THE GERIATRIC CONNECTION by Marie Sheppard Williams

What’s this, Joan? Danielle said, holding up a brick.
That’s a brick, I said.
Well, duh, she said. But what’s it doing here?
It must be the brick from Chicago, I said.
Dannie and I were sorting out stuff in the living room of Maeve’s house on the south side of Minneapolis. Maeve was my friend for more than fifty years, that’s how come I was helping sort.
Was. Maeve was my friend. You heard that. She died a couple of weeks ago. She was ninety years old plus about a week; Dannie thinks she lived the last year with the goal of reaching ninety.
Danielle is – was – Maeve’s daughter.

* * *

I guess you are wondering about the brick from Chicago.
Well. Here’s the story: about thirty years ago – before Maeve and I had any clue what “geriatric” was all about, and, oh boy, do we ever know now. I mean, Maeve is dead at ninety and I am seventy-three and fading fast. About thirty years ago, Maeve and I decided one day to go to Chicago on the Greyhound bus. Just for a few days, just for the hell of it, just for a lark. Just because we had never been there.
Before we left, Maeve’s son Chris said: Bring me back something that is really Chicago.
Hence the brick.

* * *

We can crash at James’s pad, Maeve said. With an evil little laugh.
James was a friend of Chris’s who had stayed with Chris, slept in his room, ate with the family, etc. etc., for three or four months during the fall of the previous year. As he was leaving, James said to Maeve: if you’re ever in Chicago, you can crash at my pad. And – oh, I’ll bet he came to regret this when we showed up at his door at three o’clock one June morning.
Oh, right. Fat chance, yes? A friend’s mother? An old lady? What were the odds?

* * *

Maeve’s husband Ellis drove us to the bus depot with two little suitcases and a grocery bag full of pot. Fresh from the garden.
Yeah, you heard right: pot. Grass. Weed. Mary Jane.
Marijuana. Mary-hoo-ahna.
The thing is, Ellis grew pot in his backyard garden. He was a health chemist at the city water department; his primary addiction was to alcohol, but he was growing pot to prove that the stuff had no effect on anybody. In his case maybe it didn’t; I mean, Ellis was so strange already who could tell if pot had any effect on him?
But Maeve and I were not quite as crazy as Ellis, and pot definitely had an effect on us.
Oh, my, yes.
Well, of course I know that you don’t smoke fresh-from-the-garden weed. The grocerybagful was a present for James. A little hospitality gift. We had our own stash, suitably dried and crushed, tucked into Maeve’s purse along with papers to roll joints.
We smoked some of it before we went on the trip. At the ticket window in the bus depot we ordered our tickets, and giggled like, well, like we were on pot. I said: Hey, Maeve, do you think we are ready for Chicago?
The ticket sales person said: The question is, is Chicago ready for you?

* * *

Well, God, those were the seventies. It was a swinging time. Not like the uptight and scary time we live in now, after 9/11 and the Twin Towers, during the War on Terror and the Reign of Terror – I refer of course to GWB and his cronies, who don’t look that different from the folks in charge during the French Revolution.
Listen, a few months ago we had a bus strike here in Minneapolis, and one guy, the head of the right-wing Taxpayers’ League, when somebody said to him, “The poor people can’t get to their jobs,” replied, “Haven’t they ever heard of taxis?” Honest to God, he did say this. I swear to God. You can look it up in the newspaper, the Minneapolis Star. Not exactly a leftist rag, not as far right as the St. Paul Pioneer Press, but nevertheless a pretty square sheet.
This is not exactly getting me into the story, is it? Well, folks, that’s me. All over the place. The guy who is putting on a new roof for me – Ed Bromley – told me yesterday that he is taking a writing course at Normandale College and the teacher told him, Ed, if you ever want to get published you will have to learn to focus. Hey, no, I said to him. Write whatever you feel is right for you. Stick to your guns.
Focus is what they said to me when I first started to write. Focus. Stick to the story line. Cut out all the asides to the reader.
Don’t have any fun, that’s what they are saying, isn’t it? Shape up. Become a straight white male. Follow the rules, like everybody else.
Hey. If I wrote like everybody else, what would be the point of me writing at all?
So stick to your guns, Ed Bromley.
I hired Ed because he said he was a Vietnam vet for John Kerry, and he played guitar in a band on weekends.
Well, but I also checked him out with the BBB. Of course. I’m not totally dense. But I don’t fit at all in this uptight post 9/11 country. No wonder we elected Dubya. They. They elected Dubya. I had no part in it. Well, but I did have a part, you know. We all did: we let it happen. Like the Germans let Dachau happen.
Hey, you’re crazy, people will say to me.
Maybe all that pot you smoked addled your brain for keeps.
Maybe.
I do know that Ellis was wrong: pot definitely does have an effect.

