by Sheila Evans
No doubt about it, there had been several Emmetts. Emmett the cut-up, the scamp, the mischievous rascal. Emmett the devil, had Mr. Feldman done the telling. Then again Emmett the good and generous, a caring man devoting himself to helping a family in need. All that volunteering—he must have been doing his own penance, atoning for something amiss in his own life, possibly for something that happened in Vietnam. Who knows? The saddest part: it’s too late to ask him.
But maybe we’re all like that. Give us a twist, and our usual behavior patterns fall apart quicker than a diet, or a budget. We go to pieces and take on foreign or ill-fitting shadings or shapes that shock or surprise us. Or that please and delight—that’s possible, too.
CHAPTER 14
I’m having a relapse. A scientific term for falling apart.
Instead of moving forward, progressing into my improved and promising new year, into Valentine’s Day, my Presidents’ Day holiday, with the added bonus of getting my taxes off early, after managing to clamp my hands around the neck of my life and throttling it into a semblance of order, I’m slipping backward.
Once I couldn’t sleep; now I can’t wake up. I’m a zombie going through the motions. In the bank, after waiting in line, I get up to the teller with no slip filled out, no idea if I’m after a deposit or withdrawal. In the market I wander around, since I’ve forgotten my list, and arrive home with useless groceries. At work, I forget what I’m doing, whose account I’m working on, or why. The central concern of my life: getting back to bed, to sleep. Sleep. The land of peace and forgetfulness. What do I want to forget? That I’m alone again after a brief flick of what passes, with me, for sociability? I mentioned this to Mr. Purdy, told him I was losing all the improvements I’d grafted onto my psyche. He said a leopard doesn’t change its spots. It hides in the bushes, takes on a camouflage, but underneath it’s still a leopard.
This is a normal development? This reverting to what must be my true nature? After all, it’s been almost a year. Or, on the other hand, it’s been not even a year. I don’t know which applies. Again I’ll mention this to Mr. Purdy. He’s about the only one I talk to these days.
That’s because Amy and Phil are gone, packed up and left for Wales, which might as well be the far side of the moon, although she calls (collect) every Sunday. My living room has become storage for boxes of their belongings; my garage is taken up with Amy’s Mustang. Phil’s Ford Escort rests, and rusts, in my side yard. I wouldn’t put up with this intrusion, except keeping their things seems akin to keeping a hold on them: when they come back, and they will, they’ll come to me.
“Is that what you want?” asks Mr. Purdy, peering at me over his bowl of oyster stew. “’Course, what do I know. I never had kids.”
I’m sure he’s on the cusp of peppering me with some remarks about tearing down the nest so when the birdies come flapping home, there’s no place to perch; but I’m not receptive; he knows better and shuts up.
At work, my lunch group has fallen apart. Helen now goes off to eat with Eileen, her Jolly Roger friend, who works around the corner at Radio Shack. Without Helen as cover, going one-on-one with Bruce over lunch in the conference room is too intimate, too intimidating; and we drift off on our separate ways.
Besides, I’m still pissed as hell over his poor performance at Vi’s Christmas party. He feels bad about it, too, and has apologized, several times, for the way he jumped to conclusions, and even for his snippy little daughter’s behavior. “I’m sorry, Peg,” he mumbles. “Izzie had it wrong, I know you wouldn’t say her legs are fat.”
I freeze him with a cold look. “No, I didn’t say that, because if anything, her legs are skinny.”
He gulps but manfully shoulders forward. “Whatever. I was edgy and nervous that night, and I want to forget that it ever happened. Can’t we let it go at that?”
“She said you want to get back with Jan. That your ex is having problems with the new one, and you’re looking to go home.”
He hangs his head. “Yeah, well, I suppose I might have thought that, but it wouldn’t have worked out.”
“Why not?”
“Because … either she’s changed, or I have. Which I should have realized. Would happen, I mean. People don’t stay the same, and the way I remembered her, all sweet and funny and cute … that’s not the way she is now.”
