The Virtues of Oxygen

by Susan Schoenberger

  “This is fourteen-karat,” he said. “We have a standard rate that we pay by the gram based on the day’s spot price. Some’ll try to low-ball you—that new place over on Main Street doesn’t pay as much as we do. You’re here on a day when gold is up, so this would get you a hundred and twenty-five.”

  Holly’s chin fell toward her chest. Was that all it was worth? All that mental energy and all the emotion she had invested in that one small gold band had added nothing to the scale, which only measured an inert element. It didn’t seem fair. She picked up her ring with her right hand and laid it on her left palm. It was so light, and yet it weighed on her so heavily. It had been made to match her engagement ring—a sapphire set on a thin yellow-gold band that had once belonged to Chris’s grandmother.

  She remembered when Chris proposed to her, a year after they had met on graduation night from Syracuse. He had invited her over for pizza and a movie, but when she walked into his apartment, she noticed that he had actually cleaned up and set the small kitchen table with plates that matched. He did serve pizza, but it was homemade, and for dessert he asked her to sit in the living room while he cleaned up and fussed about in the kitchen. She was so irritated by the noise of him washing pans and loading the dishwasher that she got up to help just as he came around the corner with a cake ablaze with sparklers. Written on it with blue icing were the words “Marry Me?” She remembered looking up to make sure it wasn’t a joke before she responded and finding Chris’s eyes, which were stripped of any ego or fear and said so nakedly, I love you. She blew out the sparklers, screamed “Yes!” and threw her arms around him as he balanced the cake with one hand.

  The engagement ring had never quite fit her properly. She had taken it off to make meatballs one day when the boys were little and had rested it on the edge of the sink. She didn’t know it had fallen in until she was cleaning up eggshells and flipped the switch on the garbage disposal. When she heard the grinding sound, she knew what had happened and threw herself toward the switch to shut off the disposal, but it was too late. The twisted wreckage that came up amid the bread crumbs and goo wasn’t recognizable as a ring. Chris had shrugged it off, but she had kept the once-ring in her jewelry box for years, until she had sold her small pile of jewelry several years before.

  After that, she stuck to just the wedding band, which she wore on her left ring finger until a year after Chris died and then on a chain around her neck for another year. But it was time. She couldn’t let Christmas go by without a few presents, and what good was the ring doing inside a jewelry box? It was no more than a blunt reminder that she and Chris had fulfilled their promises, because death—that unpleasant guest invited into marriage vows—had been the one to part them.

  She nodded, watched the balding pawn-shop clerk put a twist tie tag on her ring, and took the thin envelope of cash from him, then sat in her car and cried. A decade ago, fiddling with her wedding ring during a school play or a movie, she could never have imagined being desperate enough to sell it. And now it was gone, which meant she had no cushion left, not even a paper-thin one. On top of that, her boys were almost grown. How was it that Marshall, who had trailed her around the house with his blanket, now asked her to buy razor blades? Or that Connor was already taller than she was? How could it be that they would both be leaving her soon—or worse, not leaving her if she couldn’t afford to send them to college?

  When the moment passed, she wiped her eyes and pulled her hair back from her forehead. It couldn’t be helped, this growing-up thing, but no one had ever told her about the grief, the sense of loss as one phase of childhood morphed into the next, or how much she would ache in witness to their inevitable pain. No one had ever told her how much she would be willing to sacrifice to save them from even an ounce of it.

  CHAPTER 21

  Holly went into work on Monday feeling a little fragile after her weekend dose of fiscal reality. As soon as she sat down in her office, Marveen knocked on the door.

  “Got a minute?” Marveen asked.

  “Sure.”

  Marveen sat in the chair that faced Holly’s desk and smoothed her jersey dress over her knees. No one else in the office wore dresses to work—Holly was often in jeans—but Marveen dressed for the job she wished to have, which was hosting and attending charity cocktail parties and lunches.