* * *

As a matter of fact, though, I didn’t smoke all that much pot ordinarily. And neither did Maeve. We smoked it in Chicago as a kind of an afterthought, as a favor to Ellis.
Here, take this with you, Ellis said, handing Maeve the bag of pot and the plastic baggie. It’s a perfect opportunity to see if it has any effect on you. Give the bag to James. Tell him about my new project.
Ellis’s new project: pot-growing. He had many projects. He was working on some invention in the basement that he tried often to tell me about, but my mind just shut down when Ellis talked.
And he collected things: refrigerators, for example. He had eight of them lined up on the back porch. No one knew for what.
What for, Maeve? I asked once.
Oh, well, you know Ellis, she said, as if that was enough of an explanation. Which maybe it was.
But no, I didn’t know Ellis. Nor would I have wanted to.
Did anybody? Was Ellis knowable?
Maybe Maeve knew him.
The kids? Forget it.

* * *

Actually, Maeve and I didn’t smoke pot together at all except for that Chicago weekend. We talked it over afterwards and decided that we had just as good a time, just as happy, just as crazy, off pot as on it.
We could get just as high by being ourselves, just by being together.

* * *

Anyway. What I was trying to get to back a ways is that a couple of old ladies, high as kites and carrying a brown paper grocery bag full of homegrown marijuana, was not quite as remarkable then as it would be now.
And thirty years ago, I was forty-three and Maeve was sixty. Old only by comparison with James, who was a kid: maybe twenty. Twenty-one.

* * *

Maeve called him from the bus depot in Chicago. It was about 2:00 A.M.
Maybe we should, like, wait until morning? I said. Sleep in the chairs here?
Why? said Maeve. He got to our house in the middle of the night. He woke us up. And we had no warning at all, he didn’t even make a phone call, he just showed up at our front door.
So why shouldn’t we do the same?
Well . . . I said. I had no answer. “Because we’re adults” didn’t seem to fit the situation.
And we are at least clean, Maeve said. Laughed. Her funny little choking cracking laugh, like tiny sticks breaking. Heh-heh-heh.
When he arrived at our house he was filthy, he had a grubby old backpack . . . Chris made him have a bath. . . .
I take your point, I said. Okay. Yeah.
So Maeve called.
Hello? James? This is Maeve.
Blah, blah, blah, from the phone.
Of course you know me, James. I’m Christopher Trayne’s mother. You stayed with us last fall. When you left, you said if I was ever in Chicago, I could crash at your pad.
Blah, blah, blah.
Yes, well, I’m in Chicago. And I have a friend with me. We need a place to stay for a few days . . .
The upshot was that we took a cab to James’s place, and slept on a queen-size mattress that he put on the floor in the living room.
Sheets too. Wow. This was all right. We slept until James came stumbling out of his bedroom at 11:00 A.M.
Oh God, he said, looking at us.
I thought it was a dream.
He said.

* * *

It was a really nice, really big apartment.
Eleven rooms, counting bathrooms.
There was the living room at one end, where Maeve and I slept. Then there was a long hall opening off the living room, with four bedrooms, a dining room, a library, and an office on one side, with two bathrooms interspersed. And at the end, balancing the living room, was a huge kitchen.
The long hall functioned as a sort of art gallery, with surprisingly traditional art, mostly still-lifes and landscapes, nicely framed, down the blank wall and on the opposite wall between the doors.
Surprising because Maeve’s stories about James’s stay in Minneapolis did not suggest a person with conventional tastes.
Did you choose the pictures, James? Maeve asked.
Uh, no, said James. This isn’t my apartment.
He said.
Do you like the pictures?
I guess so, said James. Yes, I do like this kind of art. It’s . . . pleasant.
Whose apartment is it? said Maeve.
It belongs to some friends of my parents who are in Europe for a couple of years. I’m taking care of it.
I wondered, said Maeve. You are clearly not going to a job today. I wondered how you could afford such a big place.
Yes, well, said James, I’m looking for a job.
I’m doing interviews.
What sort of job are you looking for, James? said Maeve. Kindly. It sounded a lot like: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
Hey. You could use all sorts of adjectives to describe Maeve: intelligent, witty, funny, stylish, short, little – but “kind” is not one of them. She once told me that she thought Diary of a Mad Housewife would be a good movie to take my mother to, and listen, they took their clothes off in the credits.
I wondered what she was up to.
What were you up to, Maeve? I said later. When you asked James what sort of job he was looking for?
I just thought we should demonstrate some interest, said Maeve. Try to connect, you know, as people.
We don’t really care, though, I said. Not much.
No we don’t, said Maeve. Laughing again, that little sticks-breaking laugh.
And James doesn’t care, I said. About us. He probably thinks of us as positively geriatric.
I want to work in a bank, said James.
My goodness, said Maeve. I would never have guessed that.

