Better Times Read online

  “Man,” he says, “I remember when we first found this shithole. What luck, we thought! We keep coming back here and these idiots won’t have any idea! I’m waiting for the day you’ll figure it out. Somehow you all know each other,” he motions around the room with the gun. “Or at least you can pretend you do. But it hasn’t happened for us yet.”

  Something bubbles up in my stomach. Maybe sick, maybe something else. Either way I swallow it back. Try to stay calm. Now more than any is the moment to stay calm.

  “Y’all have a disease, you know,” he goes on. “You know that? Of course you don’t. You won’t remember any of this. Each day the same for you. No worries, no cares, no mistakes. I could even take this off.”

  He’s reaching for his mask when there’s a sound far off, a muffled pop-pop like wood collapsing in a fire.

  “Fuck!” he shouts, grabbing for his gun.

  In that moment, right before we hear the clatter of footsteps then hands pounding at the door, everyone screaming something at once, words bubble up in my head. I don’t know where from. Save another, save yourself.

  I’m reaching upward; if I could only see his face, his real face, maybe then things would go differently this time. We could both be saved from ourselves, become something to one another. But he ducks from my hands. That’s when the door gets kicked in. And we’re both turning toward it. Meeting that great white light.

  There was a saying I’d been turning over in my head quite a bit since Jerry left, whenever that was. Not for any particular reason, except in my line of work it was a good thing to keep in mind: death is for the living and not for the dead so much. I heard that once, but now I can’t remember where.

  Departures

  Betsy was checking her neighbor’s mail again. Not because Fabienne had asked her to, but because the mailman made it so easy to do, leaving it out on the hall table like that. How else was she supposed to know what was going on anyway? If the people living around her were staying or going? This was how she said hello, good-bye. How she remained a good citizen of the building. It needed someone like her, paying attention.

  She never actually picked up the envelopes. Just fanned them out on the tabletop, tiptoeing her fingers along the bills past due, the postcards both goofy and sincere, the letters with addresses written in the desperate scrawl of the far away. It calmed her, this little ritual. Sometimes, after coming home alone, she would imagine there was a stranger in her apartment; she liked to think of the sound of the front door scaring them, giving them time to sneak out one of her windows. No one was ever there, of course. Because she was so patient.

  Like with Fabienne. Fabienne was a neighbor you needed to be patient with. She was always skittering about the halls, avoiding her like a pest. But Betsy liked her. Maybe even a great deal. She certainly liked her name: Fabienne. She liked the way it sounded in her head, the way it looked written out. Like on this invitation, for instance. The cardstock thick and gray, the name and address firmly stamped. The letters tight and thin, flashing at her like a semaphore. It was asking to be handled.

  Betsy picked it up and turned it over, drawing her nail under the seal in one swift motion. It was so satisfying, how it peeled back in one clean piece.

  The card inside had the same heft as its envelope, the same stamped type with a woman’s name and two dates. February 12th, 1965, and October 4th, 1997. Four days ago. There was an address, too, for a funeral home. Betsy had seen their ads on television. Their tagline claimed they were “The best rest stop before Heaven,” a concept that always brought to mind a bunch of decomposing corpses begging for the restroom key and buying cheap beef jerky. The wake was to be held on Saturday.

  There was a note paper-clipped to the back. Fabienne, it said in a timid hand, we hope you’ll come. It’s been too long. She would have wanted you here.

  Yes, Betsy agreed. Who wouldn’t want her there?

  A door opened upstairs, followed by the muffled sound of someone searching their clothes for a key. She had probably given the person not in her apartment enough time to get out of it by now. She slid the invitation back into its envelope and then slid it into her purse.

