The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book)

by Robert Hough

  "It's $19.99."

  "Damn rip-off, that. The Slice-Master over in the corner's only $17.99, and I like the colour better."

  "Does the Slice-Master come with a puree blade?"

  "Uh, don't know."

  "Well, see, there you go. You're obviously a woman with children, and believe me a puree blade'll come in handy."

  This set the woman to thinking, which she seemed to find hard, either because she was naturally stupid or because she had a thirtypound toddler smacking the side of her head.

  "Plus," I said, "how many settings does the Slice-Master have?"

  "Uh, I dunno. Three?"

  "Three? Three settings? Far be it from me to tell you which processor to buy, madam, but most housewives find three settings inadequate for even the most basic chopping requirements. The Kitchen Whirrrr, as you can see, has seven: Thick, Medium-Thick, Medium, Medium-Thin, Thin, Wafer, Paper."

  Here I motioned like a twit and smiled brightly. Halfway through my arm sweep I realized what a mistake I'd just made.

  "Lemme see," she said.

  "Let you see what, madam?"

  "I wanna see the Paper setting. Graham only eats his carrots if they're so thin you can see through 'em, isn't that right Graham?"

  At the sound of his name the boy stopped howling and pounding the side of his mother's head long enough to wipe the back of his arm against his nose, smearing all that snot and dried pudding into a smudge that ran diagonally over the bottom half of his face. Turned my stomach, he did. Having had a momentary break he started screeching and slapping with renewed vigour.

  "I'm afraid I'm out of carrots, madam."

  "Well, spuds then. I like to get them thin before I fry 'em."

  "Of course, ma'am, right away ... oh, darn, the Kitchen Whirrrr works best with peeled potatoes and I don't seem to be able ... where did I put my peeler?"

  Her face went stiff. She grabbed both the brat's hands, which caught him off guard and shut him up. Then she looked straight at me for the first time since she'd showed up at the table.

  "Listen, lady," she said, "you jerking me around for any specific reason or is it just your nature?"

  I set the Kitchen Whirrrr to Paper, turned it on, took hold, stuck in an unpeeled potato the size of a football, and aimed. Caught the ugly little goblin right in the eye. I don't think he even got his lid closed in time, for his eye turned pink and drippy and he started screaming in a way that made his previous yowling seem calm by comparison. The woman got mad as a furnace, and through a curtain of greasy hair yelled, "What did you do?"

  "Taught your brat a lesson you trashy excuse for a human," I replied, and from there our salesman-customer relationship deteriorated. A commotion ensued, until finally there was a crowd around the All-New Stainless-Steel Slicing and Dicing Ronco Miracle Kitchen Whirrrr, though not for the reasons the Ronco people might've hoped for. My day ended with my telling a spitting-mad Theresa Gains what she could do with her crappy processing machine. Then I stormed out, feeling like exactly what I was: a useless old lady wearing a silly costume fifty years too young for her.

  The weather was the way it always is in March in southern California: hot and beautiful. I forced myself to concentrate on the way the sun warmed my face and on the coolness of the breeze blowing over the parking lot and how that coolness is so often a feature of the coast. At the same time, I forced myself to think how lucky I was to live in a place that wasn't freezing cold nine months out of the year. Then I forced myself to consider my health, my house, my big old car, my memories of criss-crossing this big old glorious country called America so many times I know it the way most people know their own bathroom.

  Had to.

  I stayed reclined for the better part of a week. Only got up to pee and drink down the occasional Hamm's and swallow my sleep medicine. If the phone rang I let it go on ringing, and if someone came to the door I let their knuckles get raw. I even moved the black-and-white into the bedroom so I could switch on Gilligan or the news if the mood hit me. Generally, it didn't.

  Finally, one afternoon I awoke and instead of feeling listless and wan I felt raring to go. Vengeful, you might say. This presented two options. The first was getting up and doing whatever it took, no matter how desperate, to get my kitties back. The second was to roll over and wait patiently for another neurasthenic lapse. Both had their attractions and their drawbacks, but after a few minutes of staring up at the ceiling I figured I better pursue the first-if I lay around much longer my muscles would start to go, and then doing anything requiring the slightest bit of vigour would be permanently out of the question.

  So I pounced. Threw back the blankets and jumped to the carpet. It felt good moving my body again, so I gave a little whoop along with it. Then I dressed in clothes befitting a woman my age and jumped in the old Buick. Tore onto the Ventura Freeway, and for the first time in my life took the center lane instead of the slow lane, all the while thinking, You've got to strike while the iron's hot. Plus I figured driving faster than normal would keep my mind off the fact that I didn't have a plan, or leastways not exactly.

