Mrs. Lacey's Groove

MRS. LACEY’S GROOVE
By: David Oliveras

Eddie heard a string section swell to greet the moonlight. It came from old Mrs. Lacey’s apartment across the street. She must have the volume turned all the way up, he thought as he closed his eyes, hummed, swayed from side to side, imagined himself outside his own body, and floated over the New York City skyline. He’d had another long day at the office and was struggling to let it go and relax. Compulsively, he checked his cell phone. No new messages. Good. Eddie congratulated himself for canceling plans with Carlos, the summer intern with the dark, mysterious eyes, and the perfect caramel complexion. It would only have lead to complications, he reasoned. The old adage that office romances never work out was a theory he didn’t have the energy to disprove. He admitted he went about it callously but it had to be done.

Carlos, who couldn’t be more than twenty-two, captured Eddie’s imagination just at the beginning of the summer, when he came fresh out of Columbia, a journalism major with glowing references and boundless enthusiasm. He was handsome yet vulnerable, the wicked, irresistible combination that has led countless women and gay men to emotional doom. Carlos was unconscious of his own beauty and the effect it had on others. Rarely would he hold anyone’s gaze for more than a few moments before bowing his head to the floor. He shuffled more than walked, around the office as if each step was carefully orchestrated so as not to disturb anyone. Eddie characteristically obsessed over him for the first few weeks, as did most of the women at the magazine, without daring to exchange so much as a word with him for fear he might scare him off. Eddie knew he was never good at making small talk and surely his face and eyes would betray him. Instead, Eddie created an elaborate personal history for Carlos. It helped to satisfy, if only momentarily, his irresistible. The imaginary profile went something like this: Carlos’ mother was a supermarket checkout girl, his father a small time con man who ran numbers until a December night when he was killed during an attempted robbery, leaving the poor girl to fend for herself and her new baby. She worked double shifts at the supermarket, sometimes getting home as late as one in the morning. With the help of her mother and some neighbors that watched the baby while she was working, she managed to stay off welfare and prove to the Department of Social Services that, despite her youth, she was a fit mother and had every right to keep her dark eyed, doe-skinned baby boy. Growing up, it was her strong character that shaped the boy that would eventually graduate Columbia on the dean’s list.

Eddie imagined that Carlos inherited her pride, her determination, and most importantly her repressed passion. Sometimes Eddie would go as far as picture Carlos’ childhood memories; summers spent with cousins and friends at baseball games and barbeques. Sometimes the setting was Spanish Harlem or Washington Heights other times Eddie opted for an exotic Latin American country and put Carlos in a lush, magical landscape rich with deep, sensual colors that covered everything in an enchanted amber light. In the weeks that Eddie couldn’t speak to him, Carlos’s body language spoke volumes; a suggestive contraposso beside the water cooler extenuating his seductive hips, a sensual circling of his neck emphasizing that there were muscles in need of expert hands, curious fingers.

After a month, they began to have short, casual conversations, usually near the copy machine and always initiated by Eddie. Carlos was observant and thoughtful, complimenting Eddie on his sweater or a new haircut. His smile was intoxicating. Once engaged, Carlos looked deeply into Eddie’s eyes when they spoke, as if he was searching for something internal that would confirm the Eddie’s honesty. Carlos’s stare gave everything Eddie was saying far too much importance. Eddie was afraid Carlos would think him shallow. But instead Carlos smiled warmly and laughed energetically in all the right places. When Eddie felt comfortable enough in their exchanges and was sure that Carlos was unlikely to be insulted, he made the bold move of inviting Carlos for a cup of coffee after work. He doubted whether it, came across poised and relaxed. He hoped that it could have been taken at face value, two new friends getting better acquainted over coffee. A cold rush went up Eddie’s back. He shivered uncontrollably, the way the body has of reacting to an unfelt chill, or for no reason at all, as if our human essence just short-circuited for a moment. He pretended to shake loose a sore muscle. Then the answer came and he understood his body had already heard the answer, had already responded to it.

“Okay.”

