Chapter XIII
Floyd awoke to the sound of screaming; it took him a groggy minute to realize that he was not the one making the noise. He stumbled out of bed and over to Dale’s crib, where his nephew wailed and kicked at the air. Floyd scooped Dale up and felt his diaper—time for a change. “Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of everything,” Floyd whispered and shuffled into the bathroom. Once he’d changed his nephew’s diaper, he took him out to the living room and sat down on the couch. Floyd rocked Dale back and forth in his arms until the child calmed down. “See, what did I tell you?” Floyd said and touched the end of Dale’s nose.
Floyd checked the clock on the wall and sighed. The honeymoon—reconciliation was a more appropriate word—was almost over. Angela and Todd had been married by the justice of the peace the day earlier; Floyd and his mother served as witnesses to the brief, dry ceremony. The newlyweds had agreed to spend one night in a local motel to get reacquainted before they both went back to work. They would be checking out of their motel by noon; Floyd was supposed to meet them at Andromeda Collectibles with their son. Then Floyd would lose the two greatest responsibilities in his life: the store and Dale.
There had been no argument over the ownership of the store; Floyd had torn up the papers that would have granted him official control. Nor did he want to spend the rest of his life caring for the place where Abby had died. Better that he pass along those ghosts to his brother’s keeping. He wouldn’t lose any sleep over losing the store; it might help his peace of mind not to have to go there anymore.
What would hurt him was losing Dale. His nephew had come to mean so much to him that he didn’t know what he would do without those eight hours a day of caring for him. He’d come to rely on that time to fill the void in his heart left by Abby’s murder. Now he would have nothing. “I’m going to miss you,” he said. Dale gurgled and reached out to touch Floyd’s nose. He hoped that was the child’s way of saying he would miss his uncle too.
With another sigh, Floyd stood up and took Dale back to the bedroom to get dressed. A winter chill still hung in the air; Floyd dressed his nephew in mittens, hat, and a thick coat to make sure he didn’t come back to his parents with a cold. “I doubt your father would notice,” Floyd grumbled.
As he drove to Andromeda Collectibles, Floyd wondered how long Todd would play at being a husband and father before the responsibility suffocated him and he ran away again. One month? Six months? A year? Maybe, Floyd thought, it isn’t a game this time. Maybe Todd had changed. Maybe his time on the road had taught him how to accept the consequences for his actions. For Angela and Dale’s sake, Floyd hoped so.
He pulled up to the store and unbuckled Dale from his carseat. “We’re here,” Floyd mumbled. He walked up to the front door of Andromeda Collectibles with a sense of foreboding; what would he do now? His hand rested on the door for a long time before he gathered the courage to open it.
All the lights were off; he had arrived too early. “I guess we’ll just have to wait,” he said to no one in particular and sat down behind the counter—the position he would soon relinquish to his brother. He looked around the store and all the memories flooded back to him; few of them were positive. Here he had experienced the worst pain of his life, almost lost his mind, and then found salvation in the child he held in his arms. It seemed appropriate that he would lose Dale in the same place where he’d lost Abby; Andromeda Collectibles would always be a testament to loss and pain for him.
The front door opened and the newlyweds appeared. Floyd stood up and met Angela halfway; he pressed her son into her arms. “Was he a good boy?” she asked.
“Always,” Floyd replied. “How was the honeymoon?”
“Fine,” Angela grunted. The ice in her voice told Floyd that he should not press for further details. “I’m going to put Dale down for a nap.” She gave Todd a sisterly peck on the cheek before stomping up the storeroom stairs.
Floyd and his brother stood far apart, twitching but saying nothing. “So what happened to the display case?” Todd finally asked.
“There was an accident,” Floyd lied.
“And where are all the comics?” Todd gestured to where the mismatched racks had once held thousands of comic books. “What’s with all this other stuff?”
“Just trying to diversify,” Floyd replied.
His brother grunted and motioned to the computers. “Those are a nice touch, though.”
“I’m glad you approve.”
