with our beach, the ocean, Neahkahnie, Rounders, Solomon, you . . . every place, every person knowing me, demanding truth. Here, it’s impossible to deny who I am. Impossible to keep my head down and not engage. And when I engage, Imogene, when I engage, it’s always a fight.”
It was the first real thing he’d said to me since he’d returned. His expression was harder now, older than how I see him in my mind. Korea had darkened the radiance of his eyes and sobered him like a cold slap to the face. I let out a deep breath and said, “Thank you for that . . . maybe I don’t understand. Heck, how could I? But one thing I do understand is that Toreck would have happily gutted a priest yesterday. I understand that.” My tears suddenly welled.
“Alright,” Theo said. “But he didn’t. And I’m fine.”
“But he wants to now, doesn’t he?”
“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.”
“What’s with all the jumping and burning of bridges? Can’t ya just peacefully cross one for once?” I said, taking a drag and blowing the smoke away from him, toward the window. His precious golf balls were all over the floor. Mamaí’s sacred shrine to him—his military awards and medals—were missing from the wall. “Love what you’re doin’ with the place.”
“Thanks,” he said as he wrapped white first-aid tape around his hand.
“You ever gonna talk about anything?” I asked. “I mean, you know . . . what happened?”
He looked up at me. “Cut that, will ya?” he said holding out the tape.
I cut it in half. “Fine then.”
He skillfully patched himself up like he’d done it a million times before.
“I remember Da saying, ‘Yur not an Irishmen ’til yur muzzle’s been busted a good many times,’” I said. “It’s your third broken nose. Aren’t you bloody Irish enough?”
“Hope so,” he said with a half-laugh.
His unopened red-white-and-blue-rimmed letters were on the table, the string untied.
“Andréa stopped by the store,” I said. “Said to say hello.”
He sat quiet for a minute and then said, “Will she be back?”
“Don’t think so,” I said. “Her family’s finally sellin’ the cabin. She just picked up her things. She’s had a tough year, losin’ a parent and all . . . You okay?”
He forced a smile and said, “I’m fine . . . She okay?”
“I guess,” I said. “Hard to tell with her—she always looks like everything’s perfect.”
He didn’t speak, just stared out the window across the street to the Bouvre house. Did that cold slap happen before he went? I never understood what happened between them.
“Okay, off limits,” I said. “Let’s chat about that fight then . . . I know Mamaí said you were God’s warrior, but she’s gone now.”
“I gave her china to Oz and Netty,” he said.
“Can we ever have a straight-on conversation? And I know ’bout the china.”
“I’m no warrior.”
“Oh yeah, forgive me. You’re just a punching bag now.”
“Exactly.”
“So you’re schemin’, then? Cause this couldn’t a been the whole plan, right?”
His tan face went pale and blank for a minute—lying wasn’t Theo’s forte.
“Thought so,” I sighed. “Since you don’t have much of a plan, I do. We’re takin’ money from our inheritance to send Toreck’s family far away from here. Five hundred dollars should help them get a start somewhere. And you need to let them know that today. She came into the store this morning and looks about to break in two. We can help a little more.”
Theo stared at me like he’d never seen me before.
“And you,” I said, “need a long, hot bath.”
He smiled and leaned forward, closer to me. “I love you, little sister.”
“Yeah, well, you still need a bath.”
“Didn’t have time last night.” He sat back in the chair and secured three bandages over the cut on his clean-shaven chin, plunked the ice pack on his knuckles, and smiled at me. “See,” he said and held up his hand. “I’m fine.” A trickle of blood dropped from his nose.
I handed him a hanky. “Shit, Theo . . . I thought your bloody nose days would be over.”
“The road to heaven often passes through hell,” he said. “And, apparently, Manzanita.”
“Yeah, but who said to knock down the door and shout, ‘Hello Satan, I’m home?’”