Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes)

by Lorna Landvik

  SAM’S ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN SCIENCE (especially last year, when Elise sat ahead of him in class), and he thinks of Shelly as an experiment. How can a person be in such a bad mood all the time? What can he do to get to her crack a smile? Is she capable of laughing, and if so, could he make her?

  “What have we here?” asks Mitch as Sam stands at the break room counter, shoving a chocolate donut in his mouth.

  Sam swallows, hard, the wad of dough like an orange squeezing through a drainpipe.

  “I, uh, I just brought these in for whoever wants one,” he says when he can talk. He doesn’t add, “in honor of me working here a whole month,” which was his impetus.

  “It sure looks better than what Ellie brings in,” says Mitch, perusing the contents of the box. “Did you try one of those god-awful oatmeal raisin cookies she brought in yesterday? Oatmeal gravel’s more like it.”

  He takes a shiny glazed donut and sinks his teeth into it.

  “Hi, honey,” says Susan, striding into the break room. “Uh, Sam.” Her amendment is quick but not quick enough to erase the flush that’s rising on her son’s neck. He’s told her, more than once, that in the office she is not to call him anything but Sam.

  “Shelly told me you were here, and with donuts—how nice!” She studies the contents of the open bakery box but doesn’t take anything.

  “Is Eldridge here yet?” asks Mitch, wiping sugar off his mouth, and Susan, pouring herself a cup of coffee shakes her head.

  “Listen, Sam, do you mind working in Haze’s office for a while? We’ve got a meeting in the conference room.”

  Sam shrugs. “Sure.”

  “You know the drill—get a file and start reading.”

  “Will do,” says Sam, and although he wants to take another donut with him, he doesn’t, and by the time he’s sitting in Haze’s office, the good mood brought on his bike ride and buying treats for his office mates (with his own money!) has deflated from a soufflé into something hard and burnt.

  Whenever Sam stays with his dad, whose borrowed condo is only blocks away from the office, he rides his bike to work. It makes him feel self-sufficient and not like such a load. Last night, his dad had slapped Sam’s belly with the back of his hand and said, “Guess you don’t need your own inner tube down at the lake!” Sam thinks he was trying to be funny; he used to be funny, but since his parents split up, his dad’s jokes make Sam cringe more than they make him laugh. For instance, jokes about his friend Mac.

  “I think the lesson here,” Phil has told his son, “is to go into medical equipment sales. Mac was never the brightest bulb in the socket, but man, has he done well for himself! And all from selling defibrillators!”

  “Real nice,” Sam had thought; after all it’s easygoing Mac who’s let his dad—and occasionally Sam himself—stay in his three-bedroom condo.

  Sam had e-mailed Jack about their dad being a jerk and had been disappointed in his brother’s short (as usual) response: “He’s going through a lot. Don’t make it worse for him!” He then texted/didn’t send Elise: “DAD = A-HOLE.” Not that he’s had any deep conversations about family (or about anything) with her, but he knows her dad still lives with Elise, her mom, and two younger brothers and didn’t have a stupid affair with another woman, a stupid affair that he couldn’t even keep secret and wound up ripping their family to shreds. Not that his mother is perfect—not by a long shot—but he could never picture her getting her teeth cleaned by a young dude and thinking, Oh yeah, he’s worth messing up my whole family for.

  Pressing his fingers against his closed eyes, Sam shakes his head fiercely, like a wet dog trying to dry itself. His aim is to throw off all the crappy thoughts that get clogged up in his brain, that make him feel either sad or crazy, that make him want to eat a second, third, or fourth donut. He sighs and drums his fingers on the file folder he’s supposed to open and whose contents he’s supposed to read. He doesn’t know why, but he feels all jangly, like everything’s revved up inside. He opens the narrow drawer in the middle of Haze’s desk and examines the neat compartments of the plastic organizer filled with paper clips, staples, pens, and rubber bands. He shuts the drawer, opens it, shuts it, opens it, and then, leaning back in the reclining office chair, he pulls the drawer out as far as he can.

