The next day, a still-shaken Elizabeth opened the newspaper to find Six-Thirty on page eleven, sitting in exactly the same spot he’d sat seven months ago: on Calvin’s grave.
“Dog Mourns Master and Saves Man’s Life,” she read out loud. “Cemetery Dog Ban Lifted.”
According to the article, people had long complained about the groundskeeper and his gun, including several who reported he’d shot at squirrels and birds right in the middle of funerals. The man would be replaced immediately, the article promised, as would the grave marker.
She peered at the close-up of Six-Thirty and Calvin’s ruined tombstone, which, thanks to the bullet’s impact, had lost about a third of its inscription.
“Oh my god,” Elizabeth said, taking in the chipped remains.
Calvin E
1927–19
Brilliant che
Your days are nu
Her face changed ever so slightly.
“Your days are nu,” she read. “Nu.” She flushed, thinking of the sad night Calvin had shared with her his childhood mantra. Every day. New.
She looked back at the photograph, stunned.
Chapter 15
Unsolicited Advice
“Your life is about to change.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your life. It’s about to change.” A woman just ahead of Elizabeth in line at the bank had turned to point at Elizabeth’s stomach. Her face was grim.
“Change?” Elizabeth said innocently as she cast her eye down upon her round form as if noticing it for the first time. “Whatever do you mean?”
It was the seventh time that week someone felt compelled to inform her that her life was about to change and she was sick of it. She’d lost her job, her research, bladder control, a clear view of her toes, restful sleep, normal skin, a pain-free back, not to mention all the little assorted freedoms everyone else who is not pregnant takes for granted—like being able to fit behind a steering wheel. The only thing she’d gained? Weight.
“I’ve been meaning to get this checked,” she said, laying a hand on her stomach. “What do you think it could be? Not a tumor, I hope.”
For a split second, the woman’s eyes widened in shock, then instantly narrowed. “No one likes a smart-aleck, missy,” she gruffed.
“You think you’re tired now,” a wiry-haired woman commented an hour later as Elizabeth yawned in a grocery store checkout line, shaking her head as if Elizabeth were already showing signs of personal weakness. “Just you wait.” Then she launched into a dramatic description of the terrible twos, the tiresome threes, the filthy fours, and the fearsome fives, barely taking a breath before piling into the angsty adolescents, the pimply pubescents, and especially, especially, oh lord, the troubled teens, noting always that boys were harder than girls, or girls were harder than boys, and on and on and on until her groceries were bagged and loaded and she was forced to get back into her faux-wood-paneled station wagon and return home to her own personal set of ingrates.
“You’re carrying high,” the man at the gas station observed. “Definitely a boy.”
“You’re carrying high,” the librarian commented. “Definitely a girl.”
“God has given you a gift,” said a priest who’d noticed Elizabeth standing alone in front of an odd gravestone at the cemetery later that same week. “Glory be to God!”
“It wasn’t God,” Elizabeth said, pointing at a new tombstone. “It was Calvin.”
She waited until he walked away, then bent down and ran her finger over the complex engraving.
Calvin Evans
1927–1955
“To make up for what happened,” cemetery management had told her, “we’ll not only provide a new tombstone, we’ll also make sure it includes the whole quote this time.” But Elizabeth had decided against a second round with Marcus Aurelius, opting instead for a chemical response that resulted in happiness. No one else recognized it, but after what she’d been through, no one questioned it either.
“I’m finally going to see someone about this, Calvin,” she said, pointing to her bump. “Dr. Mason, the rower, the one who let me row in the men’s eight. Remember?” She stared at the inscription as if awaiting a reply.
* * *
—
Twenty-five minutes later, as she pressed a button in a narrow elevator, her only companion a fat man in a straw hat, she braced herself for more unsolicited advice. And sure enough, he reached out his hand and placed it on her belly as if she were a hands-on exhibit at the Natural History Museum. “I bet eating for two is fun,” he admonished, patting her, “but remember: one of them is just a baby!”