Free Year After Henry by Cathie Pelletier Page B

unusable. The children, however, had thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. They had clapped their hands and sang out, “Daddy broke the pool! Daddy broke the pool!” And so Henry had packed them all into the tan Buick he owned back then and drove them over to the new community pool, one he couldn’t break for it was made of concrete. Afterward, red-faced with sun and tired from swimming, the whole family had gone to the town’s new McDonald’s for burgers and vanilla shakes.
    Jeanie got into her car and cracked the windows, letting out the heat of the day. She drove toward home at first and then, at the last second, turned down Market Avenue and cruised by the Days Inn. She had done this so many times in the past that it was more a habit now than a deliberate decision. Several cars sat in the parking lot, many of them with out-of-state plates, most likely tourists and salespeople. Jeanie used to do this when Henry was still alive and his Jeep would be parked around at the back, hidden, or so he thought, behind the Dempsey dumpster and a thick hedge of box elders. These were the nights he claimed to be at Murphy’s Tavern with Larry, watching sports on TV and drinking a couple beers. Jeanie knew why Henry would ask for room 9. It was the number Ted Williams had on his uniform before the Boston Red Sox retired it for good. Nine had become Henry’s lucky number. But it hadn’t been so lucky for Jeanie, for in another parking space she always saw the blue Mazda that Evie Cooper still drove to this day, the fenders rattling a bit and a thin crack in the windshield. Then, for weeks, it had been just Henry’s black Jeep back there. She had found the Mazda parked out behind Murphy’s Tavern, so she assumed Evie had left it there and ridden to the Days Inn in Henry’s Jeep. So why hadn’t Jeanie parked next to the Jeep, marched over to the door with the number 9 glued to it, and banged her fist like a crazy woman? For one thing, what if Henry hadn’t been able to get number 9 that night? What if someone else had rented it first? This would mean that he was in one of five other rooms, but it was a crapshoot as to which one. He could be in number 8, which was Carl Yastrzemski’s number before they retired it. Or in number 1, or number 27, or even number 4, which were the retired numbers for Bobby Doerr, Carlton Fisk, and Joe Cronin. But if he wasn’t in any of those rooms, then chances were he was in number 42, since that was Jackie Robinson’s number, which had long been retired by Major League Baseball. Jeanie knew all six of Henry’s lucky numbers since he played them in the lottery every Wednesday and Saturday for years. He was always telling folks his lucky numbers and why they were so. But the real truth was larger than numbers and much more indefinable. There was some kind of power in collecting this evidence against Henry Munroe. Nights when Jeanie had driven home to lie awake on the sofa, watching David Letterman and waiting for Henry to shuffle in, she would plan the day of the Big Showdown. She would imagine Henry’s face when the time came to shovel out the receipts, to mention where he always parked the Jeep, the color of Evie’s car. She would imagine the shock on his face, especially when she told him she wanted a divorce. She’d triumph, is what she’d do. And she was right on the cusp of shouting, “Aha!” when Henry died. And now, it had been a year since the parking spaces at the Days Inn had seen either the black Jeep or the blue Mazda.
    At the end of Market Avenue, Jeanie turned right onto Hayes Drive, and again onto Ezell Street, which she followed down until she saw the sign in the front yard: Spiritual Portraitist . She pulled the car up to the curb and sat there, waiting, until the lacy curtain in the downstairs window moved, ghostlike, as if a wind had rippled through it. She knew then that Evie was