Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes)

by Lorna Landvik

“I’m a poet—”

  “I know it.”

  The women smile, but Caroline punctuates hers with a “whew!” and adds, “I feel so much lighter.”

  Susan leans back in her chair to survey her, and nodding, she says, “You look like you’ve lost about . . . two ounces.”

  “Maybe I could write a feature about it: ‘How to Lose Weight by Confessing Your Deepest Secrets.’”

  “I do feel bad,” admits Susan, “that you felt it had to be one of your deepest secrets.”

  “‘Bad.’ Another rhyming word!”

  When she speaks again, after a long moment, Caroline’s voice is lower, heavier.

  “I feel dumb that it was one of my deepest secrets—I mean, who hides that they’re gay anymore? But . . . well, I’ve told you about my family. They were always so certain in their beliefs that it made me uncertain in mine. I never wanted to hurt them, but”—she exhales a chestful of air—“I finally figured out it hurts more to lie about yourself. Although my mother might disagree.”

  “You told her?”

  Caroline nods as a tear slides down her cheekbone.

  “And I figured once I let Mum know, I could let everyone know.”

  “I’m glad,” says Susan, squeezing her assistant’s hand. “Now let’s get to work.”

  September 2, 1997

  I met Cliva in college and learned quickly that she wasn’t just an Anglophile but a Royalphile. She was in the dorm room next to mine and decorated her door with a sign that read, “Here within are the Quarters of one Dame Cliva Adams.” She held “high tea” parties in our commons room, introducing us rubes to scones (ugh—not my cup of tea, or should I say not my cup of tea accompaniment—I prefer muffins), which she baked in the home economics kitchen. Cliva was from New Mexico, but her ancestry was English and Scottish, and she claimed that her great-great-grandmother was a distant cousin of Queen Victoria.

  “Big deal,” said Rose, another girl on our floor, who was fond of wearing black and would play her jazz records really loud, only responding to about the fourth or fifth shouted request to “turn it down!”

  “Who’d want to be related to royalty anyway?” she’d say. “What makes a person ‘royal’ anyway—a marauding, conquering temperament or a luck of birth?”

  Anytime I hear the word anti-establishment, I think of Rose, who would show up to these high teas in an old sweatshirt and what were then called dungarees, speaking in a smarmy British accent and crooking her pinkie with great exaggeration as she slurped her tea.

  Finally Cliva told her if she considered the teas such a joke, she didn’t have to come, to which Rose answered, “The teas aren’t a joke—I love free food—what is a joke, however, is your fascination with royalty.”

  She went on to suggest that fascinations often led to compulsions and other neuroses and that “come to think of it, I have noticed a twitch in your right eye.”

  The girls around the table protested—Cliva had no such twitch—Rose simply smiled, pocketed several little triangular sandwiches and bowing deeply, bid her adieu.

  I was thinking of both these old chums today when I heard the shocking news of Princess Diana’s death.

  While I wasn’t enamored of monarchy as Cliva was, neither was I like Rose, disdainful of it. Fact is, I’m rather neutral, not really following or caring about the lives of those who live in castles and have little to do with the day-to-day goings-on of my life.

  But a little pomp and circumstance never hurt anyone, and I enjoyed watching the pageantry and spectacle of the princess’s wedding to Prince Charles and always liked seeing Diana’s open, lovely face on magazine covers or watching her on TV, speaking in that low, slightly breathless voice. More than her stylish fashion sense, however, I was impressed by what seemed her genuine empathy and concern for people, and my respect for her grew when I learned the sadness and betrayal with which she lived.

  And now she’s gone, so young, so vital, the victim of a stupid, senseless car wreck.

  I think why I’m feeling so bad is that Diana, despite all that was thrust upon her and all that was taken away, was so much more than a princess.

  July 25, 1999

  It’s easy to get cavalier, thinking we have things figured out and life goes a certain way and then: boom. Our own arrogance slaps us in the face, reminding us—hollers at us—that we might be in charge of what clothes we choose to put on in the morning or what brand of toothpaste we squeeze onto our brushes, but that’s about it.