  “I’ve been thinking about what Stan said,” Marveen started.

  “I’ve been trying to forget what Stan said,” Holly said.

  “I’d like to take a leave of absence. You could save my salary and put it toward keeping your reporters instead.”

  “But who would do the books? Who would make sure the advertisers pay their bills?”

  “Any one of you could do it. It’s not that complicated, and we have fewer accounts now anyway. You could split it up.”

  “Look, Marveen, Stan is worried, but it’s not over yet. I don’t want anyone to make that kind of sacrifice until it’s absolutely necessary.”

  Marveen patted the pouf of hair that spread out from her head in gravity-defying radiance. The shape and whorls of it reminded Holly of a snail shell.

  “The truth is . . . I wasn’t sure I should tell you, but Arthur got a promotion,” Marveen said. “He wants me to focus on our kitchen remodel, which will practically be a full-time job. We’re adding three hundred square feet to the house, and it’s a total teardown.”

  Holly nodded. It wasn’t that she wanted to be Marveen—with her outdated bouffant hairdo and her bobbing chest and her fake nails—but for just a moment she wanted to be someone who could afford to leave a job so that her house could be enlarged.

  “I thought Arthur’s company just laid off a bunch of people,” Holly said. “I think we had a story about it.”

  “You’re right about that. Arthur had a terrible time with it. He was in charge of the downsizing.”

  Of course he was, Holly thought. She didn’t doubt that Arthur had a “terrible time with it,” but she imagined that his sleepless nights numbered far fewer than those of the laid-off.

  Holly nodded and told Marveen to figure out when her last day would be, then she put her head briefly on her desk as Marveen left, only to find Portia standing right in front of her with her reporter’s notebook in hand.

  “What’s up?” Holly said, pushing her hair behind her ears.

  “We’ve got a three-car crash over on Walsh Road,” she said. “Just wanted to let you know I was heading over.”

  “Fatalities?”

  “One of the vehicles was a garbage truck, so maybe. They have Walsh blocked off, so can you post that on Facebook and Twitter?”

  Holly nodded as Portia left. The Chronicle was only partially posted online, but they had recently embraced social media at Portia’s insistence. Holly had become fairly adept at the Facebook postings, but she was weak on Twitter. She would spend too long trying to fill out all 140 characters she was allowed, because it seemed like an irresistible challenge to get the remaining character count to zero.

  3-vehicle crash closes Walsh Road; ambulance called to the scene; garbage truck involved; stay tuned for updates from the Chronicle.

  Still eight characters left, and yet the whole story was there, Holly thought. Who needed newspapers?

  Holly stopped at Vivian’s house the next day to let her know that Racine would be sending along some numbers. The Sister Sisters were on their weekly shift, and they were just telling Vivian how they had sold their crosses at the gold store.

  “Hi, Holly . . . So the nice young man—the one with the lovely smile—told us he would give us a great deal because we were using the proceeds for charity,” one sister told Vivian. “We felt so special.”

  “We did,” the other sister agreed. “And now we can afford the cow. Our African family will be so pleased, won’t they, Sister?”

  “They will, Sister,” said the other one.

  Holly had known them for years, but no matter how many mnemonic devices she tried, she couldn’t tell one from
the other. Both had faces that had gone from apple to pear shaped, with soft jowls covered in the fine fuzz that some postmenopausal women never seemed to notice, maybe because their eyes were simultaneously weakening. They both wore thick glasses and had similarly prominent front teeth. One had one green eye and one blue eye, but Holly could never remember if that was Eileen or Eleanor.

  “I’m so glad for you both,” Vivian said. “Eileen, how’s your sciatica?”

  The one with a green eye responded.

  “So kind of you to ask, Vivian,” she said. “It’s much better. As long as I remember to do my exercises.”

  The sisters seemed to think that Holly was there to relieve them, though they still had twenty minutes left in their shift, so they gathered up their things and each made the sign of the cross over Vivian.

