The morning after Wayne Robinson was laid to rest, I drove Terry to the bus station so he could get back to Chicago in time for his show. We were early, so we found a quiet spot inside the depot where we could sit and chat for a while. We hadn’t been alone together in years, but it immediately felt like old times in the gazebo in my garden. We talked about his new life and his job at the theater. I told him I’d try to make it back to Chicago to see him perform. He said that he’d come visit Plainview again when he got the chance. I believed he might actually do it since Barbara Jean, who’d made him a gift of the Dior dress he’d worn, had told him she had other dresses she’d like to pass his way. Just the idea of walking into her closet once more had made him go weak in the knees again.
Just after the speaker crackled and announced the boarding of Terry’s bus, he surprised me by asking, “Odette, do you see ghosts?”
I generally avoided telling my friends about my gift—or delusion, depending on your beliefs concerning such things. I’d never told Barbara Jean that since her first husband, Lester, had died, I’d often seen him and their son, Adam, playing together in the garden behind her big house. I’d made no mention to Clarice of the many times I’d seen her dead father following her around, beaming with pride. I would find it torturous if someone were to tell me that people my heart ached for were nearby but couldn’t be heard, seen, or touched. But there was such hope on Terry’s face as he waited for my answer that I felt I had to make an exception to my rule. Also, my mama didn’t raise any liars. So I said, “Yes. I do.”
He said, “I wondered back when I used to hang out with you in your backyard. Sometimes when I’d come by unexpected, you’d be talking to somebody—your mother, I think. Then, when Mr. Henry asked you yesterday morning if you’d seen his father after the fire, I wondered about it again.”
I said, “You’ve got your talents. I’ve got mine.”
Terry leaned in close to me and whispered, “Sometimes I swear my mother is with me. I’ll be watching an old movie on TV, like the two of us used to do together, and I know she’s there, right beside me. Or I’ll be walking down the street, or doing chores around my apartment, and, poof, there’s Mom. Do you think she’s really there?”
I said, “I can’t say for sure if your mother’s been coming to see you in Chicago, but I know she was with you almost all the time in Plainview after she passed. Right before you left and you were so unhappy, I doubt that she ever once let you out of her sight. It stands to reason she’s still checking in.” I patted his cheek. “Terry, Audrey, or both, if you were mine, I’d never stop coming to see you.”
He said, “Thank you.”
“I knew you were special the day we met in my backyard. What you did yesterday only showed me I was right. Since we left the cemetery, I’ve been thinking that if you can find a way to forgive your father after all he did, then I’ve got no excuse to keep holding on to the load of grievances I’ve made a habit of carrying. You made me want to do better. And that’s saying a whole lot, because I’ve gotten real used to being me.”
Terry furrowed his brow and leaned back in his chair. “Odette, I should probably tell you what really happened at the cemetery.” He gnawed at his lower lip. “When I told you yesterday that I couldn’t do what I was planning to do, I didn’t mean that I’d changed my mind. I meant that I really couldn’t do it. Like, physically. When I squatted down, I found out that the dress Barbara Jean gave me was so tight I couldn’t get my knees apart. Next thing I knew, everybody was telling me how proud they were of me for proving I was the better man, and I couldn’t admit the truth. I had every intention of pissing on that bastard, but that gorgeous dress wouldn’t let me.”
I laughed, picturing Barbara Jean, ever the lady, putting together an outfit for Terry with precisely that limitation in mind. I patted Terry’s shoulder and said, “As long as you feel good about it, I still believe it worked out for the best.” I was thinking, I can’t wait to tell this part of the story to Mama. She’s gonna love it.
A second announcement summoned passengers to Terry’s bus. We exchanged hugs and kisses and promised each other that it wouldn’t be long before we talked again. I waved good-bye to him as he boarded a Chicago-bound bus, on purpose this time.
* * *
WHEN I GOT back home, Denise, Jimmy, and Eric were sitting at the kitchen table with their father. They’d arrived in Plainview the previous night, along with their spouses. Denise’s husband, Jimmy’s wife, and Eric’s partner had all been corralled into playing some sort of video game in the family room with Denise’s children, Dora and William.
Denise said, “She’s back, Daddy. Now you can open it.” She pointed to the manila envelope El had left with Barbara Jean for James. She turned my way. “Daddy said we had to wait until you got home before we could look inside.”
I resisted the urge to laugh. I had been pestering James to unseal that envelope from the moment we’d left Wayne Robinson’s burial, but I’d been unable to persuade him to do it. He’d claimed that he was going to wait until the kids had left, so his attention wouldn’t be diverted from enjoying their company. Our children were having none of that. And they had always been better at getting James to see things their way than I was. If they wanted that envelope opened, it was going to be opened.
