Some Other Town (15 page)

He said this every dinner. Ben is a generous person with an exceptionally open heart so I never said anything more about his chicken. I only put the parts I could not eat back in Ben's refrigerator after dinner. And then later when it was time to leave and I returned to his kitchen once more, always I found a brown paper bag Ben had left on the counter for me. The bags were always just chicken-sized and made of heavy paper, ones he saved for this particular occasion.

So after our first dinner, I left Ben's house with the bagged remains of my chicken. It felt strange all right, but then I thought of a woman I knew who shuttled back and forth from her lover's house with a paper bag full of spare underwear. It can be no stranger to leave Ben's farm with a bag of chicken under my arm.

That first dinner, it was not of course only whole chicken Ben served. That was only the part I could count on. Ben has a garden, he grows vegetables there, in the fall of our dinner he had mostly just broccoli left. But the problem here is that Ben cannot leave his vegetables alone. At the last minute that dinner, he brought out a few slices of Velveeta, which he melted down to a hot yellow puddle and poured all over the broccoli, on what had until then been perfect little spears of fresh green. It was what was called for, Ben's instincts told him, he knows this sort of thing without thinking. And with the broccoli and whole chickens arranged on our plates, he arrived at the table, happy and flushed from the kitchen.

Then, before we took our seats, Ben put on some music for dinner. Almost always Ben would play music at dinner, usually Tchaikovsky, melodramatic and loud. That night he lit candles as well, dozens of candles, the room swayed with their wavering light. And then, with everything ready, we sat down at his dining room table with all its five leaves in place. The table belongs to Ben's landlord, it could sit sixteen or more. I do not know why Ben leaves in all the leaves.

So then on that first night there we were, Ben and I, at that titanic old table, with the music soaring and candles for light. We sat at the head and foot of the table. It was arduous talking, but we tried.

“So, Ben,” I called to his end of the table. “Tell me about yourself.” Though not inspired, it is a good opener, I've found, with most of the men I have known. They are happy enough to run with that ball, often for the rest of the evening.

But Ben only looked confused. He called back he had already told me about why he was here, we did not need to go over that ground. What more did I want to know?

I gave this some thought, and well then, I called, what about hobbies, pursuits? “What interests and delights you in that life of yours, Ben?”

As it turns out, Ben told me that night, many things in life interest and delight him. Van Morrison, for example, The Band. Other music too. Gram Parsons, The Byrds. And then there's a tape someone gave him years ago of an idiot savant who sang just like Jose Feliciano.

And here Ben got up and played that tape of the savant doing “Light My Fire.” Which then reminded him of another tape he had, and got up to put on, of Lowell Thomas, live, saying fart. Lowell Thomas had meant to say heart, struck by a near fatal heart attack, but it came out as fart, and then Lowell could not stop laughing. He tried to continue the broadcast, but every few words he would think of that fart and he'd snicker, then laugh outright, then roar, and have to start over again. Eventually he just couldn't go on. Ben Adams loved hearing that tape, you could tell. He laughed and laughed just like Lowell.

Then when the tape ended, Ben waited to turn the music back on. Instead, he sat down at the table, this time taking the chair next to mine, and said well but there are other things in this world he likes too. Pizzas, he likes frozen pizzas. And wild iris and real
leather slippers. And teaching and books, of course, too. Although mostly, he said, the teaching does no good and the books that he likes are old. He just hasn't much faith in the new ones.

And then for no reason I could see, Ben moved his chair closer and grew serious. “But it's painting, Margaret, that matters.”

I was not ready for this change in the evening. Ben seemed to want now to talk, he was no longer just entertaining. And although art is not a topic I thrill to, “Painting, Ben?” I said. “That's right. I remember. You told me that you teach painting.” As though what was needed here was verification.

I hoped then we could go back to Lowell Thomas. I did not like this new seriousness in Ben. It was after all our first dinner. And more to the point, I can no longer bear to talk art.

