Ordinary Life: Stories

by Elizabeth Berg

  They ordered cheeseburgers, onion rings, and chocolate shakes. They were being bad together, and it was fun. She knew every pair of socks he owned. They ate routinely from each other’s plate. They had made two children together, astonishing cellular miracles, the best things in their lives—they had done this together. George had been there when each girl had been born, had seen them recoil at the sudden brightness of life, had heard them wail with tiny, trembling jaws, had seen their chests rise evenly as they breathed alone for the first time. But even then, Phyllis thought, even then there was this missing of each other. George hadn’t cried, not even the first time. He’d looked embarrassed; and though he sat next to her it was as though the essence of himself was across the room, staring out the window. Phyllis had hidden the few tears she’d shed, kissed George on the cheek as he left, reminded him to let the dog out. It was after he was gone that she’d unwrapped the baby. She’d caressed the tightly clenched fists, the apricot cheeks. She’d traced the whorl of hair at the back of her daughter’s head, watched the rhythm of her heartbeat in the soft spot. “I am your mother,” she’d said. And then she cried freely, happily, staring in grateful disbelief at the size of the baby’s toes.

  Recently Phyllis had had a brief affair. All the time, the man said things to her like this: “I want your presence. I want your being. I want you to brush up against me in the hall in the house where we live.” He told her her collarbones were beautiful; he kissed the gums above her teeth, telling her he wanted to be everywhere on her. He read poetry to her, fed her slices of fresh fruit. Her love for him was huge, frightening, and invigorating, but she quit the affair for the way her children looked asleep, and for the touching hole in George’s underwear that she found on the day she was going to tell him she wanted out. But she missed that man. Sometimes his memory would spear her, and she would need to take a deep breath to keep on.

  George was making noise with his straw. She looked at him, wondered if he had ever had a lover. She could ask him. But if she asked him, he would ask her, and then what? Their relationship was like a complicated arrangement of pickup sticks. Who wanted to go first? It was too dangerous.

  Still, she wanted something. She said, “Know what I read the other day? That there was this mystery out in the country: A man found a house sparrow, decapitated. Then there were four more found, all by other people. Everyone was really upset, and they called ornithologists and everything, but no one could explain it. Then some guy saw one day what was happening: a grackle did it—just pecked at the necks of the sparrows until their heads came off.”

  George pushed away his plate. “Jesus.”

  She sighed, leaned forward. “Oh, I’m sorry. I just mean, my God, isn’t it incredible? Why do you think he did that?”

  “Well, he cracked up. I suppose birds do that, too.”

  “But it’s so unsettling if birds go crazy, too. It makes everything so untrustworthy.”

  “Everything is untrustworthy. Anything can happen, at any time.” He seemed so cold saying this. She wondered what he was telling her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean what do I mean?” He signaled for the check. “The world is imperfect, Phyllis. You always forget.”

  They got back into the car. “Do the license plate thing with me,” Phyllis said. She wanted to know.

  George snorted lightly, then pointed to a black Saab. “Okay, T-I-N. Telling Is Nothing.” Time Is Now, she thought. “F-N-W,” he pointed to next. “First, Never Whine.” Find New Woman, she thought.

  He got back onto the freeway, put on the radio, turned the volume low. “Did you see what Rach was studying last night? About stars. She wants a telescope. I think we’ll get her one.”

  “Don’t you think they’re too expensive?”

  “Just a little one, used.”

  “Okay.” She stared out the window, bit at her lip. Then she turned off the radio and said, “You know, Rachel told me about this one kind of star, a white dwarf. It collapses inward.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  You don’t know, she thought. Oh, no you don’t. “I feel like that star, George.” There. She’d said it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I feel like I’m collapsing inward. Like the star.”

  “Jesus, Phyllis! Can’t we ever just have a good time?”

