What Was Mine: & Other Stories (6 page)

When Elizabeth remembered the afternoon, late that night, in bed, it was as if she had not been a part of it. She had the sense that the day, like a very compelling movie, was something half dreamed. That there was something inevitable and romantic about the way she and Z had risen in unison and reached toward each other reflexively.

Later, Henry had told her that her hand and Z’s, clasped across the table, had reminded him of the end of a tennis match, when the winner and the loser gripped hands perfunctorily. And then he had stopped himself. What an odd thing to think of, he had said: clearly there had been no competition at all.

T
oward the end of my third marriage, when my husband and I had enough problems on our hands, the Welcome Wagon lady began to call on us. It was just a rented house—more than we could afford, too, so we were going to have to give it up before summer was over. The first time she came I told her it was an inconvenient time to talk, and that we were going to be moving, anyway. Still, she came back the next day, saying that she hoped I had a minute. That day had been hell: my husband arguing about who should get the dog (
he
brought it home, but I was the one who wanted to keep it in spite of how much shots cost), the dog running and cowering when we raised our voices, the upstairs john backed up. My husband had no idea where the plunger was, although a plunger is a pretty big thing to lose. I had to tell her that it wasn’t a good time. Not to be put off, she asked when it would be. I’m not good at putting people off. I start to feel guilty, which I know is unnecessary, but still I do. “Friday,” I told her, and I made it a point to be out when she came. My husband cooked soil at the greenhouse on Fridays and Saturdays. He wasn’t home either: just the dog, who had looked from the moment we got him as if he could use a friend. He would have been happy to hear her rap and to be let outside for a few minutes, but all that happened was that she went away.

The next week she came back. She was a tall woman, quite heavy, wearing a white poncho with black stars woven into the wool and ratty-looking fur tails. She had on a black skirt that I knew the dog would get hairs all over, and a ring on her wedding finger that looked like something Richard Burton would have bought Elizabeth Taylor. It was so large that the diamond had fallen sideways, and rested against her baby finger. She was trying to flick it straight when I opened the door.

“Come in,” I said. It had to be done sometime.

She came in and the dog dashed to greet her. He’d just had two teeth pulled, and we owed the vet for one of them. He seemed fine, though, in spite of what he’d been through the day before.

I thought I should be polite and offer her coffee, although since I’d stopped drinking it, the aroma wasn’t too pleasant to me. Naturally, she said she’d have some, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble. “What’s boiling water?” I said. Something like that.

She eyed the pictures in the side room, where I meant for us to sit. They were hand-colored engravings of trout. My husband was a fisherman. He bought them for a dollar each, from people who didn’t know any better. They were the nicest things we had.

She took off the rat-tail poncho and draped it over one of the chairs. I had to force the dog to back off from sniffing it. The sniffing would have been all right, but he was a licker, too.

“As you can probably tell, I love this community and want to serve it,” she said. She told me she had lived down the road—she pointed, as if I didn’t know where the road was—for almost twenty years. “I came here as a bride,” she said. “You know those happy days. Everything looks good to you. But this community kept on looking good.” She laughed. “Now I’m almost a dowager,” she said. She fiddled with the poncho, tapping her fingers over the stars as if they were checkers and she were debating her move.

“Things aren’t going so well with my husband and me,” I said. “As I meant to indicate, I don’t think we’re going to be here much longer.”

She looked like a child who’d dropped its toy off a bridge. She frowned and her eyes made a long sweep along the floor, seeming to focus on the corner. She probably saw the dust balls. It was no more my problem to clean than my husband’s. If it was going to be a childless marriage and I wasn’t going to be a traditional wife, then he could clean as well as I could.

I got her the coffee and had a 7-Up myself, to be polite and drink along with her. Doing that with alcohol had led to the collapse of my first marriage. My second husband no one could have been married to. He went to Vietnam and came back loony. He thought trucks on the highway would blow up if we passed them. He was given three tickets for driving too slow on an interstate. He lied, telling them that he had rheumatism in his foot and that sometimes he just couldn’t push too hard on the accelerator. Actually, he thought everything was going to burst into flames.

“I’m very sorry to hear that you’re having problems,” Betty said. Her name was Betty. She’d told me that outside, before she came in. Betty what, she didn’t say.

I lowered my eyes.

“Don’t abandon hope!” she said so loudly she startled me. I wondered if she was a Christian. A lot of those, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, came around to the apartment my second husband and I occupied.

“What I mean is, our community needs you,” she said. “Our community needs younger people to restore life to it. There used to be children on bicycles, but no more. Maybe a grandchild or two, on the weekends.”

“On the highway?” I said. She was pointing to the road again. Actually, the road was a highway.

“We had rabbits and turtles and squirrels running everywhere. The telephone company came out and put squirrel-proof lines up, and the squirrels were doing acrobatics while the men were packing up their tool kits.” She had a wide smile that showed her fillings. She seemed to be warming up to something.

“This used to be a regular stop for a traveling carnival. To this day, I’ve got stuffed bears and alligators my husband won me at the carnival. He knocked those monkeys off the shelf with that hardball”—she held her thumb and first two fingers in the air, curled and spread as far as they could go, so that they looked like a meat hook—“and he was so good at it, the man said that he didn’t think he’d ever come back to town with the carnival again. Of course, that wasn’t the reason why the carnival disappeared.”

I nodded. I was coming to understand that she was suffering too.

