Mother Box and Other Tales (10 page)

For a long while Penny stood in front of her house and considered its new colors. She shifted her bags—what heavy bags, she could not now remember what was in them—and observed the shadow of the ladder leaning up against the front of the house elongate rapidly across the lawn. Finally, Penny opened her front door and went into the kitchen with her purchases. The kitchen was surprisingly bright and noisy. Max was sitting at the table with two other young men drinking beers and smoking. They had music playing on the radio and all three were laughing at once as if at the end of a long, hard-earned joke.

“Mom!” Max said, standing up and stretching his arms wide as if introducing her to the kitchen. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” said Penny. She lined up three jars of borscht and a little tin of sardines. Qvack! jumped up on the counter next to her and nuzzled the plastic bags.

“About the house, what do you think about the colors?” Max said, coming around the table and turning down the radio. “I thought it was time for a change.”

Penny rolled back the sardine tin's lid with its little tin key and offered one to Qvack!. He accepted it graciously, eating it in two compact bites and licking the fish oil off the counter with only a trace of shame. Penny considered her son. He was leaning against the doorframe, stretching easily to grip the lintel. He hadn't shaved that morning, or it was late enough that the hair had grown back, and the line of his jaw was underscored by dark stubble. She thought about the nature of gifts, who they were most important to. Her mother was very inclined to buy hats, but had never once come to the house in Alabama where they had moved and then settled. In Penny's turret closet there were dozens of prim hat boxes tied at the top with lush, wrinkled ribbon.

“It's lovely, Max,” Penny finally said. “Very lifelike.” Max grinned and swooped away from the doorframe, turning back to
his friends with his arms spread wide again as if introducing them this time. Here is the kitchen, his arms seemed to say. Here is my mother and her one-eyed cat. Max turned the radio back up and Qvack! put his paw on the back of Penny's wrist and miaowed politely for another sardine.

Max's two friends' names were Jenner and Paul. They were house painters and Max was also going to be a house painter and drive with them in their blue truck as they circled the town looking for houses in stages of ill-repair. Penny sat with them at the kitchen table and listened to the radio while Jenner talked about small business owner's insurance and ladder length and latex over-coats. Paul was more the silent type and Max, sitting between them, eventually suggested they go down to Newt's for the drink specials and a local band. After they left, Penny took down a pony glass from a high shelf and mixed herself a limeade and gin. She stood in front of the cupboard for a long moment and then reached up for a second glass. She opened the back door and, with Qvack! running out in front of her, took both drinks into the garden.

It was almost dark, an uncertain moment in the evening that made the garden seem longer and narrower than it ever appeared in the day, and Penny watched the ground carefully to avoid tripping as she made her way to the little garden bench which sat underneath a pecan tree. Honeysuckle had grown up around the legs of the bench and over its back. When Penny sat down she sank back into its dark, fragrant tangle. Penny swept a few empty pecan shells off the bench next to her and took a sip of the limeade. She called out, “I've brought you a drink,” and watched as a shadow detached itself from the nearest pine trunk and made its way over to her.

The man in the garden bowed slightly to Penny, sweeping off his bowler hat in a gesture that seemed at once both extravagant
and restrained. He took a seat on the bench next to her when she offered, pulling up his gray suit pants at the knees and unbuttoning the front of his suit-coat, and sipped the limeade and gin.

“This is not at all unsatisfactory,” the man in the garden said after a long silence. His voice had a curiously thick quality to it, as if he had only a moment before been eating spoonfuls of yogurt and honey.

“It's only limeade,” Penny said. The evening light was catching in her glass, making the limeade glow with an unsettling luminescence. She could see the man in the garden's socks where his pant legs had risen above the fine line of his leather shoes. The socks were a light pink, tastefully flocked in charcoal. His shoes were highly polished but marked by a water line just above the sole and over the toe, as if he had been standing a long time in damp grass.

“Just so,” the man in the garden said, “but you'll forgive me if I don't say I find it delightful. Adjectives tend to overstate the moment, don't you agree?”