Todd caught the sarcasm in Floyd’s voice and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, bro, you did a great job, I’m not knocking it.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Floyd mumbled. He went behind the counter and grabbed the ledger where he’d kept track of the store’s finances. He’d gotten lax on the bookkeeping after Abby’s shooting; he’d stuffed receipts and notices in the ledger to deal with at some future point in time. He showed the records to his brother, who blew out a deep breath.
“Shit,” Todd groaned. “What the hell happened?”
Floyd didn’t want to explain his mental breakdown after Abby’s death to his brother; he doubted Todd would understand. “We ran into some financial problems,” Floyd said.
“I guess so. I’m going to have to file for bankruptcy or something.”
“You do what you got to do,” Floyd replied. He didn’t have the energy to argue with Todd about how the store had already been teetering on the verge of bankruptcy before he left. Instead, he pulled out his checkbook and wrote out a check for what he estimated was the amount of cash from Andromeda Collectibles he still had in his bank account. “That should be everything. Unless you want to audit me.”
The brothers stared at each other for a long time and then Todd laughed uneasily. “Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.” Floyd shook his head and went around the other side of the counter on his way to the door. “Thanks for taking care of things for me. And I don’t just mean the store.”
Floyd nodded. “You’re welcome.” He stopped at the door and asked the question weighing heavily on his mind since Todd’s return. “Why did you come back?”
Todd shrugged. “I just woke up one day and realized it was time.”
Floyd considered the answer for a moment and decided not to press his brother on the issue any further. As Floyd pulled open the door, Todd asked, “What happened to my stool?” Floyd couldn’t hold back his laughter and wondered when was the last time he’d laughed in Andromeda Comics.
He left the store and saw
“No, Todd’s back in charge,” Floyd replied.
The two regulars jumped back as though he’d slapped them. “Todd’s back?” Max breathed. “Why didn’t he tell us?”
Floyd shrugged. “He’s been busy.” He patted Gary and Max on the shoulders and headed towards his car. “Hey,” he called to them, “just because I’m not there, don’t think you can download all the porn you want.”
“When have we ever done that?”
Floyd smiled, glad to be rid of the store, but the question loomed in his mind—now what? He had no job, no one to take care of, and he couldn’t go back to school for at least another month. What would he do now?
As he climbed in his car and started up the engine, Michelle Kapanen ran up to his window and tapped on the glass. He rolled the window down and saw that she was almost in tears. “Weren’t you going to say goodbye?” she demanded.
“Oh, well, I guess I got caught up in so much other stuff that I forgot,” he stammered. “It’s not like we won’t ever see each other again,” he added to put her at ease, though he had no intention of coming back to the store except to visit Dale.
Michelle wiped her eyes and nodded. “Look, I was just wondering if maybe you’d like to go out tomorrow night. You know, have dinner or see a movie or something.”
Floyd stared at her for a long time and considered the proposal. The question of what to do next still loomed large in his mind. He didn’t care much for Michelle; he barely knew she existed, but who else did he have in his life? Abby was dead, Dale had two parents to care for him, and Floyd’s mother had her hands full looking after his father. He didn’t want to be alone, tormented by the painful memories in his apartment. He wanted someone to take care of, to love. Maybe Michelle could be the one. “Yeah, sure,” he said at last. She squealed with delight and promised to call him later after he gave her his number. When he pulled away to head for home, he shook his head. What the hell, he thought.
#
As Floyd pulled up to the curb of Michelle’s parents’ house—situated in the middle of the suburbs he had terrorized after the first disastrous encounter with Abby’s mother—he remembered how difficult his first date with Abby had been; he remembered the awkward silences that had threatened to spoil their relationship before it began. He only hoped that now, with some dating experience under his belt, he would be able to carry on a conversation. He never got the chance; Michelle began talking as soon as she came down the steps of her parent’s house in a flower print dress that reminded him of the one Abby had worn on their first date.
He tried to keep up with her as he drove to the mall, but soon found himself tuning her out. To maintain the front that he was still listening, he would nod every so often. As at Andromeda Collectibles, she never showed any sign of noticing his inattention; she continued jabbering until their movie began and other people in the audience hissed at her to be quiet. “Go to Hell!” she shouted to the audience in general. She crossed her arms and pouted through half the picture while Floyd hunkered down in his seat and wondered what he was doing here.