James ran a butter knife beneath the flap of the envelope and reached inside. The first thing he slid out was a sheet of white paper. Standing behind him, I saw the words “My son,” written in the same big, round letters that marked the envelope. Several handwritten lines were scrawled beneath that.
I pulled reading glasses from my pocketbook and passed them to James. At Denise’s urging, he began to read aloud:
Dear James,
I’ve been trying to find words to talk to you about the past and all those things I did wrong to you and your mother. But it’s like that time the Pink Slipper caught fire and everybody ran for the one door together. Every word tries to escape at the same time, and nothing gets out. So I’m writing this for you.
James paused, clearly having trouble with El’s chicken scratch.
I remember every day with you. I know you won’t believe me, but you were my world.
James used his index finger to slide the glasses a little farther down his nose.
I tried, but I wasn’t good enough. That’s the story of my life.
James stopped and said, “It’s hard to read. Half the lines are scribbled over, and stuff is written sideways.”
He went on:
There will never be a day when I don’t look for you to come running up to me.
James stopped again, tilting the page in hopes of finding a better reading angle. “He must have been drunk when he wrote it.”
Denise reached out and took the letter from her father. She said, “Daddy, it’s a song.” She handed it back to James. “See, these other words are rhyming lyrics that he crossed out.”
James picked it up and read it again, to himself this time. Even with the reading glasses, he squinted to decipher the words. I was sure that my husband, who loves mysteries, was also trying to read the lines El had obscured beneath slashes of ink. When he finished reading, James quickly passed a finger beneath his glistening eyes and then played it off like he was just removing the glasses. His voice quavering slightly, he said, “It’s not a bad little song.”
He reached into the envelope again and removed a bundle of pictures bound together with a thick rubber band. He pulled the first photograph away from the stack and stared at it for a moment. It was a picture of a tall, skinny man who looked a bit like James. He wore a striped vest and a bowler hat, and by his side was a strange animal.
James turned the photo over and read the words that were written on the back in the same handwriting as the song lyrics:
Your grandfather Joe. His leopard, Raja.
If you ever see Raja, follow him.
James flipped the photograph right side up again, and Denise squealed at her brothers, “Oh, my God. This is incredible. Do you remember all those stories Daddy used to make up for us when we were little? About Joey and his leopard, Roger? I can’t believe this.”
Laughing, Eric picked up the picture. “I can’t believe this is any kind of leopard.”
Denise said, “Daddy, do you remember those stories?”
Our children’s spouses came into the kitchen in a rush of conversation and giggling. Dora tugged at the right arm of her uncle Eric’s partner, Greg, competing for his attention with her brother, William, who yanked on the poor man’s left hand. Jimmy’s wife said, “These children need feeding, and they say that Grandma Odette promised them waffles.”
Denise said to James, “Do you remember those stories you used to tell us?”
Dora released Greg and ran to her grandfather. “What stories?”
“Those Joey and Roger stories I used to tell you and your brother,” Denise said. “Your grandfather made them up for your uncles and me when we were little. Well, we thought he was making them up. It turns out Joey was your great-great-grandfather.”
“He had a leopard?” William asked.
“Well, he had some kind of animal with spots on it,” Denise said.
James continued to study the picture.
Denise placed a hand on her father’s arm. In a tone of voice I hadn’t heard from her in twenty-five years, she said, “Daddy, I want to hear a story.”
Eric and Jimmy laughed at the idea of being told a children’s story at their ages. But they both moved their chairs closer to their father.
Denise said, “Please tell us one for old times’ sake.”
I stood behind James, massaging his tight shoulders as our daughter badgered him.
Dora leaned against her grandfather’s side and said, “Come on, Granddaddy.”
William let go of Greg and hurried to join Dora. “I want to hear one, too,” he said.
I felt the tension fall away from James’s shoulders. In a hoarse voice, he began, “Once upon a time, there was a boy named Joe who had a pet leopard called Roger…”
My mind traveled back in time, and I pictured Daddy cheerfully humming a sorrow-filled blues song to himself as he sawed open the ceiling in my family room to give me and my children a skylight so we could see the stars. I rested my chin on my James’s shoulder, and listened to the love in his voice.
It took some strength to keep from stepping away from the perfect moment in front of me to record it in the book I’d started keeping, the way Mama used to. But I managed to stay put, knowing I would get to it later.
The next time the blues comes looking for me, I’ll do what you did, Mama. I’ll shake my book of little miracles at it and tell it to move along, because I know how to jump for joy.