The Blue Hour Read online

  Few customers ambled about today, as if a bomb threat had cleared the mall. An antiquarian bookseller named Claire Warren had the booth across from Sheila’s, and I stopped there to check out her latest arrivals.

  “Are you with your friends?” Sheila called from down the aisle. She must have spotted Nick or Hedy.

  “We’re having lunch today,” I said.

  Frowning, Sheila lugged a large cardboard box. “Easter things,” she explained. “I’m running late this year. And I need the money. Badly.”

  Sheila lived pretty much from hand to mouth. At the mall she specialized in antique linens and obscure kitchen utensils, such domestic stuff. At the back of the booth her doll collection, locked away in a glass case, was staring out vacantly.

  “Your Lady Hedda,” she groaned, shaking her head.

  “Please, Sheila…”

  She stuck her tongue out, laughed, and set the box on the seat of a pressed-back oak kitchen chair that was marked “$45.”

  “Did they tell you about Guy?” I said.

  “What about him?”

  Now she was curious. Guy often spent Saturday afternoons at the mall, manning the family booth, and Sheila was very fond of him. “He’s moving out…”

  “That’s old news,” she cut me off. “Never mind, I feel like hell. My hot flashes…”

  At fifty, Sheila was struggling with her body. She’d recently dyed her hair the bronze color of a Coppertone bottle, and had it streaked with ox-blood red gashes. “Six bucks a streak!” she’d complained. Of course she worked at maintaining her weight, and still had a good figure.

  “I thought you’d heard something about Guy’s find,” Sheila added.

  “What find?”

  “Didn’t his parents tell you? Last month he bought an old box full of letters at an estate sale. It turns out three of them are from the woman who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

  “Harriet Beecher Stowe? Have you seen them?”

  “No. Guy went to an expert. Some people get all the breaks.”

  “But you wouldn’t have bought old letters.”

  “Let’s not talk about it.”

  Something more was troubling her. “Have you heard from Brad again?”

  “Don’t ask. Don’t go there. I mean it. Really.”

  Brad was the boyfriend. A house painter when he worked. Ten years younger than Sheila, he drank his pay as fast as he earned it. “I’m crazy about him,” she’d often told me while pruning something or other. “I’m crazy in love.”

  “Why do you bother with those people?” she said, changing the subject.

  “We go back a long time, Hedy and me. Practically forever.”

  “Well, they’ve ruined their kid,” she objected. “He’s afraid of his shadow. But I’ve got a great pair of bronze bookends for him,” she added. “For housewarming.”

  Guy collected books about the Civil War, and military memorabilia related to it. It made no sense, this meek boy interested in veterans’ medals and old daggers. Hedy said that he’d seen Gone With the Wind in the sixth grade and had been bowled over. Nick explained that the market for military collectibles was stable and lucrative, which Guy understood.

  “I should think of something for him, too. I’ll ask Nick what he needs.”

  “Look, I’d better get down to work. Do you want me to start cleaning up the garden tomorrow morning?”

  Spring cleanup is a serious matter in our part of the state, a snow belt. We didn’t mention Brad again. If he appeared tonight, my yard would have to wait.

  Curious about Guy’s letters, I headed back to the Antons’ booth. Most of the mall’s visitors are over fifty, and with money tight, only the savviest dealers can keep afloat. Television programs like Antiques Roadshow have made people aware of the value in family heirlooms, even in cast-off junk. That Shirley Temple tumbler might be a holy grail to someone reassembling a childhood from other people’s discards.

  “We were about to send out the scouts,” Nick said as I approached.

  “He was with Sheila,” Hedy remarked. “I told you that.”

  “We have to get back to Guy,” Nick said. “I promised to help him pack some things later, and we need to hit the road right after lunch if we’re going to meditate first.”

  Regular meditation, I should add, was part of their beliefs.

  “What did Sheila have to say?” Hedy asked, reaching for her purse. She took out a mirror and a tube of red lipstick, quickly painted her mouth, pressed her lips together, checked her face in the mirror, and then looked up at me. “She must have said something.”