  In the back of the drawer, there are envelopes, stamps, a copy of Computers for Dummies, and a small round box painted with flowers. In sixth-grade art, they had had a two-week session on rosemaling, the Norwegian decorative painting, and he learned (sort of) how to paint those kinds of flowers.

  Looking across the table at his friend Jacob’s sloppy work, he had thought, “He’s a rose-mauler,” and even as he was pleased with his wordplay, he was more pleased when the teacher complimented his own precise brush strokes.

  Sam twists the lid open, hoping to find candy. M&M’s would be nice, or maybe Hot Tamales. But inside the box, there is nothing but cotton batting and on top of that, a key.

  Two rows of drawers flank the desk’s middle drawer, but only the top ones on the right and left sides have keyholes, and this key fits in neither.

  Leaning back in the chair again, he surveys the room, wondering if there might be a safe behind the framed newspaper picture of Haze accepting an award, or behind the weird (or would his art teacher say “impressionistic”?) painting of maple trees, or behind the framed newspaper picture of Haze and some guy shaking hands (Sam doesn’t recognize Lance LeRoi, star of the 1960s television hit show Rowdy O’Doul, Cowhand).

  “Hey, Sam!”

  Startled, the boy lurches up in the reclining chair.

  “Caroline . . . hi.”

  The young woman smiles, and Sam’s body feels like it’s opening in response to that generous smile.

  “So you’re working in Haze’s office today, huh?”

  Sam bobs his head.

  “Enjoy it—the light’s a lot better here than in the conference room, which is where I’m supposed to be. Bye!”

  “Bye,” Sam answers, feeling his face heat up. He stares for a long time at the space Caroline had occupied, and sighing, he opens the file on the desk and begins reading columns.

  September 15, 1969

  When we were eleven, my friend Eunice and I were getting on the Ferris wheel at the Mountrail County Fair, and the man who loaded people on and off the cars was a Negro. He was the first Negro I had ever seen, and I was struck by how dark his skin was and how white his teeth were, whiter even than those of my brother’s best friend, Eddie.

  “He scares me,” said Eunice as our car climbed slowly in a creaky arc.

  “Why?” I asked, surprised. The carny who worked the ring toss booth, the one with the scar that crawled up his face, crinkling up the corner of his eyelid—now that guy was scary. This one was nice and friendly and had told us to enjoy the view.

  “Because most Negroes are criminals,” she said, a little tsk in her voice.

  After the ride, I thanked the carney profusely when he lifted the bar and set us free, and as we walked into the small midway, I turned left when my friend turned right.

  “Haze!” she said. “Come on! The cotton candy’s this way!”

  I wanted to keep walking left, toward the little tent with the flea-bitten circus ponies, toward the fun house with mirrors that made you look either two or ten feet tall, past the dirt parking lot, and into the dark night. Eunice lived on a farm, and I was spending the night at her house; her parents were going to pick us up by the bandstand at nine, and where did I want to go anyway?

  My thoughts were all a jumble: Why would my friend—a kind and generous girl—say such a thing?

  A boy in my class had gotten a lecture from our teacher about name-calling and generalizations after claiming “all girls are dumb.” (This he had the nerve to say after Ella Lundberg knocked him out of a spelling bee round.) What would my teacher say to Eunice? I said nothing, but followed her to the cotton candy stand, and by the time we’d finished eating the sticky spun sugar off our pap
er cones, it was on to the next ride, the next thrill.

  I’m remembering this on the sixth anniversary of the day those little girls were killed by that bomb in Birmingham. Killed walking into an assembly in their church basement. Killed by men who no doubt heard things like my friend and the boy in my class said, heard them over and over and believed them. That the Ku Klux Klan is full of grown men who wreak such hatred and destruction while hiding under sheets outrages and saddens me in a deep, soul-weary way. While it seems many of them are sick and fevered with hate, I’d bet there are others who just go along because they don’t know how to stand up, because they’re afraid, because it seemed easier to just get the cotton candy.

  On this day, I’m thinking of my Sunday-best dresses my mother sewed for me, the ones she hand-smocked or trimmed with lace, and I imagine those four little girls in their flouncy skirts and shiny shoes, whose mothers had tied their sashes and combed their hair, and promised them an extra piece of cobbler if they paid attention during the sermon.