For Eddie, the moment stopped there. They didn’t stop smiling at each other nervously, they didn’t suggest places to go, and there was no small awkward laughter, not then. That all came later, in the moments that followed. First there was an exquisite stillness where time was suspended, briefly like the space between heartbeats and just for that instant, Eddie was happy. In that concrete stillness there was no approaching deadline, there were no voicemail messages or weekly editorial meetings. The rest of the afternoon lifted away.

At 5:00 o’clock, Eddie saved the spreadsheet with the disappointing circulation numbers and shut down his PC, ready to leave the office for the night. He agreed to meet up with Carlos at the coffee shop across the street but found himself suddenly feeling hollow inside. For so long now his aloofness and, seeming coldness kept him, safe from the possibility of attachment. Going out for coffee with an attractive man constituted a date. Even if ultimately the man turned out to be straight, or uninterested, Eddie’s intentions were clear, if not to Carlos, at least to himself. He knew it was too great a leap, too soon. It would have been his first date since the accident and it felt all wrong. He wasn’t ready to reach out to the world just yet.

Hoping to break out unnoticed, Eddie left the office using the freight elevator, which raised an eyebrow from the custodian who was just arriving for his shift. Once outside, he walked in the opposite direction of the coffee shop and went home.

He knew was being rude and immature. A connection with Carlos wasn’t equivalent to cheating on Brad. His therapist would argue that he was holding on to the past. Eddie followed his instinct to search out an emotional sanctuary, which lately consisted of a hot bath, a glass of Merlot and half a Percodan. Thank you Dr. Kamen, he thought as he opened his medicine cabinet. “I knew there was a reason I’m paying you $125 an hour.”

Disrupting his quiet evening and a good night’s sleep, Mrs. Lacey’s music was playing the same song over and over at full blast. Eddie hated the paper-thin walls in his apartment that allowed him to hear the next door neighbors fighting or the excited voices of young kids in the playing in the street cascading over one another in rhythms he didn’t understand. The kids made him painfully aware that he was no longer “hip.” A vibration, like the dull buzz of an electric razor ran through the neighborhood. Something was going on. Something big.

Eddie made himself a mental blueprint of what Mrs. Lacey must have been like before she wandered off into the Twilight Zone and stepped out a psycho octogenarian. He gave her all the likeable attributes he romanticized. He made her a strong, vibrant, independent woman; working in a tool factory while Mr. Lacey was off fighting the war, the perfect embodiment of Rosie the Riveter. She was frugal and dependable. She made due with the little she earned while her husband was an ocean away storming a beach, chasing down Hitler. Maybe, that’s where she developed her nasty, biting attitude, her crusty exterior. Eddie imagined casting Susan Hayward or Barbara Stanwyck in the role. It could just as easily had been Rap or Merengue blaring, and usually it was, but tonight’s program, forgotten to all except Mrs. Lacey, hadn’t been heard on this block for decades.

The summer was winding down but the humidity level promised to be brutal for a while longer. The weathermen were getting it right consistently for a change and people were suddenly paying attention to the forecasts, hoping for a break in the heat. Eddie’s pajama shirt clung to his chest, damp with perspiration. The thick night air rushed in as he opened his living room window. He debated whether opening the window was actually counter-productive. The living room faced the street and through a line of Maple leaves he could see into Mrs. Lacey’s apartment. She’s lived there for more than forty years. She’s become a neighborhood fixture. Crabby, argumentative and known to scowl for no reason, Mrs. Lacey never had more than two visitors at a time. The only people that were ever seen entering her apartment were Maria, her homecare attendant and Ivana, her cleaning lady. Eddie sat back and listened, trying to catch the frequency of the kids in the street. Their voices were distant and garbled, frantically, tripping over each other. He wasn’t getting their animated exchanges.

“I tell you she hit for $4 million!” a female voice screamed. Eddie turned his attention to the parallel universe on the other side of his living room wall. The neighbors were at it again. Eddie hated the shrill dissonance of her voice. Eddie barely ever saw them. Occasionally he might run into one or the other of them in the elevator but he never paid much attention. He had already invented personal histories for both of them. She was a waitress, he drove a bus. She was frustrated by his poker buddies and bowling nights. Eddie created them based on what he heard through a few inches of plaster; the intensity of their fighting
“Don’t tell me! What d’ya you know? I got it from the grocer that sold her the ticket. It was $4 million,” the female neighbor said with increasing agitation.