  While she was getting dressed on Saturday morning, Betsy listened to the news on the radio. She found the man’s voice soothing, as if he was telling a story just to her. Today he was telling her about a robbery that had happened in Charlotte on the 4th at the offices of Loomis, Fargo and Company. It was the second largest cash robbery in U.S. history. $17.3 million spirited away. The suspects, one of whom was an employee of the bank, still at large. The FBI had recently found an abandoned armored van with $3.3 million in cash left in the back. They’d opened a tip line that anyone with useful information could call. The ringleader was already believed to have fled the country.

  Of course, Betsy thought, as she smoothed her black skirt over her thighs, what else was there to do but go on holiday? She always dreamed she’d run away to Paris. A name like Fabienne would make sense there. Not like Betsy, the name of something you’d lead around on a leash. And this, this is what Fabienne would wear on a day like this one: the skirt, the black hose, the strand of pearls at her throat. The blouse navy blue, a touch both elegantly surprising and respectful.

  Betsy had meant to give Fabienne the invitation earlier in the week. But the timing had never seemed right. They were always just missing each other, Fabienne’s door shutting when Betsy’s opened, a figure vanishing around a corner or a pair of legs disappearing up the stairs. She couldn’t very well give an invitation to that. By Friday night it was still in her purse and what could she do? Fabienne should be there, one way or another.

  As she walked into the funeral home, Betsy tried to adopt a confident gait, her heels castanetting over the tile as she approached a woman, gray and somber, standing near the entry.

  “Thank you for coming,” the woman began, trailing off in search of a name.

  “Fabienne,” Betsy finished for her, taking the woman’s offered hand.

  The woman tilted her head back, blinked and then narrowed her eyes, looking at her in the way she always imagined birds looked at humans. Then the skin of her face abruptly softened. “Fabienne, of course,” she said. “Vicky’s old school friend. All grown up now.”

  “That’s right,” Betsy said, smiling gently, reaching her other hand up to squeeze the woman’s shoulder. The fluid, assured movements of her Fabienne.

  “You look so different,” the woman said. “But, then, it’s been some time. Almost, what, twenty years?”

  “It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long,” Betsy said, and the woman smiled and nodded, her eyes already moving beyond her to find someone else in the crowd. Usually when someone did this to her it was an annoyance, a tender blow. But now she took it as a good omen. A sign that she belonged, could be swept onward just like everyone else.

  The viewing had been set up in the next room, a line forming along the far wall. Those who had already taken their moment were sitting in the chairs laid out before the casket. A low murmur filled the air like the spectral space between stations; everyone was either avoiding someone’s eyes or staring meaningfully into them. Betsy stood behind a man whose posture had the same curl as his cane, clasping her hands in front of her crotch and bowing her head in a manner she hoped seemed thoughtful.

  Though there were several pictures on tables throughout the room, it was still strange to see someone for the first time this way: resting serenely in purple velvet lining, body arranged like a bouquet, makeup layered as an onion. A woman behind Betsy had wondered audibly if the effects of the chemo would show, but there was nothing she could see. Still, she was not the sort of woman Fabienne would be friends with, full-hipped with an excessive stone on her ring finger, where Fabienne was all sharp corners and single. But, then, it did not seem they had been anything for a long time. Betsy bent close enough for the chemical spray in the woman’s hair to sting her eyes and whispered, “Hello, Vicky. I hope it’s all right that I’
m here.” There was no answer, of course, but there was no objection either.

  Betsy took a seat removed from the others, tears from the hairspray still spangling her vision. Fabienne surely would have some sort of handkerchief and she silently cursed herself for not bringing one along.

  She noticed a figure out of the corner of her eye, a hulking blur that seemed to be waving something at her. A man, she realized, whispering to her. She turned toward him but he was already getting up from his chair and coming nearer. “It’s Fabienne, isn’t it?” he was saying, holding out a white cloth like a handful of food for a small animal. “I heard you and Ms. Cross talking earlier.”

  “Oh, yes,” Betsy said, nodding gratefully as she took the kerchief from him, pinching it to dab at her eyes while he took the empty seat beside her. “And you are?”