* * *

James lived in this huge place with his girlfriend, Ariadne.
Yes, truly, Ariadne.
Ariadne, now, looked more like what we thought James would have looked like. Dirndl skirt, flowered peasant blouse, sandals, dirty feet, lots of hair. The seventies look.
Ariadne didn’t actually live in, though she obviously could have, with those four bedrooms and all. Ariadne officially lived with her parents and came over every evening after work – she had a job as a teller in a bank, which must have been where James got his idea about working in a bank – and she cooked for the two of them, and they did whatever young people do. You know what I’m thinking.
Ariadne must have cleaned up a lot for her job, combed her hair, washed her feet, etc.
We were there five days, Thursday through Tuesday, and we saw very little of either of them. Well, actually from Friday morning, we left Minneapolis on Thursday, but we didn’t get to Chicago until Friday.

* * *

James was astonished by the bag of pot. What do I do with it? he said. I mean, I have never seen pot just green like this . . .
It’s Ellis’s newest project, said Maeve.
You take some cookie sheets, James, she said. Again – kindly. Like a teacher explaining something to a rather backward student. You spread the leaves out on the cookie sheets and put them in a sunny window to dry, and when they’re dry you crumble them up and there you are.
You do have cookie sheets, don’t you, James?
I don’t exactly know, said James. I can look in the kitchen, I guess.
He didn’t sound all that enthusiastic. Or, for that matter, appreciative.
I don’t get it, I said to Maeve. Later, when we were alone, when James had gone off to a job interview. Surely he smokes pot.
Well, he certainly did when he stayed with us, Maeve said.
Maybe, she said, it’s us. Maybe he can’t deal with motherly types bringing him pot.
Motherly types? I said.
Well, you know what I mean.
Maeve said.
And we cracked up, and shared a joint.

* * *

We both had kids, Maeve and me, but neither of us was what anybody would call “motherly.” I was, at that time, working as a social worker at the Minneapolis Society for the Blind. I had one daughter, Margaret, who was seventeen and living with her father and his new wife, Anita, in Santa Monica.
When Margaret went out to California and discovered that her father was married again – no, we hadn’t known, he hadn’t told us – she called and asked if she could come back to Minneapolis.
Absolutely not, I said.
It wouldn’t be fair to me or to yourself, I said. You wanted this, and now you have to stick it out for six months at least.
So: motherly? Hardly.
And Maeve. She maybe wanted to be motherly, she believed in motherhood, she had three children, all of them older than Margaret, but she didn’t have “motherly” in her makeup.
She had vamp, she had sexy, she had charming as hell, she had smart, but motherly? No.
Years later Margaret said to me – after she was living in England, studying architecture, and seeing a therapist for the first time – she said to me, I finally understand that for someone who was not by nature a mother-type, you did all right.
All right?!! I said: I did great. I did fabulous. Considering.
Yeah, she said. Considering.
You always have to consider, I said.
I mean, Margaret said, my therapist helped me to see that you didn’t do any of the worst things. You could have left me. You didn’t leave me. Daddy left. You stayed, and went to school, and worked, and bought the house for me.
I could have killed you, I said.
That would have been the worst.
Oh, Mum! said Margaret.
She likes me, though, Margaret does. Well: she loves me. And appreciates me. But she doesn’t worship the ground I walk on, like Maeve’s kids do. She doesn’t think the sun rises in my ass. Or anything.

* * *

I totally understand why people kill their children. It was that hard.

* * *

Mum. That’s the Brit in Margaret now. They call mothers Mum over there.

You probably knew that.
Could I ever have dreamed that that little baby, born on a Sunday morning so long ago now, would have ended up as a British citizen? No, I could never have dreamed that.

* * *

Could any of us ever have dreamed the end in the beginning?