“There used to be two trash pickups a week,” she said. “Now it’s just Monday morning, like we don’t eat and throw things out except after the weekends. I take it to the dump. You can hire a service to come get it, but they want everything wrapped just so. They act like they’re the local post office. Have you tried to mail a package from our local post office? If they sold the supplies, I’d think all that harassment was because they wanted to make a profit selling their own goods, but all they’ve got is manila envelopes.”

I had never been in the local post office. Our mail was delivered—what there was of it. Except for Christmas, we didn’t get much mail. At Christmas, various people remembered me.

“I suppose the greenhouse where my husband works had a heyday too?” I said. I was curious. It looked like it had been built at the turn of the century. It certainly didn’t look like it had ever been anything else.

“It offered a landscaping service the year I moved in,” Betty said. “There was always a dance on the longest day of the year, out on the big lawn leading up to the greenhouse. All the almond bushes and weeping cherry trees were in flower. It was an amazing sight.” She took a sip of coffee. “You know, there are handicapped people in town,” she said. “I’m supposed to say ‘physically challenged.’ They’re not on the streets now. I think that aging made it worse. It was some spine deformity, along with funny speech and a few marbles missing.” She tapped the side of her head. “They came to the dance, a few of them,” she said. “Everyone looked out for them.” She had another sip of coffee. “They were physically challenged because their mothers slept with their own brothers, and so forth,” she said.

I had a sip of 7-Up. I knew before she said so that the world could be a terrible place.

“Why don’t you move, then?” I said. “If it’s not the way it used to be, why don’t you and your husband move?”

She said “Ha!” and threw back her head. She had a mole under her chin I hadn’t seen before. “Because of my husband,” she said. “Now you’re going to think I’m trying to sell something, the way I was telling you I suspected the post office of doing. The thing is, my husband is a marriage counselor, and he works out of our home. It’s very centrally located, and he’s very much in demand. The patients don’t want to drive all over kingdom come to find him.” She took another sip of coffee. “My husband would never move,” she said. Then, as if struck by sudden inspiration, she picked up the bag she’d brought with her and put it on her lap. “If you and your husband did want his services, he’s the only marriage counselor in the book,” she said. “I’m not here to advocate his services, but since it came up in conversation, I thought I’d be forthcoming. When he and I have troubles, he irons them right out. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m your Welcome Wagon lady, and I have some things for you. We’ll just be optimistic and say that you’re staying in our fine community.”

She was a different person when she next started to talk. Her voice rose an octave higher, and her chin strained as if lifting to meet it. First she gave me a trowel. It was green metal, quite nice, with a wooden handle. Narrower than most trowels. It was from the greenhouse where my husband worked. A special trowel to plant bulbs.

She kept eye contact with me, reaching into the bag without looking down. She probably had the things in a particular order, because as she was speaking she produced each thing she began to talk about.

First I got the trowel, then a wide-tooth comb from the local hairstylist. Then Betty took out a golf ball and held it close to my face. “Tell me where that came from,” she said.

I moved my head back about a foot so I could focus. It was a white golf ball. I craned my neck to look around to the other side.

“It doesn’t say anything,” I said.

She yanked it back as fast as a child when another child shows interest in its toy. She examined it, held close to her chest.

“Imagine that!” she hooted. “All these years of giving away Willy Wyler Putt-Putt balls, and this one doesn’t bear the name!”

She put it on the table and continued. I reached out and played with it like a worry stone as she continued.

“A box of bonbons is yours from the local market,” she said, feeling in the bag. “It can be claimed when you purchase groceries in the amount of ten dollars.” She continued to feel around in the bag. “I mean, the bonbons aren’t here, but there’s a coupon—a coupon that’s rather thick, like cardboard.” She gave up feeling around and looked into the bag. “Oh no!” she said, pulling out a slip of pink paper. “Look at that!” she said. “I know just what happened. I told my husband about the parking ticket I got, and I said that it was in my bag, and he must have reached in and left the ticket there and removed the coupon for bonbons!” She shook her head from side to side. Tears had started to well up in her eyes. “Imagine taking the wrong piece of paper!
That’ll
show you how helpful men are when they mean to help you out!”

Wiping a tear away with her wrist, she continued to shake her head as she spoke. Then she gave me a map of the community, provided by the local hardware store. There was a smudge of blue eye shadow on her arm. It looked like a dangerously bulging vein.

As she unrolled the map, I saw that it was a blank piece of paper. She had a huge smile on her face as she peered over the top of it. From my face, though, she could tell that something was wrong. She looked down and saw that there was nothing on the map. She jumped out of the chair, she was so surprised.

“It can only be one thing,” she said. “When they mail me the tube, there’s a protective wrapper around the maps. I can’t blame this one on my husband. I have to say that in all my years of doing this, this is the stupidest mistake I’ve ever made.”

I heard the chair crack. Just a small sound, but it meant that the glue my husband used hadn’t worked. I held my breath. As she started to stand, one of the legs bent under, and the chair went down. She staggered, but caught her balance on the chest between the windows. The chest had come with the house. Never in my life had I had money for a cherry-wood chest. The dog had run into the room when the commotion started, and he was nosing the fur on her poncho when I grabbed it off the floor.

“It’s certainly not our day,” I said. I started to say how sorry I was about the chair, but suddenly she was crying, carrying on about how the community would never again be the wonderful place it once had been. She had smeared the makeup above one eye earlier, and then she rubbed the other one, so that she looked like a clown peering out through rings of soot. She was trying to get herself together, but for a few seconds it looked like a losing battle. I saw as she patted her hair that she was wearing a fall. It had come partially unfastened as she stumbled across the room.