The Worst
By Francine L. Trevens
From the short story collection
IMAGICS

Early that very morning Sonya had assured her husband and daughter, "Now the worst is over," but perverse destiny made her out a liar within the hour.

This was the worst. Pulling the car over just before the entrance to the turnpike because the man beside her had obviously breathed his last, was the worst. The man beside her, to whom she had been wed over 45 years, the only man she ever loved, the center of her universe since she was fifteen, died beside her minutes after they left their daughter's home for the final time.

Would she ever forget the sound of Stew's voice as he sighed, "Now I am homeless," then gave a shudder, a strange gurgling sound, before slumping over against the car door?

She called his name three or four times as she pulled over on the deserted road to check his pulse by putting her fingers against his too thin wrist. Then, to check further, by laying her head against his chest and heart- no sound. She tried breathing into his mouth. She tried thumping his chest. Nothing. How many years had she slept, her head just here, comforted by that heart rhythm? How many years must she now face devoid of that comfort?

Yes, this was the worst. Watching him recover from two previous heart attacks she'd feared this moment. But today, she had no suspicion, even when he said a few minutes ago perhaps it would be best if she drove now, and he took over later. He had not slept that well, and she seemed so perky. He had pulled over on the broad Longmeadow Street, and slid to the right side of the car as she came around to the wheel. Practically before he was settled, Tinsy leapt from the back into his lap. He stroked the poodle's wiry fur as Sonya resumed the drive, heading for the turnpike entrance in Connecticut.

"We'll never be making this trip again," he said.

"New York is a few hours closer, so the trip next year will be shorter," Sonya optimistically reminded him.

Darcy, their recently divorced daughter, was selling the Massachusetts house and relocating to Manhattan -into something called a loft - which was currently being built. It was in the old garment district, where Sonya's brother had worked when they were young. Within a few blocks of the New Yorker Hotel, where they had stayed when they went to conventions with Stew‘s Boston boss.

On their private trips to the city, they had stayed in Brooklyn with Sonya's kid sister, or on Long Island, with her older sister. Sonya and Stew were the only ones in her family who left the Empire State during the Great Depression, but Darcy, a child then, still thought of New York as home. It was only natural for her, a theater person, to want to return there after her divorce.

For Stew, however, it was equally natural not to want to return to the city of his failure. The city which had defeated him during the depression, when the union refused his request to let his three workers work one week unpaid, until the check for the big order cleared. Although he had painstakingly paid back every dime he owed when he'd taken the job in Boston, he still felt guilty and defeated by the metropolis. He had not looked forward to the idea of returning there every summer now that Darcy, their only child, was to live there.

Sonya looked about at the empty roads and unlit houses. Then she looked at the tree beneath which she had parked, and a cold clamminess overtook her. Incredibly, she had stopped the car exactly where, four years earlier, her brother-in-law had died. She thought back. Had her husband been looking out the window as he spoke those final words, "Now I am homeless."? Had he remembered this spot, which they always avoided glancing towards when they drove this familiar road? Had he imagined his dead younger brother, Van, lying slumped over the blaring horn of his little sports car? Or worse, had he imagined Van's spirit there, beckoning to him? All their lives, Stew had taken care of Ivan. He didn't even accept the job as general manager in Boston without the provision his brother could also work in the factory. Had Van beckoned to him, offering him the ultimate home?

Ridiculous, she told herself. They had all marveled at the coincidence of Van's death on the same date, though many years later, that his mother had died. Now they'd muse over Stew's death in that same spot.

Shoving away these thoughts, she restarted the engine, turned the car around and drove back to Darcy's. She was not conscious of recalling all the red tape that had ensued after Van's body had been found there in Connecticut mere miles from Darcy's Massachusetts home. Another state, another police department. Trips to Hartford to identify the body - oh, forget it, forget Van's death, forget her husband's death. Concentrate on driving very, very carefully back to her daughter's. Then let Darcy, ever efficient, ever practical, handle the details.

As she pulled into the long driveway beside the imposing Georgian colonial house, Sonya tooted the horn four or five times to alert her probably napping daughter and sleeping granddaughter that something was amiss. She didn't want them rushing down and seeing that lifeless body. She better get out of the car, go to the back steps so she could tell them.

Ten minutes ago, Darcy, exhausted beyond sleep, had finally dozed back off. When she heard the horn as if from a great distance, Darcy also heard her own voice saying, "Now I am an orphan." It startled her awake. How could she have thought such a thing?

Her parents were fine. That morning dad looked better than he had for days, and mom was her usual bustling self, packing their belongings into the car to drive to their Miami apartment, where friends awaited them. They had made this same trip every autumn for seven years. Dad was always eager to be back with his cronies in the South. How could she have thought...?