  “Nothing special.”

  “Really? But she’s so full of herself.”

  “That’s for sure,” Nick added.

  I almost said, “Aren’t we all?”

  2

  Monday, March 26

  The theft at the library’s archives preoccupied me all the next week, and I’d barely noticed that the heat wave had sputtered out. When I turned into my driveway after work, anticipating a double Scotch, I found Sheila digging at the edges of my front-yard flower bed. Though I never intended this, my garden has become the best on the block, a romantic English money-pit.

  “I thought I’d check a few things,” she called. Of course she really wanted to talk, her eyes said as much. As she followed me into the house I said, “You seem frazzled. What’s up?”

  “I can’t afford to lose another client. It’s tough when friends move away.”

  Friends and clients were a heady mix for Sheila – a confusion she fostered. I’d guessed this when she first arrived to solve my gardening problems with a batch of homemade brownies.

  “Who’s moving?”

  “Theo Eliades. To Bay Village. He told me yesterday, when I phoned about cleaning up his garden.”

  “But you knew his house was for sale. He’ll be closer to Daphne.”

  Theo hadn’t called me yet. We were friends from campus, for over a decade, where he’d worked in the counseling office. Worn down by being understanding and supportive, he’d taken early retirement. Fraternal twins, he and Daphne often spoke of their childhood, both claiming to have clairvoyant powers, special instincts, intuitions.

  I had no idea what Sheila wanted Theo to do. Her attitude was typical of many outside the academic community in a small college town. While our common resembles a page from an idyllic New England calendar, tensions have existed between the farming community and the college since it was plopped down in the middle of a cornfield in 1833. From its start, the college has been progressive: the first in the U.S. to be co-ed; the first to welcome black students, in 1835; then, a stop on the Underground Railway. Today the town and gown split still divides us.

  Like everyone on campus, I was glad to see February finished. Swastikas had been spray-painted on posters for Black History month, and signs for “Whites Only” taped over several drinking fountains. Then one Sunday night a student driving past the Center for Women and Transgender People spotted somebody in a white robe and hood. The next day classes were cancelled for a solidarity rally. As anger grew, a police official suggested that the Klan sighting might be a hoax. But who else wore such hoods? Of course security alerts filled each day, the national media showed up, and CNN anchors put the spotlight on us. Anyhow, I wasn’t in the mood for Sheila’s complaints, though she has a good bullshit detector.

  “Well, it’s like everybody’s moving,” she repeated. “But why Bay Village? Do they want to be murdered?”

  “Her place is by the lake.” I lit a fire under the kettle for tea. An affluent suburb west of Cleveland, Bay Village is still known for a sixty-year-old crime, when the osteopath Sam Sheppard killed his pregnant wife, Marilyn, but claimed that a bushy-haired intruder was guilty. The case later inspired a popular television series and movie. “Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “Brad’s seeing someone else.”

  “You’ve known that for months, Sheila.”

  “Yeah, but
she’s out to drive me crazy. She keeps phoning in the middle of the night and hanging up as soon as I answer. The number’s blocked so I can’t do a thing about it.”

  “You could turn off your ringer.”

  “But it might be my mother. You know she had a mastectomy last year.”

  “Fair enough.” Just fifty, Sheila still had a living parent; your life feels different then.

  “Mind if I smoke? I’m down to five a day and I need one now.”

  I handed her an ashtray from under the sink. “How do you know it’s Brad’s girlfriend? And does she have a name?”

  “Loretta.” Sheila searched her purse for her smokes. “She’s thirty-five. Younger than Brad. And in and out of the county jail, half a dozen times. If only I didn’t love him so much.”

  “What was she in for?”

  “Drugs, shoplifting. I think she also turns tricks.” Sheila took a drag of her cigarette, choked, and mumbled, “Shit. You know, I’m still head over heels. It’s been five years next month. Five years down the drain. That’s a long time.”

  The kettle whistled and I reached to pour hot water over tea bags.

