Open House

by Elizabeth Berg

  “Yeah!”

  “Really?”

  “Well . . . Yes. Yes. Thank you.”

  And then the Ryder truck arrives, a man driving it who’s been hired to help carry stuff in. There wasn’t much, Lydia had assured me: some bedroom furniture, a few kitchen things, linens. The apartment she lived in before had been mostly furnished.

  I stand at the window and watch the man climb out of the truck, note with satisfaction that he is huge. I won’t need to help much. He opens the back doors of the truck and pulls out a brass headboard, which glints magnificently in the sun.

  “Boy, that bed is old,” Marie says, sipping coffee and standing beside me. “My mother was born in it. And her mother.”

  I see a woman in the bed with wavy, dark hair loosened about her head, perspiring, another woman wearing a long skirt and a white blouse with rolled-up sleeves, standing by to wipe her face with a soft, folded cloth, to speak quietly into her ear, a woman who has had children her self and thus communicates in a higher language.

  When I was in labor, David sat beside me eating the dinner the hospital provided and complaining that it was cold. I turned the call light on for the nurse, who, upon entering, asked, “Need something for pain, hon?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. And then, pointing to David’s tray, “It’s cold.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Okay. I’ll take care of it right away.” She took David’s tray from him, said in a low voice to me, “First things first, right?” Oh, no, you don’t know him, I’d wanted to say. But maybe she did.

  I see the moving man coming up the walk and I go to the door to meet him. He is probably well over six foot three, and his weight is considerable. He is fat, is the plain truth, and yet I find him extremely pleasant to look at. It has to do with his beautiful black hair, cut in an appealingly shaggy way. And his brown eyes, they’re nice too—golden, almost. He is wearing faded blue jeans, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black suspenders, and red high-top sneakers; no coat. He smells faintly of soap.

  “Aren’t you cold?” I ask.

  “Nope.” He smiles at me. Nice teeth.

  I smile back. Lean against the doorjamb, arms crossed.

  “Did you want me to tell him where to put it, Sam?” Marie asks.

  “Oh! I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s up—well, here, let me show you.” I lead him up the staircase, conscious of my backside as I always am, leading one damn workman or another upstairs or downstairs. It doesn’t matter who they are: meter man, furnace-repair man, furniture-delivery man: every time I walk in front of them, I can feel them judging my ass. Even if they’re not. But probably they are.

  I take him to the study. “This is it.” I move to the window and open the shade. The room fills with light, and, inexplicably, this fills me with a kind of optimism and pride.

  The man leans the bed frame gently against the wall, then extends his hand. “My name is King.”

  I laugh. “It is?”

  “Honest to God. My parents were . . . different.”

  “Well,” I say. “I’m sorry for laughing. It’s just, you know . . . Graceland. I’m Sam.”

  “So you’ll be Lydia’s roommate?”

  “Yes. You know her? Lydia?”

  “Just met her. Her and her boyfriend, nice people. They have a lot of class. Something you don’t see much of anymore.” He motions for me to go ahead of him out of the room. “She doesn’t have much stuff. This won’t take long.”

  “I made some banana bread, and there’s coffee,” I say. I agree with what he just said about Lydia. Therefore, I will feed him.

  Downstairs, I see that Lydia has arrived. She is taking her coat off, adjusting her open-weave cardigan sweater, asking her daughter where the closet is again, and Marie is saying she’s not sure, either.

  “I’ll hang that up,” I say, taking her coat, and then, shyly, “Hello. Welcome.”

  Lydia smiles, takes my hand between her own. Her hands are warm, strong; not dry and fragile feeling, as I had thought they would be. My hands, however, reflect my nervousness—I know they’re ice-cold. I lead the women into the kitchen, set out cups and plates for them, slice the banana bread.

  After we sit down, Lydia pushes a small package toward me. “For you,” she says. And then, when I start to protest, she says, “It’s nothing. Very small.” I unwrap crystal salt and pepper shakers, start to say thank you when I am interrupted by a high-pitched “Yoo-hoo!” At first I’m confused, thinking the moving man has an awfully high voice, but then there is my mother, coming into the kitchen. She is wearing a lavender work-out suit, and her coat is open, car keys in her hand.