The hero of their movie downed a glass of whiskey; the sight of it sent Floyd’s mind tumbling back to the night when he had almost committed suicide. He had been so close; he had held the pills in his hand. All he had to do was swallow them and wait for the end to come. “Come with me,” Abby’s voice echoed in his head and he looked around the theater. Michelle shot him a dirty look and he turned his attention back to the screen.
He didn’t want to go back to the despair that had seized him that night and had continued to plague him until Angela had pressed Dale into his arms. His nephew had been his anchor, but without him, Floyd felt like a ship lost at sea, taking on dark water. Before long, he would sink back into the black ocean that had once engulfed him.
He leaned over and kissed Michelle.
The kiss took her by surprise; she flailed her arms until she got a grip around his neck and kissed him back. When he pulled away, she stared at him, her mouth hanging open and eyes bulging. He leaned back in his seat and took several deep breaths. What had he done? He’d betrayed Abby. He stood up and made his way down the aisle. “Floyd? Where are you going?” he heard Michelle call after him as he raced out of the theater.
Floyd burst into the bathroom and locked himself into a stall; he sat on the toilet and buried his face in his hands. What had he done? How could he do that to Abby? She was dead because he had done nothing to prevent her murder and now not even six months later he was kissing someone else, a relative stranger no less.
“I’m so sorry, Abby,” he whispered into his hands. “It didn’t mean anything.”
It didn’t, he knew that. He’d only kissed Michelle out of desperation, as a way to prevent descending into the depths of his crippling loneliness. During the kiss, he’d only thought of Abby—the way her lips tasted, the smoothness of her skin, and the silkiness of her hair.
In the Herbert Chemical bathroom the thought of her had driven him into her bedroom, and forced him to confess his darkest secret to her. This time the lust could only torment him; he would never taste or feel her again. He had to accept that Abby was dead. Nothing he’d felt for her could help him now; his lingering love for her would only send him crashing back into the depths.
Floyd wiped his eyes and staggered out of the bathroom. He shambled into the lobby of the movie theater and found Michelle searching the crowds for him. A smile came to her face when she saw him and she ran into his arms. He ran a hand through her hair—it had a rougher texture than Abby’s—and mumbled, “I’m sorry. I’m back now.”
They skipped the rest of the movie and went to dinner at Groesbeck’s. Floyd wanted to avoid any similarity with his date with Abby; he ordered the lasagna and a glass of white wine. Michelle ordered the same, but with a Coke; she was not of drinking age yet, a fact Floyd was unaware of until that moment. As they waited for their entrées, she resumed talking as though nothing had happened. He rested his chin on his hand and pretended to listen.
His feelings for Michelle didn’t matter so much as her proximity to him. She was too immature, too perky, and too self-involved for him, but it didn’t matter. For whatever reason, she had taken an interest in him and that was all he needed right now. He needed someone he could go through the motions of a relationship with; he needed someone who could help him forget about Abby. The waiter nudged him and put his food down before him; he wondered how long he had been daydreaming while Michelle continued to ramble on.
Floyd ate his food in silence with a phony smile fixed to his lips. He tried to tell himself that when viewed by herself—without comparisons to Abby—Michelle was not so bad. She was not beautiful, but not ugly either; she was a plain, nondescript girl of whom there were millions throughout the country. As immature and self-involved as she was, she had endured his inattention and rudeness. She was a good, ordinary girl—she was no Abby.
He had no connection, no spark, with Michelle. He and Abby had understood each other so well in spite of their awkward pauses, or maybe because of them. Inside they had been so much alike—shy, inexperienced, and hiding a terrible secret from the world. They had so many similarities to build upon. They had shared a love of books. They had grown up in the same town. Her mother and his father worked for the same company.
He and Michelle, on the other hand, were nothing alike. She was outgoing and—from what little of her chatter he listened to—she’d had her share of boyfriends growing up. She didn’t like to read books. She had spent most of her life in
Her prattle continued all the way back to her house, where she finally shut up and stared at him expectantly. He leaned over and gave her a dry, passionless kiss. She pulled away with her lips curled in a disapproving frown. “My parents aren’t home if you want to come inside,” she announced.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t,” he replied.