  “Bless you, my dear,” said the one with two blue eyes as they left in a blur of black fabric.

  Holly put down her purse and took off her coat, since she would now have to stay until the next volunteer came.

  “How on earth do you tell them apart?” she said. “It has baffled me for years.”

  “Easy,” Vivian said. “Eileen is the one with the green eye. Two e’s in Eileen, and two e’s in green.”

  “Brilliant,” Holly said. “Although they seem virtually interchangeable anyway. I’m not sure they even notice that no one seems to call them by name.”

  “You’re wrong there. In fact, they can’t understand why people confuse them. They’re actually quite different. Eileen studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art thinking she wanted to be an actress, but then she visited Eleanor on a missionary trip to India and decided she wanted that life instead. Still, she’s the more dramatic one.”

  Once again, Holly felt a tiny knot of jealousy that Vivian had taken the time to learn the nuns’ stories, when she was the journalist. She should have interviewed both nuns, and she should have known which one had the green eye. Instead, she was writing up police logs and putting captions on the winners of pet contests because her staff was so small now that these chores didn’t get done unless she did them herself.

  “So why are you here?” Vivian said. “You don’t have a shift until Thursday.”

  “I just stopped by to say that Racine would be sending you the expenses and revenue projections by e-mail,” Holly said, looking out the window, then back to Vivian. “And to let you know that he asked me out.”

  Vivian, who had been watching TV as Holly spoke, snapped her head around. “He asked you out? To do what?”

  “I don’t know. Dinner, I guess. Is that okay with you? I didn’t know if it was all right, because of my status as your watchdog.”

  Vivian burst into laughter. “You mean, is going to dinner all right now that you’ve already been to dinner with him?”

  Holly felt the blood run into her face. “Who told you?”

  “Who do you think? But if it hadn’t been Marveen, it would have been someone else. You seem to forget that I am the hub of Bertram Corners gossip, Holly. Everyone loves to tell me what’s going on out there, since I can’t see it for myself.”

  “Marveen has the biggest mouth on the planet.”

  “Oh please. She didn’t mean any harm. She just thought it was sweet that you got all dressed up and went out with a good-looking man. She was trying to take credit for your makeover.”

  “Does it bother you that I didn’t say anything? I didn’t want you to think I was shirking my duties.”

  Vivian laughed again. “My dear, sweet Holly. Why do you think I gave you this job in the first place? When I saw Racine’s picture online and spoke to him over the phone, I immediately thought, ‘He’d be great for Holly.’ Nothing serious, but a much-needed fling, which you haven’t had since Chris died, or possibly ever.”

  “So you set me up? Who else knew? Am I the laughingstock of the whole town?”

  “Of course not. I am the soul of discretion.”

  Holly walked to the window and looked out, wondering how she was perceived in the town where she had grown up. She really didn’t know.

  “Oh, look,” Vivian said. “I just got an e-mail from Racine with the revenue projections.”

  “Are they good?” Holly said, walking back to look at Vivian’s computer screen.

  “Let me see.”

  Vivian told her voice-activated computer to open a spreadsheet and scroll down. Holly could see the numbers, but she wasn’t sure what they meant.”

  “These are higher than I would have expected,” Vivian said. “He’s got a fairly big number in here for resale of estate items. Have you seen much of that happening?”

  Holly couldn’t remember any customers actually buying the estate jewelry and trinkets in the glass cases, but she wasn’t in the store all the time.

  “Not really,” she said. “But don’t you trust his numbers?”

  “I should. But I’m a skeptic, which is why I’m a good businesswoman. What I’d really like to do is go down there myself and see how it’s laid out, then look at the books.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  Vivian shook her head. “You have no idea what a production that would be. It requires staff and renting a van with the right equipment, and then I’m not sure I’d be able to get inside the store. It’s just too much.”