  “Ma!”

  “Well, you never answer the phone. I was on my way back from my aerobics class—” She looks pointedly at Marie and Lydia.

  “Lydia, please meet my mother, Veronica Reynolds. Mom, this is Lydia Fitch, my new roommate; and this is her daughter, Marie Howard. It’s moving day—I guess you saw the truck. . . .”

  Veronica comes to the table to shake both women’s hands. Her bracelets jangle busily. “Very nice to meet you, what a surprise.” She doesn’t say surprise like it’s a surprise. She says it like it’s a dirty trick.

  “Banana bread?” Lydia asks, offering her own untouched plate, and Veronica hastily declines. “I’m on my way home, really, just dropped in to see how my daughter’s doing. But apparently she’s doing just fine, isn’t she, got two roommates already!”

  “Just one,” Marie says.

  “Pardon?”

  “Just one, I’m not moving in. I’m just here to help my mother get settled.”

  “I see. Where’s Travis?”

  “Shopping,” I say. “He went to the mall with Billy Silverman and his mother to find some pants he must have. All the rage.”

  “You let him buy his own clothes now?”

  “I have for some time.”

  “Uh-huh. Well! Something else I didn’t know.” She looks at Lydia. “Funny, isn’t it, how you can not know so much about those you’re closest to? Okay, I’d better be going, I don’t want to stay too long. Not even invited in the first place, of course.”

  “Ma. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. I’m sure you know that.”

  “Oh no. Really, I can’t. A lot to do, for tonight. I’m having a man over for dinner. I thought, well, why not lobster, something sort of elegant? And I just found something out about lobster, too. A woman at the gym told me if you slice open their claws after they’re cooked and hold them upside down over the sink, the water will run right out. Then there’s no need for bibs covering up your cleavage.”

  A polite silence at the table. Then Veronica tells Lydia, “Well. I hope you’ll be very happy here.” She turns to me. “Want to walk me to the car?”

  At the door, we meet King, carrying an armload of clothes and a pole lamp. He nods, smiling, and my mother pulls back to let him pass. “Well!” she says, after we get outside. “Don’t get him mad at you! A few pounds getting a free ride there!”

  “He’s quite nice, really.”

  She climbs into her car, pulls down the visor to check herself in the mirror. “I wonder something,” she says.

  “What?”

  She adjusts her bangs, leans in closer to the mirror, wipes away a smudge of eyeliner. “I just wonder if you could give me one reason why I couldn’t have lived here with you instead of a total stranger. Who’s old.”

  Let’s see, I think. One reason?

  She looks at me. “I mean, your own mother. I just wonder what you could have been thinking that you wouldn’t ask me first.”

  “Oh, Ma, this all came about accidentally, all of a sudden. I didn’t plan it. Besides, I don’t know if it’s such a good idea for mothers and daughters to live together after a certain age. Do you, really? I mean, if you need money—”

  “I certainly don’t need your money! Have I ever asked you for money? Ever? Even once?”

  “Well, then, I’m sorry if you feel—”
>
  Veronica puts her hand on my arm, squeezes it. “Oh, it’s all right. I understand. You’re confused right now, honey, doing things on the spur of the moment that you probably don’t understand yourself. You didn’t think to ask me. You probably thought I wouldn’t want to live with you and Travis. Oh now, darling, of course I would. But not quite yet. Maybe a few years from now, all right?”

  I straighten, stand silently. What is it that I feel so often around my mother? Amazement? Confusion? Is it anger?

  “You know, if I did live here . . . I’ve always thought a little chintz in that family room is all you need. That’s what I’d do. Recover the sofa.”

  “Right.”

  My mother turns the key in the ignition. Engelbert Humperdinck blasts out a plea for forgiveness, not having known it would end this way. Veronica respectfully turns him down. “Call me, later. There’s someone I want you to meet. This one you’ll really like.”

  “Ma—”

  She flutters her fingers. “I’ll talk to you soon.” Then she turns the radio back up and pulls away, her right blinker gaily flashing, as it usually is. I head back for the house, irritated at the fact that my mother is right. I am confused.