* * *

Well, anyway. Friday and Saturday and Sunday, Maeve and I did some of the tourist things in Chicago. We saw the aquarium, for example, and I bought a cheap mother-of-pearl ring there, which I think I still have. Somewhere.
We rode the El all around the city. Not just once, and not to get anywhere, but because we absolutely loved the El.
El. That’s short for Elevated, if you didn’t know. (Well, I didn’t know until I got to Chicago. Why should you?)
Maeve and I were bus people at home in Minneapolis, me by choice and Maeve because she never learned to drive, and we took to the Chicago El like, hey, like ducks to water.
We did the buses in Chicago too. When we wanted to actually get somewhere.
Maeve and I were great traveling companions. What it is, we didn’t either one of us really want to see anything. What we mostly wanted to do was walk on the streets and watch the people. And ride the buses. And the El.
We were downtown at one point looking for a restaurant, Harding’s, that had been recommended to us by Ariadne. Suddenly we were totally lost and we stopped dead in the middle of a street crossing, and for some reason stared up at the sky, maybe expecting God to intervene? A policeman came up to us and said: Do you need some help, ladies?
The things I mostly remember about Chicago: The police were really, really nice. The El was great. And I ate one of the three best meals I ever had in my whole life at Harding’s.
Harding’s – I don’t think it is there any more – was an Irish eatery on the second floor of a building downtown.
What’s good? I asked the waitress, Maggie, who was dressed in an Irish peasant outfit. I knew that her name was Maggie because that’s what her nametag said.
Personally, I always have the Irish lunch, she said.
That’s always good. Never fails.
And it didn’t fail this time.
Plain corned beef and cabbage. Potatoes. Soda bread. Freshly ground horseradish. The horseradish was so good that we asked for more of it and sat and ate it with spoons.
Mmm, mmm, mmm.
And the potatoes! Like they say, to die for.
Plain food, perfectly cooked, perfectly served. Mmm.
The people at Harding’s were so pleased with us, and our mmm’s.
Were we high? Is that what made the food so wonderful? Maybe. A little.
I still remember the taste of the horseradish.

* * *

The other two “best meals”? One was at a seder in Atlanta, Georgia. The other was in the bed of a truck when I was nineteen years old, hitchhiking with two friends in the Rocky Mountains in Montana – in those days it was safer to hitchhike than it is now – bread and cheese, hacked off with a pocketknife, and big juicy peaches.
When you think in terms of memories of food – hey, isn’t life good? Won’t you hate to leave this planet? I’m going to hate to leave: the horseradish and the potatoes, the peaches, the bread and cheese, the marinated eggplant from the seder, all the memories, and me, gone. Where? You don’t know, that’s the thing. Will they have horseradish in heaven? Hey, maybe. But you don’t know.

* * *

I read the Koran once when I was in school. The thing I remember most was the way the writer – Mohammed? Allah?  –  went on about food. Sweet milk that would never go sour. Like that. Well. You have to take into account the heat in the Koran countries, and how hard it must have been to keep food fresh.

* * *

I remember something else from Chicago. Maeve and I were walking down a street and there was a lush green lawn on one side. De Paul University, a sign said. Hey, Maeve, I said: Will they arrest us if we sit on that grass?
Let’s do it, said Maeve. So we did. Oh: the memory of my body lying on green, green grass, oh, yum. I can feel the grass, I can smell the grass now, around me, under me.
Suddenly: the sound of a little bell down the street.
Oh, Maeve, I said, it’s an ice cream man!
Well. Of course we had to have ice cream from the ice cream man. I ran down the street – I could run then, really run, not like now – caught up with the truck, bought two chocolate-covered ice cream bars on sticks and brought them back to where Maeve – dear, funny Maeve – lay smiling on the grass.
And we ate them. So: horseradish. Cops. Potatoes. Green, green grass. Ice cream on sticks. A perfect trip, we agreed later.
We went to the aquarium just because we thought it was expected of us.
We have to see something, Maeve said. We have to go someplace. People will ask us: What did you do? What did you see? We can’t just say: We sat on the grass at De Paul University. We ate ice cream on sticks.
So on Sunday we went to the Chicago aquarium.
It was okay. There were fish in tanks, and like that.
And everywhere we went, we were looking for something that was “really Chicago” for Chris.