I try to extinguish, or at least disguise, the warm wash of pleasure this gives me. Moreover, something in me resonates, as if I’m a bell he has just rung. If I were to meet Emmett now, would I like him? Or would I see him as an insensitive man awash in testosterone, a dinosaur of a John Wayne pursuing grotesque and overly aggressive hobbies? Would I wonder what sort of a self-effacing wife he had at home, catering to his whims, skewing the perception of both of them?
Bruce adds, “Jan, I don’t know, she’s got a real attitude these days, pushy and bitter, like I owe her, it’s all my fault.”
He could be describing me.
Apparently he’s unaware of that, and goes on, “And the place is a mess, needs paint—they’ve let it go—and the grass, my beautiful lawn, it’s all weeds. Nobody mows, not even Todd, after all I taught him. Make a long story short, I realized you can’t, you can’t—”
“Go home again?”
“That’s about it. You know, none of this would have happened between us—between you and me, we were doing fine—if it hadn’t been for that rotten party at Vi’s,” he says, neatly circling back to where he came in.
Fine? I don’t know about fine, but there’d been at least a possibility that we could have done something mutually congenial. I agree with his assessment of the party, a wretched affair, on more than one count. Because right after the New Year when we came back to work, Vi had paged me into the conference room. Uh, oh, I thought, pacing down the hall in my hippie boots—I’ve fallen in love with them again, and they’re just the thing for this ice cave we work in—here we go, I’ve had it. And yes, it was more political fallout from the party. In a faux patient tone, she explained that Tiffany’s had a hard time, a difficult life, for which she takes Prozac, among other medications, and the last thing she needs is people interfering in her relationships.
“What!”
“Tiff says you advised her friend—Jason?—that he ought to go back to his wife. I think that’s up to Jason, and the more we stick our noses into someone else’s business, the more harm we cause. Now, I suspect, Peg, that since you’re older and probably consider yourself wiser—”
“Wait a minute! I never said any such thing to Jason. We sat on the couch together for five minutes, during which time he complained about Tiffany, about how hard she is to live with, how hard it is, or has been, to raise two little kids. How Tiffany … forget it! This is ridiculous.”
I actually stomped out, slapping down my felt boots as hard as I could. Went to sulk in the bathroom, which was more Tiffany’s style than mine. To her credit, Vi later apologized, said she hadn’t had all the facts, and that perhaps she’d been out of line to speak so quickly. Please, she pleaded, let’s cultivate a professional atmosphere wherein we do our work with a minimum of interference, of friction, blah, blah, blah.
The upshot of that was that I took a day off, my first one ever, and went down to the Department of Human Resources to look for a new job. A waste of time. I snagged a number from the dispenser and waited in line with fifty or sixty other people, most of them jabbering away in Spanish or Urdu or something that from the looks of them could have been Arabic. I’d visualized a cozy conference with a sympathetic professional who’d listen to me, leaning across a nice clean desk, then smile encouragingly and magically place me, a square Peg, in a nice tidy square hole. Instead, a surly clerk finally bellowed my number, then talked loudly over a counter—for all the world to hear—telling me, in sum, that I was overqualified. All they had on offer was service-oriented, motel maid, gardener, fast food. “You’re employed now, right? Well, then you got no problem, right?” Shoving my paperwork back across the
counter, the woman yelled, “Next! Number sixty-three! Number sixty-three!”
To cheer myself up, to form a psychic link to faraway Amy, I ate lunch at the same place where we’d last eaten, at that health food joint one block off Main in a converted Victorian trimmed with fish scales and gingerbread. I usually avoid such establishments, which intimidate me with their self-righteous purity. Macramé curtains cover windows plastered with rainbow-hued HONOR DIVERSITY stickers; tables and chairs arrogantly mismatched, overhung with creeping charlie plants; the waitresses—who give the impression they know more about my blood pressure than I do—are long-skirted women wearing Birkenstocks, their long hair in gray braids.