  He was not quite so large as he’d first appeared, or at least he was the sort of large man who carried himself with care. His shirt tugged at him the way a wife would, though it was clear to Betsy that one hadn’t chosen it for him. His hair was cropped close to his head in the manner of someone who kept appointments. His eyes were dark and small; she had to seek them as they sought her.

  “It’s Stan,” he said. Then, sheepishly, “You don’t remember me?”

  He did not seem the sort of man that Fabienne would have been attached to, romantically or otherwise. His name was too clipped, for one. Not like hers, which rested like something melting on the tongue. Betsy had never actually met any of Fabienne’s boyfriends, but once or twice she had glimpsed a suited someone emerging from the front door or dashing up the stairs, a spray of flowers in his arms. They were tall, thin, light as birds and just as apt to take off. Someone like Stan would weigh her down. But perhaps that would have been better for her.

  “I’m sorry, I–

  “It’s all right,” he said, ducking as if from a blow. “I lived next door to the Crosses. We used to see each other sometimes. But I’ve changed a lot. We both have.”

  “How have I changed?” she asked, emboldened by his humility.

  “Well, the last time I saw you your hair was braided. It hung down your back and always knocked against your spine when you walked, which was very quickly. Like you were running away from the world. I couldn’t figure out why you were in such a hurry. And I never did, since I never saw you again. Until today.”

  “How old were we?” Betsy asked.

  “Sixteen.”

  “And now we are much more,” she said, gazing off in that way she’d seen wistful people do.

  “Do you remember,” he leaned closer, his nostrils blooming with held breath, “where you were going that day?”

  “Of course. I was going on a trip.” Fabienne was always getting brochures for exotic locales in her mail. Pyramids, island cruises, ice fishing expeditions in Alaska. Whether she ever went, Betsy didn’t know, but she could imagine her in each place and she fit in every one.

  “Vicky talked a lot about the trips you used to take together,” Stan was saying.

  “That’s right,” Betsy said, seizing on this piece of biography and building a puzzle from it. Of course they had been close once; of course they only had one another. “Me and Vicky and the Crosses. That was the year we went to Florida. To Weeki Wachee Springs. Do you know it?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s a state park,” she continued. “They have a live mermaid show; that was our favorite part. The girls in a tank, propelling themselves back and forth with artificial tails. They breathe air through tubes that run from small tanks on their backs. We stayed for hours, watched the shows back to back, until her parents pulled us away. But,” she said, her voice growing heavy, “that was the last trip we took together.”

  She glanced up then, checking his face for cracks in the story he’d just been told. But he was still, his gaze resting fully, comfortably on her own. He was listening to her, she realized. But not just to her; he was listening for something inside her as if at the hollow of a tree.

  “Do you still travel?” he asked.

  “I dream of it. But my work keeps me here. I manage a department store.” It was sophisticated but not flashy, exactly what Fabienne would be. Betsy was a receptionist for an insurance company; she spent all day repeating, “And who shall I say is calling?”

  She could be so open with this man. Anything she gave him he accepted.

  “And what do you do?” she asked. A Stan like this one must be something sturdy but dazzling, high-wire with a net underneath. An attorney, a physicist, a pediatrician.

  “I’m an accountant,” he said.

  Stan stayed by her side through the speeches. They laughed when everyone laughed and looked sad when everyone looked sad. He stayed with her as they got up and made their way toward the exit where Ms. Cross stood once again, clutching the hands of people as they passed. It seemed only natural; surely men were always following Fabienne around without being asked. Affixing themselves like barnacles to a ship.

  “Fabienne,” Ms. Cross said when they reached her, “it was good of you to be here. And Stan. Vicky would have been happy to see you two together again.”

  “I’m sorry it’s not under better circumstances,” Stan said, pressing Ms. Cross’s offered hand in both of his.

  “Me, too. Fabienne, would you mind waiting just a moment? There’s something I need to speak with you about.” Before Betsy could object, before she could even think about wanting to, Ms. Cross was linking her arm through hers and leading her down the hall to a darkened room.