“Why not?” she whined.
“It’s just…it’s too soon,” he answered. They had only gone out on one date; it was too soon to reveal his secret to her. He thought back to that night in Abby’s bedroom when he’d first shown her what he’d hidden his entire life. She had understood his pain and shame because she felt the same way about what her mother had done to her. When he looked over at Michelle, with her eager, pleading eyes, he knew she would never understand, not the way Abby had. Abby had been one in a million.
She crossed her arms and her lips trembled; he thought she would burst into tears at any moment. “Don’t you want to be with me?”
He took her hand and looked into her eyes. “It’s not that,” he protested. “I’m not…I’m not ready yet. I need time.”
“You’re still thinking about her?” she accused him and pulled her hand from his grasp. “What about me? Aren’t I beautiful? Don’t you want me?”
“I do…”
“Then come inside with me,” she interrupted.
He hung his head. He couldn’t tell her about his secret. Not now. Not ever. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Her face turned red. “Why not?” she roared. Her voice lowered as she growled, “She’s dead. Forget about her.”
Before he knew it, his hand reached out and slapped her across the face. She reeled back against the door and rubbed her cheek. The sound of his hand impacting against Michelle’s skin brought Floyd back to the storeroom, where the gunman had slapped Abby across the face time and again as she fought against him. “Get out,” he whimpered.
Michelle climbed out of the car and slammed the door shut. She touched the spot where he’d hit her and as he drove away, she screamed, “I don’t ever want to see you again, you…you freak!”
As through their entire relationship, he didn’t hear her.
#
Floyd sat in the darkness of his apartment and stared at his hands. He couldn’t believe he’d hit Michelle. In all his life, he’d only hit Todd on a few occasions, and that was in self-defense. He hadn’t even tried to throw a punch at the gunman before his wrists were bound up. He didn’t think he could ever hit a woman; he didn’t think he was the kind of person to do that. The incident called into question everything he thought he knew about himself; if he could slap a girl, was he capable of something even worse?
In the last nine months, everything he’d thought he’d known about himself had turned out to be untrue. He had thought he was responsible; then he ran over Abby in the hallway of Sanders Hall, vandalized a golf course, fell asleep while his brother ran away, and wrecked Andromeda Collectibles in a fit of rage. He had thought he was brave; then he did nothing while Abby was raped and murdered. He had thought he was a good person; then he slapped Michelle for saying nothing more than the truth. Even his good deeds like taking over the store in his brother’s absence and helping with Dale were a cover to assuage his guilty conscience and make himself feel better.
He’d spent twenty-two years living a lie and now he didn’t know who he was anymore. Looking back at everything that had happened since he’d run into Abby, he could no longer assure himself of the most basic thing—that he was a decent human being. He didn’t know what he was capable of, how low he could sink. His moral compass was in a state of flux; he could no longer trust it to guide him.
He didn’t know where he wanted to go anyway. With no job, no school, and no writing, he had no purpose anymore. He had no idea what he wanted to do or what kind of man he wanted to be. When he’d slapped Michelle he’d finally cut the anchor and found himself adrift again on the dark sea of despair. I’m nothing, he told himself. I’m just a lump of flesh taking up space.
The telephone ran and shook him from his dark thoughts. He let it ring. The answering machine—he’d bought a new one after he started taking care of Dale—picked up after the fourth ring. “Floyd? It’s Mom,” her voice bordered on panic and he lurched to his feet. “It’s your father. We’re going to the hospital.” By the time he grabbed the telephone, the line had gone dead.
“Mom?” he called into it and got no answer. He ran out the front door and flew down the stairs to his car. As he drove to the hospital, all his other concerns and worries fell away; he cared only about his father. God, let him be all right, Floyd prayed as he sped across the old city to
The doors of the emergency room slid open for Floyd and he ran towards the front desk. Someone grabbed his arm and wheeled him around; he found himself looking up at Todd. “What’s going on?” Floyd asked.
