When Madeline Was Young (39 page)

He had made a small garden plot in the backyard so he could grow tomatoes and basil for that happy hour, as well as flowers for the woman of the house. Because he no longer went to the museum, there were four bird-feeders, two on poles and two hanging from the pear tree: the Grove Avenue oasis for the lesser birds, grackles and starlings, and whatever high-class songbirds might stop by. The Merry Maids had been for their biweekly appointment that day, sweeping through the house in thirty minutes, four of them in checked uniforms fanning out to clean; even on the deck there was still the whiff of the air freshener they sprayed inside as their last act.

Once we got talking about the trip, Diana was good enough to marshal Tessa and Madeline into the kitchen, to assemble the dinner we'd brought. I was glad to have a chance to describe the visit with no others adding or correcting. "All that talk of valor and service and the Kingdom of Heaven," I said. "It was wonderfully primitive and persuasive."

"Your mother would have croaked."

"Tessa, I'm sorry to say, did her grandmother proud, reducing an old friend of Kyle's to tears with her antiwar screed."

"Did she?" He perked up.

"What's remarkable, though, is that Buddy told me he'd tried to talk Kyle out of enlisting. He said he'd felt Mom's presence when he was making his arguments."

My father lifted his eyes to the heights of the pear tree. "There's nobody left in the family for your mother to spar with. She only picks on the ignorant people with advanced degrees, those who theoretically should know better." He, too, considered her in the present. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt, and when they were back on his face he pressed close to examine me. "You don't look so great."

"Can't hold my liquor," I said. "I temporarily forgot that I'm old." I was moving my arm only by virtue of the Percadan I'd found in my bag.

"Old," my father repeated.

"Buddy's old now, too."

"Devastated, I'd expect."

"I almost didn't recognize him."

"I assume the military does something to prepare the boys fo
r d
eath. Maybe there's no better training in this life than that."

Was my aged father properly trained? I wondered. Was he ready? "I got sad news a few days ago," he said, "news that Mikey O'Da
y d
ied."

"Mikey!"

"His sister called, the younger sister, the one in Georgia he'd gone to live with when the mother passed away. Congestive heart failure, pretty quick, I guess. The sister seemed to think he knew he was going."

That was something people often mentioned. He knew, he recognized me in the end, he wasn't afraid, and so forth. To my father I said, "Did you tell her?"

"I don't think I will. I've been pondering, but I don't see any reason."

We were quiet for a while. And then I told him about Robert playing Battlefield Vietnam. We talked in our usual and not altogether uncheerful way about how the world was going to hell. When Diana and the girls came out with a tray of sandwiches, my father said to Madeline, "There you are."

"I'm always here," she said, smoothing her short hair as she sat next to him.

He put his hand between her shoulder blades and drew circles for a minute. She hardly noticed, and I realized it was probably a gesture he made several times a day, without thinking. When he was done he rested his fingers at the nape of her neck. "This spread is beautiful
,
isn't it, Maddy?" He gave her a quick pat before he helped himself to an indeterminate kind of sandwich, turkey or ham or egg salad, whatever was most oozing mayonnaise.

"Diana." I reached for her sleeve. How did a person keep the devotion running pure? With or without God's grace. Devotion that at a certain point was for its own sake. "Diana," I said again, clutching her upper arm, which had grown strong with her morning yoga guru.

"Okay, okay!" She was trying to shake me away. "I know you want to get going. I know your head is killing you, but it's your own fault. Just let me eat."

Nonetheless, for a little bit, I kept my hand, but softly, on her arm.

When we finished our sandwiches, we turned for the north, leaving the two of them at their places on the deck. The sun was moving beyond the trees and houses, no place in my old town to see it finally slip over the filmy city horizon. Madeline and my father would sit there together until the fireflies appeared and the street lights came on, waiting for the ghostly mothers to ring their bells and sing out the names of their children from the back porches-time, at long last, to come inside.