The Address Book

By: JG Lowry

It was old, the address book, tattered, the pages dirty. For years, I had been meaning to replace it.

Turning the pages of the old book, I find, Archibald & Sons. Yes! Brothers, both of them blond, in blue shirts and dungarees. While gardening, Brenda had turned up a rock, convinced that it was a meteorite; washing it in the tub, she swore that it had shook, springing to life, leaping out of her hands and into the commode. Smiling, the brothers fished it out with what looked like forceps, charging a sum we thought modest.

A few pages on, Crystal. No last name, no address, no phone number. I sit thinking. Ah! Our ghostly neighbor! Always dressed in white with gray hair to match, tapping on our door at two in the morning. Her cat, Bobby, was missing. We didn’t see him, by any chance? Kind, Brenda made her tea and sat with her in the kitchen. Bobby, what happened? You never came home.

Pages C to E are blank, but at the bottom of E, in tiny print, I find Magdalena, along with a phone number written backwards. My clever code.

Magdelena with her lustrous hair, snowy smile. Her husband, Forrest Loch, a diplomat, always traveling to, or expected back, from Chile, or Luxemburg, Botswana, or Caracas. Encountered her on a train to Washington, waiting patiently for a gentleman to lift her bag into the overhead rack.

That afternoon, the two of us watched the rain from our hotel bed, the clouds almost touching the Potomac, sipping cognac, she pretending to teach me Spanish, both of us laughing at my ineptitude. When I called, a week later, a woman, speaking in a cold tone, said there was no such person. My sole infidelity, a result, I’ve convinced myself, of the rain, the dark afternoon.

I turn the page to Harmon & Sons, Hardware, long closed, gutted by a mysterious fire. After a raucous party, Brenda and I staggered out of a taxi near dawn, each convinced that the other was drunk. Our keys! What happened to our keys? Awakened at home by Brenda’s tears, Mr. Harmon appeared within the hour, carrying a black bag, his cranky son in tow. He insisted it had been a pleasure, refusing the money we heaped upon him.

Next, The Blue Hour, a restaurant where Brenda and I met at the bar, commiserating over the lack of peanuts. Memorable, too, for a luncheon honoring Brenda’s parents for thirty years of marriage, when, after a round of toasts and picture taking, a large cockroach appeared on the table in front of Brenda’s mother. Prudy wanted to scream but, instead, froze. Her face turned pink, then an alarming purple

To the rescue: Brenda’s brother Larry, known as Ketch, a Major in the air force, resplendent in his dress blue, who, sweeping the roach onto a spoon, put it into his mouth, pronouncing it delicious, a fine source of protein. With Ketch that day, his wife of six weeks, Shirley, she of the prodigious singing talent, and equally prodigious capacity for drink and pool boys. Soon lost to Hollywood and a string of sad movies.

Boone Pickard rules the next page: Director of Pickard and Fontelli, Home Decorating and Design. His dark hair combed in two waves; Italian suit and shoes. Hired to decorate our new condominium, Boone immediately decided me superfluous, focusing his attention on Brenda; circling, holding her eyes, seizing both her hands in his to make a point. He pronounced a verdict on our taste with a wave of his hand. Furniture: distressing. Rugs: he’s bought better from an outlet for movie theaters. As for our paintings, cherished, purchased after months of careful budgeting and tiring visits to galleries: Why are you collecting nobodies? Brenda wept. He’s right. We’re dummies.

What he proposed, accompanied by elaborate drawings, would have cost us almost twice what we paid for the apartment. A con man! I cried, balling up the papers and flinging them across the room. Brenda sighed. Yes. But you have to admit, he was charming.

After Boone, Tiny, our cat. What’s he doing here? Rescued from Prospect Park, with his huge thirst for birds, he acted like he wanted to be a wolf. Remembered for crying at the door of our bedroom when Brenda and I made love. Ah Tiny, I want you back

Along the margin of the same page, a drawing of a human foot, its big toe colored red, wiggly lines rising from it indicating pain. Brenda’s work, no doubt. Her mother, Prudy, had broken her toe kicking the refrigerator after discovering that Lewis, her husband of thirty years, had, for ten of them, a girlfriend in Indianapolis. It infuriated her! Not the girlfriend! No! Indianapolis! Where the hell was Indianapolis? Who the hell would live there? And when did Lewis, who got lost regularly on the subway, go there?

Under U, written in a shaky hand: U-think you R, U-R. Painful reminder that I had been drinking again.

On the next line, R. T. Quince, for years our Official Successful Friend, always known as R.T, photographer and reporter; addresses in London and Perth and Mumbai; five phone numbers, all of them crossed over; names of wives and girlfriends filling half a page. Had his greatest success when, living in Vietnam for over a year, he took pictures of children maimed by unexploded bombs and mines left over from the war. His wife Sarita Sparks, also a reporter, died on Halloween night in London, when coming home from a party dressed as a fly, she jumped into a fountain off Trafalgar Square, getting entangled in her costume and managing to drown, people laughing and applauding, thinking it was a stunt.

He last called near Christmas, many years ago, his voice so low we could hardly hear him. He was living in Chicago, starting his third marriage, and trying to sell his memoir to publishers. He was saving money to get a face lift so he could become a television commentator.

V is empty. Never found a name to put there.

W has one entry: Tom Winkler. A classmate from college, long forgotten, until he called on a snowy night when Brenda and I were watching TV. She was quietly weeping, holding a tissue to her face, certain that she was pregnant at forty-four. Without so much as a greeting, Tom said he was dying. That he was in love with me, had always been in love with me ever since that day in French class with Miss Chasson, fresh from Paris with a saucy smile and tiny skirt. We were translating a passage from The Stranger for a mid-term grade. Tom had no time for such things, being a substitute on the basketball team and the president of a fraternity house. Seeing his distress, I turned my book so he could see the translation neatly written between the lines. In addition to an “A” Tom received a smile and a polite clap from Miss Chasson.

So, Peter, after all these years, I was wondering, he said, do you love me? With Brenda sobbing beside me, a throbbing in my head signaling the start of a headache, I swore and hung up. Tom, forgive me!

On the back of the book, I find I had written: Kindness before regret. I write the same words on the flyleaf of the new book. This time I mean it.