  There was nothing in the room except several chairs with coats thrown over them like an assembly of ghosts, and Ms. Cross motioned for Betsy to sit where she pleased. She remained standing, head down, concentrating on the wrinkled lacing of her fingers. Her avoidance of Betsy’s face shot something cold through her. For the first time that day she was worried.

  “I’m not quite sure how to say this,” Ms. Cross began. “It’s not easy for me.”

  “You don’t have to,” Betsy said, preparing to rise, to leave before being asked. But Ms. Cross held up a hand to stop her.

  “I didn’t like the idea of the lawyers handling this,” she continued. “It seemed crass. Better it be kept among family. And I hope you still think of yourself that way, Fabienne. As family.”

  “Of course,” Betsy whispered, thinking of Weeki Wachee Springs, where they had never been. She had seen it on a postcard once, though, sent to someone else.

  “Anyway,” Ms. Cross said, turning to wrestle something from the pocket of her blazer, “Vicky wanted you to have this. It’s not much; she didn’t have much to give. But it’s what she wanted. Something about paying back what she owed.” She held out a piece of folded paper, turning discreetly away while Betsy opened it, as you’d do for someone undressing. A check for five thousand dollars made out to Fabienne.

  “Thank you,” she said, folding it back up and slipping it into her purse.

  “Yes, well, I have to get back out there,” Ms. Cross said, turning to leave her before pausing at the door. “Please, Fabienne, come and see us sometime.”

  “I’d like that,” Betsy said, but she was already gone.

  Stan was still waiting for her in the hall, which made her anxious. Betsy didn’t like people being around her when she had to think. She could feel the check settling in her purse, weighing her down like the actual bills it promised. She had never had this much money before, not all in one place. She feared it might make her a little reckless.

  After all, there was no way she could give it to Fabienne now. There was no adequate explanation she could offer. Nor did she want to think one up. She was the one who had come, out of the goodness of her heart. It was important to Vicky that she have it. What good would it be for Fabienne to know about it, since it was hers now?

  The question was what to do with it. She would not be able to take it to a bank; for one thing, they would all be closed at this hour. Nor could she see much point in saving it, letting
it molder away in the dark recesses of some metal depository, at the mercy of middle managers and thieves, while she went back to living her old life. Surely Vicky would want it better used than that.

  “Is everything all right?” Stan asked, shifting forward onto the balls of his feet as she drew near.

  “Fine,” she said, and laughed in a way she hoped seemed offhand. “I’ve just come into some money, in fact.”

  Something dark passed over his face and just as quickly disappeared. “Oh? I hope this doesn’t mean you won’t let me take you to dinner.”

  But Fabienne would not be afraid to ask for more than that. Fabienne would take a risk. Indeed, she would be waiting for moments like this, to become what she was meant to be.

  “I think,” she said, turning to let him fold her coat around her like a pair of arms, “you’d better take me to the airport instead.”

  They stopped by his office first, where she endorsed the check in Fabienne’s name, and he gave her a stack of bills from a safe by his desk. It seemed so small in her hands, no more dense than a deck of cards being held together with a dingy rubber band. She felt burdened by it, now that it was something she could see, could hold. Money always looked so ugly up close. It was no wonder those bank robbers left a whole truck behind.

  “You don’t want to stop anywhere else?” Stan asked as they got back into his car. “Your place, maybe? To pack?”

  She thought of all those nobodies not in her apartment, not making themselves at home. “There’s no point,” she said. “I’ll just buy what I need there.”

  To her surprise, Stan chuckled. “You always were mysterious. Like, for instance, how you’ve managed to live here all these years and we’ve never run into each other.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want to be seen.”

  He shook his head, but in that downward way people do when amused. “You know, I tried to see you. A few years back.”

  Betsy stiffened, let her right hand rest on the door handle. But the car was already in motion, the houses and gas stations and drugstores of her town waving good-bye.