  She examined her fingernails, held her breath. Here was the moment. She thought of her lover standing in the middle of his kitchen in his flannel shirt and brown corduroy pants, stroking her hair and telling her she didn’t even know how beautiful she was. Then she thought of Rachel reading about the stars, sighing contentedly before sleep, both of her parents in the room right next to hers.

  “Where do you think we could get a telescope?” she asked.

  “I don’t know—we’ll look in the paper, I guess.”

  A Porsche passed them, going fast. She saw the plate before it roared ahead. It was a funny one, a triple letter. NNN 733. Never, Never, Never, she thought, aching. “Hey, look,” George said. “No News Nearing.”

  “Right,” she said. She thought of the star being polite, sparing the universe the wreckage of its destruction. She thought of the grackle, its brain off-kilter, its own kind of destruction no better understood. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.

  George cleared his throat. “Phyllis?”

  “What?”

  “Please don’t leave me.”

  She opened her eyes. He was staring straight ahead, immobile. She said nothing for a while, then wondered if she’d heard him correctly. “What did you say, George?”

  “I asked you not to leave me.”

  “Well, I … I’m not going to.”

  “I know it’s hard for you,” he said.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  She turned to face him. “You know, George, so much would be helped if you’d just talk to me.”

  “Well. Men don’t talk.”

  “Some men do.”

  He was quiet then. His face hardened, the air in the space between them seemed to change, and she understood that he knew. She made a small gesture with her hand toward him. “I’m sorry, George. It’s over, you know.”

  “I know. For a while now.”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t see any point in discussing it, Phyllis. These things happen.”

  She nodded, looked out the window. She saw a huge field of flowers. They were tall, an impossibly beautiful purple color. They grew straight toward the sun, sure of themselves. Phyllis thought about saying she wanted to stop and pick a bouquet for their room, but she knew George would object. Let’s just get there. But then, at that moment, he pulled over, got out of the car, and went into the field. He picked several flowers, handed them to her through her open window with a shy flourish. “Here,” he said. His feet were sinking slowly in the black mud.

  He climbed into the car and started driving again. He wouldn’t look at her. Phyllis stared into the center of one of the flowers. There were four fragile filaments, arching up, leaning forward, expectant. She felt her eyes fill with tears and she closed her lids against them.

  “I made this snow tunnel once,” George said.

  She looked at him. “Pardon?”

  “I said I made this snow tunnel once. The winter I turned eleven, it snowed about three feet. Alan Hirschfelt and I dug this really long tunnel in my backyard. It was freezing out—our moms made us wear those dopey hats with earflaps and chin straps and we were mad as hell about it. It took us hours to make that tunnel. We met in the middle just before it got dark. The snow looked blue. We were so excited when we were done—no breaks, just one long, perfect tunnel. We met right in the middle.”

  “So what did you do?” Phyllis asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean when you were finished, what did you do?”

  “Why, we shook hands. I remember that. We shook hands and then we went home.”

&n
bsp; “Oh,” Phyllis said. She took in a breath. “I appreciate your telling me that, George. I like those kinds of stories very much.”

  “Okay.” He turned the radio on, and she closed her eyes again. When she felt his hand over hers, she pushed her fingers up to slide between his. She had memorized his knuckles long ago, but the feeling now was quite new—full of hope, she realized, and full, too, of the exquisite relief of forgiveness.

  The Matchmaker

  The summer I turned eleven, I played matchmaker. I wanted Anna Gunther, the seventy-five-year-old woman to whom I tried to teach English, and Artie Miller, the seventy-six-year-old man who lived down the street, to fall in love. My intentions were not entirely philanthropic. If Anna and Artie worked, I thought I might learn enough about love to garner the affections of Billy Croucher, in whom I was newly and greatly interested. He was a class ahead of me in school, a fine baseball player, and indisputably handsome. He never paid any attention to me, though I played baseball nearly as well as he, but I believed that at any moment something would break through inside him, and he would see me clear. Then we would sit together on the bus. The notion of his hand resting on the seat near mine was enough to alter my breathing pattern.