Penny did not know whether she agreed or not, but they sat for a long time together and conversed while the last of the light slowly died out and fireflies replaced it with their drowsy, intermittent glow. When Penny finally went into the house, she stood at the sink and rinsed their glasses. She tried to remember what they talked about, but could only remember the fireflies and the scent of honeysuckle, another muskier scent and Qvack! purring at her feet. The man in the garden's glass held an imprint of his lips along its rim, as if his lips had been filmed with a fine gloss, and Penny touched a finger to the impression. She held the glass up to her face and inhaled deeply, but all she could smell was the tang of limeade and a faint, bitter trace of gin.

The next night, Penny brought drinks into the garden again and the next night after. Soon it became a ritual to sit on the
bench and watch for the man in the garden's shadow solidifying from the deeper bank of the forest's shadow, to listen to the crisp rustle of his suit as he settled himself on the bench. One evening, Penny went out as usual and found the man in the garden already waiting for her on the bench with a little silver drink cart pulled up next to him. The cart held a variety of carafes and mixers and a plate of finger sandwiches, crusts removed, which seemed to pull all the evening light into their white squares.

The man in the garden rose as Penny approached and bowed his customary, elegant bow. “I thought I might repay your hospitality,” he said, expertly pouring her drink into a cut-glass tumbler and proffering the plate of finger sandwiches. “I find an evening snack a fine fortifier for spirits of all sorts, wouldn't you agree?” he said.

“I do,” said Penny, taking a bite of the sandwich which tasted airy and green. “I do, I do.”

Penny began to spend longer and longer evenings in the garden, often staying until the trunks of the pine trees began to grow gray and individual in the pre-dawn light. No matter how long she and the man in the garden sat on the bench, the liquid in the carafes never seemed to go down and there were never any fewer finger sandwiches on the plate. Yet, when Penny woke up in the morning, sometimes now sleeping into the afternoon, she felt clear-headed and relaxed. Only very rarely did she stand at her turret window and watch the wind rustle through the tops of the pine trees. The garden in the daytime seemed graceless and foreign. Its colors were garish and seemed to Penny as if they had been chosen out of a catalogue, pre-ordered from a set.

Max was also staying out later and later. During the day, he painted houses with Jenner and Paul. Sometimes, he would come home for dinner and Penny would suddenly remember that she had forgotten to eat all day and would pull together a macaroni
casserole. They would eat together at the kitchen table, listening to the radio and talking a little, but Max was tired and spattered with paint. He would have paint in his hair, flecks of blue or gold, and paint in long streaks down the backs of his hands. He would have paint on his face and Penny wanted to smear it down along his cheekbones and over his jaw, but the paint was always dry and flaking. After dinner, Max would shower and go out to Newt's with Jenner and Paul and the girls they met there and danced with. Sometimes, Max would tell her, “Eat, mom, eat. You never eat anymore,” or that there were letters for her piling up with the mail. When he came home, Penny would watch from the garden as the light in his room flicked on and his shadow crossed in front of the window. She would watch his window after the light flicked off, but never for too long.

One night, Penny and the man in the garden were sitting in their usual spot having their usual drinks. Qvack! was stretched out next to the drink cart purring in the lingering heat that radiated from the patio tiles. “The summer is getting on,” said the man in the garden, taking a slim brown cigarette out of a silver case he carried in his waistcoat pocket.

“Yes,” said Penny, though it seemed to her that nothing had changed. The flowers were various shades of gray in the night garden, but they were all still blooming in their random, fervent bloom. The honeysuckle that immersed them didn't seem to have progressed at all in its conquest of the bench.

“Yes,” said the man in the garden and sighed languidly. “So too all things, don't you find?” he said and offered Penny a cigarette. As they sat together and smoked Penny heard the rattle of Jenner and Paul's blue truck as it pulled into the driveway. She heard the door slam and Max's voice as he called “Goodnight,” and something lower, more indistinct. The light in his bedroom flicked on.

Penny watched as Max's shadow crossed and recrossed the bedroom window. The light flicked out and Penny took the last sweet sip of her drink, holding the glass out to the man in the garden who unstoppered the carafe in perfect anticipation. Suddenly, another light impinged on the garden and Penny looked up, startled. The kitchen light was on and Max was leaning into the window, cupping his hand to peer out at her and the man in the garden sitting on their bench. He seemed to be very far away and the light in the kitchen cold and clinical. It made his features harsh, Penny thought. His brow was too severe and his skin washed-out, an unpleasant white.