I ordered a sweet potato frittata, and tea (green, organic, decaf), and waited and waited … why such slow service … all they had to do was carve a square off the casserole I could see in the refrigerated display and stick it in the microwave … aha, no microwave, of course. So I had plenty of time to read from their assorted literature (smeared type, recycled paper). To chart my chakras, get in touch with my inner child (or parent), learn about the magic of macrobiotics.
Mainly, though, I reminisced, I recalled Amy’s and my stay at that place in the redwoods. We’d had a jolly trip. But I realized, with my increasing ability to tolerate self-honesty, that retrospect was working its magic, that time and distance were spinning a glow that the actual event had not been blessed with—I’d done the same with vacations, with life itself, with Emmett.
However, it had been gratifying to spend time with Amy, walking on that beach, talking about Emmett. After all, who else could I talk to about him? No one wanted to put up with my drivel. I was even getting sick of it myself.
At last my lunch. Forking up the sweet potato thing, I wondered if the sole reason I’d ordered it was to avoid duplicating what I’d had with Amy, which I hadn’t liked. No more than the food in that hifalutin inn, overpriced, over-cheesed, overdone. I was making the same mistake again and again. What was I doing here? I tossed down money for the bill and a tip—fifteen percent (no tablecloth, only a tie-dye runner), signed their petitions to save wetlands, tigers and the pandas. All the while thinking that if I hurried, I’d be able to work in a nap before bedtime. So much sleep; so little time.
Subway, that’s my place. I start dropping in there for lunch, sinking into my plastic booth, wolfing down my BLT, slurping my Dr. Pepper. An angry slurp, because, between naps, I’ve just finished an irritating book Helen loaned me. It’s about this stalwart, inventive, plucky babe on her own for the first time, a new version of An Unmarried Woman. A rich gal—she’s been left by her rich husband, who decides he wants to come back after it’s too late—goes to work as a temp, for the saucy thrill of it, and develops a scheme to rent out parts of her house. She makes a dizzy success of her eclectic clientele, she prospers, she engages in a warm fuzzy romance. Happiness, as far as the eye can see. I want to shriek, That’s not the way it is!
Then one day Bruce rolls into the parking lot, parks his rig next to my Bronco, strides in, orders a sandwich, then plunks down across from me. How did he know I was here? Well, there’s my Bronco in the parking lot. I remember Mr. Purdy remarking that Mad Max was keeping an eye on the house. Is he stalking me?
Not Bruce. I doubt he’s capable of it. He takes a bite out of his sandwich, then says sternly, with mock irritation, “By the way, you owe me some Chinese.”
“I what?” Oh, he is clever, knowing he’d get nowhere being polite, but to lay on a guilt trip, yeah, I’d go for it.
“Yes, I wanted Chinese and you forced me into Mexican. When are you going to make it up to me?”
In spite of myself, I experience a rush. He’s missed me, I make a difference in his life. I manage to conceal how the pique of my iceberg is melting into a warm puddle of gratitude, of affection (yes, but not love), and snap, “Have you got Izzie’s okay for that? Does she know you’re eating lunch with me? You better square it with her first.”
“Come on, Peg.”
“Or better yet, why doesn’t she fix you some chow mein at home? Open a can, throw on some noodles. That way she’ll know exactly where you are.”
He takes this with equanimity. “The Jade Garden this Friday night.”
“Can’t this Fri—”
“Mr. Purdy and the oyster stew. I forgot. How about Saturday?”
But I will not so easily give up my rich war for a threadbare capitulation. I hedge and argue, I want to rub his nose in it, back him into a corner; I want to pick a fight. After two months of sleepwalking, I am alive, alert, quivering for action. It’s wonderful, but I don’t want him to know it. That would give him too much power … but who am I kidding? He’s got eyes in his head, he can see for himself that I have (probably) pinked up with this emotional jump-start he’s delivered. I’m not dead after all.
With a philosophical shrug, he accepts the pelting I deliver—he’s used to it, has, probably, gotten it from Jan, and now, probably, from Izzie. A man who’s used to dealing with difficult women might just be my cup of tea. I consider this idea while I study him across from me, as he sinks his square teeth into his chicken sandwich (I think it’s chicken—who can tell what the mystery meat is in these places?). He’s got a slight smear of mustard on the corner of his mouth. He wipes at it, says, “How about after your soup date with Mr. Purdy? Yeah, this Friday, I’ll come by, pick you up and we’ll go for pie? A drink?”