  “Hey, don’t bother with any for me. Brad says it’s not Loretta. And unless he’s lying, they aren’t sleeping together anymore. Maybe he wants to get back with me. Oh, the hell with it.” Shrugging, she paused. “You know, I saw Guy’s new place. It’s tough, starting over like this.”

  “He’s hardly starting over, he’s growing up.”

  “Blame that on your friends.” She stubbed her cigarette.

  “Can we leave them out of this?” We were talking in circles. I wanted to cook my supper, drink my Scotch, and take a hot shower.

  “He’s seeing a therapist. Just don’t tell them. Guy says they’d disown him.”

  “For seeing a therapist? I doubt it, Sheila. His parents are devoted.”

  “Screw devotion,” she said. “I should be moving on – there’s always too much to do.”

  “The garden looks great, Sheila. It needed your touch.”

  “I know,” she agreed. And then she was gone.

  The evening would be shot if I didn’t watch out. With Sheila’s funk lingering, I decided to phone Theo. His house had sold in a terrible market.

  “Hullo,” he said, almost too softly to hear, as if he’d been polishing his depression like the family silver. No anti-pills, Theo didn’t go in for those, just sitting immobile.

  “Sheila said you’ve got good news. We should celebrate.”

  “I don’t think I could do that. Not today. It’s so final now.”

  “But this is what you wanted. Are you worrying about Neil? He’ll be fine.”

  For the last year, Theo had rented the spare room in his house to Neil Breuler, who worked as a campus security guard and had once helped him change a flat tire on his Volvo. Turning fifty, Neil had just left his wife of twenty years. Perhaps Theo loved him. There was nothing sexual between them, Theo told me so, yet Neil appeared to plump up on his attention, his fussing, and Theo couldn’t help himself.

  “Have you been checking out Neil’s room again?”

  Once, Theo had mentioned that he’d done some snooping, almost courting an objection.

  “Well,” he stammered. “I’ve given it another look-see. I have to know what’s going on in my own house, don’t I? Wouldn’t you do the same thing?”

  “Frankly, I can’t imagine renting out my spare room. What did you find?”

  “Just his stuff. I didn’t look that carefully. But nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “C’mon, Theo, you’re holding back…”

  “He has several boxes of condoms. Some were even flavored. Banana and chocolate.”

  “Just ordinary stuff,” I repeated. “Okay. Do you have any supper plans?”

  He didn’t answer at once.

  “Then come on, let’s have a pizza.”

  “I could ask Neil to join us.”

  “No, Theo, just you and me and the pizza. Neil can fend for himself. He’s a big boy.”

  “Maybe another night? I don’t really feel like company. We’ll talk later.”

  Two depressives in one afternoon – my limit. What, I had to ask, was friendship about? A troubled friendship’s like drowning, you can’t breathe, but when you stop seeing an old friend you lose a part of yourself. Naturally my thoughts returned to Hedy and Nick. We were no longer allies, a childish notion perhaps but friendship’s shadow.

  During our lunch at my place we’d reminisced about old times, until I brought up Guy’s discovery.

  “Who told you?” Hedy asked.

  “Sheila did. Is it a secret?”

  Nick leaned towards me. “Sheila knew?”

  “Guy told her. Of course I’m curious. The archive has a good collection of documents related to Oberlin during the Civil War.”

  “We don’t want to broadcast it,” cautioned Hedy. “You know, people would like to get hold of the letters and take credit for finding them.”

  “I wonder who Stowe was writing to,” I said, ignoring the rest.

  “We did a little research,” Hedy replied in a softer tone. “In the 1840s she was living in Cincinnati with her father, a Presbyterian minister, and they might have visited the college.”

  I wanted to hear more. “What were the letters like?”

  “We haven’t seen them,” Nick explained. “Guy took them to an expert right away.”

  “But what makes him think they’re from Stowe? Was her name on an envelope?”

  “Guy said the writer mentions a novel she was completing,” added Hedy, almost protectively. “And she signed her first name Harriet.”

  Skepticism was probably the wrong tack. “I hope Guy gets good advice.”