“He stopped breathing. They took him in for surgery,” Todd explained and led Floyd to the waiting area, where Angela held Dale in one flimsy plastic chair while next to her, Lynn stared down at the floor. Floyd didn’t know what to say to his mother; he sat down next to her and said nothing.
Across the white linoleum floor, another family huddled together; it took Floyd a moment to recognize them as the Accounts Receivable manager from Herbert Chemical and her family. The manager and her husband sat close together while their pudgy daughter slept with her head on her mother’s lap. Their son was missing and Floyd wondered what had happened to him. He imagined the boy swallowing household chemicals, falling down the stairs, and running into the path of an oncoming car. When the boy returned in the company of his grandfather, Floyd blew out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. The manager’s son hopped onto his father’s lap and Floyd cast his eyes down to the floor as a pang of guilt seized him.
The minutes dragged on with no word from the doctors. Todd—the irresponsible one who’d just gotten back from five months on the run—became the family spokesman and visited the front desk every few minutes to get an update. The nurse at the desk would only say that Floyd’s father was still in surgery; they would report any change as soon as they had word. The minutes became hours and Floyd feared the worst. The downcast faces of Angela and Todd told him that they too were expecting bad news. Through it all, his mother stared at the floor and wrung her hands; her expression never changed.
The doctor—a little Indian man in blood-spattered scrubs—entered the waiting area. When Floyd saw the doctor’s grim expression, he steeled himself for the news. “I’m sorry,” the doctor began and explained everything they had done to try to revive Floyd’s father. In the end, there was nothing more they could do. He was dead.
“Oh God, no,” his mother wailed. Todd patted her on the back while Floyd remained numb with disbelief. He’d known it was coming—they all had—but now that the moment was at hand, he couldn’t believe it. His father was gone.
Floyd got to his feet and lunged after the doctor. He grabbed the man by the arm and spun him around. “There has to be something more you can do,” Floyd pleaded. “There has to be something else.”
The doctor shook his head and put a hand on Floyd’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, young man, we did everything we could.” Floyd released the doctor’s arm and watched him walk away. The verdict was final, there was nothing that could change it. He returned to his grieving mother and still no words would come. Instead, he put an arm around her shoulder and hoped the gesture would convey what he felt.
Later they were informed they could go see his father. Floyd and Todd held their mother’s hands as they made the grim pilgrimage to the operating room where the doctors had fought to save their father for hours until they finally gave in to the inevitable. When the doors opened, Floyd’s legs buckled and vomit rose in his throat.
Ernie Jensen lay on a gurney, his face a pale gray-white and the rest of him covered with a sheet. Floyd took a step forward and peeked under the sheet; he turned his head just in time for his vomit to splatter on the floor. He sank to his knees and took several deep breaths as he tried to recover from the horror of what he’d seen.
The medical staff had cleaned up his father’s body before letting the family view it, but their cleaning could not mask the gruesome state of the corpse. The doctors had cracked his father’s chest open during the efforts to revive him. Blood had crusted around the area and Floyd thought he could see his father’s heart, or it might be his imagination—he didn’t have the strength to look under the sheet again. With his chest cracked and all the incisions for various tubes and equipment, his father looked more like a piece of meat than someone who had once been alive, who had once loved his sons.
Floyd felt Todd’s hand on his back. “Come on, let’s go,” Todd whispered. Floyd nodded and rose to his feet. On the way out, he paused to pull the sheet over Ernie’s face. It was the last thing he could do for his father.
#
The funeral was held three days later. The limousine Todd—who had made all of the arrangements—had rented wound its way through the streets of the old city on the way to St. Mark’s. Floyd remembered all the times he had traveled this route with his father at the wheel of their car. Back then, the neighborhoods they passed through had all looked idyllic with big Victorian houses sporting bright new coats of paint, white picket fences, and lush green lawns. Like everything else, the paint of the houses was now fading, the white picket fences falling down, and the green lawns growing unchecked. So many times Floyd had yearned to live in one of the big Victorian houses, but now they looked little better than the homes in
He sat next to his mother in the limousine; she stared straight ahead with the stony stoicism his father had always worn. Floyd wished he knew something to say to make her feel better, but nothing came to him. She had lost her husband of twenty-eight years, a man Floyd had hardly known at all. When he tried to think of moments of tenderness he had witnessed between his parents, he couldn’t think of many other than his father making breakfast on their anniversary. Perhaps his mother’s relationship with Ernie, like his own, had been built on a common understanding that did not need many displays of outward affection.