  Sam takes a deep breath. His American History class had a whole unit on civil rights, and he remembered reading about that church bombing, but Haze’s words make him feel as if it just happened. He unfastens the paper clip securing a stack of readers’ letters. Most of them thank the paper for publishing the column, including Harlan Dodd, his nutzoid neighbor who apparently took a while to become a nut.

  To the Editor:

  Haze Evans’s words make me think. And right now I’m thinking that as much we have to be proud of to be Americans, we also have to acknowledge our shameful side. My little niece sang with the Cherub Choir this past Sunday. About fifteen little tykes standing in front of the church singing “Children of the Heavenly Father.” Cute as all get out. And now to think of that same scene, but imagining an explosion bursting through the air, silencing the organ and those little voices . . . well, you wouldn’t ever imagine such a thing. And yet those people down in Birmingham didn’t imagine it—they lived it. My heart is heavy.

  —Harlan Dodd

  What happened to the guy who could write a letter like this, Sam thinks, that would turn him into the complete tool he was now? He reads through the letters and then comes across one that shakes him even more than Mr. Dodd’s did.

  To the Editor:

  I usually enjoy Haze Evans’s columns, but this one made me really sad. Which is probably a good thing because I, like many people, tend to run away from those kinds of feelings instead of truly experiencing them, finding their cause, and digging them out by the roots, etc. I admit the natural prejudice (natural in the sense that it was almost assumed a white person should have one) I had against Negroes solidified when as a college freshman new to the city, I was walking down Division Street in Chicago and my purse was grabbed out of my hands by a “young buck.” (I was too refined for those words; these were the words of the police officer who took my complaint.) Something worse happened to me a year later when I was in my sophomore year at Northwestern, but the perpetrator was not called a “young buck” by anyone. The police, in fact, upon learning the name of the white boy, whose family was well-to-do and well known, told me it would be better for all to drop the charges, because things could get ugly for me if I proceeded.

  “Live and learn,” I was advised, and because I was young and afraid, I let this boy get away with a terrible crime, which has shadowed me throughout my life. I left school and was aimless and adrift for years, until I finally landed here in Granite Creek, thanks to inheriting a relative’s house.

  The funny (in the sad sense) thing is that several years ago while driving home late after attending a concert in St. Paul, I got a flat tire and had to pull over. The first person to stop on the quiet road was a Negro man, and afraid, I nearly declined his offer to change my tire. But I didn’t, and he quickly and easily took off the flat and replaced it with the spare and wouldn’t accept the money I offered, only saying, “Glad to help.” Would I have felt that racing heart, those prickles of fear if a white man had stopped? Even though it had been a white man who had raped me?

  What is the matter with us?

  Marie Atherton

  (And please use my name. I’m tired of feeling ashamed.)

  Sam stares at the scratchy handwriting and faded ink. The letter’s like an antique, and yet it feels as immediate as a text. He wonders if the paper published this letter. It’s so . . . raw, and he feels both sorry for and proud of the woman who wrote it, recognizing the act of bravery it was to write it.

  Jacob told him how boring his work days at the FoodKing are and how he was going to hurl if he had to carry out the groceries of one more old lady who asked him what grade he was in and dug around in her stupid coin purse for a two-quarter tip. Sam wonders how old Marie Atherton is now, if she’s ever had Jacob carry out her groceries. Is she one of the old ladies digging around in her stupid coin purse for a tip?

  He texts/doesn’t send J. K. Rowling, “YOU KNOW SO MUCH, BUT DID YOU EVER THINK YOU DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING?”

  9

  It’s a hot, muggy August day, and Susan is in Des Moines for a “Women in Publishing” conference. She loves these annual gatherings but prefers when they’re held a little farther away, to amp up the vacation factor. The hotel has an outdoor pool, but a group of loud and rowdy men spoiled the relaxing swim she had looked forward to after her first full day of speakers, panels, and breakaway sessions.