Eddie raised his glass in Mrs. Lacey’s direction in a congratulatory salute. With a long grateful swallow he polished off the first glass of the evening and poured another. Minutes later, news cameras arrived tripping over each other, jockeying for position, mercilessly nudging each other for a better angle. The glare of their television lights filling the street. For the reporters, it was a slow news day. It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering news with global repercussions, but for the neighborhood, it was nothing short of a miracle.

Eddie imagined that as soon as she knew she had the winning numbers, Mrs. Lacey would have called her daughter in Florida. Then, this same daughter who hasn’t spoken or written to her mother in months, suddenly becomes energetic, caring and warm. She promises to leave her two kids with her husband and be on the next flight. “It’ll be great,” she purrs. “We’ll spend some real quality time, Momma,” Eddie could hear the daughter promise cheerfully. People can be such hypocrites he thought.

An image flashed in his mind; the texture of Mrs. Lacey’s trembling hands as she put down the phone. Her fingers are crooked, her fingernails yellowed. Her thick blue veins visible underneath the skin, which is liver spotted. What had those hands felt during her 86 years? What had those hands done to survive? What had they offered the world? Mrs. Lacey still wanted to believe that her daughter still loved her, still wanted a connection, that all their past hate and disappointments didn’t matter anymore, that they could still be close and see each other every once in a while. The feeling made her heart race, a heart longing to hear music, to dance.

She puts on a record. Eddie visualized her gnarled finger drag across a stack of aging vinyl, making a few passes before it stops on the one album she was looking for. It had to be a record and not a CD. In fact, Eddie bet the album came from the original pressing. $4 million was enough to make the normally temperamental, irritable battleaxe put on some music, dance around her apartment and even go as far as to have a drink. Sure, why not. The hip replacement she had two years ago isn’t even slowing her down. Eddie imagined her stating confidently for the cameras that she’s determined to find out just how much mileage she can get out of the damn thing.
Eddie shifted his weight and felt the tired foot tingle with relief. He took his arm off the windowsill and brushed away the fine gravel that itched away at his elbow. How long had he been staring out the window? He felt he was almost finished with Mrs. Lacey, but not yet. If there were any rhyme or reason to life, Mr. Lacey would be there with her. He should be there. The war cheated them out of a full life together. She has good reason to be hostile toward the world. Maybe everyone already knows this and Eddie’s just now catching on. Why else would everyone in the neighborhood put up with her? Eddie cast Henry Fonda as Mr. Lacey. The way he looked in that movie with Katherine Hepburn, feeble, ornery, yet lovable. Eddie placed the image of Mr. Lacey there, pressed tightly against his wife in a passionate embrace as if the war never happened and their love was never interrupted. He let himself imagine Mr. Lacey sharing the good news. It would have been the kind of embrace that comes naturally after being with someone your whole life and words no longer mean anything.

He let himself imagine Brad next to him, looking out over Second Avenue, watching the older couple celebrate, leaning out over the window’s edge a little too confidently. Brad and an apple martini. In his mind, Henry Fonda became Mr. Lacey and morphed lucidly into Brad, only an older version of Brad. Brad at 40, at 50, at 75. Brad would have looked like that, Eddie said out loud. His voice lost in the cacophony of sounds, like a bad note in an orchestra that only the erring oboe player can hear.

Life does that. It gives and takes, ebbs and flows like the ocean, you know, all that New Age shit, Eddie hypothesized. Suddenly, Mrs. Lacey was a full, real person, someone he had known all his life.

He sipped slowly at his glass and let the woody aroma of wine fill his head. He told himself he’d give it another ten minutes, if he didn’t feel anything by then, he’d take the other half of the Percodan.

There may be some divine design that connects seemingly crazy, unexplainable moments together. Life and death may all make sense in some large, intricate pattern, but more than likely it’s just dumb, random luck. Tonight, on Second Avenue and 11th street, after two husbands, three kids, eight grandkids and more than her fair share of misery, Mrs. Lacey got to shake hands with Lady Luck. It’s her song everyone is listening to tonight. She’s the one throwing the party. Tonight, Dinah Washington replaces DMX and Eddie is sure the East Village is the better for it. He welcomed the change.