But I saw I had only encouraged him. He looked at me close and said, “I have this one painting, Margaret. Now, in my head. I know its edges, its shapes, the shadows. I know where the color should go.”

“So, Ben?” I said. I did not understand the issue. “Why not just paint it, begin?”

Ben looked at me, kindly. It was clear he was getting to that.

“I have, Margaret, I have. Many times. But it's no good just to paint some idea that you have, some copy of some idea. What I'm waiting for is actually to see it.”

“See it, Ben?” I was not sure I was following him.

Ben raised a hand toward the wall. “For that moment, Margaret. That one moment you look and know it is there, below what you see, or beyond. Exceptional, necessary, pulsing. So that you have to paint now, before it is gone. Paint and then, if you are lucky, watch it become something true.”

Ben looked back at me, closer. “Those few paintings, Margaret, those are the ones you paint for. When you have a painting like that, one that's alive, that's whole, then Margaret you've done it. You've found the way in.”

I looked at Ben, nodded. “OK,” I said. “Good.” I was not sure I wanted him to go on.

Which did make Ben stop. He seemed to just hear what he was saying. He smiled, remembered himself, remembered us both. Then looking at me, he asked, really meaning it, “Well but what about you, Margaret? What about you?”

I gave Ben a smile in return. But the truth was I had started to tire. And I said what I say when people I do not know well ask so what about me. “Oh Ben. Really there is not much to tell.”

Ben sat back, looked surprised. Which surprised me as well, as whatever spell he might have thought we were under seemed to have just come undone. And because Ben now looked so bewildered, then sad, I could not just leave things like that. I had not meant to sound rude or cut short the evening Ben had planned. So I rallied.

I brought up the Project, the editors and Steinem, a little about Mott Street as well. I explained Mrs. E, how people are right when they say you can't choose your neighbors.

Then I told Ben about paste-up, that that's what I did for a living. I tried to be helpful, I offered some tricks I thought he might use. “Here Ben,” I said, thinking fast. “Here's something I have learned that might come in handy.” And I explained how when inking lines into tables, I stick tape to the back of my ruler. It lifts it so when you run a pen by, the ink won't seep under and smudge.

“So Ben,” I said, “if you need a straight line in a painting sometime, I recommend you add tape to your ruler.”

Ben smiled and rallied too. He thanked me for the tip, he said he certainly would keep that in mind. And we talked then and laughed and Ben turned up the music. Nobody brought up art again. And when at ten o'clock I told him I should probably leave, we both had work in the morning, Ben just nodded and brought out my leftovers. “Come back again, Margaret,” he said, handing me the bag. “Come back again soon. Will you?”

I have. Or I did. For a while there were regular dinners. Ben would call me at work, say please come at six, and always the dinners were the same—the long leaved table, the music, the sauced and carefully arranged chickens. They were odd, formal evenings for a man on a farm. Odd, out-of-place evenings all right, dining by candles, Tchaikovsky, with the farmer's spotted pigs in their pen just outside making noises like flushing toilets.

But, as I've said, I got used to Ben's dinners. I came to see the sweet grace of them. We were like two children making believe, dressing to dine like grown-ups, talking of things that mattered. Always those nights then Ben opened his heart, always I tried listening with mine.

I have missed those lovely, strange dinners with Ben.

He shifts in the cupola, smiles. So much he would still like to tell her. About time, about them. How, given time, it could have worked out for them.

He shakes his head. But it is what they do not have now, time.

Standing, he turns for the door. Funny thing about time, he thinks. A trickster, shape shifter. A mobius, no beginning, no end. See how it twists there, bows, holds trembling, contracts, then disappears. How in an eye blink it's over.

How can something with no beginning or end be over?

He cannot answer the question.

Celeste, strangely for Celeste, has not said a word all this lunch hour. But now, in the pause that results when I say what I say about the man with the shirts, Celeste at last makes her move.

But it's not men she would like to discuss. Celeste for the time being has tired of men, she has a more pressing topic. It is Emmaline she would like now for us to consider, it is Emmaline who is most on her mind.