* * *

I think it was Sunday night that James woke us up at 1:00 A.M. and suggested that we leave for a while.
There’s a Mexican beer joint down the street, Pancho’s, he said. You shouldn’t miss Pancho’s. They’re open really late. They have great guacamole. Great beer. You shouldn’t miss Pancho’s.
Hey, that’s okay, I said. We’re in bed. We’re sleeping. We’ve seen enough. We don’t need to see Pancho’s.
You shouldn’t miss it, James insisted.
Well, thanks, but no thanks, I said. We don’t need to see Pancho’s. It’s really too late to eat.
Dumb me.
Hey, I was really still asleep. But I am a little slow, even when wide awake.
Maeve got it. Come on, she said. Get dressed. We’ll go to Pancho’s.
Walking down the street, hastily dressed, still half asleep: What the hell happened there? I said. Why are we outside at 1:00 A.M.?
Joan, don’t you know? said Maeve.
No I don’t, I said.
She started to laugh, that cracking, funny, wise-guy laugh.
I’m going to miss that laugh, more than I can tell you. Maeve is dead now, I told you that, dead at ninety.
They wanted to fuck, she said. They couldn’t fuck with us in the apartment.
Maeve! I said. You’re kidding. That huge apartment? Nine rooms away from us?
I’m telling you, she said. They couldn’t fuck.
The guacamole at Pancho’s was the best I’ve ever eaten. Fantastic. Can you count guacamole and beer and chips as a meal? Maybe I should say that I remember four great meals. Pancho’s is gone now too. I know because I looked it up in the Chicago phone book at the library the other day.

* * *

The last night we were there, we decided that we would make a party for James and Ariadne. Sort of to thank them for putting us up. Or putting up with us.
So we went out that day and bought a supper. Guacamole and chips from Pancho’s. Good bread from a bakery down the street. Turtle soup from a gourmet grocery store. You could still get turtle soup then – this was before turtles went on the endangered list. So we were cooperating that day in the fatal endangerment of a species. But what did we know? About turtles? Or endangered species? Isn’t that the way all life proceeds? We don’t know what we do. Forgive us, Father. Oh, yeah, I’ll forgive you, says God, but you are still going to buy the farm, you are still hell-bent to jump off that final lemming cliff.
Not My will, but thine be done. Says God.
Hell-bent. Our whole race. Yeah. Is it too late for us? Maybe it’s not too late for us.
Okay. Anyway. We also bought two bottles of good wine: I didn’t know good wine from bad, but Maeve did, because Ellis, being a very discriminating drunk, and a health chemist, had shopped for wine from a lot of different areas and countries for their trace minerals – honest to God, would I lie to you about such a thing?  –  and in the process of hunting down healthy wines had learned quite a bit about wines that were considered good by the cognoscenti, and, in turn, had educated Maeve.
So we took our good wines and our turtle soup and everything else back to the apartment and waited for James and Ariadne.
James came in first.
Hi, we said. Brightly. Cheerily. Probably high, don’t you think?
We’ve brought you and Ariadne supper.
To thank you for having us here.
Turtle soup. Bread. Guacamole and chips. And some really nice wine. And we can smoke the rest of our pot.
Ariadne’s planning spaghetti, James said. And salad. She said so last night.
Maybe you can have spaghetti tomorrow, I said. After we’ve gone.
I don’t think so, said James.
Ariadne came in just then.
She was nicer about it than James, but she also turned down our supper.
Uh, James doesn’t like turtle soup, she said. Do you, James?
I don’t like turtle soup, said James.
I like spaghetti.
James is very fussy about what he eats, Ariadne said. But it was nice of you to think of it.
Well, of course we had to give in.
At least take one of the bottles of wine, Maeve said. It’s a nice wine.
Well – okay, James said.

* * *

So we sat on our mattress on the floor and ate guacamole and chips for supper, and drank the other bottle of wine.
A very nice wine.
No, we couldn’t heat up the turtle soup. James and Ariadne were using the kitchen. To cook spaghetti.
I don’t know, James was not all that fussy when he was at our house, said Maeve. He ate anything I put in front of him.
I wonder what happened, I said. To change him. Into, you know, this kind of person.
People change, Maeve said. Sometimes you don’t know why.
We looked at each other. Lay around on piled-up pillows and smoked some of our pot. Eventually went to sleep. I never slept better in my life than I did in Chicago. And I am a congenital insomniac, so memories of good sleep are, well, memorable.
I think it must have been the pot. And the company. Maeve was a great companion – so charming and smart, so funny.
She’s gone now. I told you that.