The melody was followed by a drummer’s soft, scratchy brush strokes and a bright bass line. He was surprised at how easy it was to let the music wash over him, to lose himself. Then, as the welcomed numbness set in, he sank into Mrs. Lacey’s groove.

It’s the kind of recording that came from the early days of stereophonic sound and invokes a time long past when life was simpler. It’s a life Eddie knows only through movies and magazines yet he feels a certain mystic connection to the era. That song came from a time when Hollywood stars like Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Jimmy Cagney captured the country’s imagination.

In the distance, rising above the dissonance of Manhattan traffic, an ambulance siren wailed violently. It brought Eddie out of his thoughts and back to the present moment with surprising force. The laughter and animated voices mushroomed, filling every floor of the building, while that siren blared away like a wrong note in an otherwise graceful arpeggio.

Just when he thought every reporter in New York was camped out in front of the building, more arrived. The police had set up barricades with the idea that they would only let the press through, but people without credentials snuck through. Everyone wanted a glimpse of the new millionairess. The street was a mob scene.

Eddie let the sultry voice on the recording seep into his being. Aah! What a voice; throaty, pained and full of truth. It’s the perfect send-off tune to start a new life as a millionaire, a sort of theme song, an anthem to live by. “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes,” she sang and just across the street Mrs. Lacey is her old self again, only better. Twenty-four little hours could make all the difference in the world.

One day you can be sitting home alone, watching TV, minding your own business and next thing you know, six little numbers set you apart from the rest of humanity. Conversely, one day your life can be a potpourri of blessings: a new car, a big house, a promising career, then the next minute you lose the one thing that holds it all in place.

“It could have just as easily been me in that car accident,” Eddie thought.

It was just dumb luck he was running late and Brad wanted to meet him at the theatre. If he hadn’t taken that call a few minutes after 5:00 o’clock and instead left the office on time, if Brad wasn’t going so fast, if they had gotten the brakes checked like they’d been meaning to, if it wasn’t raining… the ending was always the same. That night (how many years ago was it now?) the blaring sirens cried out for them, tonight they’re meant for someone else. And who decides? Dumb luck, like the lotto numbers?

Somewhere out, there someone’s life was changing instant-by-instant, waiting for that ambulance, waiting for the flashing lights and men in neatly pressed white shirts and dark pants to deliver them from tragedy. It could just as easily be Brad standing here, willing himself to ignore the sirens, jealous of an old woman and her new found fortune she can’t use, letting the sounds of Dinah Washington and the rhythms of prescription medication dance in his consciousness but, Brad was never really into jazz.

The accident changed everything.

In a instant, the life he and Brad had built in their beautiful and tolerant city by the bay, filled with wonderful friends and promising careers, was smashed beyond recognition. Without Brad, the mortgage payments on their expansive Victorian on (name of street) were impossible. Eddie spent the initial first few months after the funeral engaged in a whirlwind of activity. A person would have guessed nothing was wrong by the way he applied himself. He shopped at the same stores and ate at the same restaurants with as little change in his routine as possible. When anyone would ask, “Hey how are you getting on?” he’d answer, “I’m fine, really, I’m fine, thanks for asking.” Of course he wasn’t. In those somnambulistic weeks, when it seemed to him that Brad could still walk through that door any minute, Eddie attended every charity benefit, volunteered at every fundraiser. He marched, he paraded, he protested and organized for numerous causes. He even volunteered to man the phone banks at the teen suicide hotline. When asked, he never passed up an invitation to go out, thinking all he had to do was keep busy, fill the empty hours with something other than thoughts of Brad. Eventually, Eddie crumbled as if from the inside out. His depression started to show in small ways. He would show up late at meetings or not at all.