  Right after school was out, I got my Junior Scientist of America card in the mail. I wrapped it in Saran wrap and put it in a prominent place in my red plastic wallet. Then I ventured forth into the natural world, a recognized member of the scientific community at last, looking for important work. Sometimes I cracked open rocks, searching for elaborate crystal patterns. Sometimes I followed insects—secretly, I thought—to find out what they really did. Mostly, I gathered things to stare at under my microscope. The best things were always specimens from inside, though: salt crystals, sugar crystals, a hair from my head. Often I would look quickly from the eyepiece to the object on the slide, to make sure nobody was fooling me. How could those translucent, multidimensional blocks I saw in the microscope really be the same sugar I so casually sprinkled on my oatmeal?

  In time, I grew tired of playing scientist. My best friend, Carol Conroy (who was my best friend mostly because she was an only child and therefore fascinating to me), had gone to Seattle on vacation. My other friend, the untidily overweight Kathy O’Connor, was not speaking to me due to the seriousness of our last argument, which had to do with whether or not playing waitress was babyish.

  Anna Gunther came to me at exactly the right time: I needed a new project and a new friend. I first saw her when I emerged from some bushes where I’d been trying to catch a baby rabbit. He had eluded me, and I was hot and frustrated. She was sitting on the back porch of her house wearing a print sundress, sandals with short black socks, and a kerchief on her head.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She smiled and nodded.

  “I almost caught a baby rabbit,” I said.

  Again she smiled and nodded. I came in for a closer view. “You live there?” I asked.

  She smiled yet again, and made some motion that indicated that she didn’t understand me. I noticed her legs were unshaven. “No English?” I asked.

  She nodded happily. “No English. No English.”

  I grew very excited. I’d never met anyone who didn’t speak English before. I licked my lips and stood up straighter. I pointed to myself. “Sarah,” I said. And then again, “Sarah.”

  “Sarah,” she repeated, and then, pointing to herself, she said, “Anna.”

  “Anna,” I said, and she beamed.

  This was going very well, I thought. “I teach you English?” I asked, and she stared blankly at me. I wondered how to pantomime “teach.” We studied each other in friendly expectation. Then I picked up a rock. “Rock,” I said, pointing to it.

  “Rock,” she answered seriously.

  “Yes!” I said, and picked up a stick.

  We went on that way for some time. It never occurred to me that she might not want to be doing this. At one point, a younger woman came to the door and spoke in German to Anna. Then she looked at me and said, “Hello. You’re teaching my mother English?”

  I blushed. “Well …”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “My mother just came here from Stuttgart a week ago—she doesn’t know any English. And she loves children.”

  She spoke German to her mother again, and Anna nodded enthusiastically. I’m hired, I thought.

  I came over to Anna’s back porch each afternoon. She would be waiting for me with a plate of cookies. We would have a little treat together, and then commence our lesson of the day. I thought it was important for Anna to learn animals, because I liked them. I brought over a huge volume depicting wildlife, and we would look at the pictures together. “Tiger,” I would say, pointing. “Boa constrictor.” Sometimes she would tell me the names of the animals in German, and when I haltingly repeated them back, she would nod approvingly.

  One day as I was preparing to go to Anna’s, I noticed that my turtle was looking sickly. I’d forgotten to feed him the day before, and I wasn’t sure I’d remembered the day before that, either. In addition to that, his water had nearly all evaporated. I felt terrible. I filled his bowl with fresh water and gave him a generous serving of assorted fly parts, and brought him with me to Anna’s.

  She was properly concerned when I managed to communicate that the turtle was sick. (This I had done by making retching sounds while pointing to the turtle.) She picked him up and laid him gently on her skirt and stroked his tiny head on the diamond-shaped depression between his eyes. If turtles sigh, he did then. She spoke a little German to him, soft, incomprehensible words of comfort, and put him back by his plastic palm tree. Then she turned her attention to me to begin learning the names of wildflowers.