  I AM DREAMING that someone is shaking my shoulder. And then I realize that someone is shaking my shoulder. “What,” I say loudly, irritated, my eyes closed. Then, sitting up quickly, “What is it? Travis? What’s wrong?”

  He puts his fingers to his lips, gestures for me to follow. I look at the clock: 3:07.

  “What are you doing?” I change my voice to a whisper, remembering, suddenly, that someone else is in the house. “It’s the middle of the night! Are you sick?” I reach out to feel his forehead.

  He pulls away impatiently. “Come with me,” he says urgently, and I follow him down the hall. Outside Lydia’s shut door, he stops, waits. And then I hear it. Snoring. Loud snoring, cartoon variety. I look at Travis, cover my mouth as I start to laugh. But he is not amused. “Mom,” he whispers fiercely. “It isn’t funny!”

  He shakes his head, then goes back into his bedroom, slams the door. I go in after him, sit on his bed. “Travis . . .” He pulls the pillow over his head. I try to take it off and he pulls it more tightly over him.

  “You can’t breathe when you do that, you know.”

  “Who cares?” His voice is muffled, shaky with tears.

  “Come out from under there. I want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk. You’re just crazy.” He turns away from me.

  I yank the pillow off, turn him over. “Now, you listen here. You listen to me. Don’t you dare talk to me like that. I am your mother. And I am not crazy. I am . . . Things are changing, that’s all, Travis. They are changing because they have to. And don’t you slam doors at three in the morning, either! Some people are trying to sleep.”

  He watches me through narrowed eyes, says nothing.

  Finally, I say, “Well, what, Travis? What’s the big deal? So she snores.”

  “She woke me up! I have to go to school tomorrow! I have to get a good night’s sleep!”

  I refrain from commenting on this new interest in academic responsibilities, say instead, “Tomorrow’s Sunday, Travis.”

  “Well, fine, but she probably snores every night.”

  “I suppose she might. But you’ll get used to it. You really will. You’d be surprised what you can get used to. After a few nights, you won’t even notice it.”

  “Who wants to get used to it? Who wants an old lady living here, anyway? She’s not even my grandma.”

  “No, she’s not.”

  “So why is she here?”

  “I told you. Dad left. If we want to keep living here, we need a roommate to help pay for the mortgage. Remember, I told you that?”

  Nothing.

  “Travis?”

  “Yes, I remember.” His voice is quiet now, resigned. I hate that he knows what a mortgage is.

  “What if she dies here or something?” he asks.

  “Pardon?”

  “What if she dies here?”

  “Well, Travis, I’m sure that’s not going to happen.” My God. What if it does? I see myself on the phone, abstractly weeping, saying, “I don’t know her medical history. She just moved in. But I think she’s dead.”

  9

  A LITTLE OVER A WEEK LATER, ON MONDAY MORNING, I SIT alone at the kitchen table. Lydia got up early, had tea and toast with blackberry jam, and then went out with Thomas. She was going to accompany him to a doctor’s appointment, and then they were going to an afternoon concert at Symphony Hall. Travis ate his Cheerios sullenly, then left for school without saying good-bye. Now I sit with a fourth cup of coffee, feeling my heart beat too fast and not caring. Maybe this is a good way to kill yourself: an exuberant overdose of caffeine, I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying!! could be my last thought. Had to go!! Too painful!!

  Oh, what I want to do is hand my life over to someone else. That’s all. And they could rearrange everything into something that would make sense. There, they could say; now, was that so hard? Well, for me, yes. It is too hard for me. I am no good at my own life.

  I close my eyes, lean my head back, and begin to sob from a place deep in my stomach. I can’t be alone. I don’t want to be alone. I miss David so much, yes I do, I miss the presence of another person in my bed at night, even if he doesn’t touch me; the reliability of someone else being there in the morning, even if they only shave and stare straight ahead into the mirror while you lean against the bathroom doorjamb with your cup of coffee, chatting hopefully. And I miss my son; I miss the way that he was before, when he trusted me, when he thought I could take care of him.