“I must say,” Celeste says for an opening, “I have simply had it with Emmaline.” She does not think she can take one more day of that girl's shady tricks.

She summarizes for us the behaviors. All those bloody little notes from yesterday, that doomed typo, the chair shenanigans. And then last night—well, young Emmaline had been at it again. “You cannot imagine,” Celeste tells us, “how mentally trying it's become for me.” And here Celeste gives a faint sigh and sits back. And details the latest infraction.

This morning when Celeste came into work, there on her chair—a new bloodied note from the night before. “Miss Rogers,
mum,” it began in Emmaline's shaky ghost hand. “If it would not be too much trouble, we here would like you to close the window when you leave your suite for the day. Consumptives are given to colds, you must know, and with these evenings still so nippy, we all fear we could catch our deaths.”

“It was alarming, finding that note,” Celeste says, “first thing like that in the morning. Also, I must add, annoying.” Clearly Emmaline does not have enough to do. Certainly she seems to be restless. Bored, maybe that too. Why else would she play all these tricks?

Lola agrees. “And they're not even that good anymore. Honestly, darlins', I ask you—‘catch our deaths'? Please.”

Celeste ignores Lola. She straightens in her chair, lets out a breath, and looks as though she's come to a difficult decision. “Ghost or no,” Celeste tells us, “Emmaline has been hanging on here for too long.” And for Emmaline's own diaphanous sake, she feels it's time the girl took her leave.

“Get on with her life, you mean?” Frances asks.

Celeste ignores Frances as well. “There are cedar smudge sticks, I suppose,” she offers. “Or simply pure sage. We could try something along those lines. Hang up some garlic, sprinkle some holy water, see if that discourages her any.”

Celeste stops, she is thoughtful a moment. She does not mean to sound harsh. “I believe we could think of it not as ghost riddance so much as a kind of ghost rescue. Really, we would be doing Emmaline a favor.”

We all sit at our table and nod our heads, thoughtful as well. But no one has anything to add here. We are not up on our exorcisms or the feelings of ghosts in the way that clearly Celeste is. Frances, impatient as always to move on, says well we will just
leave it to Celeste's discretion. Frances herself no longer wishes to discuss the topic of ghosts, she'd like it known.

But Celeste has still more to say. “The dead have their reasons for sticking around,” she tells us, now taking the long view. “There are reasons ghosts are here,” she says, “and not there,” vaguely waving one hand toward the window. “Research tells us in fact that over ninety percent are here for the exact same reason.”

Frances interrupts. “To terrorize and torment?”

Celeste keeps her eyes steady on Lola and me. She leans in. “To tie up loose ends.”

She relaxes and gives us a happy look at how simple really it is. “Unfinished business,” she says. “That is most ghosts' concern. And if we can figure out what Emmaline needs done, we might be able to help.”

Lola and Frances sit at the table and stare.

Celeste continues. We would not have to worry about smudge sticks, she says, if we could help Emmaline find a little closure. “It is not easy for the dead, you must know,” she says. And adds it would probably do us all good to try a little harder to understand them.

Lola and Frances give each other and then me a quick look. We all of us now know where the conversation is headed. We have been here with Celeste before. It is one of her more irritating sides, in fact, that she has appointed herself spokeswoman for the dead. That she generally sits around thinking about them. That she reads up on death and dying before bed.

Because what is disturbing really, I think, is that all her research never seems to lead anywhere much, just to more of her already vague reflections. On impermanence, for instance, and facing uncertainty together. How extinction makes life more
spacious. This is how people who think too much about death start to think, I think, and worse yet talk. And if we give her time enough today, Celeste will tell us again about awakening the spiritual warrior within. Or how death can teach us to cherish the other as we learn to cherish ourselves.

I do not now think I can take another lecture. I am myself of the opinion there are already too many who cherish themselves, we do not need death as a job aid. I look at Lola and Frances and they nod. It is as I suspected, we're agreed. Mostly we here at this table try not to think about death much at all or what it might mean for the living.