  The next morning, I found the turtle dead. I cried about it to my mother, who was kind enough to not point out that it was all my fault, and she gave me a velvet-lined jewelry box to be the turtle’s casket. I put him in the box, gave him a kiss good-bye, and took him outside to bury him. It seemed to me that a turtle who had been so much abused in life ought to be buried in a magnificent place as compensation. The best place I knew was the gully, a large valley near my house where I would often play. The grass was eye high there, and rich smelling. There was a stream that ran through it, with water so clear it was almost invisible, and with smooth stones and patches of moss all along the banks. I thought it would be good to have the turtle overlook the stream, to be high up on a hill with the sunshine while the water ran steadily below. I found a rock suitable for digging and had just begun when I was suddenly overwhelmed with grief. I dropped the rock and covered my face with my hands. I wasn’t done with that turtle—why did he have to die? Did he hurt when he died? Did he hold a grudge against me? When he got to heaven and God asked him how it had gone, would he say, “Oh, it was fine until Sarah Harris starved me to death”?

  “Sarah Harris?” God would say.

  Oh, it was terrible. Pain and neglect were in the world, and suffering, but when it was your fault … I wept.

  I was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing his throat. I looked up to see an older man wearing corduroy pants, a blue shirt, and a cardigan sweater. He had slippers on, too, the kind my dad wore.

  “Lose a pet?” he asked.

  I nodded miserably.

  “What kind?”

  “A turtle,” I said. “He was from the dime store.”

  The man nodded and began helping me dig. “I used to have a turtle,” he said, and I thought that he sounded sad. This seemed a fitting enough tribute for a turtle, to have two people thinking sorrowful and kind thoughts about him at the same time, one even an adult, and I began to feel better.

  “You live here?” I asked the man.

  “About half a block down the street from you.”

  I was surprised. “I’ve never seen you.”

  “My wife was sick for a long time,” he said. “I couldn’t get out much—busy taking care of her.”

  “Is she okay now?”

 
; “She died.”

  My eyes widened. A turtle was one thing, but a person! “Oh!” I said. “That’s sad.”

  He looked down at me and smiled. “We had a good life together,” he said.

  I patted the turtle’s grave. “My grandpa died,” I said. “But I didn’t know him. He was seventy-six.”

  “So am I,” the man said.

  I felt extremely awkward. “My other grandpa is eighty,” I said. “He’s still alive.”

  “What’s your name?” the man asked. I told him and asked him his. “Artie Miller,” he said, and shook my hand. It made me feel very grown-up, and I decided I liked him.

  “Would you like to meet a woman your age?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “She doesn’t speak English. She lives on the block next to ours.”

  “Maybe another time. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I watched him go.

  “Hearts,” I said to Anna the next afternoon. I had an Archie comic book and I was showing Anna the hearts that came out of Betty when she watched Archie walk by. Archie didn’t even notice Betty, besotted the way he was with the raven-haired Veronica.

  “Hearts,” Anna said dutifully.

  I pointed to my chest. “My heart,” I said.

  Anna pointed to her ample bosom. “My-heart,” she said.

  “Yes. Very good,” I said, and then rose, indicating a transition. I pointed again to my chest, saying, “Heart?” Then I fluttered my eyelashes and sighed and said, “Love.”

  Anna seemed not to understand me.

  I embraced the air, closed my eyes, and made loud kissing sounds. Then I opened my eyes and said in a dreamy voice, “Loooovvvve.”

  “Acht!” she said. “Love! Ja!”

  Her face softened. She knew what I meant. That was enough of that for today. It never paid to rush a fragile thing. I pulled a pile of my favorite baseball cards from my jeans pocket and sat beside her. “Minnesota Twins,” I said.

  Anna selected a chocolate cookie from the plate between us. “Minn-ah-so-ta,” she said carefully, and took a bite. Then, “Twins!” she said triumphantly.