  And then suddenly I stop crying, push wet strands of hair back from my face. What is the point in this?

  First, I will go on a diet. This grief has put five pounds on me so far. I have to be careful. There are some women for whom sorrow attracts fat, and I am one of them. I will go on a diet and then I will take some adult education courses. Oh, but then I’ll have to find some. And I’ll have to go and register somewhere, fill in tiresome blank after blank, put an X in the “Ms.” box. I’ve always put an X in the “Ms.” box, but now it’s pathetic. And I’ll have to get dressed. I’m not dressed now; I don’t get dressed right away anymore, Martha Stewart doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

  I stare wearily at the kitchen table, at the swatch of sunlight that lies over the basket of paper napkins. The pattern on the napkins is illuminated; white-on-white roses. I never saw those roses before. I have lived my life blind.

  I need to talk to someone. I go to the phone to call Rita, then stop. It’s too early. Who, then? Louise and I have never been close. I haven’t made any other real friends. There is no one. I have spent most of my life focusing on David, and he is gone. Nothing has rushed in to fill this void; there are no natural laws to make for an instant adjustment; humans are stupider than nature. I just have to go through this, that’s all. By myself. It is all up to me, things are too much up to me and I don’t like it. It is not exhilarating. It is not an opportunity to “grow.” It is hard work; scary, lonely stuff; and I don’t want it. I don’t want it. I want my old life back.

  I go to the phone, quickly dial David’s office number. When his secretary puts me through, I realize I have no idea what to say.

  “. . . Sam?”

  “How are you?” I was just going to call you! Sam, I’ve made a terrible mistake.

  “I’m fine.” His voice is wary. Wary! But we were married, we were married, for nearly twenty years!

  I lean against the wall. “David.” I squeeze the phone cord.

  He waits.

  “How come you did this?” I ask, finally.

  “Sam—”

  “I really feel terrible. And I don’t know who to tell. I don’t have anyone to tell who can understand what you . . . You were my friend. But you’re not my friend. I don’t understand how this happened, David. I don’t get it, really; I liter
ally don’t. I mean, you didn’t give me a chance. You never really told me what was wrong.” Crying. Again.

  “Where are you?” His voice is low. Impatient.

  “I . . . In Paris, David. Where do you think I am? I’m home. Goddamnit, I hate you.”

  “Look, I’ll come over after work. We’ll talk.”

  “No! . . . Fine.”

  “I’ll be there about seven.”

  I hang up, embarrassed for myself in front of myself. Oh, what do I want back? What? The bored tolerance of a man who finds not one thing about me charming?

  The doorbell sounds, and I wipe my face, go to look out the peephole. It is King, the man who helped Lydia move in, holding the leashes of three dogs. No, four. Between the legs of the German shepherd is the ridiculous face of a Chihuahua, barking wildly at nothing. There are twin cocker spaniels on braided leashes, sitting patiently as bookends and looking up as though they are the ones that rang the bell.

  I open the door and the dogs all rush forward. King pulls them back, smiles expectantly at me. “Hi. Want to go for a walk?”

  “Well, I’m kind of . . . not dressed. I’m . . .” I see the same accepting kindness in his pleasant face that I saw before. “I’ve been crying,” I say, laughing.

  “Yes, I see that. Come for a walk with me. You won’t cry anymore. Come on, go get your leash.”

  I start to say that I can’t. But why can’t I? I ask him to wait a moment, and go upstairs to dress. I select a blue sweater that is a flattering color for me.

  When I walk down the steps with King, he offers me his arm, and I take it. Such a lovely thing. When did people stop doing it?

  “Where are we going?” I ask. It’s a perfect November day—just cold enough for a coat, the sun bright.

  “Anywhere.” He stops, holds out the tangle of leashes to me. “Dog?”

  I smile, select the pink rhinestoned leash of the Chihuahua, whose hysteria has been silenced by the prospect of something interesting happening.

  “DAD’S COMING FOR dinner tonight,” I tell Travis. He is at the kitchen table, listlessly eating a snack of peanut-butter toast. He looks up at me, searching for a way to react.