Cabbage Hill

Charlie checked his Rolex. An hour before his flight to Toronto and the connection home. He had one final pre-arranged stop. He drove the rental Camry down the street of stunted maples and shaggy bushes until it reached Perimeter Road, then went two blocks beyond. Here we are, the house that time forgot. The bungalow needed paint and the front yard was overgrown with thick-stemmed thistles. The blinds were half-drawn on the two front windows, like the lids of two watchful but tired eyes. In the city, Charlie knew this kind of dereliction: an absentee landlord holding onto the title until the entire block was demolished for a high-rise.

But wait: no chance of high-rises here. Cabbage Hill was an unpretentious agricultural center in the foothills of a mountain range in the Rockies. Three-ton trucks of produce roared up and down its roads, and semi-trailers stacked with rough-cut logs teetered along too fast. Lumber, vegetables, young able workers: those were its chief exports.

Charlie knocked at the door. Might as well get this over with. Its small square window reflected his face, sallow and drawn, with dark under-eye shadows. He peered through the raggedy lace curtain and saw a figure slowly moving. He stifled a yawn and checked the time again. Last night he’d dreamt he was walking the highway at night and looked down a ravine to see flames below. He had awakened, gasping and hot-faced, with a dizzy, shaken feeling in him. Thought I was over this, he told himself. Oh well, I can nap on the plane.

An ancient birdlike woman opened the door. “Charles Madi,” she said in a voice rusty from disuse. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

It seemed to be the local greeting, this denial of truth. Charlie had heard it throughout this long, tiresome weekend of the Cabbage Hill High School reunion. He knew he was thirty pounds flabbier and grey-haired. Although, come to think of it, his haircut had stayed the same. “Dr. Kildare” was the look he’d strived for all his life–the dashing, competent heartbreaker.

“Miss Jackson… how are you?” he said warmly. Back in the day, she had been his favorite adult at the school: a young, dedicated librarian who conversed with students like equals.

“Come in, come in.” She opened the door wide. “Call me Lucinda.”

“Sorry, you’ll always be Miss Jackson to me,” he said jovially as he entered. As he stared down the hall, into the living room, he remembered coming here forty years earlier. He had arrived with Fiorella, who’d been appointed class valedictorian that year. Brainy, beautiful, yet so charming she did not attract the usual swarm of haters. The two teens had been moving boxes of discontinued books to Miss Jackson’s house; she couldn’t bring herself to destroy them so had adopted them instead. I’ll bet she still has that copy of Das Kapital. He’d signed it out once and found it impenetrable–but Fiorella had been impressed.

“Please, make yourself at home,” Miss Jackson said, pointing to a living room dominated by a chesterfield and loveseat. Christ, he thought, old ladies and their floral prints. The mantel, the piano top, and the surface of the credenza were crowded with framed pictures. At first glance, they were all photos of Fiorella–and his heart galloped.

But no. While Miss Jackson clattered around in the kitchen, he forced himself to pick up one picture after another. Look, dammit, look. Miss Jackson and the mayor. Miss Jackson and a pro basketball player. Miss Jackson with one student and another. No Fiorella here at all. Maybe she doesn’t even remember her.

Miss Jackson entered, pushing the teacart. Her movements were slow and halting–hence, the untended front yard, he realized, and for a moment he imagined rolling up his sleeves, cutting down her thistles, and putting right the ravages of time. But no: the flight to Toronto. He seated himself with knees touching the coffee table, where the community paper was lying face up. “Success Story Shares Secrets,” the headline said, above a picture of Mr. Charles Madi at the podium on Saturday night. There was an inset of his yearbook picture. Yes, the “Dr. Kildare” hairdo hadn’t changed.

“You received a hero’s welcome,” Miss Jackson said, her mouth curving in a half-smile. Her false teeth seemed a size too big for her.

“I guess…pretty sad excuse for a hero.”

She stirred the teapot and removed the tea bags. She asked him to pour “as my wrist is still mending.” He did.

“A recent break?” he asked.

She demurred, steering the conversation away from aches and pains. “How splendid that you haven’t forgotten us,” she said.

Charlie decided to play it earnestly. “Any success I’ve had, I owe it to Cabbage Hill. I’ve just been too busy, though, to attend the reunions.”

