Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

by Lorna Landvik

  But on Thursdays, she spent her entire lunch hour sitting on a stool in front of a flecked Formica counter, drinking coffee with Mr. Paradise.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said one day as he raced in, sliding onto the stool so that it swiveled violently and his knee smacked against hers. He quickly swiveled back. “A fellow at my bus stop had a heart attack.”

  “Oh, my,” said Merit. “Is he all right?”

  Mr. Paradise shrugged. “Time will tell. He was breathing on his own by the time the ambulance got there.”

  The waitress brought them their standard order: cherry pie à la mode for Merit and wheat toast with extra jelly for Mr. Paradise.

  “So, Miss Mayes” (in some conversation he had learned her maiden name and had called her by it ever since; she called him by his surname as well), “have you given any more thought to my proposal?”

  With a scratchy paper napkin, Merit blotted a glutinous blob of cherry filling off her lip.

  “I have, Mr. Paradise, and my answer’s still the same. I don’t think I’m ready yet.”

  “Oh, go on,” said an old woman sitting next to Merit at the counter. “Nobody’s getting any younger, and good husband material is hard to find.”

  Mr. Paradise laughed at the look of horror that swept across Merit’s face.

  “I’m not asking her to marry me, madam. I’m merely asking her to sing in public.”

  “Well,” said the old woman, looking Merit up and down, “you should marry her. When’s a guy like you ever going to find as good-looking a woman as this one?”

  “I quite agree with you, madam. However, at this moment in time, we’re discussing music. But thank you for your interest in our affairs.”

  Dismissed, the old woman swiveled her stool around, turning her back to them.

  “But one day you might be ready?” asked Mr. Paradise, picking up the conversational thread that had been yanked out.

  “I might,” said Merit, and then the two of them, in a delayed reaction to the old lady’s comments, burst out laughing.

  “HEY,” said Merit later that evening, “they’re talking about Mr. Paradise.”

  “Who?” said Reni, who, for her civics class, made a point of watching the news with her mother.

  “Shh,” said Merit, listening to the news reporter who was describing how Harry Swann, waiting for the bus that would take him to the art museum (“I really wanted to see that Monet exhibition,” he said from his hospital bed), suffered a heart attack and was revived by a man with whom he’d earlier been chatting (“We were mostly talking about the weather—isn’t that what people at bus stops talk about?”).

  A paramedic who’d been on the scene was interviewed, saying that everyone should learn CPR so that they could save a life like the Samaritan who’d worked on Mr. Swann: “All we did was continue what this guy had started. It’s not a hard procedure, and all you have to do is call the Red Cross to set up a class.”

  The television reporter thanked the paramedic for the unsolicited Red Cross commercial and, looking earnestly into the camera, said, “And we here at Channel Eight, along with Mr. Harry Swann, whose heart, while battered, is still beating, thank the gentleman who stopped to help a felled citizen and then, seeking no glory of his own, strode off into the noonday sun.”

  “You know the guy?” asked Reni, staring at her mother, who stared at the TV, her mouth unhinged.

  “Yes . . . yes, Mr. Paradise. The man I have coffee with on Thursday afternoons. I’ve told you about him.”

  “Mother,” scolded Reni, “I’d remember you telling me about having coffee with some guy on Thursday afternoons—especially some guy named Mr. Paradise.”

  “Mom, when’s dinner?” asked Melody, running into the room with her younger sister.

  “Yeah, we’re hungry,” declared Jewel.

  Merit turned off the TV.

  “Why don’t you girls set the table?” she said. “And Reni—how about you make the salad?”

  “Mother,” said Reni in the way only a fifteen-year-old girl can say it. “You aren’t going anywhere until you tell me about this Paradise guy.”

  “But there’s nothing to tell,” said Merit, hating that she could feel a blush heat up her face. “Mr. Paradise is a friend of mine—believe me, he’s only a friend—and he and I get together on my lunch hour every Thursday to have a cup of coffee and talk.”