  “But it would be an adventure,” Holly said, suddenly wanting Vivian to take charge of the gold store investment before she screwed it up. Holly worried that she would have the opposite of Vivian’s Midas touch, sucking the value out of an otherwise successful business just as she had sucked the value out of her own house. “I could make all the arrangements.”

  “It would be nice to get outside,” Vivian said. “I think it’s been six months since I went to that concert in the park.”

  “What day do you want to go? Maybe Thursday?”

  By then Holly would have had her second date with Racine, and Vivian’s visit would give her an excuse to see him again without calling.

  “What the hell,” Vivian said. “Let’s take this show on the road.”

  After work, Holly ran home to cook the boys some pasta for dinner, then brought them with her for a rare trip to the mall so she could see what they wanted for Christmas. They each needed a new white polo shirt for the school holiday concerts, which she figured she could pick up at J. C. Penney. Then she would follow them through the mall and see what they picked up and admired, hoping there were at least a few items she could afford. She would make a point of avoiding the Apple Store.

  The plan went awry almost immediately after she found the polo shirts—on sale—for ten dollars each. Marshall saw a cluster of his friends and gave her a wave and said, “I’ll meet you back here in an hour.” She followed Connor as he made a beeline to the Apple Store, where he became engrossed in an online game.

  “Go shop, Mom,” Connor said without taking his eyes off the screen. “I’ll be here when you’re ready to go.”

  Holly patted Connor on the back and headed back out into the packed corridors lousy with garish lights and overheated shoppers with bags strung on their arms, evidence that other people could still afford the kind of Christmas she used to have. She had actually looked forward to taking the boys to the mall—a place they normally avoided—but now that she was here, it all seemed so pointless. The fear of rejected credit cards hung over her like a storm cloud. She wanted to pick out overpriced cashmere and holiday tins of peppermint bark and hat/scarf ensembles that would never be worn. She wanted that feeling of anticipation and that rush of adrenaline that comes from finding the perfect present which used to carry her through the season all the way up until the actual opening of said present and the response that never quite lived up to expectations.

  But after the concert shirts, she still had a hundred dollars or so from the ring sale, which meant fifty for each boy. She picked up a plaid shirt in one store and looked at the price tag: $39.95. So that and a new pair of socks would blow the whole wad for one of them. She sig
hed and put the shirt back, wondering if she should head back to J. C. Penney, and then caught sight of Marshall in the way that a mother can pick out the slope of her own child’s nose or his distinctive gait out of a large crowd. She looked again. Yes, that was Marshall, and he had his arm tight around the shoulder of a girl with jet-black hair and an eyebrow piercing. Holly pulled in a quick breath and put a hand instinctively over her mouth, shocked to see her son so casually intimate with a girl.

  She maneuvered behind a rack of down coats to get a better look. The girl was petite and wore a short skirt with black tights and combat boots. She looked a little dangerous, which was probably what drew Marshall to her, but she wondered about the attraction in the other direction. Holly couldn’t see any tattoos, but she somehow sensed their presence.

  “Mom, what are you doing?”

  Holly started. “Connor. Jesus, you scared me. I thought you were staying at the Apple Store.”

  “They have a time limit during the holidays, so I came to find you. Why are you spying on Marshall?”

  “Is that his girlfriend?”

  “I guess so,” he said, crouching with her behind the rack of coats.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Like Hannah or something.”

  “She doesn’t look like a Hannah.”

  “If that’s her name, then she looks like a Hannah,” Connor said, and Holly couldn’t dispute his logic.

  “Why hasn’t he said anything about her? They look very comfortable together.”

  “He’s worried you’ll freak out.”

  Holly turned to Connor, even at the risk of letting Marshall out of her sight. “Why would I freak out? I’ve been waiting for it to happen.”

  Connor buried his face in one of the down jackets. “It’s just hard talking about stuff like that.”

  Holly stood up straight and turned back to the store. She waved a hand toward the racks of shirts and jeans and jackets and T-shirts.