Then she consciously registered the blaring car horn. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Grabbing her flowing purple robe, she stepped in, pulled up the zipper as she crammed her feet into fuzzy slippers before dashing down the stairs, across the hall, through the kitchen and out the back, where her mother stood beside the wild flowers.

"What did you forget?" Darcy asked, gesturing, both hands turned up and out at her side. Sonya threw herself into Darcy's arms, shaking, "Its dad," was all she could say.

Darcy looked towards the car, and then, instinctively, up to her daughter's window. Rhonda's bedroom overlooked the driveway. But the teenager was not peering out, as she so often did when cars came or went in their driveway. She was probably still asleep. Rhonda had come down a few hours ago to help load the car, but was so tired, they said their goodbyes and bustled her back to bed.

"See you in New York next year," Rhonda had said, as she hugged her Poppy's bony body.

"Sure, Princess," he'd replied unenthusiastically.

"We'll go painting in Central Park," she promised. That had brought a wan smile to his long, gray face.

"And we'll go to plays together," she promised her Grammy, as she kissed Sonya her six month farewell.

"I'm counting on it," Sonya replied. "Now, get back to sleep. You have your own trip to make this afternoon."

Darcy and Rhonda were to move to their yet unfinished loft, because the sixteen year old was starting classes at the New School in just a few weeks. The house here was in the hands of a reliable realtor. The plan was they would be coming back regularly to make sure it was in good shape, to visit old friends, and slowly bring more and more of their possessions to Manhattan.

What would happen now, Sonya wondered.

Three hours later, after Stew's body was removed, the man from the funeral home was concluding his rigmarole. They were sitting in the twenty five foot living room. Sonya and the man facing each other on twin love seats before the rococo fireplace, Darcy was nearby on the golden swan's head chair, and Rhonda at the far end of the room, on the window seat at the front. Tinsy moaned softly at her feet.

Sonya, who had been hard of hearing since she fell off a streetcar as a teenager, thought she heard the back door into the kitchen open and shut softly. She was too polite to interrupt the man requesting her signature on various documents. She did glance at Darcy, who rose slowly, to head across the hall. Rhonda also glanced towards the hall as Tinsy followed Darcy to the kitchen.

When the man left, Sonya, who still felt as if she were navigating under water and nothing was real, turned to her daughter, who stood in the doorway to the kitchen near the back of the hall.

"Who came in?"

"No one. The door is still bolted."

"But I heard it open and close," Sonya insisted.

"So did Tinsy and I," her granddaughter agreed. "and Mom, you must have " she said to Darcy, "You got up and came to the kitchen. Tinsy followed you."

"Where is Tinsy?" Sonya asked.

"She went down to your apartment I tried to call her, but she has not come up."

"Did you go down?"

"Do, Mom - go see -" Rhonda urged.

The three generations of women looked at each other uncomfortably before Darcy descended the stairs, calling to the dog. When she reached the basement apartment, Tinsy was strolling slowly from the living room in the front, past the little bathroom to the kitchen, and then back to the stairs. She was walking at the pace Stew always set. Tinsy's eyes were alert, and her tail was wagging, as always when she was with Stew.

"It's all right," Darcy called up. " No one is here."

Darcy heard her own voice "Now I am an orphan," and wondered how her mother had survived if Dad were driving and had a heart attack. It was something she would ask about in the days ahead.

Tinsy slowly ascended the stairs to Darcy's kitchen, and she followed. Sonya and Rhonda looked at her expectantly. Darcy shook her head.

"But we all heard it, even the dog!" Rhonda insisted, "Someone came in."

"No one's there," Darcy assured her daughter.

Surely Darcy would have sensed dad had he been there. With all the strange experiences in her life, a ghost would have made itself known. But she sensed nothing.

Tinsy wagged her tail eagerly, rubbing against Sonya, as she had with Stew when she wanted to go out.

"Do you think you couldn't see him?"

"Whom?"

"Poppy. It was Poppy. He came back."

Sonya stared at her granddaughter. The child did not seem to have the least doubt. Then she glanced at Tinsy, who sat at her feet, her face eagerly turned up to her. Finally she looked at Darcy, who seemed uncertain.

"Ghosts don't need to open doors," Darcy said.

"How do we know that? Just because we assume they walk through walls doesn't mean they do!" Rhonda insisted. "Besides, maybe he wanted us to know he was here. Maybe he wanted us to hear him."

"I didn't see him, there is no one there," Darcy replied, turning on the electric burner.

"He is. He came back!" Rhonda persisted. She opened the door and called "Poppy! Poppy!" Tinsy began jumping on Sonya, which she'd been trained not to do.