  “Talk,” said Reni. “What do you talk about?”

  Merit played with her collar. “I don’t know. Probably the same things you talk about with your friends.”

  “Sex?”

  Looking at the sly, bet-you-didn’t-expect-that look on her daughter’s face, Merit smiled.

  “Well, usually we talk about things we know something about.”

  THE TALK was what had made her agree to a second coffee date with Mr. Paradise; she hadn’t had such a relaxed conversation with anyone outside the Angry Housewives in years. He was an odd fellow—he had the courtly manners of a 1930s leading man but the scrappy looks of a character actor from ’70s B-movies. Sometimes his speech resembled his manners (“I’m half a century young,” he said when Merit asked his age); other times he spoke, if not like a gangster, then like a gangster’s friend (“I’d like to bust that ex of yours right in the snoot”). He was thin, and even in his polyester flares, Merit could see that he was bowlegged. He wore boots with heels that pushed him close to six feet yet he didn’t have a tall man’s presence. But the funniest thing about him was the attention he paid to Merit. He listened to her as if she were the ruler of the free world and he a reporter getting an exclusive interview.

  “He forgets his own children’s birthdays?” he asked during the second coffee date.

  Merit nodded solemnly, staring at the girls’ school photographs she had laid out for him to see.

  “The girls are used to it. That’s the problem; they’re so used to his bad behavior that they’re not even bothered by it anymore. His one great lesson to his daughters is that they shouldn’t count on him for anything because he won’t deliver.”

  Mr. Paradise twisted his mouth as he scratched one of his sideburns.

  “That, Miss Mayes, is a crying shame.”

  Merit nodded. “The good news is, he’s moving to Florida—hallelujah—so he won’t be around here anymore.”

  “Good riddance,” said Mr. Paradise.

  “Exactly. I’m hoping that when he leaves I won’t feel so . . . unsafe. I feel at any time he might break into my house and beat me up again . . . or worse.”

  “Oh, Miss Mayes,” said Mr. Paradise, concern pushing down his dark, bristly eyebrows. “We must hustle you girls out of that house posthaste and find a secret location.”

  Merit laughed. “Oh, I don’t really think he’s going to do anything crazy—he hasn’t yet. It’s just that, I don’t know, I guess when someone’s really hurt you, there always seems to be a possibility for more.”

  “Have you got an alarm system? If not, let’s install one today. I know a—”

  Merit laughed. “I don’t think you need to worry about it. Really, I’m fine. The girls and I are fine.”

  Mr. Paradise dipped the tip of his knife in the little plastic jelly packet and spread the orange marmalade on a triangle of toast.

  “I can’t say as I like your former husband,” he said, “and you sure did the right thing by getting out of that . . . mess. Still, I have to feel sorry for a man who hasn’t figured out how to love his own family.”

  “Do you . . . do you have a family?”

  Mr. Paradise squinted and a burst of wrinkles fanned out toward his sideburns. “Well, my mother’s still alive and I have a sister in Anchorage, of all places, but no, I have never been lucky enough to find the woman who would become my wife and the mother of our children.” His smile was rueful. “I always wanted a little girl. I’ve had a name picked out for years: Portia. Portia Paradise—can you imagine how a girl could take on the world with a name like that?”

  M
erit smiled but felt a little sad, missing the girl, Portia Paradise, who was never to be.

  “Oops,” said Mr. Paradise, looking at his Timex watch. “You’d better be on your way, Miss Mayes, if you don’t want to be late for work.”

  Merit got off the stool as if she were arthritic. “Maybe I’ll see you at the library tomorrow?”

  Mr. Paradise tucked a dollar bill under his plate. “There aren’t any maybes about it.”

  April 1984

  HOST: AUDREY

  BOOK: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

  REASON CHOSEN: “I could relate to the title.”