“Formative years spent in Cabbage Hill equals time well spent,” she said cheerily. “Now that you’ve made a name for yourself, people are paying attention.”

He balanced his cup on the saucer as he regarded the books, the piano, the hand-knit blanket on the sofa. “But how are you doing?” he asked. “Keeping busy?”

“Can’t garden, but I do continue choir. And I catch up on my reading.” She nodded to a desktop contraption in the corner that looked like a micro-fiche reader. “That’s my magnifier. So I can still read books with ordinary-size type.” She paused. “I presume you hired a ghost writer for your autobiography, Charles?”

“Ha ha, Miss J, you still have eagle eyes and the wolf’s nose.” Charlie elaborately added milk and sugar to his tea while he thought about how to phrase it. “I confess, I hired a B.A. in English Lit to make sense of my notes.”

“There’s no mention of Cabbage Hill.”

Here we go, humble roots, blah-blah. What do I care? Forty minutes and I’m outta here. “The editor said to cut out the early stuff. ‘Nobody’s interested in what diapers you wore,’ she told me. ‘Life begins at college.’” He inspected the plate of Peek Freans as if to discover a change of topic.

“Ah yes, editors,” Miss Jackson said. She brought her copy of The Turnaround King to the coffee table.

“Why don’t I sign that for you,” he said, sliding a Sharpie from his jacket pocket. He had signed four dozen books that weekend and was still warmed up.

She smiled as she handed him the book. “Did you have a good time at … the weekend festivities?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, I had food poisoning–or something–the day I arrived. Had to skip the first event, the Friday mix ‘n’ mingle.” Charlie returned the book and rubbed at an imaginary spot on the side of his nose. In truth, he had skipped the event in favor of a nap.

“Too bad… Did you make it to the awards ceremony?” she asked. “Did you hear about the new scholarship?”

Charlie concealed his exasperation by blowing on his tea. I know you’re testing me, Miss J: will I say her name? “Oh yes, the Fiorella de Sousa Memorial Scholarship,” he said, taking care to speak evenly. I’m the anonymous donor; of course I know about the damned award.

“You knew her, did you?” she said.

He smiled. Don’t play dumb with me. “Yes, we sometimes studied together in the library.” He recalled sitting at the long gleaming oak tables, with books open in front of them, and his hand occasionally straying to Fiorella’s warm thigh. “When the library needed all those repairs, we even brought books here for you, Miss J; do you remember that?”

She widened her eyes. “Oh yes, of course…my age… I sometimes mix people up.”

“Perhaps you are vague about me,” he said, “but Fiorella was … unforgettable, wouldn’t you say?” Genuine enthusiasm warmed his voice. “Sang like an angel, top student, very promising debater.”

“Yes… she was very special,” she said. Lowering her voice she added: “It was such a shock.”

“It was terrible–for the entire class.” I will keep my comments general, he strategized. “They talked a lot about her at the reunion.”

“So bright. So full of promise.” Miss Jackson set her cup down heavily. “The first death in your cohort,” she continued, ruminating. “Unless you count Raymond, the meningitis boy in Grade Five…. What a big funeral she had. Overflow capacity.”

“Yes.” His attention had been riveted on Fiorella’s coffin, sitting on a dais, armfuls of flowers heaped all around it. He couldn’t help noticing the coffin’s long gleaming oak, its handsome molding, its shiny metal handles. In the middle of a hymn he’d had a vision of Fiorella’s pale sweaty face under the weak overhead light of his car with its shiny metal trim.

“More tea? … You’ll have to do the pouring.”

Charlie busied himself with refreshing both their cups. He had been dating Fiorella–secretly, because both sets of parents were super-strict. One night they’d stayed late with the debate team to cram for the regional competition. After a covert, long-drawn-out kiss in the exit stairwell they had parted. They drove home their separate ways: she, up the hill; he, down the hill. Inky darkness, rural roads, second-hand cars driven by tired teens. The town woke up to the smell of a burning automobile and the chop-chop of a search helicopter. Her body was found among the wreckage at the foot of the escarpment. A big truck had forced her Chevy off the hard-top and onto the narrow gravel shoulder of the road, where she’d lost control. Her car rolled three times before coming to a rest.

“It’s high time they set up a memorial fund. Why didn’t they do it right away?”