  When I heard that John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane was missing and then, days later, that his, his wife’s, and his sister-in-law’s remains had been found on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, I thought, No. No. This goes against all that should be right and good.

  I’ve written before about his father, his uncle, about those bright and beautiful Kennedys cut down in their prime, and once again, as I did hearing the news of their deaths, I feel all curled up, curled up to protect my wounded heart. Why is it that—

  Shelly pulls back, surprised by two splats on the newspaper in front of her. For a millisecond, she wonders if there’s a leak in the ceiling. Looking furtively around the reception area like an employee who’s just pocketed a box of staples or a roll of stamps, she daubs her eyes with a tissue. In her closed-down world, crying was something rare as a white peacock, and it would take time to cull her memory and remember the last time she had been so moved to shed tears.

  A tiny sob hitches up her chest as her eyes fill again.

  “Hey, Shelly,” says Sam, and the receptionist jumps in her chair, banging her knee against the edge of her desk.

  Not meaning to startle her, Sam is quick to apologize, and seeing the distress on her face, he asks, “Are you all right?”

  “Just had a coughing fit is all,” says Shelly, faking a cough to buttress her fake claim. “What are you doing here anyway?”

  Sam flushes at the snarl in the woman’s voice.

  “I . . . uh, I’ve got the morning off from school—Mom signed a note—I’ve got a dentist’s appointment, and I just thought I’d stop in for a while before I . . .”

  The embarrassment on the boy’s face irritates Shelly; at least she assumes it’s irritation she feels, until she collapses onto her desk, sobbing.

  For a moment, Sam stands rigid like a Yosemite hiker coming across a grizzly, but then adrenaline kicks in, and he rushes to the receptionist, placing his hand on her heaving back.

  “Shelly? Shelly, what’s the matter?”

  To Sam, calling her by her name and asking this question feels as intimate as having his hand on her back, and he wishes more than anything that he’d slept in before visiting Dr. Arnowitz for the stupid biannual checkup his mother insists on. He was worried too that someone would come in at any minute—Mitch always comes in early, and often Caroline—and Sam was sure Shelly would not like her mental breakdown (his diagnosis) witnessed by anyone else.

  “Shelly,” he says, his voice soft, “would you like to go into the break room? Or the bathroom? I can—”

  “Yes,” she gasps, rolling back in her chair (one wheel grazing the tip of Sam’s shoe) as she opens a lower drawer. Grabbing her purse, she rushes out of the room as if a fire alarm’s been pulled.

  Standing watching her, Sam’s body feels rubbery, like he’s gotten off a ride that’s spun him too fast. When he thinks his legs are up to the task, he walks out of the reception area, deciding not to work after all. It would be way too weird to stay in the office. He’ll go early to his dental appointment and read about Goofus and Gallant (and think how Goofus always seems to have more fun) in the old Highlights magazines that are always splayed out on the waiting-room end tables.

  IN A BATHROOM STALL, Shelly is posed like Rodin’s The Thinker, only her perch isn’t a bronzed rock but a porcelain toilet. She has long since stopped crying, yet an occasional little soblette twitters up her throat, reminding her of her outburst, and she presses her face harder against the knuckles of her fist. She feels fool
ish—what that boy must think of her!—but she also feels something so foreign she can’t even name it. In her chest, there is both a weight and a softness, as if her heavy heart has been wrapped in a soft, fuzzy baby’s blanket.

  Shelly has never been one for reflection, self or otherwise, but now, in the confines of this gray-walled stall, she asks herself, What the hell? What the hell happened out there when she read those columns? Why the hell should she give a good goddamn about the deaths of British and American royalty?

  Because . . . because of so many things, she thinks. Because of how she had thought the nickname John John was the cutest thing she’d ever heard.

  “I was named after my father,” her ex-husband had told her when they were watching a television documentary about the Kennedy kids. “And no one ever called me Ray Ray. In fact when my old man called me anything, it was usually, ‘Hey, stupid.’”

  Ray’s tone had been light, as if the story were a joke, but Shelly saw the pain in his eyes, pain he tried to hide with his tough-guy squint.

