I was born and raised in this town. I always thought I would move away at some point, there are so many things that can take a person somewhere else, but none of those things ever happened to me, so here I am. It’s not that I want to live somewhere else; this is a very nice town and I can’t imagine a nicer place to live except perhaps someplace where it doesn’t snow so much, but I suppose every place has its good things and bad things. Robert also comes from here, and we live now in the house he grew up in (which we have renovated twice). My sister lives in the house I grew up in, but I have nothing to do with her for reasons that don’t really pertain at all to the matter at hand, which is the Djukanovics. I suppose in a way that everything is connected in some fashion, but I’d rather just leave Valerie (my sister) out of this. She’ll only spoil the story, like she spoils everything. I don’t know why I said that about her living in the house we grew up in, so just forget it.
This is not very nice, but I am going to tell it anyway. When I was a little girl in this town, we called all the folk who lived down along the spillway “river rats,” on account of the fact that their houses were always being flooded and if, after a flood, you’d drive along the River Road, you’d see them huddled beneath tarpaulins, shivering and surrounded by the waterlogged furniture they’d managed to drag out of their bungalows. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized how insensitive this was; in fact I thought “river rat” was a term of endearment because my father’s pet name for me was Minnie Mouse, and there’s not much difference between a mouse and a rat. And besides, we weren’t insensitive because we’d always bring old blankets and canned vegetables and powdered milk and things like that to the fire station where the people who were flooded out could just come and take what they wanted for free, no questions asked.
But nevertheless, even though we meant no harm and actually did some good, I have come to feel guilty about our attitude toward those folk who lived in the flood zone, and I suppose one of the reasons I didn’t resist the arrival of the Djukanovics was that I thought it might serve as an expiation of any sins of pride or selfishness I had (unwittingly) committed in my youth. So I put fresh linens on the beds in the guest room (once Robert had cleared all his junk off them) and then I went into Alice’s room to do the same. I don’t often go into Alice’s room. It’s not a shrine or anything, although it is exactly as it was when she left for college, but I do vacuum and dust in there once a week, although it’s amazing when you keep the windows closed how little dust accumulates. Although I suppose that makes perfect sense and isn’t amazing at all. I have trouble sometimes distinguishing between the two: what is normal and what is amazing. Anyway, even though the sheets on the bed were clean I took them off and put on fresh ones. They were an old set of Holly Hobbie doll sheets Alice had loved when she was little, and I thought the Djukanovic girl might like them, despite being odd. I cleared out the top two drawers in Alice’s dresser and moved all her cheerleading and field hockey trophies off her desk. I couldn’t quite bring myself to open her closet. I don’t know why, really, but I figured that a little girl who had been flooded out of her home wouldn’t have much to hang up. Girls hardly ever wear dresses these days.
The Djukanovics arrived about five o’clock, and despite the ice-cream social at the shelter, they seemed ready for supper. I showed them all to their rooms (there was only one little girl after all, named Wanda) and left them to settle in, which didn’t take them long at all because by six o’clock they were sitting in the den, looking hungry. Mr. Djukanovic had put on the TV news without asking me if he might turn the TV on, which I thought was a bit presumptuous (maybe I didn’t like the TV, or news, or something), but I was determined to be a gracious host. After all, it would only be a few days: the county was arranging to have those emergency mobile-home shelters set up behind the high school, and supposedly they were on their way from wherever they came from, from wherever the last disaster was.
The moment the Djukanovics pulled into the driveway, Robert had disappeared down into the basement, where he had lugged his leather-working equipment. Robert “tools” leather belts and sells them through the website handtooledleatherbeltsbyrobert.com, which they helped him set up at the senior center. They’re always bringing young people in to teach seniors about technology and the Internet and what have you, and Robert is very keen on it. I stay out of it. I was disappointed by Robert’s subterranean defection, but I wasn’t surprised, as he doesn’t really interact with people anymore. He worked forty-five years as a car salesman and did very well for himself (and me too, for that matter) (and Alice), but he never really liked it and it didn’t come naturally to him, and when he retired five years ago, he said he was never going to talk to anyone ever again. I don’t think he included me and a few other people in this resolution, I think he meant he reserved the right to never again talk to anyone he didn’t want to talk to, including, apparently, the Djukanovics.
So there they were in the den, listening to the TV news, or at least pretending to listen. Mrs. Djukanovic was wearing sunglasses for some reason I could not figure out and had fallen back into the cushions of the sofa in a way that suggested she might be sleeping. Her mouth was open. Wanda was sitting on the floor, playing with what looked like a Barbie doll with no arms. She wore pink eyeglasses that had those thick magnifying lenses and they did make her look a little like a googly-eyed fish. Only Mr. Djukanovic was watching the television. He sat with a disconcerting alertness, holding the remote in his hand, pointed at the TV screen as if the minute the news didn’t agree with him he would click it off.
I stood in the doorway for a moment, and when it became clear that my presence—or if not presence, for I rarely feel present anywhere these days, my existence—was not likely to be acknowledged in any way, I cleared my throat, which is of course a terribly schoolmarmish thing to do, and said, trying for a happy brightness, “Well, is anyone hungry for some supper?”
