Margaret was wild in her mind. Bowling took over everything. Hadn’t it already? Worse. She dreamt of bowling, she told long stories about bowling to strangers, to her fellow parishioners at St. Elias’s, the moral of which was always: gravity brings down all things eventually. In her own head she heard the sounds of the pins. She knew it was boring but she couldn’t help it. The Bowl-Mor pinsetter, it’s still the best, it breaks down but I know how to fix nearly anything by now, you wouldn’t think an old woman like me would be so clever at mechanics but it’s like those machines are my children, I know they’re about to get a fever or a jam or a crazy notion and just like that I’m there to fix and soothe, I put those babies to bed. A candlepin ball weighs 2.5 pounds. The pharaohs bowled. Bertha Truitt introduced the sport of candlepin bowling to the people of Salford, Massachusetts. A curious woman. She could bowl for hours and never improve.
Margaret you are crazy if you think people want to hear about bowling. But bowling and God, that’s all it was with her. The people at church were driven round the bend. Bowling or God or both. Or dark predictions about children, or murders from her pulp magazines. She believed in the everlasting light of God and in the darkness and depravity of mankind. She had read the Bible three times in her life cover to cover, and hundreds of murder mysteries and true-crime books. That’s a lot of murder, Margaret. Sure and murder has been with us since the beginning or directly after: Cain and Abel, funny how she couldn’t remember who was the murdered one. There is more to life, Margaret, than murder and bowling and God and children. O yes then what.
Just cuddle the baby, don’t tell the new mother—Amy this time, she married young and had a son, she lives in Salford—don’t tell her all the ways her neglect can lead to his death. Just lock the door, don’t explain how a man intent on slitting your throat can climb a trellis and open a window and get to you as silent as slicing a cake. Just watch the leagues bowl. People bowl for the bowling of it, not because they wish to hear about the history of bowling, who invented it, who refined it, what it means.
At the bowling alley Margaret narrated her own movements with the calm detail of a wildlife documentary: “I’m standing by the corn popper. Why am I standing by the corn popper? I was looking at the league schedules, and now I’m here.” More than once when she retraced her own steps she ended up in the men’s room, making nobody happy.
“The Little Sisters is a nice place,” Cracker reminded Margaret. “You used to say so yourself when you volunteered there.” If only she could speed up the process of Margaret losing her mind, so that Cracker could get her into the nursing home without her noticing it. Slide her in sideways.
“They tell you when you can get out of bed,” said Margaret in a passion. “They tell you when you walk and eat and—everything. They own your body.”
“They don’t own your body, Mother.”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” said Margaret darkly. “You’re their slave. It’s slavery. Except nothing gets done.”
“It’s not—”
“Is money exchanged?”
“Yes.”
“When I was little it was called baby-farming. I don’t know what you call it now. I will be sold for parts.”
Cracker only wanted Margaret out of the house, to pace at the Bowlaway away from the stove, the bathtub, the iron, the steep backstairs. All the deaths that Margaret had predicted for the children seemed to be gunning for her: drowning, burning, the horrifying attentions of unscrupulous strangers.
“Everyone asks for you,” Cracker would say.
“Who’s everyone?” asked Margaret, already anxious.
Margaret, neglected, was found in her nightgown on the porches of neighbors. “Ah, Margaret,” said the neighbors, next door, across the street, “it’s nice to see you.” No it wasn’t. They wanted to call the authorities, but they weren’t sure what authorities to call.
The neighbors believed themselves to be good people, sympathetic, of course they would save the life of a poor soul adrift. The first time somebody took Margaret into their living room, offered her a cookie and a cup of tea, listened to her tell a story about bowling, oh, it was wonderful. Poor old woman, and such a teller of tales! They’d certainly remember this day! She got home safe eventually, it was a pleasure to have her. No trouble at all. Goodbye, Margaret! Come back anytime.
But she would. For the same visit, with variations: a different nightgown. Different next of kin: “I am looking for my husband. I am looking for my Minna. I am looking for my mother, I misplaced her, have you seen my mother?”
“Who’s your mother, darling,” said the around-the-corner neighbor, a weight lifter named Henrik who looked like a Saint Bernard to Margaret; she cowered, held her hand up so he could sniff her acquaintance. Instead he kissed it. “What’s your name, my love.”
“Margaret Vanetten,” she said, and then, dubiously, “Truitt.”
“Oh, Truitt,” said Henrik. “I know Truitts. Let’s take you home.”
They kept taking her to this house that was not hers!
The old woman wasn’t Cracker’s responsibility really, was she? Was possession nine-tenths of the law? That’s what children said on the playground, when finders keepers was no longer binding. Margaret had two sons. Surely it was their turn to pick up the weight. Where, for instance, was Arch? He was no longer on channel 5, not banned but beat for good. The last time she’d seen him was at Amy’s high school graduation, where he had worn a trench coat against the rain and also (thought Cracker) to disguise himself. He’d kept his hands in his pockets. Then Brenda had graduated and moved away, and there was no reason for Cracker and Arch to meet. Years ago now.
That left Roy.
She called Roy on a Saturday afternoon, and Arch answered. She recognized his voice instantly and hung up, her fingers on the kitchen phone’s hook. She counted to five and lifted her hand and listened to the inhuman dial tone, the voice of God telling you that you need not be alone.
She dialed again and this time when Arch answered—irritated, she had given him enough time to sit back down only to have to stand up again, it was a husbandly irritation—she said, “It’s Cracker. We need to talk about your mother. Is that Arch?”
“It’s Arch,” said Arch. “OK. Let’s talk.”
Return to Me
Cracker Graham sat in South Station, waiting for Arch Truitt. Would he be wearing a trench coat? Would he have his old familiar head? He might have aged hundreds of years, or not at all. Every time somebody about the size of Arch, as she remembered him, walked into the vast waiting hall, she stood up, though the person was not always even a man.
Then there he was, not in a trench coat but a denim jacket, blue jeans a shade darker. She’d wondered whether they would hug, which showed how she’d forgotten her once and future husband, who never hesitated in the face of an embrace. He hugged her. She felt the old brass button on the cuff of his jacket behind her left ear: what she needed. That sweet smell of him.
“Car’s this way,” she said. “You look good.” He did, ramshackle around the edges, but pink and not yellow, his long hair combed back.
“Roy takes better care of me.”
“Better than I did.”
“Better than me of myself. No one bosses like a brother.”
“Color in your cheeks. What are you doing these days?”
“We own a candlepin house. Me and Roy.”
“This candlepin house?” she said, pointing to the sidewalk by her old Impala. She unlocked the door for him, then opened it with a chivalrous flourish before going to the driver’s side.
“Thanks. No, not this one. We bought a house in Worcester. Got a little pro shop in it. I run that. People come to see me.”