  “Did you know JFK had such a bad back that it was hard for him to pick up his own kids?” Shelly had said.

  “That came from his war service,” Ray said. “Guy could have easily used his daddy’s connections to get out of serving, but he didn’t. I admire that.”

  They had been sitting on the green corduroy couch they had bought on credit at Montgomery Wards and that would be theirs after only four more payments, holding hands during the telecast, and when there was a commercial, Ray was the one who got up to help himself to a beer and make her a rum and Tab.

  Shelly knew there was a trove of sweet memories of Ray—even if the bastard had left her, he was a good guy—but it was easier to keep it hidden away in the dusty attic of her mind, unopened.

  Still, I’m not the only one whose husband left her! thinks Shelly as tears wet her knuckles. That poor Diana, a princess in so many ways, was treated like dirt by a man who’s no prince in my book!

  “Shelly?”

  The receptionist freezes, her eyes widened into circles.

  “I didn’t quite understand what you said. Are you all right?”

  Blood rushes to Shelly’s head. Did she actually say what she was thinking out loud?

  “Fine, fine,” she says, her voice gruff. She forces a cough. “I just . . . I was just talking to myself is all. Reciting my grocery list.”

  Her face flames red at the inane words that come out of her mouth, and with great effort, she hoists herself off the toilet, flushes it, and barrels out of the door and to the wash basins.

  “I’m . . . uh, I’m making a princess cake tonight. Old family recipe of my mother’s.” She still sounds gruff, her voice an octave lower than her normal speaking one, and she bangs the soap dispenser with her palm while turning on the faucet full blast with her other hand.

  “Sounds good,” says Caroline, who seeing her own puzzled reaction in the mirror, quickly turns toward the stalls.

  24

  Sticking her head in her assistant’s office to say hello, Susan says, “Just what I like to see. Hard at work, and it’s not even nine o’clock yet.”

  “So there is such a thing as a princess cake,” says Caroline, peering at her computer screen.

  Standing in the door’s threshold, Susan says, “I assume you’re going to elaborate?”

  “Morning,” says Caroline, looking up at her boss. “I was just . . . it’s just that I was in the bathroom, and I heard Shelly saying something about Princess Diana. Only she told me she was just reciting her grocery list out loud, because she’s making a princess cake.”

  “What?” says Susan, confused.

  “I walked into the bathroom, and I heard Shelly talking about Princess Diana and what a rat her husband was to her. And she was crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she was just thinking of the ingredients she needs to buy because she’s going to make a princess cake.”

  Susan stands still for a moment, thinking.

  “So do you think it was a reaction to Haze’s columns today?”

  “Must be, but I wouldn’t have thought the one about Princess Diana would be the one to do her in.” Caroline shrugs. “I guess I thought she was incapable of been done in.”

  While Susan would like to spend more time pondering Shelly’s odd behavior, she’s got a paper to run, and after muttering, “Very strange,” she asks Caroline to meet her in her office to go over the morning’s agenda.

  “OH, I . . . should I come back?”

  Mercedes looks at the sharp-featured woman standing in the doorway and smiles.

  “Oh, no, no. Come on in. I’m all finished up in here.”

  Putting the clippers on a tray, she places one of Haze’s hands on top of the other and says to the patient, “All done with your manicure, Madame. Tomorrow we’ll go after those toenails of yours.”

  Smiling, she looks up at Shelly, who has not moved from the door frame.

  “Please, come on in.” She gestures to the chair next to the bed. “Haze loves company.”

  Shelly gives a quick nod, which seems to trigger a flush that softens her natural scowl.

  “I’m, uh . . . I’m Shelly,” she says. “I work with Haze. I’m the receptionist.”

  “Nice to meet you,” says Mercedes, and she means it. It’s not her place to ask who Haze’s visitors are, but she always appreciates when they introduce themselves. It makes everything . . . friendlier. She introduces herself, and before she leaves on the rest of her rounds, she says, “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

  Hard to do that in a hospital room, thinks Shelly after the nurse leaves, settling herself in the plastic molded chair. Bringing her purse to her lap, she notices that the topstitching on a pocket has frayed. Next she examines her fingernails and reminds herself to pick up a bottle of polish on her way home. Shelly doesn’t have many creative outlets, but giving herself a manicure is one of them, and she is proud of her nicely shaped and groomed nails. Attractive hands are an important asset for a receptionist, she reasons, seeing as how they’re on public display as she handles the phone, writes out messages, gets coffee for advertisers and visitors, and so on.