He shrugged. “Disorganization, I guess.” I was only too happy to provide the funds–in exchange for anonymity, of course.

“Another cookie?” She held the plate shakily toward him, then took one, which she broke in half with gusto. “When will you write your memoirs, Charles? Your true memoirs, I mean.”

“Never. Ha ha, I don’t want to confess how many times I cut class and smoked dope,” he said with calculated bluster.

Charlie’s smile faded, but Miss Jackson did not register. “Do be serious, Charles. As Monsieur Montaigne said, ‘how can I understand another man if I do not understand myself?’”

“As a matter of fact,” Charlie said, selecting another cookie, “I did take another kick at the can last year.”

“And?”

“I learned I’m no writer.” Some genius said: writing is easy–just cut yourself and watch it bleed. I’m no masochist. This is what started the damned nightmares again.

“Surely you haven’t given up?”

 “I had to put it on the back burner,” he said. “A business associate was having trouble with a company he’d bought. He asked if I could come and work a little magic.”

“I see. Charles Madi, the Turnaround King.”

“Yep, that’s me. I love a challenge.”

“Of course you do,” she said, walking to the bookshelf. “Sometimes uncomfortable memories resurface. It happened to me. I wrote my memoir a few years ago.”  She selected a book and brought it to him.

He read the title aloud with a chuckle: “Between the Stacks.” He turned it over. “Lucinda Jackson. Nice photo.” Circa 1990, that is.

“You never married, did you?” she said. “Or was that another thing your editors censored?”

“Oh, there have been women…” He let it hang in the air; that usually sufficed.

She gazed at him. “I should think a successful, handsome man would have been down the aisle once or twice.”

“How about you, Miss J? Or do I have to buy the book to find out the answer?” He said it in the devilish, irresistible manner calculated to make most women laugh.

“My life was more like a Gertrude Stein/Alice Toklas affair. By which I mean, I am a follower of Sappho.” She referred to it so daintily that Charlie took a moment to catch on.

“Oh,” he said. He frowned slightly. Was I clued out then or what? He turned her book back over and rubbed the little medallion picture that said “Finalist” for some regional prize.

“My paramour died during ‘the troubles’ in Ireland a few years before I came to Cabbage Hill. I was heartbroken. And then, after a while, it just became my habit, never to allow anyone to come close to me.” She eyed him carefully.

“I’m sorry to hear–I mean, about your, your paramour.” Charlie tried to recall if anyone had gossiped about Miss Jackson at the reunion. He drew a blank…which was strange because the air had been thick with gossip–about every teacher, every classmate. At one point, it hit him that, for the past 39 reunions, his fellow classmates would have been making mincemeat of “Bonny Prince Charlie.” He felt sickened.   

“A strange thing happened when I wrote this book,” she said.

“Did you shock the town by coming out?”

 “I achieved some kind of perspective.” She cocked her head to one side. “I realized I had buried myself in literature. It was my passion and solace, but I was missing out on real, live people.”

He kept smiling, although his throat tightened as he remembered the day he had wept uncontrollably in the middle of trying to put words to his grief. How wickedly unfair it was: two students, two cars, one going north, one going south. The irreplaceable Fiorella, the joyous “little flower” of her family, had been cut down so young. Why had it not been him: the crass, untalented, utterly undeserving oaf, instead? He remembered, as at a great distance, her smooth limbs against his: a memory once palpable and, when he tried to capture her essence in words, fleeting. Memories did not stay vivid forever. They became mental rituals. Once, something had been there. Instead of entering the twilight, challenging himself to press against a razor’s edge, though, he had run from the pain.

His cell phone chimed. “My reminder to get going,” he said, digging in his pocket to turn off the alarm. “Sorry.”

“Why don’t we continue the conversation–reunion weekend, same time next year?” she said.

“Sure, sure,” he said, getting up to go. He thanked her for hospitality. “My assistant will be in touch with you.” He wondered what business trip he could schedule as an alibi for not attending next year.

On his way out, Charlie glanced at the crowd of photos on the credenza near the door. The setting sun flickered on only one–Miss Jackson and Fiorella de Sousa.  It was most unearthly–Fiorella’s gaze caught his–and she seemed to look away. Then the room faded to shadows.

He left the house slowly, noticing again the tall, thick-stemmed thistles in the yard.

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