  “He will,” Hedy assured me, shifting about uncomfortably in her chair.

  “Are your knees acting up?” I asked.

  “They’ve been worse,” she said with a shrug. “Today I want to forget I have knees.”

  Years ago the Antons had looked forward to a retirement of travel abroad, and we’d mentioned trips together, to Tuscany, maybe Venice; all happy dreams. But Hedy’s arthritis now made even local treks difficult.

  “We’ve been really worried about what’s going on in the country,” Nick said, as if his thoughts had piled up on him and he had to speak out or suffocate. “We’re losing faith in it.”

  I didn’t ask why. With the presidential primaries in full swing, could we avoid them?

  Naturally Hedy chimed in. “All the talk of same-sex marriage in California and Washington…”

  “How can that matter to you?” I took the bait. “It’s not important to me, I can’t imagine wanting to get married. And no matter who gets married, it doesn’t touch you and Nick.”

  “Yes, it does. It devalues us. What we’ve made together.”

  “Marriage has always meant a man and a woman,” Nick agreed. “And the children.”

  “Well, that’s changing. We’re talking about civil rights, legal…”

  “Civilizations have ended over less,” Hedy warned. “Remember that.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “You don’t think we’re the only civilization that’s lived on the planet?” Her mouth tightened into a nervous smile. “Ice ages have wiped out others, but they existed.”

  The ice age and same-sex marriage – too big a leap for me.

  “I probably don’t like change any more than you do, but it isn’t always for the worse,” I said, not wanting to placate her. “Anyway, you can’t stop time…”

  “We’re not bigots,” Nick interrupted me.

  “It started with the military.” Hedy shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to be a young soldier and have to shower with lesbians looking at my body. We owe our soldiers more.”

  “But gays are serving in armies all around the world without a catastrophe. In Israel…”

  “This has got nothing to do with you,” Nick stopped me. “You know we
care about you. And you know we’re not bigots.”

  Apparently there was to be no disagreement between us about that. Did they assume I bedded down with a new body every night? I couldn’t guess what they thought.

  Nick reached across the table and folded his hand over mine. As I started to pull away, he pressed his hand against my wrist and held it there, to the table. “If two men or women love each other, we wish them well, but that’s not the point.”

  “Sure it is. That’s exactly the point. You’d better be careful about the kind of the people who share your views.”

  “Don’t you believe in liberty?” Nick stared at me as if I’d somehow lost my bearings.

  “Liberty’s not the point. We can have different values, but facts are facts,” I said. “We can’t have different facts.”

  Hedy frowned, about to reply, as Nick continued: “A lot of people think like us. Don’t underestimate that.”

  “It’s true.” She nodded approvingly.

  I glanced down at the table, at Nick’s hand on mine. When they spoke like this I’d come to feel it didn’t matter if I was in the room with them, they were only talking to themselves. They both knew that I’d been part of the Vietnam War exodus of young men to Canada, when the powers that be used my generation as cannon fodder. Though I now lived back in the U.S., I carried two passports – you can never have too many passports.

  It’s 2012, I told myself, not the 1950s. Joe McCarthy wasn’t running amok, no campus required a loyalty oath. And yet, what would the world be like if the Tea Party had its way? Watching Hedy, I tried to remember the young girl I’d met half a century ago, the girl who sat across from me in art class and noticed my fumbles with a charcoal pencil. She’d leaned over the table and said, “Hold it like this, at an angle,” demonstrating patiently.

  After class we’d walked to the cafeteria together. She strode along like she owned the corridors of our high school, and I loved her ease. Hedy had no interest in its cliques or home games. Back when everyone listened to the Beatles and folk music, we preferred Beethoven, dreamed of visiting Europe’s museums, impatient to graduate. She was studying the cello for a concert career. I can still see her giving a solo recital, one of Bach’s unaccompanied sonatas, in the small auditorium of the local library where I worked as a page. She’d borrowed her mother’s French perfume and its scent somehow drew attention away from the music. I understood, then, that our bond had been sealed because I wasn’t looking for a girlfriend, and never would.