* * *

The next morning there was a bus leaving for Minneapolis at 11:46 A.M. We phoned Ellis and told him when to meet us. Ellis was always totally charmed with both of us. And he adored Maeve. Years later, after Ellis died, Maeve told me that she thought the marriage had survived alcoholism – lots don’t, you know – because Ellis had told her, every chance he got, how beautiful she was.
She wasn’t, you know. Not in any ordinary sense of the word. She had style, she had presence, but her actual features weren’t a bit pretty. Homely, really, when you looked right at her, past the style, past the halo.
Margaret – my daughter, the architect, who is also an artist, lots of architects are – and I were talking about beauty once. Who was beautiful and who was not.
Maeve is beautiful, she said.
I reported that back to Maeve, who was terribly pleased. I always did like Margaret, she said. That was when she told me about how Ellis always said she was beautiful, and that was why the marriage lasted.
I could sort of see it, and sort of not see it. Maeve being beautiful, I mean. I guess I didn’t have the right kind of eyes. I mean, I thought she was a really classy lady, but beautiful? No, I didn’t see it.
Once Maeve said: I think beauty is the triumph over what you actually look like.

* * *

She also said – once – that happiness is the triumph over what is actually happening.

* * *

We got our stuff together, and we had some time before we had to leave. We sat on the mattress in James’s living room and talked about this and that.
What do you make of James?
Maeve said.
I don’t know, I said. An uptight little priss? Maybe?
Like I said before, said Maeve: maybe it’s us. Maybe he can’t handle us being old ladies. Being people’s mothers. Maybe it doesn’t fit for him, and he can’t deal with it.
And the pot.
Some day I’ll write a story about this, I said. I’ll call it “The Geriatric Connection.” Oh, that’s funny, said Maeve.
And we laughed and laughed. High? Hey, maybe. Probably.
Maybe it’s because we just assumed we could stay with him, I said.
He just assumed he could stay with me, said Maeve. In Minneapolis. What’s the difference?
We’re old ladies, I said. James is not an old lady.
Yes he is, said Maeve.

* * *

And: What sign do you think James is? Maeve asked me.
I thought about it.
Um, Virgo?
What do you think?
Oh, Virgo, said Maeve. You’re right. Definitely Virgo.
God, how we laughed! Alone in the big apartment, standing in the hallway, with the nicely framed calendar art.
And he liked the art, I said. We should have known from that.
Oh, yes, said Maeve, laughing. We should have known from that.
He’ll do fine in a bank, I said.
And we laughed some more.
Do you think anybody ever calls him Jim? I said.
Or Jimmy?
I doubt it, said Maeve.

* * *

We left the can of turtle soup and the loaf of bread on a shelf in the kitchen cupboard, next to the cornflakes.
And we left most of our remaining stash of pot.

* * *

Ariadne was nicer to us, I said.
Oh, yes, said Maeve. Ariadne was much nicer. In fact, Ariadne is much too nice for James.
I don’t think it will last, said Maeve. Ariadne will figure it out.

* * *

We still had a lot of time left. So we decided to walk to the bus depot, maybe a couple of miles away – both of us were good walkers, and our suitcases were not very large or heavy. I mean, for five days? All we really needed were a few changes of underwear and socks. A shirt. And we had breakfast on the way.
We chose a little cafe near the depot. It served okay food. But not like Harding’s, or Pancho’s. The food was good enough, but not what you’d call memorable.
There was a building being torn down across the street. We went over and stood behind the barrier fence and peered through gaps into the hole, with piles of rubble in it and around it. Maeve bent over and picked up a brick that had somehow fallen outside the barrier.
I’ll take this to Chris, she said.
She laughed, that strange crazed little laugh, like sticks breaking, like little glass hearts – breaking.
It’s really Chicago.
She said.

* * *

So: That’s the brick from Chicago, I said to Danielle, maybe thirty years later, when Maeve was dead, and I – hey, you too – was dying.
Grab what you can: the food, the friends.
Oh, yeah, Danielle said. Laughed. Her laughter was a slight echo of Maeve’s, but not much.
No one will ever laugh again like Maeve.
No one will ever again be Maeve. Bad, good, beautiful, snobbish, funny, whatever.
No one will be me, either. Nor Ellis. Nor Danielle. Chris. James. Ariadne.
Or you.
What did you guys do in Chicago? said Danielle.
Oh, I said. Nothing special. We stayed with James and Ariadne. We ate at a restaurant called Harding’s. We sat on the grass at De Paul University. We had ice cream on sticks. We saw the aquarium.
We found this brick for Chris.
Nothing special. Nothing much.

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Marie Sheppard Williams is the author of two short story collections, The Worldwide Church of the Handicapped (Coffee House Press) and The Weekend Girl (Folio Bookworks). She is a frequent contributor to Alaska Quarterly Review.