The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (43 page)

Peggy nursed a secret hurt: what Bill said to her in a rage right before he dumped her at the Miramar: “If you can’t wait more than five minutes, why should I bother to come back,” and her riposte: “Don’t bother,” so when Marge yelled, “I think I hear something,” she had to run to the edge of the clearing with the rest of them; at the first sound they would light the flares. She heard herself calling aloud, thinking if anything happened to Bill it would be her fault, for willing it, and that if she spread her arms and cried, “They’re coming,” it might bring them.

She discovered that the days were exquisitely organized around their waiting; no one sunned or played cards or read for too long in any one day because it would distort the schedule; they had to keep the division between the segments because it made the hours keep marching. Although fights were a constant, no quarrel could be too violent to preclude a reconciliation because they had to continue together, even as they had to silence any suggestion that even one of them might be disappointed; when the men came back they were all coming, down to the last one. Unless this was so, there was no way for the women to live together.

Pam and Marge organized a softball team, mostly thick-waisted “girls” from their own age group. They got Peggy to play, and after some consideration Donna joined them.

“Wait till you meet Dave,” Marge said, sprawling in the grass in the outfield. “I would see him at the end of the walk in his uniform and that was when I loved him most. He’ll never change.”

“Everybody changes,” Donna said gently.

“Not my Dave.”

“Now, Bill …” Peggy began, but when she tried to think of Bill there was a blur and what she remembered was not what he looked like but what she wanted him to look like because she had always been bothered by the hair growing in his nostrils, his wide Mongol cheekbones, covered by too much flesh, so she recomposed his face to her liking:
If I can’t have what I had, then at least let me make it what I want
. “Bill looks like something out of the movies.”

Somebody decided it would be a good idea to have bonfires ready; if the planes should come by daylight they would see the smoke columns. Every few weeks the women could rebuild the heaps of firewood, taking out anything that looked wet or rotten. Bernice organized a duplicate bridge tournament. Marva and some of the younger girls meditated for half an hour before breakfast and again before supper and, grudgingly, asked Peggy to join them.

She and Peggy were the first at the chaises one bright morning and they exchanged stories, grumbling about being stuck with all these old biddies, no better off than anybody else.

“I don’t know,” Marva was saying, “at least the meals come regular. I got sick of granola.”

Peggy said, “I never had a tan like this before.”

“But they act like we’re going to be here forever.” Marva looked at Marge, wobbling out on wedgies. “It’s obscene.”

Peggy said bravely, “We’re not like them.”

“We’ll never be like them.”

“We just have to hang in here for the time being.” Peggy settled herself, feeling the sun on her belly. “For the time being we’re in the same boat.”

Elise seemed especially drawn to Peggy; she would pat the chaise next to her and wait for Peggy to join her. Then she would put the name, Gailliard, into the air between them and sit contemplating it, assuming that Peggy shared some of the same feelings. She told herself Peggy was young enough to be her daughter but that was a lie; she could be Peggy’s grandmother, and knew it. Still it seemed important to her to keep the pretense of youth, even as it was important to keep herself exquisitely groomed and to greet each morning with the same generous smile, the same air of hope because to the others she was a fixed point, which they could sight from, and until she flagged they would not waver. She did her best to suspend Peggy in that same network of waiting, to keep her safe along with the rest.

“You ought to talk to Donna,” she said, “I think you have a lot in common.”

“I’m afraid of her because she seems so sad.”

“You could learn from her,” Elise said. “She keeps herself well.”

Peggy knew what Elise meant. Pam and Marge and their group played records over and over and mooned and dithered like a bunch of girls but Donna kept her dignity, fixed in a purity of waiting which Elise would admire because it resembled her own. There was no way for Peggy to explain that she and Bill had parted in anger, that she was pledged to wait but she had already jeopardized everything she was waiting for, that in her failure of will she might already have wished Bill to his death.

Please bring him back
, she thought.
I would give anything to have him back
. By the time she thought this she had already been there longer than she realized; time blurred, and as she sent out her wish she heard the distant drumming of engines and the sky darkened with planes returning, the message running ahead of them, singing in the air at the Miramar, hanging before them as clearly as anything in writing:

I’M BACK

so that Peggy had to hide her head and rock with anxiety and it was Donna who was the first to acknowledge it, addressing the sky gently, her voice soft with several lifetimes of regret.

She said, so nobody else heard her: “I’m afraid it’s too late.”

Elise found her hands fluttering about her face and her loins weak and her head buzzing in panic. Even with her eyes closed she was aware of Gailliard shimmering before her, beautiful and unscathed, and she pulled a towel up to cover her, murmuring, “He’ll see me, he’ll
see
me,” because she knew that he
would come to her with his beauty preserved at the moment when his life went out like a spark and she was well past seventy now, beautifully groomed but old, wrinkled, with all her systems crumbling, diminished even further by his relentless beauty, and if he recognized her at all he would say, You’re so
old
. She pulled the towel closer, like a shroud, whispering, “Please don’t let him see me.”

HONEY, IT’S ME

(Donna murmured, “There’s nothing left here.”)

“You bastard, wasting me like this, while you stayed young.” Bernice went to her room and pulled the curtains and slammed the door.