After missing several important deadlines and making countless mistakes his boss came into his office and unceremoniously asked him to leave. Calmly, he packed his things and said goodbye to the few co-workers he was friendly with. That night, when he got home, he felt a choice was upon him. It was time to leave San Francisco and go home. He sorted through their belongings deciding what to throw or give away, what to keep, and why. It wasn’t enough that something might be useful. Eddie was deciding what to cherish, what to make space for. Then, he put the house on the market.

The same friends who commended him when he was in denial repositioned themselves. Their compassion turned into a distant, guarded posture. They were jaded about death and tired of his tearful dirge. Who hadn’t experienced loss first hand these days? Weren’t we all in mourning? “Haven’t we all lost someone?” they reasoned. None of them would fully empathize with Eddie for fear that they’d fall back into depressions of their own. An hour or two with Eddie was too much to tolerate without alcohol or a thick skin. Except Veronica. Veronica was Brad’s best friend and the most sincere of the lot. Though he grew to love her, mostly to placate Brad, initially Eddie hated her. He thought she was overbearing and cynical. But over time he understood that’s how she survived her own heartache. Veronica, for all her toughness, had a genuinely feminine resilience, to keep her mind and her heart open no matter what. She argued it was a capacity a male, even a gay male will inherently lack. As a last resort, and at Veronica’s insistence, Eddie started seeing a psychiatrist who recognized his charitable work as a mechanism of denial. He prescribed Percodan, but after a few sessions Eddie stopped seeing him.

During the weeks when he solidified the decision to move back East they met for drinks. She considered it into her routine “check-in.” She used the opportunity to advise him against the drastic, cross-country move. She told him it sounded adolescent. For some reason, Veronica got away with talking that way to people. Her comments were direct and biting. She criticized Eddie, calling his grief a permanent paralysis that would keep him from living a full life. She was devoted to Brad’s memory but had to turn her attention to Eddie because in her mind, Eddie was still salvageable. Though Veronica had seen Eddie go through immense personal changes over the years, not the least of which was conquering an addiction to cocaine, she never imagined Eddie moving past the “gay widow” role.

“Darling,” Veronica said affectionately. They were going to have a cup of coffee. Eddie had been threatening to leave San Francisco for weeks. He had already had his phone disconnected but Veronica tracked him down at his office. She found him packing his things and insisted on taking him out for “a drink or something.” They agreed that they were both sick of coffee and began walking towards the bay. At Fisherman’s Wharf they ate clam chowder soup out of sourdough bread bowls like a pair of tourists Veronica’s arm nestled comfortably in the crook of Eddie’s elbow.

“Remember the first time we all came down here together?” Eddie asked. “Brad wanted us all to try ecstasy but I was too scared.”

Veronica smiled meekly, intolerant of the chitchat. She was not the type that liked to engage in reminiscing.

“I worry about you kid. You’re not really good with change. Are you sure moving away is what you need right now? Anywhere you go he’ll still be dead,” she said coarsely. A moment passed and her face softened slightly. “How long were you and Brad together?”

“Three years,” Eddie whispered. The wind coming off the bay swallowed the sound of his voice. “Three. Almost four years,” he repeated. The number seemed insignificant as if time had the power to diminish the fundamental nature of what they felt for each other. He wished the wind had swallowed him too. Veronica drew a long, deep breath. Her face reflected the pain of someone who’s been there. She paused a moment, considering whether or not hard earned wisdom would fall on deaf ears. Then with a smile, she offered it.

“Well, you’ve mourned him longer than you were actually with him.” In a loving but stern voice that Eddie thought even she was incapable of, she continued. “It’s time to move on.” It was simple but powerful logic. Bottom line: she was right.
Life with Brad was one social event after another and when they fought Eddie complained that being with him was like being handcuffed to a parade. As long as he stayed in San Francisco, something would always be missing. Ordinary things held powerful connections to the past and reminded him of all he’d lost, everything he’d never have again. Every meal had become a challenge. After so many years of shopping for two, Eddie would either venture into a diner alone or, more likely, stay home and cook twice as much food as he could eat. Either way he would think of Brad. Eddie’s drinking was out of control. Without a job and living in a studio apartment, Eddie’s savings were vanishing quickly. Cocaine took care of the money he got from the sale of the house.