Because Reverend Judy had arranged matters in such an expeditious, not to say careless, way, there were several aspects of the Djukanovics’ living with us that befuddled me. Were we merely providing shelter, or were we expected to feed them three meals a day? (By “we” I mean “I.”) Was it a sort of bed-and-breakfast, lunch-and-dinner type of arrangement, or was I meant to let the Djukanovics fend for themselves?
Anyway, this question seemed to be answered by Mr. Djukanovic. He said, “Yes, very hungry in fact.”
I thought Mrs. Djukanovic might pipe up at this moment and suggest that she could cook her family whatever type of supper they liked to eat, but perhaps she was really sleeping because she made no movement whatsoever.
“Well, how about some spaghetti?” I suggested spaghetti for several reasons. The first was that I knew I had lots of it, as it’s one of the few things that Robert still likes. As he’s gotten older, he’s been having some problems with his digestion, and his appetite isn’t anything like it was. He now refuses to eat any dish that can be considered even remotely foreign or exotic. The second was that so many people don’t eat so many things these days. Alice was a special type of vegetarian, I forget which kind, but it made things very difficult when she and Charlie (her husband) and Laila (their daughter) came over for supper, and thirdly because spaghetti is one of the few things I feel confident about cooking. If you can call it cooking. I used to think I was quite a good cook, what with Shake ’n Bake and fried chicken and a nice meatloaf once or twice a week, but now that everything is supposed to be local and organic and good for you, I’m afraid to do more than scramble some eggs (which I do very well, but I didn’t think I could offer scrambled eggs to the Djukanovics for supper, even though Robert and I often eat them in the evening).
My suggestion of spaghetti was met with a sort of shrug from Mr. Djukanovic, which I chose to interpret as a yes, so I made a big pot of spaghetti (a whole box) and heated up a whole jar of sauce and it’s funny, like hot dogs and hot dog buns, how the quantities never correspond, there was far too much spag
hetti, but I figured better too much than too little, and made a pathetic salad from some tired lettuce and a bag of those little baby carrots that are all peeled for you that I find a bit creepy because for some reason I associate those peeled baby carrots with babies being flayed alive, which I know is just horrible and I don’t know why I think that but I do. I also wonder if they really are baby carrots or if they are really big carrots that are just cut into pieces and shaped to look infantile. Anyway, despite these reservations, I bought them because I thought they might make a nice healthy snack for Robert and me, but like so many things I bought hoping to brighten or at least alter our life in some way, the carrots had been ignored and their expiration date loomed. (In fact it had passed, but only by a few days.)
That night, something strange happened. Well, I suppose just about everything that had been happening for the past day or two, ever since Reverend Judy had clutched at me in the vestibule of the church, had been strange or at least abnormal, but what happened that night was stranger still. Or perhaps not; you know I have trouble distinguishing the strange from the normal.
After I had prepared the spaghetti/salad supper and set it out on the kitchen table and set three places and told the Djukanovics that supper was ready, I went down into the basement and told Robert we were going to Gully’s. Robert doesn’t like to go out to dinner because he doesn’t like spending money on things he thinks he can get cheaper. In restaurants he’s always calculating the “markup” on everything that we order and comparing the price of the meal in the restaurant with the price of the meal had we prepared it at home (and by “we” I mean “I”), but I think he was upset by the arrival of the Djukanovics and just wanted to avoid them at all costs, so he agreed to dinner at Gully’s with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.
And then he ordered a bottle of wine with dinner, which I don’t think he’s ever done before. We don’t drink liquor at home, but Robert usually has two glasses of wine with dinner when we go out and I usually have one (and maybe two), but I don’t think it has ever occurred to either of us to order a full bottle of wine in a restaurant even though it is commonly done (and much cheaper that way, a bottle costs the same as three glasses, which come to think of it would make it appealing to Robert). It just seems somewhat brazen, the way they just plonk the bottle right on your table for all the world to see.
When we got home, the Djukanovics had gone to bed, and the kitchen was spotless. Things had been cleaned that had nothing to do with their supper. I supposed Mrs. Djukanovic did it (I couldn’t picture Mr. Djukanovic or Wanda doing it), and it made me feel a little bit bad for thinking poorly about Mrs. Djukanovic when she was sleeping on the sofa. Of course she was exhausted, what with being flooded out of her home and living in the high-school gymnasium and then moving into a strange person’s house. She had every right to fall asleep like that on the sofa. I was glad I had made the spaghetti and was sorry that the carrots had expired, although they seemed fresh enough. Everything was cleaned up and put away. Some things were put away in the wrong places, but you couldn’t blame her for that. People have different ideas about where things should go.