  Forcing herself to look up at Haze, Shelly blurts out, “Sorry. I’m just so nervous.”

  Haze’s face is serene, if masklike, and the phrase “when it rains, it pours,” enters Shelly’s head as she feels, for the second time that day, tears flood her eyes.

  “Whoo!” she says, digging around for a tissue in her purse with the frayed topstitching. “Whoo, I—”

  She shakes her head, her words stopped by emotion damming up her throat. The tissue is rendered useless after a moment, and standing, Shelly drops the sodden mass into the nearby wastebasket and yanks two, three, four tissues out of the box on the patient’s nightstand.

  “Haze,” she finally manages to say in a choked whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

  The truth of her words spoken aloud—when was the last time she apologized for anything?—presses her back down into the chair.

  Her eyes travel the length of Haze’s inert body.

  “So sorry this happened to you, so sorry I haven’t been to see you earlier . . . so sorry I’ve been so cool to you all these years, I . . . I . . .” She blows her nose and shakes her head, a warning to herself that she will no longer tolerate this sniveling. “But your affair with Bill . . . it was just so wrong! He was a married man!”

  The sensation Shelly feels in her chest almost makes her laugh—she’s got literal heartburn!—and she breathes deeply to calm herself.

  “I bet you’re surprised that I knew about it, but really, Haze, not to brag, I know about everything. At least everything that happens in the office.” She stares at a display of get-well cards hanging from a cord someone draped across the wall and then begins to count them. There are sixty-two cards, and she is ashamed that not one of them is from her.

  “Oh, Haze,” she says finally. “What do I know about love and its rightness or wrongn
ess, for cripe’s sake? I couldn’t hold on to the love of my life, for the simple fact I wasn’t the love of his.”

  Shelly puts her hand on the spotty mound of knuckles and fingers that are Haze’s, and more than making an apology, she is shocked by this gesture. How many years—decades—has it been since she held someone’s hand?

  “Haze,” she whispers, “Susan McGrath was so smart to rerun your columns. I didn’t realize what a . . . force you were before—I don’t know, maybe it is true that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” She squeezes Haze’s hands. “Not that you’re gone, I don’t mean that.

  “Today they ran two columns together, the ones you wrote after Princess Diana’s and John F. Kennedy Jr.’s deaths, and I don’t know . . . they just made me think. Of so many things. I don’t know where Ray—he’s my ex—is now, or if he’s even alive. He’s been out of my life a lot longer than he was ever in it. But for the short time he loved me, he really loved me. He made me feel like a princess, and not in that icky, put-on-a-pedestal way. Just sort of honoring me as a person, you know? He’d make me pancakes on weekends and shape them like flowers—like tulips. He’d put about three of them on a plate—he made them small—and then he’d draw on stems and leaves with the syrup! Wouldn’t that make anyone feel like a princess, or at least special?”

  Shelly sits for a long moment, thinking of those bouquets of pancakes served to her on the unbreakable Corelle dishes she, always practical, had insisted they buy over the china Ray liked.

  She could have sat there all evening, but her stomach, used to its six o’clock can of ravioli or microwaved turkey potpie, lets out stutters that swell into growls, and squeezing Haze’s hands one more time, she rises, thanking Haze for listening and wishing her a good night.

  IN CURATING THE COLUMNS they chose to reprint, it seemed logical not to skip back and forth through the years but to present them in a chronological order, even as one year might be represented by only one or two columns, and the following year by five or six. Occasionally they reprinted a column that mirrored something currently happening in the community. When social media trolls excoriated the chief nurse at the Granite Creek hospital, who was entering treatment for opioid addiction, they reprinted Haze’s nod to a president’s wife and her bravery for publicly going into treatment.