  “Here’s one for the Triple Alphas!” calls a man, slapping his big belly. He bounced on the diving board, hard, before cannonballing into the pool.

  Swimming laps, Susan feels herself lifted in the wake in the man’s splash. It’s not the first time this has happened—the fraternity brothers gathered for their thirtieth reunion are partial to cannonballs—but it’s the one that will finally make her, when she gets to the shallow end, climb up the little ladder and out of the pool.

  A wolf whistle shrieks, and Susan ignores it, walking quickly to her lawn chair. When she puts on her hotel robe, one of the fraternity brothers yells, “Aw, don’t deprive us!”

  Picking up her towel and book, Susan walks across cement warmed by the sun. There are more wolf whistles and a juvenile invitation, and when she reaches the safety of the sliding glass door, she turns.

  “You guys are the Alpha what?” she asks pleasantly, as if she hasn’t heard their constant references to their fraternal name.

  “We’re the Triples! Alpha Alpha Alpha!” they shout, pride and belligerence in their voices.

  “What did you say?” she asks, as if confused. “Alpha Alpha Assholes?” She slides the door open and makes her escape as the men lob back hurt corrections and angry insults.

  SEVERAL OF THE FRAT BOYS/MEN are sitting in the bar now, but Susan hopes that in clothes and with her hair dried they won’t recognize her.

  “You really said that to them?” asks Maureen, a publisher of an alternative weekly paper in Tucson.

  Susan sighs. “They reminded me of all the things I hated in college.”

  Shannon, who’s the editor in chief of a national women’s magazine, shakes her head as she pushes her straw through the pink sludge of her frozen strawberry daiquiri.

  “Don’t hold it against me, but I was president of my sorority. And pinned to the president of Tau Delta Phi.”

  “Pinned,” says Susan as she and Maureen laugh. “I can’t say I was sorry that weird ritual died out.”

  Again, Shannon shakes her head. “Yeah, one in several long steps on the way to matrimony. Which fortunately I didn’t enter with the guy—I would have been the first of his six wives.”

  “No,” said Susan, and as Shannon nodded dolefully, Maureen asks, “Are you married now?”

  Shannon wasn’t married but had been, and when she says the name of her ex-husband, her tablemates gasp, both having seen many times the hedge fund manager giving interviews on television or his name in the paper.

  “I can’t believe you were married to John Engval!” Susan says, “He was like a g
uru to my husband. He read both of his books and even went to one of his seminars in Chicago!”

  “Mark my words,” says Shannon. “He’ll be in jail by next year.” She shakes her head. “Pinned to a professional divorcé and married to a swindler. What happened to my radar?”

  Maureen was celebrating her twenty-fourth anniversary with her husband, whom she’d met while working in Algiers.

  “I’m not saying it’s been easy,” she said. “Mourad was . . . well, pretty sexist. No, make that really sexist. And I knew this when I fell for him, but I fell for him so hard that I thought I could change him.”

  “And did you?” asks Susan.

  “No,” says Maureen, shaking her head, and her countenance is mournful until a smile breaks through. “But our first daughter did. From day one, his eyes were suddenly opened to injustice and unfairness—especially when Deena turned out to be a soccer star!”

  The women laugh, and the air around their booth swirls with the electricity of shared understanding and sympathy.

  “Really, who do you think led the protest against the boys’ team getting the best practice times out on the field? Mourad. And when Linnea, our second, started showing an interest in science, who do you think was the parent volunteering to chaperone every trip to the planetarium or the science museum? Mourad.” Her smile is both warm and wistful. “He’s a regular Gloria Steinem.”

  When it is Susan’s turn to tell her story, she takes a long sip of her chardonnay before saying, “Well, my husband and I are separated, and I was hoping for a reconciliation, but I’m not holding my breath.”

  “If he was a fan of my ex,” says Shannon, “maybe you’re better off.”

  Susan manages a laugh.

  “One of things I loved—love—most about Phil is his kindness,” she says, “but for a while he was . . . mean, always sniping at me. It turns out he was having an affair at the time, with his dental hygienist!”

  “And taking his guilt out on you,” says Shannon, shaking her head. “Typical.”