Chapter 19 Jack

Ralph and Doris Haines were married seventy-six years. Doris had Alzheimer's, and as her mind gave way to that terrible disease, she didn't know her husband any longer. She was rarely even awake. That didn't stop Ralph from shuffling in on his walker every day to sit with her and hold her hand. Sometimes Doris would speak. Most of what she said was nonsensical to Jack, but Ralph always answered.

Just before her death, Doris opened her eyes and looked up. A rapturous, joyous smile filled her face. "Kenny?" she croaked. And then her eyes slid shut.

A half hour later, she was gone.

Ralph finally let go of her hand. He folded it across her belly, patted it, then took out a faded handkerchief and wiped his eyes. "That disease," he said. "I thought it had stolen the best of her. But the best of her was still in there."

Kenny, Ralph said, was the son they'd lost in the Vietnam War. Like so many others who had died in Jack's care, the vision of a predeceased loved one was the last thing Doris had seen before she'd shuffled off this mortal coil. While science debated what the visions reallywere, Jack thought that remarkable phenomenon was what surviving family members needed most. The belief that a loved one was waiting on the other side brought enormous comfort to them.

He'd come to the garden today, not with grief but with awe. He would never forget the look on Doris's face when she saw her son, or what Ralph had said about the best of his wife. Jack wished for someone to be that devoted to him. He wanted a love that would sustain him through the worst of times, through disease and strife and disaster, and at the end, for someone who knew he was still in there, no matter what. He wanted someone who would be impatient with him in long checkout lines, and watch movies with him that didn't live up to the hype, and appreciate lazy Sunday mornings and walking the dog and wine tastings and dinner parties and football. Was that asking too much?

The only trouble was, he wasn't interested in anyone. The closest he'd come to an interest in the last year was Nora, from the corner store. What had happened to her, anyway? He recalled them standing under the awning in front of the corner store, waiting for the crime scene unit to arrive and watching the rain turn the street into a river that cars shouldn't attempt to drive through. They took bets as to which cars would go for it. They agreed that they were too smart or too cowardly to attempt it, and that the "turn around, don't drown" campaign had been seared into their fearful consciences as children.

Jack asked if she could remember her greatest childhood fear.

"I had two," she said. "Quicksand and razors in apples at Halloween."

He laughed. "Have you ever seen quicksand?"

"Never. But in fifth grade, Cressida Talley said she had a sister who was sucked into it and disappeared, so for weeks I was on the lookout for it everywhere I went, sure I would be swallowed up."

"What about a razor in Halloween apples?"

"Never got an apple in my bag." She laughed. "Wouldn't it be totally obvious if an apple had a razor in it?" She shook her head. "What about you?"

"Easy. Spontaneous combustion. My mom told me about it."

"Your mom?" Nora laughed.

"Turns out, it was her greatest fear too," Jack said. "We spent an entire summer afraid of getting hot on the off chance we would simultaneously combust. I think I wore my Ninja Turtle flame-retardant pajamas every day."

She'd smiled up at him, her eyes glittering in the light of streetlamps. "Prepared for an emergency. I like that."

Jack had been so sure Nora would call him after that night. Why hadn't she? He would really like to know the answer to that—heaven knew he'd waited long enough, hoping she might guess that he'd lost her number and reach out.

He was ready to plant some squash. He borrowed a wagon at the garden entrance and trundled his seedlings to his plot.

The first thing he did was check on the tomatoes he'd planted. He thought maybe he'd planted them too early, but one plant had taken the assignment and run with it, already producing three small but perfect tomatoes. He'd tilled a row for the squash during his last visit, and after he planted them, he had some cleanup and weeding to do. This garden had become his part-time job.

Byron had been exasperated when Jack canceled loose plans earlier this week to check on his plot. "Dude, you're all plants and dead people."

"Nearly dead people," he'd corrected him.

Byron's complaint wasn't entirely fair—they'd squeezed in a baseball game last weekend. And he'd helped Clark, another buddy, move. He'd picked up a couple of extra shifts and gone out after work with Sandra and Pauline for drinks. He was busy.

He was even busier now because he'd gotten roped into making some cosmetic repairs at the Triangle Theater. In fact, he was headed there today. Where did the weekend go?

***

He found Catherine in a foul mood, stomping around the faded lobby. She immediately put him to work shoring up the old ticket box, but then proceeded to bark orders until Jack told her—politely—that he was doing this as a favor to her, and if she would rather he come back another time, he would. But he was not putting up with that.

Catherine was instantly contrite and heaved a sigh that carried the weight of the world in it. "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm a little upset, that's all. These repairs should have been done a long time ago, but we didn't have the money."

"Who is we?" he asked curiously as he nailed planks to the side of the ticket box.