Sonya patted her granddaughter's shoulder. "Ronny, even if he did, he is not down there. If he were, Tinsy would be there. If she's here, so is your Poppy."

"Where? Where is he?" the teen asked.

"Inside us all, in memories," Darcy replied.

Sonya looked at Tinsy. Sonya had never had much patience for pets. Stew loved animals, and was thrilled when Darcy gave him this puppy from her dog's first litter. It had been right after his second heart attack, right after he came home from the hospital. Rhonda had been very young and had said the puppy was the "Tinsiest of the litter." And so she was named Tinsy.

"I think she wants to go out," Darcy said, also looking at the mini poodle.

"Her leash is in the car," Sonya said.

"She never runs away. I'll stand outside with her,"

Rhonda offered, realizing Sonya's reluctance to return to the car from which Stew's body was so recently removed.

As Rhonda unlocked the door and stepped outside, Sonya told her daughter, "It had to have been his ghost, if I heard it. I never hear the door opening when its people. Otherwise, how do you explain it?"

Darcy took three faded old cups from the cabinet. The good mugs and cups were already shipped.

"Explain it? How do we explain anything? We just accept it and go on. After we've had some tea, I'll call the school in New York and explain Darcy may be coming late. I'll also call the guy building the loft and tell him we will be arriving a week later and to just leave all the stuff in our living space until we get there. Are there any calls you would like me to make for you?"

Sonya shook her head. She'd deal with calls tomorrow.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Mom?" Darcy asked, her voice suddenly gentle rather than the official tone of the stage manager which she had been using.

"I do have a favor. Would you mind if I slept upstairs with you tonight?"

"Of course, I figured you'd be in the guest room."

"I meant in bed with you. I've never slept alone!"

"You wouldn't be alone. Tinsy would probably..." Darcy stopped herself. "Of course you can sleep in the bed with me."

Darcy remembered how, when Dad had gone to Boston for a month to get settled before having his wife and young daughter join him, she had shared the bed with her mom. She remembered hearing how her mom had slept in a bed with both her sisters from childhood until each of them married. She realized what a horror this all was for Sonya, the confusion and uncertainty which must be troubling the older woman.

Up till now, Darcy had been thinking of how this disrupted all her own plans. All the calls she would have to make, all the changes she would have to arrange. Stunned as she herself was by the suddenness of her father's death, what must her mother be feeling? How had she been so cool and efficient, instead of warm and sympathetic? How had she allowed her own problems and confusion to prevent her from sympathizing with the immensity of her mother's loss? She engulfed her mother in another embrace. "I'm here for you. Mom. I'll be here as long as you want."

"We'll sort things out in a week, then you can get on with your life and I'll go down to Florida," Sonya replied, hugging her gently, grateful for the affection but afraid she would break down if she let herself go. Break down so completely that she might never be able to put herself together again.

"You'll be fine." Stew's voice whispered to her. But she did not hear it from outside herself, rather from inside.

"I'll be fine," Sonya assured her daughter, echoing the words she had heard.

Darcy broke away as the kettle began whistling. "I know you will, Mom. You've always been the strong one."

"Strong?" Sonya repeated. She felt like a pool of melted butter. She felt as if she were oozing in all directions, as if her very flesh and bones had disappeared and she was just a mound of useless matter.

"It's amazing how you knew enough to drive back here. It's amazing how you held yourself in. You are really remarkable," Darcy assured her.

Sonya sat at the kitchen table. Actually, she sank weightless into the chair. She had not consciously thought of sitting. She had not consciously thought of much of anything since realizing where Stew had died. She had been working on automatic pilot.

"You are strong," Stew's voice repeated, inside her. "We could all always count on you, my dearest."

The door opened and Rhonda and Tinsy came in. Tinsy ran to Sonya, and plopped herself down on her foot, as she used to do with Stew. Rhonda rinsed her hands at the sink, then went to the door to the basement.

"I'm going down to see for myself. I know Poppy came back," she declared stubbornly.

"He's not down there," Sonya said softly.

Rhonda and Darcy looked at her.

"How do you know?" challenged Rhonda.

"Because he is here. He is here in me," Sonya said, lifting her teacup.

"You mean that junk mom said about his living in each of us? I don't buy that. I..."

"No, I mean I can hear him talk. I can feel him comforting me. He is here. Look, even Tinsy senses it."

They all stared at the dog, closing her eyes and relaxing on Sonya's foot.

"Now sit down, both of you. Let's have our tea and figure out what needs to be done next."

"That's my girl," Stew whispered. Sonya smiled. Her daughter and granddaughter smiled back at her.

There were many questions they could never answer. But what to do, logically, step by step in any situation, these women had always known. They would know it now and it would see them through into whatever other mysteries the future might hold.

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