  At one-thirty in the morning, I heard Bryan yell, “Mom!” in my ear and scrambled up on the bed, ready to rip into him for waking me out of a dead sleep like that. Only he wasn’t there. A gust of wind blew raindrops in through the open window, and I was filled with a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature.

  I saw my son lying on the sidewalk in an eerie light so blue that the blood that trickled from the gash above his eye was black. Someone in a dress lay by him, her limbs bent at such odd, horrible angles that she looked like a human swastika. A van, the van that Bryan had gotten into that evening, lay on its side, its front as wrinkled and broken as the cars we saw in the demolition derby the boys had begged me to take them to a few years ago. Someone was walking around the van—it was so hard to see things clearly in that eerie blue light. Someone was walking around moaning, holding his head, and finally I could see it was Jeff, the boy who’d been driving. He was holding his head and his moans got louder and louder and became screams, became wailing, keening screams, and I did not know the screams were mine until Michael burst into my room, swatting the light on and yelling, just as Bryan had yelled, “Mom!”

  IT WASN’T LONG after my terrible vision that I got the call from the hospital.

  “Run and get Grant,” I said, throwing off my pajamas (superstition had kept me in them; if I didn’t get dressed for a trip to the hospital or, God forbid, the morgue, then maybe I wouldn’t have to go after all; maybe it was all a terrible dream).

  Grant was an insomniac, especially since Stuart, his longtime love, had left him (Grant was truly angry at me for not warning him, but I, like everyone else, had had no prescience of this totally surprising and incomprehensible event), and even if he had been asleep, he was the type of friend who would gladly wake up in the wee hours to help a pal. So were the Angry Housewives, but it was easier waking up one person than a whole household.

  Grant had the Lincoln warmed up and purring by the time I finished dressing (a task harder than I’d ever imagine—for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to put on my pants or where my socks went).

  “Mom, hurry!” Michael kept saying, which made me get all the more confused and agitated, and as I raced across the lawn to Grant’s driveway, unbuttoned clothes trailed after me.

  “Oh, God, Grant!” I screamed as I fell into his front seat. “Oh, God, Bryan is—”

  “Hennepin County?” he asked, referring to the hospital, and as I was incapable of answering, Michael said yes.

  The streets were slick with rain, and I realized that though I had always liked the sound of water splashing off car tires, I could never like it again, because maybe the rainy streets had caused the accident.

  In that horribly lit emergency room that made everyone look lost and spooky, like survivors of a nuclear holocaust, we were told that Bryan was now in surgery, that there were multiple injuries. I watched the nurse’s mouth move and had the odd sensation that I was falling into it, falling into those awful words.

  “You better sit down,” said Grant, holding on to me as I swooned. “Michael, can you get your mother some water?”

  “Do you need to lie down?” asked the nurse.

  I shook my head. Lying down would somehow be a surrender, and that was the last thing I was willing to do.

  PAUL GOT TO THE HOSPITAL about a half hour after we did. He and Cynthia and their two-year-old son had moved out to a suburb so new that their backyard faced a cornfield.

  “I always thought it would be Davey,” I said dully as we took a walk to the coffee machines. “I always thought it would be Davey who’d have the car wreck.”

  “Oh, Audrey,” said Paul sadly.

  “Well, didn’t you? I mean, he’s the reckless one, the one who always gets into trouble—”

  “Past tense, Audrey. He hasn’t gotten into any trouble lately.”

  “That we know of.”

  It soothed me, talking about the familiar topic of Davey and his problems while who knows what was happening to his brother. But it was true—after several years of rebellion that veered into criminality (vandalism, driving while under the influence, and a petty theft that got him a month in the workhouse), Davey seemed to be settling down (knock knock knock on wood). He was living with his girlfriend and working with a company that customized kitchens. Then again, maybe we weren’t hearing from the cops because he was twenty-one now.

  “Ouch,” I said, coffee splashing on my hand as I took the paper cup out of the little window of the vending machine.

  “He should be here soon.”

  “Davey?” I asked. “You called him?”