The move back to New York was harder than he thought. Veronica left him multiple messages on his machine in a vain effort to stay in touch. Eric and Stephen, who met Brad at the gym and practically adopted him on sight, offered Eddie multiple invitations to come back to San Francisco and visit whenever he wanted. Brad’s sister, Eileen visited from Ohio for a long weekend to give Eddie a few things she said she knew Brad would have wanted him to have. Brad’s college graduation ring, his hand held organizer, an 8X10 of Brad shaking hands with Elizabeth Taylor at a charity function. She said she was clearing out her attic and needed to make space. Eddie would make space. He’d keep them and treasure them like museum pieces. Eileen asked if Eddie was seeing anyone at the moment and that ended the visit shortly thereafter with an icy smile from Eddie.
Somewhere, buried deep in a closet, Mrs. Lacey still kept her husband’s uniform neatly pressed, with its medals dulled with age under a protective plastic garment bag. She made space. Isn’t that what a widow’s supposed to do, make space? The thought shook through Eddie’s mind like an electrical pulse.

He might be bringing all his old problems with him; he was determined to give New York a try. Brad, who only visited New York on a few occasions for business throughout the year, said New York was the best place in the world to go if you wanted to be alone. Wasn’t that just yesterday?

He wasn’t the first New Yorker to leave and come running back, tail between the legs. The city is the kind of place you need to leave every once in a while. You need to go somewhere else, regain your sanity, and center yourself. Start a new life. If for some reason, a car accident or a world war should upset things, then you realize you’re tethered to the place. New York has a way of crying out for its sons and daughters, enticing them with all kinds of splendor and chaos they can’t get anywhere else. It’s the place to take refuge from the harshness of reality because it’s the only place that can sustain fantasies, fuel the imagination. It’s the magical, rejuvenating place that makes little old ladies millionaires overnight.

His mind wanders, stumbling backward to a memory of his favorite night in New York with Brad. The memory carries him across the living room toward the dining room. Sitting on one of the dining chairs from Crate and Barrel that Brad loved and he hated, he sank into another time. Brad came to New York on business. They wanted to take in a Broadway show but he caught a cold and they spent their last night in the hotel room watching a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie instead. It was a perfect night of room service and apple martinis. Inevitably, his memory of the one lasting moment that changed everything passed through the movie projector in his mind. The tape stops there.

It’s not uncommon for Eddie to replay the events of that horrible day a thousand times or more with as many variations but the ending was always the same. It was, always the same drunk driver, always the same terror at the sound of his cell phone going off, always Veronica’s hysterical voice saying, “Eddie, there’s been an accident…”

Coming back home had been a good idea Eddie reassured himself. It felt right; even if not every moment was comfortable, it felt right.
He promised himself he’d get back into the rhythm of things. It’s gonna take time to feel comfortable enough around people. He needed time to learn to trust again. But somehow, a future seemed possible here. A miracle seemed possible here. It’s all about making the right choices, taking responsibility for your actions, putting out a positive vibe so the world will respond in kind, he thought. Veronica’s words hadn’t fallen on deaf ears; in fact, her words rang in Eddie’s mind like monastic bells summoning the devoted to mass. There was another really good saying from one of those New Age books he’d been reading lately that he wanted to remember. It was one of those great inspirational lines that are meant to sum up all of life in a few succinct words but he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. It was profound and universal and now it was gone, sacrificed at the altar of numbing drugs. It’ll come to him, it always does. It had something to do with not paying too much attention to ambulance sirens. They’re just noise. Sometimes life gives you noise and sometimes it gives you music. Happiness is learning to listen so you can tell the difference. If you hear noise, block it out, shut it off, and run away. If you hear music, then dance like it’s New Year’s Eve, dance like you’re 86, and you just hit the lottery. If he was ever going to dance, he would have to learn to take his cue from Mrs. Lacey, let the old lady lead him.

He’ll make up some convenient excuse to tell Carlos. A family emergency, or something equally vague and harrowing. Maybe Carlos might understand and give him a second chance at that cup of coffee. Maybe they’d have some kind of connection. Who knows? But he knew the city had a soft spot for hopeless widows and he still had half a Percodan left.