Lucy

In the middle of the night he craved coffee. Wanted to sip the bitter heat into his mouth and forget about the cold, empty side of the bed. Needed to carefully count out scoops and pour them in the filter.

He swung his feet to the floor and shuffled his toes into the slippers. He grit his teeth to stand up. He’d forgotten how much he ached.

The kitchen light was on. He always left it on, all day, all night, like she used to before the side of the bed was suddenly empty. He inched to the doorway, ran his fingers over his scalp that the hair had all thinned away from.

It took him a moment to remember which drawer he kept the scooper in. That happened more and more frequently now, the forgetting, the having to pause and remember ordinary things. Two days ago, he’d forgotten his granddaughter’s name. He pictured in his mind the shock on her face when he’d called her Lucy. “Grandad, I’m Claire.” Her voice, childish. “Grandad. Lucy was your wife’s name.”

He kept the coffee maker on the countertop, still the same cheap plywood one Lucy had picked out. “Ed,” she’d said, her voice shades lighter than normal. “This color is so beautiful, Ed.” She’d loved anything green.

When she visited Claire always brought ground coffee beans from the supermarket. He’d told her not to bring them on Tuesday. He’d thought the last bag was still half-full. He walked to counter, slowly, painfully. The bag was empty.

Damn. He needed coffee. When he used to get sick Lucy wouldn’t make him chicken soup or buy him ginger ale, she’d brew him coffee, put it in a mug, watch TV with him while he sipped it and braid her thick red hair. The house always had coffee in it. Always.

He would have to go out. He hadn’t driven in over six months, since Claire had talked to the doctor and told him it wasn’t safe. He’d told her that safe wasn’t always best, that back when he was a boy nobody thought twice about these newfangled diseases and everybody drove fast, all the time. He wouldn’t have saved Lucy from that car accident if he’d thought about safety. Claire had sighed and told him she’d bring coffee tomorrow.

He grabbed the car keys from the hook by the telephone. They stuck to the metal from having been there so long. His heart was beating fast. The car was in the driveway; Claire used it when she came so it didn’t go rusty. She said it was better safe than sorry. There was that word again. Safe.

Hands shaking, he hobbled into the driver’s seat, eased the key into the ignition, put the car in drive and his palms on the wheel. He started out shakily, but drove steadily once he’d gone a few yards. Lucy used to say that driving a car is like riding a bike or baking a cake: once you learn, you never forget.

And he remembered. Oh, he remembered. He knew the roads to take to the supermarket, where to go straight and where to turn. He knew the landmarks like the back of his hand: the bank where he’d signed his first check, the pharmacy where he’d had that awful job in high school. The cemetery, where he had relatives buried dating back to 1789.

The movie theater where he’d taken Lucy on their first date, after he’d saved her from that terrible accident.

He couldn’t remember why he was driving to the supermarket, so he pulled into the movie theater and parked the car in the same space he’d parked it with Lucy. He’d be damned if he couldn’t remember that.

For some reason his hand trembled when he opened the door and creaked out. He straightened, slowly, eyes alert. Back when he’d come here with Lucy the theater had been on Main Street, the pride of Alton Heights. People from the city had trekked out here to see King Kong and Gidget and the newest Jimmy Stewart films.

Now Main Street was called Marleton Avenue, after the mayor, and the asphalt was cracked. He stared across the street. A woman was walking, her thick red hair bouncing with each step. He wondered what Lucy was doing walking down Main Street in the middle of the night.

Lucy crossed the street right as a car turned from Springside Road and sped up. He realized it was on track to hit her, knock the breath out of her body and crumple her into the asphlaty dust. He ran to her, breathing hard, but thinking only that this was not safe, but he had to save her, he had to, he was the only one who could. She would thank him. Maybe she would go to the movies with him. He pictured himself married.

He dove in front of the car to push her out of the way. All that sprinting practice for track had made him fast and strong. Ohio State was even talking with him about scholarships. He felt exhilarated and heroic and brave, like he could lift anything.

He grabbed Lucy’s arm as his old, aching legs buckled beneath him and pulled them both under the car.