  “Well, of course I called him, Audrey. Bryan’s his brother.”

  Of course he was; I was ashamed that I hadn’t thought to call him myself. But since Davey had graduated from high school (at least he’d managed that), he hadn’t been much of a force in his brothers’ lives. Bryan and Michael only saw him at holidays, and only the holidays when Davey stood to gain something (Thanksgiving, for dinner, and Christmas, for dinner and gifts).

  “Mr. and Mrs. Forrest?” asked a doctor, coming toward us. My insides took a dive. Honestly, I was surprised I could still walk toward her with all my vital organs so displaced.

  “He’s out of danger,” were the first words she spoke, the words that made me want to kiss her face, hug her, lift her up to the ceiling. Instead, I burst into tears.

  “He’s got a rough road ahead of him,” she continued, as if more solemn news would turn off my waterworks. “He’s broken his pelvis and his right leg. He’ll be in a wheelchair and then on crutches for quite a while, and he’ll need a lot of physical therapy.”

  “Oh, God,” I said, both in horror at the severity of injuries and in thanks that I wasn’t hearing worse things.

  “He punctured a lung, tore his right rotator cuff, and broke a thumb,” she said, “but all in all, he’s a lucky young man.”

  “Can we see him?” I asked, and I could feel the wall of tears pushing against the rickety dam of calm I struggled to keep upright.

  “He’s not quite ready. We have to set his broken bones and put his leg in traction.” The doctor looked away; I don’t think she could stand the look on my face. “But soon. Soon. We’ll let you see him as soon as possible.”

  Davey had arrived, disheveled and wild-eyed, by the time we got the go-ahead to see Bryan, and he held my hand so tight I almost yelped, but I was not about to tell him to loosen his grip.

  I stood there in the hospital room flanked by Paul and Davey and Michael, looking at my middle son, whose first word after Mama and Dada had been kiss.

  A pulley held up his leg, which was in an ankle-to-hip cast. He looked almost comic, like the ski-accident victim in movies who’s nearly mummified in bandages. Tubes from machines making various noises were threaded into him.

  “Bry?” said Davey, his voice cracking.

  “I don’t think he can hear, honey,” I said. “He’s sedated.”

  “Bry, we’re here for you, buddy. I know you must be scared, but it’s gonna be fine, you’re gonna be just fine; we’ll be throwing the football around in no time.”

  My sons had played a lot of football as boys, but Davey hadn’t thrown a ball to his brothers in years. Still, I think we all appreciated his words.

  Michael, who was truly Bryan’s best friend, stood by, mute, his hand cupped around Bryan�
��s right foot, about the only area that wasn’t bandaged. And the world kept spinning.

  WHEN BRYAN WOKE UP, he looked at me and said, as if he were claiming ownership, “My mom.”

  “Oh, my darling,” I said, leaning down to kiss his forehead (next to the bandage), his cheek, his lips.

  “I remember calling you,” he said.

  “I know. I heard. Scared me half to death.”

  “Am I okay?”

  After I gave him the running list of his injuries, he whispered, “Jenny?”

  I assured him she was all right; in fact her only injury was a cut along her hairline that required fourteen stitches. Jeff, the boy who’d been driving, the one I’d seen in my dream, had a head injury whose effects would not be more fully known until some time had passed.

  “What about Amber?”

  Either I paused too long or the look on my face told him everything. The girl I’d seen bent like a swastika was dead.

  “Mom, what happened to Amber?”

  “Listen, Bryan, why don’t you just get a little rest now?”

  “Mom, did Amber die?”

  Not wanting to, I nevertheless nodded, and Bryan’s face scrunched up like a baby’s the moment before he lets out a wail.

  “Amber died?” he asked, his voice begging me to recant.

  I nodded again as Bryan shook his head.

  “She can’t. She can’t have died. She’s the one who said she had to get home or her parents were going to kill her. Guess the car crash beat them to it!” He barked out a terrible, one-syllable laugh that slunk into a low moan.