Marge was ablaze with love, and she sang, or prayed: Dave, let me keep you out there, perfect and unchanged. If you come back you will have a beer belly, just like me, you will have gotten gray. As she sang, or prayed, she imagined she heard him responding: How could I, I’ve been dead, and she said, aloud, “Dave, let me keep you the way I thought you were.”

DON’T YOU HEAR ME

(In the tower, the oldest lady turned milky eyes to the ceiling; she could no longer speak but she made herself understood:
It was all used up by waiting
.)

Peggy cowered; they were supposed to light the flares or something—set off fires. Remembering the story of the monkey’s paw she thought her last wish had come true and that Bill was struggling out of some distant heap of wreckage at this very minute, and he would be mangled, dreadful, dragging toward her …

“The meals aren’t bad,” Marva was saying, doing her best to override the thunder of the engines; the sky above was black now but she pushed on, “And Ben, he never really gave a damn.” Shrugging as if to brush aside the shadows of the wings, she said, “Hey, Peg, do you hear anything?”

… either that or he would try and yank her away from this place that she loved just to go on making her unhappy. He would be Enoch Arden, at the window, and she would turn to face him: Oh, it’s you.

“No,” Peggy said firmly, as the planes passed over, “I don’t hear anything.”

—
Other Stories and: The Attack of the Giant Baby
, 1981

Sisohpromatem

I, Joseph Bug, awoke one morning to find that I had become an enormous human. I lay under the washbasin in the furnished room which heretofore had been my kingdom, an unbounded world, and saw first that the bottom of the washbasin dripped only a few inches above my face and that from where I lay I could see all four walls of the room.

Then I realized I was lying on my back. At first I thought I would die there unless someone came and nudged me over, and then, as I began kicking my legs, I discovered that the forelegs clung to the edge of the washbasin and with a certain amount of manipulation I would be able to regain my belly. Even then I hoped that once turned, so, I would be able to crawl away and lose myself in the woodwork that I loved.

As you must have gathered, I had not yet grasped the enormity of my plight. So eager was I to regain my legs that I grappled with the basin, scrambling and then losing purchase, falling back at last to rest.

It was only then, as I lay with these new, pink legs sprawled about me, that I understood how repulsive I had become. The new appendages were huge and disgustingly pink, bloated like night crawlers, and they were only four in number. My back, which pressed against the rotting floorboards, was uncommonly tender. Gone was my crowning beauty; gone was the brave carapace which had glittered in the dim light, protecting me from the thousand perils that threaten a young roach. Gone were my brilliant antennae and the excellent legs which supported my waist. In place of a body which moved like quicksilver I was left with a series of huge mounds and excrescences; my quick form had been replaced by an untidy, ungainly, hideous mound of flesh.

I would have despaired then, had it not been for the instinct stronger than reason which told me that I must struggle to regain my belly, for only then would the world look right to me.

Gathering all my strength, I grappled with the washbasin again, thinking longingly of the slime which once I had gloried in, knowing that never again would I frolic in those pipes. Once again I was reminded of those revels, the races in the cracks around the bottom of the toilet, our gallant disregard
for the pellets put down by the room’s human occupant, the pride one felt in escaping a clumsy human foot. And because I was, after all, an insect, I drew myself together and attempted to regain my feet. Using my strange forelegs I embraced the washbasin, pulling myself up until my upper half rested upon it, inadvertently standing as I now remembered that humans did, coming abreast of a reflecting surface, and so inadvertently into what I would take to be my face.

I screamed for a full minute, so overcome by tremors that I fell to what I know must have been my knees, pressing my new face against the cold porcelain. Trembling, I crumpled, noticing in transit that I bent now in several directions, most notably at the waist. Instinct guided me so that I fell in a series of stages, bending and folding and coming to rest at last on my belly, and the simple fact of lying as the gods intended gave me some small cheer.

Still I might have died then, of simple horror, if a new hope had not presented itself. As I lay with my head under the washbasin I was aware of a small progress going on in the baseboard near my head. Even though my ears had been sadly dulled I could hear them coming—bold Hugo and grumbling Arnold, with Sarah and Steve and Gloria chittering behind. They must have been drawn by my cries—surely they were coming to rescue me.

Arnold came first, looking brightly from the murk beneath the baseboard. Because I could not interpret his expression I lay silent, waiting to see what would come. Hugo pushed up beside him, studying my left elbow, and the others came out, rank on rank, looking at me and talking among themselves. They looked so familiar, all those beloved faces, so concerned that I was sure they had come to help me and so, speaking softly so as not to flatten them with my huge voice, I said:

“Hugo. Arnold. Thank heaven you have come.”

But they didn’t answer. Instead they bowed their heads together, antennae intertwining, and although I could not make out what they were saying I was sure they were talking about me as they would never talk in my presence if I were myself again.

Pained by this, I turned at last to Gloria, who had been close to me in the way of a cockroach with another cockroach, and because she was not chattering with the rest but instead looked at me with a certain concentrated expression, I whispered, full of longing:

“Gloria, surely
you
will … “

Gloria laid an egg.

Before I could help myself, I had begun to weep. Now this itself was a new
experience, and so fascinated was I by the sensation, by the interesting taste of the liquid I excreted, that I forgot for a minute about the little delegation along the baseboard.