The limo pulled up to St. Mark’s and Floyd took his mother’s hand to help her out. Unlike the neighborhood around it, St. Mark Lutheran Church had not changed much. The imposing hexagonal brick building with its meticulous stained glass illustrations of the twelve disciples along the five sides outside the church made Floyd feel small and young again. As if the designers of the church had wanted to subconsciously prepare the parishioners for what would await them when they got to the afterlife, the stern image of St. Peter glared down at Floyd and his mother as they went through the front doors of the church. Once inside, Floyd paused and wondered where to go. Todd took their mother’s arm and led her into the church; Floyd waited for Angela and Dale and ushered them to the seats Todd had reserved in the front row of the church.
Sunlight poured in through the giant stained glass image of Jesus over the altar and fell onto the glossy black surface of the coffin. Todd took
“How are you holding up?” the uncle asked.
“Fine,” Floyd mumbled while Todd continued to nod, smile, and shake hands with the relatives as though he were a politician on the campaign trail.
“Your dad was a good man,” the hefty uncle said before sauntering off.
Angela tapped Floyd’s shoulder and asked, “You mind holding Dale while I look for the bathroom?”
“No problem,” Floyd replied. He cleared his throat and whispered, “It’s to your left and down three doors.” She nodded and pressed her son into his arms. Dale giggled, oblivious to the seriousness of the occasion. It struck Floyd then that Dale would never know his grandfather; he vowed to make an effort to tell his nephew about what a good man Ernie Jensen was one day. Floyd pressed Dale to his chest and shed the tears he’d saved up since first getting the fateful call from his mother three days earlier.
The pain he felt in his heart over his father’s death was different than his pain over Abby’s death. While she had been ripped from his life in one violent moment, he had experienced the loss of his father a little at a time over the past year. Yet even with a year to prepare for the inevitable, the thought that he would never see his father again struck him with as much force as the realization in the hospital that he would never see Abby again.
When Angela returned and he handed Dale back to her, she saw the tears running down his cheeks and patted him on the back. “It’s all right,” she whispered in the same voice she used to soothe Dale when he cried.
“I know,” Floyd whispered and dried his eyes. “I just can’t believe he’s gone.”
“At least you had a chance to know your father,” Angela replied as Todd and
The service was brief; the man who had replaced Pastor Ray didn’t know Floyd’s father and hence kept to generic remarks. When it came time for friends and family to speak, Floyd got to his feet before he knew what he was doing. He ascended the carpeted steps to the altar and faced the crowd. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He cleared his throat and felt the eyes of the assembled friends and family upon him. From the corner of his eye, he saw Todd rising to his feet to come collect his brother.
Floyd cleared his throat again and thought about what Angela had said. “There’s not a lot I can tell you about my father,” he began. “I didn’t know him that well, not as well as a son should know a father.” Floyd paced the altar and motioned to the casket where his father lay—his skin still with an unnatural gray tinge and clad forever in a suit two sizes too large for his shriveled body. “But I know a few things—the most important things.”
His throat had turned as dry as cotton and he paused in a vain attempt to work some moisture into his mouth. “I know that he was a good father, who sacrificed his dreams to care for his family. He worked a mundane job for twenty years to provide a home for his wife and children. He always made time for Little League games or Cub Scout meetings or…” Floyd stopped and thought of all the doctor’s appointments his parents had endured for his sake. “Or to take his son to the doctor. He was always there for us, even when we weren’t there for him.”
Floyd walked over to the casket and ran his hand along the smooth black finish. “There’s something I always meant to say, but never did.” He turned to the casket and put a hand on his father’s cold shoulder. “I love you, Dad.”