But none of that was the strange thing I’m talking about. That happened later. It happened in bed. Bed! Imagine anything happening in bed at my age. Except for dying, I suppose. But no, it will probably seem like nothing to you, but what had happened was that after Robert and I had gotten into bed—and it was awkward, because we hadn’t gotten into the same bed together since he had his hip replaced, since what had happened to Alice happened to Alice—but we went about it as if we did it every night, getting into the same bed together, which when you think about it is an extraordinary thing to do. I mean, I know it’s perfectly natural but if you step back just a little bit and look at the anthropological aspect of it, it does seem odd, doesn’t it? Two people getting into the same bed, at least two people our age, although perhaps it’s not odd at all, for you hear about those couples from the Old World who slept together in the same bed for a hundred years and died within minutes of each other, but it was odd for Robert and me. That’s all I’m saying. I didn’t know what to do or how to behave, so I turned away from Robert and pretended to fall asleep. I was aware of Robert lying there beside me, lying on his back, very still but somehow tense, awake, alive, and alone, somehow alone. Perhaps I shifted a little, I don’t really know, but Robert turned toward me and pressed himself against my back and reached over me and drew me closer to him and I could feel his breath and maybe his lips on the back of my neck, and then I felt him shaking, gently shaking, and his mouth was pressed against my neck, and I realized he was crying. Robert was crying. Oh, it’s all too much for him, I thought. And I turned over and pushed him a little and he turned too, and then I held him like he had held me, held him close against me, until he stopped crying.
The next morning, I slept much later than I normally do, and by the time I came downstairs, Wanda had gone off to school and the Djukanovics were back on the sofa in the den, watching television. They were watching the show about the little bossy cartoon girl who is some sort of explorer. That was one of Laila’s favorite shows. It’s odd what children like. For some reason this particular show just set my teeth on edge. When Mr. Djukanovic heard me in the kitchen, he quickly clicked the TV off as if he had been watching one of the pornographic channels. (Of course we don’t get any of them, we have the no-frills, very basic cable package, and we only have that because you need it to get reception. I do miss the old days when there were just a few channels and just about everything was worth watching.) Mrs. Djukanovic got up and slunk out of the room and went upstairs. She was wearing a headscarf along with the dark glasses and looked quite—well, not frightening, because I know it’s wrong to be frightened of people who wear headscarves and sunglasses indoors, but it was a little spooky. Or maybe I just don’t get out enough.
Usually I put the coffee and water in the coffeepot before I go to bed each night, so when I come down in the morning all I have to do is switch it on—it seems like such a timesaver, but of course it isn’t—but I hadn’t done this when we’d gotten home from Gully’s, I suppose because I was a bit discombobulated by everything and perhaps a bit tipsy, because Robert and I did drink the entire bottle of wine, a fact which in the clear light of day seemed quite shocking to me.
“Some coffee, Mr. Djukanovic?” I asked, as if I were in a television commercial.
He pushed himself up off the sofa—he was a big man, not fat really, but just large in a way that made our house and everything in it seem small. He sat on one of the stools at the counter that separates the kitchen from the den and said, “Yes, please. We could not find the coffee.”
“Oh, I keep it in the freezer,” I said, and realized how silly that sounded. But Alice had told me I should keep it there because it kept better, but I suppose anything keeps better if it’s frozen. I certainly would. Why not just have done with it and put everything in the freezer?
Mr. Djukanovic and I watched the Mr. Coffee with undivided attention as if it were some sort of miraculous alchemical invention making gold and not Chock full o’Nuts. When it was finished, I filled two mugs and opened the refrigerator and poured some milk into a creamer because I grew up thinking it wasn’t nice to put bottles on the table (or the counter in this case), and lifted the lid from the sugar bowl and slid it toward Mr. Djukanovic. For some reason I was very curious as to how he took his coffee, as if this would reveal something to me, something clarifying and comforting about the entire situation we found ourselves in, and I watched as he poured in milk and spooned two spoonfuls of sugar into the mug, and I thought, Oh, he takes it light and sweet, light and sweet. But I didn’t know what, if anything, that meant.
Mr. Djukanovic sipped at his coffee and said, “You are very kind to invite us into your house. We are very grateful. Thank you.”
“Why, you’re most welcome,” I said. “I’m so glad you can stay here with us.” I realized that this made it sound as if they were fri
ends or family popping by on a holiday and not homeless refugees, so I said, “I am so sorry about your home, and your misfortune.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is bad. Very bad.”
“Terrible,” I said. “Just terrible.”
“I must apologize for my wife,” he said. “She is very ashamed. Because she is very proud, you see. She is so ashamed.”
“Ashamed?” I said. “Ashamed of what? There is nothing for her to be ashamed of.”
“Losing our house,” he said. “Our house in America. She loved it so much. She was proud of it. And so losing it, and having to come here. It is shaming to her. Also, she does not speak English.”
I wanted to ask him what language she did speak, but I remembered how we had got off to the wrong start with my question about his name, and things seemed to be going so beautifully now, so I thought it best to hold my tongue.
“It was not a good house, I know, but it was the only house we could afford,” he said.
“Well, I’m sure with the insurance money you can buy a nice new house,” I said.
The Best American Short Stories 2014 Page 8