"Us. The thespians."

"Sounds like a traveling show." He grinned at Catherine, expecting her to laugh with him.

But she was glaring back at him with an expression that said he was downright dumb. "Who do you think lives there?" She pointed in the direction of the old apartment building at the end of the parking lot.

"People without a lot of money?"

Her expression turned thunderous. "That building has been home to stage performers for years."

"Wait—you all live here?"

"Where did you think we lived?"

"I don't know—I never thought about it."

Catherine explained to Jack that she and her husband, Douglas, and Walter and a couple of others had scraped together the money to buy the property and existing structures years ago. Walter, Jack learned, was not a driver or an award-winning gardener by trade—he'd been a set designer on Broadway. The others were dancers, actors, and even a costume designer—some with Broadway experience, some with local experience, all of them with careers in theater.

"It's our own damn fault," Catherine said angrily. She threw her fuzzy purple scarf around her neck in dramatic fashion. "I used to keep on top of things, but when Douglas died, I lost my way."

"Maybe you should sit—"

"Don't treat me like an invalid!" And then she promptly sat down on the one folding chair in the lobby, leaned over, and buried her face in her hands.

"Catherine!"

"You don't understand how broke we are," she moaned. "All I have is Social Security because Douglas left some debts I didn't know about. I live like a pauper."

"Oh," Jack said, wincing.

"Get that pity off your face. I found my peace with it, I really did," she insisted. "Until that asshole with the gold rings on his fingers showed up and tried to evict us."

"What? Who?"

Catherine winced. "We're a smidge behind on our taxes."

"What's a smidge?"

"Thousands. There's a lien on the property. The guy who bought the lien wants to build luxury apartments here. He said it's an up-and-coming part of town," Catherine said bitterly.

That didn't sound like something that could be fixed by spiffing up the place. "Have you thought about selling?" Jack asked.

"For God's sake, Jack. We're all living on fixed incomes. Where are we going to go?"

"Family?"

"Those who could live with family have already left. The rest of us have no place to go." She sat up. "We've got a different idea. We're going to fundraise to pay the arrears before he evicts us."

Jack instantly imagined them selling baked goods and knitted scarves on the street corner. He glanced up to the stained ceiling where gold paint was chipping off. He thought of the rotting floor in the theater—he suspected a water leak somewhere. And the bathrooms that needed to be overhauled, the stage curtains that looked more fire hazard than functional. "That's a lot of cookies, Catherine."

"Cookies! Have you always been this dumb? We're staging A Streetcar Named Desire."

"Oh." He perked up. "I get it. You'll get some actors to donate their time?"

She squinted at him. "We're performers! Stage veterans! Right now we are debating whether it should be a musical—because of course Martin wants to sing. And Meredith thinks she will play Blanche DuBois, but that will happen only over my dead body."

"Wait." Jack put a hand up as he tried to picture a geriatric musical. It seemed a bit of a stretch with the odd little clique of dance class participants he'd seen so far. And could they really bring in enough money to pay thousands in back taxes? Surely there was a better option. Maybe the city or a nonprofit could help. "How long do you have?" he asked.

"Sixty days. We'll be needing help with set design," Catherine said slyly.

Sixty days?Jack looked at the ticket box that was currently in the process of a slow disintegration. "Just curious... did you con me into doing a few repairs around here with the hope I would build a set?"

"No! I conned you into it with the hope you'd be one of our dancers. We're going to need someone strong enough to do a couple of lifts. But if you think you're up to building sets, well, we can use that help too."

Jack couldn't help but laugh at her audacity. "You are something else, Catherine Henry."

"You agreed with me that you need some work-life balance, remember? You said you needed more joy in your life. You can't be about death allthe time."

"First, you did all the talking, not me. Second, I am not about death allthe time, and third, I am not a dancer. Or a set builder. This is all beyond my skill set, Catherine. And anyway, why didn't you just come out and ask?"

"If I had said, ‘Please come be in a musical with me and my elderly friends,' would you have agreed?"

He frowned. "No. I've been to one musical in my entire life, and that was in high school."

She stood up from her chair, put her hands on her hips. "You are what is wrong with America."

He rolled his eyes. "I thought what was wrong with America was people who didn't take care of their garden plots."

"You're both what's wrong with America. You never have to think about anyone but yourself. You, you, you. There are at least eleven of us who will be out on the street if we don't do something. That means me,Jack. But if you're too busy taking care of dead people, then by all means—"

"They are not dead people. They are dying, and someday we'll be doing the same, so stop acting like they aren't worth my time."

"Stop acting like this isn't worth mine," she shot back.

They glared at each other for one intense moment.

"Fine," Jack finally muttered, and Catherine smiled.