Floyd had managed to hold back the tears, but as the last words escaped his lips, the emotion welled to the surface. He wiped his eyes and staggered back to sit next to his mother, who grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back and stared down at the floor while others came up to the front of the church to share their memories. Floyd tried to listen, but was too caught up in his own memories of his father. He thought of the last holiday they’d spent together, when they’d finally embraced on the deck after Todd’s sudden return. At the end, when it was too late, they’d broken the wall of silence and let their feelings show through. If only they’d found a way to break through the wall years earlier.
The funeral service ended and Floyd followed his brother and a handful of uncles serving as pallbearers. When Floyd touched the brass rail of the coffin, he was reminded of the night at Ms. Chapman’s house when he’d angrily defended his father before storming out. Why couldn’t I have told him that? he asked himself. Why hadn’t he ever told his father how proud he was of him? He and Todd took the lead of the casket and marched down the aisle of the church on the way out to the hearse. Floyd watched the hearse depart before he trudged to the waiting limousine, full of regret.
He sat down next to his mother, who dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Floyd reached over to take her hand and give it a squeeze; she smiled and squeezed back. Across from them, Todd had an arm around Angela, who held the sleeping Dale in her arms. No one said anything as the limo glided through the deserted streets of the old city on the way to the cemetery.
Once they parked at the cemetery, Floyd followed everyone to the small plot where his father would be interred. Floyd noted how different his father’s grave was from Abby’s. No marble angel stood over his plot like a stone sentinel. The glossy gray stone was marked with the family name at the top and had only his father’s name, birth date, and the day he died—no poetry or words to remember him by. That was the way it should be, Floyd thought. Ernie Jensen had been a man of few words; he didn’t have any words to remember him by. There was room on the stone for his mother’s name, birth date, and day of her death whenever that should come to pass; Floyd shuddered at the thought of losing her too.
He picked his way through the crowd and stood next to his mother to watch the casket lower into the ground. The pastor read the Lord’s Prayer over the grave and made a few more generic remarks before inviting anyone to speak. No one volunteered; Floyd had already said everything he wanted to say. People headed for their cars to begin the trek back to St. Mark’s for the funeral luncheon.
Floyd remained rooted in place, not wanting to leave yet. Todd patted him on the back and left with Angela and Dale in tow. His mother stood next to him for a long time before she asked, “Could I have a moment alone?” Floyd nodded and staggered off towards the limousine. He watched from afar as his mother knelt down and spoke one last time to her husband. What would she do now that she had no one to care for? he wondered. He shook his head and remembered his musings from the night his father died. What would he do now?
His eyes caught sight of Todd taking Dale from Angela’s arms; a smile spreading across Todd’s face caused Floyd’s heart to sink. The last few days had shown that Todd had changed, that he could take responsibility when he had to. He would be a good husband and father, as his own father had been. Floyd no longer had to worry about his nephew’s well-being.
He watched his mother walk away from the grave, wiping the tears from her eyes. It had been hard on her to have to take care of her husband like a child for the last year and then to lose him, but he knew she was strong enough to recover—much stronger than he had been after Abby’s death. He would be around if she needed him, if she needed someone to talk to or look after. In the long run, though, he wouldn’t have to worry about her either.
The only person he was worried about was himself. He had no life, no dreams, and no goals for the future. He’d lost Abby, the store, and his will to write. He could look forward to visits with his nephew, but it wouldn’t be the same. With Todd back in charge of the store and without the woman he loved, Floyd was back to where he’d been before he’d met Abby.
When he went home that night, he opened the top drawer of his dresser still filled with clothes Abby had left behind. He fondled the rough cotton of a T-shirt, the heavy wool of a skirt, and the smooth silk of a pair of panties as he conjured an image of her in each article of clothing. Then he tossed them into a shopping bag that he tied shut and threw into the dark recesses of his closet.
He pulled out his various pants and polo shirts and began to fold them and arrange them into neat little piles—midnight blue polo shirt and gray slacks for Monday, forest green polo and khakis for Tuesday, and so on. When he closed the drawers, everything was arranged exactly as it had been before Abby had ever entered his life. Floyd set the alarm clock before he realized that he had nowhere to go in the morning.
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