“Oh,” said Penny, and her hand jerked a little, almost spilling her drink.

“Ah,” said the man in the garden, “this must be your son. Max, is it not? Your son, Max?”

“Yes,” said Penny. She recovered herself and sucked the few droplets of spilled liquor from her finger. “That's Max. Would you like to say hello?”

The man in the garden recovered his bowler hat from the bench next to him and put it on as he rose. He bowed toward the window and swept the hat down over his heart with a little military flourish Penny had not seen him use before. “Hello, Max,” he said and inclined his sleek, curly head in greeting.

But Max did not respond. He continued to peer out the window, leaning closer now. Penny thought the light not only made him look severe, but also featureless. She noticed he needed a haircut. His hair as it hung around his face made his head seem overly large, misshapen, and he was leaning in such a way that she couldn't see his body, only a vague, contorted suggestion. Max rapped on the glass sharply with his knuckles. He turned away from the window and switched off the light. The man in the garden turned to Penny and lifted a quizzical eyebrow.

“I'm so sorry,” Penny said, half rising herself. “Normally, he's a very polite boy.” Penny thought about it and could not remember whether Max was normally polite or not. It seemed to her that he wasn't, but the man in the garden sat down on the bench and put an arm around her to help settle her back in her seat.

“It's quite alright, my dear,” the man in the garden said. He was leaning close to her, peering into her face with an expression of kindly concern. Penny could smell the faint sweet scent of his breath. It smelled like grass, as if he had been grazing in a meadow, and she thought his teeth, which she had never particularly noticed before, seemed very large and square and white. “We are all so young,” said the man in the garden, looking over her shoulder and into the unmitigated darkness of the forest. Then he laughed.

The next day, Penny woke late in the afternoon. Qvack! was sleeping curled at the foot of her bed and the light as it poured through her thin curtains seemed brash. Max was standing in the doorway.

“I've been calling you for a long time,” he said, frowning and pushing his hair back from his forehead. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Penny raised her arms above her head and stretched. The sheets rubbed against her nipples with a pleasant friction and she realized she was naked. It didn't seem to matter though and the light hurt her eyes. She sat up in bed and shielded her eyes from the window.

Max turned away and stared at his feet. He kicked the edge of her braided rug so it flipped back over itself and then smoothed it flat. “Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat and then stopping to clear it again. “There are more letters for you on the table. They look important. Official. I paid the bills.” He turned and started down the hall.

“Max,” Penny called after him. She heard him stop in the hallway. “We need to talk about last night.”

“What about last night?” Max said. From the way his voice sounded, Penny knew he still had his back to her.

“Well, you were rude last night, to my friend, and that is not how you're supposed to be. That's not what I taught you to be.”

“Jesus, Mom,” said Max and Penny heard the creak of the top stair as he started down.

Penny rolled onto her side and pulled the sheet up over her shoulder. She rolled a little further, onto her stomach, and wiggled until the mattress pushed her breasts apart and to the side of her ribcage. The sheets against her stomach felt cool and heavy, thick. “That is not what you are for,” she called after Max.

When Penny got up later that afternoon the light was already starting to thicken in golden rectangles across the floor. She stood in front of her closet looking at her clothes which hung in orderly rows above the hatboxes. Finally, she picked a thin, cotton shift, a slip which she had bought to go beneath summer dresses. It didn't seem to fit right, so Penny pinned it at the back with a line of hatpins. Max had already left for the evening. His dishes were piled in the sink and he'd run water over the plate which made the smears of ketchup and hamburger juice run pale and oily just below the surface. On the kitchen table was a stack of thick letters in manila envelopes. They were held together with a rubber band and Max had left a hot-pink Post-It note on top of the stack. It read:
If you don't open these, I will
. Penny unstuck the note and pressed her finger to the adhesive seam. She pulled the envelopes one by one out from under the rubber band and spread them over the table. The stamps were dark and thickly banded by cancellation marks. The letters had gone many places and been marked by them. Penny held one of the envelopes up to her nose and inhaled. It smelled like paper.