When I shake my head, he says, “Well, don’t say no now; think about it, let me know later.”
Friday with Mr. Purdy and oyster stew. As usual, he’s full of his usual indignation over the usual mess at City Hall, the usual shenanigans of the Council—which is all news to me because I’ve quit reading the paper. He switches over to the neighborhood skinny, tells me, with a laugh, that Lyle had something explode in his garage, was out with an extinguisher putting down a smoky blaze while Frieda ran around wringing her hands. Irene’s been doing bedding plants, pansies, and he thinks it’s too early. “This weather, it’ll fool you. We always get a cold snap just before real spring.”
I watch him slurp his oyster stew, and I think I’m in my cold snap now, this is it. I’ll spend the rest of my life watching him, the high point of my week, apart from grabbing a nap, or going back to bed. Something has to change, I’m ready for a change. I can’t go on like this, I have finished with one thing and I want the next thing to begin.
What I’m finished with is my grieving period. How do I know, how does anyone know, when it’s over? Because it’s no longer serving a useful purpose, which is emptying the well of the psyche, no longer plump with satisfying emotions. It lies down as flat as a dried out, run-over skunk in the road, deplete of juice.
One of Emmett’s more dreary poems bubbles up, like an air pocket in thick soup, or a pimple in clear skin. I vow to get a paper shredder and put an end to his drivel. If only erasing them from my memory will be as easy:
There’s more to me than meets the eye,
But also there’s much less.
I’m deep, I’m dense, a shallow guy—
A puzzle, I confess.
Like you, I’m pure in my good life,
In oaths and vows and lies.
Deceits and dreams—with both I’m rife—
This comes as no surprise.
This world’s like us, you know my dear—
No need to fret or fume.
Not much is simple, straight, or clear
Except a path from here to doom.
I’m not ready for that path yet. I want jokes and pranks and games. I want fights, and tricks, and outrage. And laughter. I want messy connections … with Bruce? Well, it’s a start. Maybe more than a start.
Then Mr. Purdy says something that strikes me. “You read about that meteor shower due tonight? Whole mess of meteorites supposed to flare across the sky. I’d go out to watch it, but we got too many streetlights. You need total dark, but I don’t know where you’d get it around here. Used to be dark at night, but now
…” and he goes off on a reminiscence about how things used to be, back in the good old days.
I don’t attend to his rant, because I know a place where I can see a meteor shower, which may be just what I’m waiting for.
At the top of my cul-de-sac I shine the light from one of Emmett’s flashlights on a path through a vacant lot, one of the last vacant lots in captivity around here. This path leads to an overlook above the glow of streetlights, a place where I’ll see a falling star show. I asked Mr. Purdy to come, too, but he said he was too full, too tired, hadn’t felt well all day, although he put away two bowls of soup and a great quantity of garlic bread. That’s fine—I really want to be alone.
This is federal land, part of an abandoned World War II ammunition arsenal, and has never been developed. The knob overlook will be a fine viewing platform. The trail up to it is rough and rocky, full of knee-high scrub that catches at my skirt. It’s that foolish broomstick skirt, not practical for this trip, but I love it. I view it as a symbol, an indication of improvement—at least of change—the same way I view my boots, my earrings, even my smooth glowing teak table.
About halfway up there’s a spring, but there’s been no rain since that Halloween storm so there’s only a bit of mud to step my felt boots around. I continue up to that wide cleared spot, the shelf-like projection. I know of this place from when Amy was a baby and Emmett and I brought her up here to watch Fourth of July fireworks—the City used to put on a show from a nearby park. Not now, of course, with the fire danger so high and the budget so low.
Later when neighborhood kids were teenagers, this fort-like projection had been a hangout and littered with debris—soda and beer cans, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, even used condoms. But our kids are grown and gone. Now the area stays fairly clean.