  What I did have was possible courses of action. The first was barging into Jeb and Ida's office and demanding they give me my tigers back. While it's hard to describe why I thought this might work, it has to do with my having been adulated once. Another was getting Jeb alone and then out-and-out begging, something that probably wouldn't work either and had the additional drawback of being a humiliation. The other idea I had was somewhere in the middle: I'd find Jeb or Ray Labbat and I'd say, all right, you win. You hire me back and I'll sign on legit and any increase in your insurance premiums you can deduct straight from my salary. That'll make me happy and that'll make the Omahamians happy and you can keep on advertising you've got yourself the oldest living tiger trainer, two shows daily.

  Yet as I tore along the freeway, the needle on the senseless side of seventy, I willed myself not to make any decisions. Sometimes when you enter an arena full of animals made grumpy by weather or bad hay it's best to let instinct get you through. If I had a definite plan, it was only to put myself in the moment and then see what determination and a talent for survival would do for me.

  So I pulled into the JungleLand parking lot and immediately got mad when I saw someone else parked in my favourite spot beneath the big oak tree. Instead of calming myself down, I let myself get good and enraged, for that car being in that spot was a part of the moment, and if my being mad as a polar bear was part of the equation, then so be it. So I hit the steering wheel and leaned heavily on the horn and cursed out the window. When this didn't accomplish anything other than make me go hoarse I parked in the grass lot used on busy days. Walked all the way across the lot, and when I reached the entrance Wanda the ticket girl got all wide-eyed and curious about the details of my life since retirement.

  "Mabel!" she said. "How're you doing?"

  Though Wanda was a decent person with problems that merited sympathy-her son was in prison, and over the past year her husband had bloated with gout-I lowered my chin and held up my palm as if to say, Sorry, Wanda. Not right now. Then I walked on in, feeling relieved she hadn't asked me to pay admission.

  For a second I stood in the midway, getting my bearings, feeling the way you do when you return to a place you once belonged-i.e., awkward. Which is not to say people weren't coming up to me and asking me how I was doing. They were, only I was feeling stupid being on the lot without any work to do, so I used body language to indicate I was too busy for idle chat but I'd come by later for a proper hello.

  Mostly I wanted to keep up a good head of steam. Though I still had no idea what I was going to do when I finally tracked down my old bosses, there was a better than even chance I'd do it in a voice gone sharp as a mowing tine. I stormed past the games of skill and the coin rides and Annie's hamburger shack. Pigeons cawed and fluttered into my face. (Who did they think they were, saying I was too old?) I turned a corner onto the connection leading to the menage. Pulled up
. Was as if some furious god with big lungs had taken the wind from my sails with a single sharp inhale.

  Henry Tyndall, doddery as ever, was leading Daisy the Dromedary to the show arena. He moved so slowly it was more like the damn camel was leading him.

  So. My heart pounded, my eyes brimmed, my stomach went fluttery and I suffered a sudden weakness in whatever muscles decide whether you do or do not go to the bathroom. Seeing Tyndall was something I wouldn't've predicted in a million years. Instead of reacting and being in the moment and running on instinct and doing all the things I'd pictured myself doing, I stood there thinking, Why? Why me?

  Seeing as there's no more stupefying a question, I knew my first priority was to make it stop bouncing around my head. In other words, I got my legs going before I figured where it was they were going to go to. Meanwhile, I sort of left my own body and imagined how I must've looked trying to run, and that way was: arms crooked and tensed, fingers splayed, head stuck out like a turtle's, splinted legs moving at the hips, a stiffness caused by the fear of breaking something. An expression hoping for dignified but not quite making it. I don't think I'd ever been madder at my own self for getting so old.

  I'd travelled a few dozen steps when I figured out I was heading in the direction of the monkey house. I kept on going. The monkeys were inside that day, so when I pulled open the door I was met with a steamy rankness. Fought my way through schoolchildren all pointing at the king gorilla, who was fond of vomiting into his hands and then slurping it right back up again, something he was doing that very moment. There was a stretch of daylight between the gorillas and the orangutans, at which point there was another cluster, Gerald the papa orang giving a show by twirling his privates with a forefinger and grinning like a pervert.

  By the time I made it to the chimps, I was sweating like a ewe on slaughter day. For a second I stood with my eyes down. I couldn't look. Couldn't even bring myself to lift my head-just sort of angled my eyeballs upward and felt my throat seize tight. Sure enough, that old Indian chief was in there, hunched over and sweeping pellets, his face a thousand red nooks and crannies and crevices.

  Had to've been ninety if he was a day.

  I put my head down and walked quickly out of the monkey house and if anyone called out, "Hi Mabel how you doing?" I ignored them and kept going. Shaky with regret, I was, and that's a bitter way to feel: even the dumbest eighteen-year-old elephant groomer knows enough to be nice to the boss. Truth was, I'd been too big for my britches. I'd deserved everything that'd come my way, and here I'm talking about more than my firing from JungleLand.

  By the time I stopped at Snack Bar Annie's I was pale and shaky and sweaty.

  "Jesus Christ, Mabel," Annie said. "You look like you seen a ghost."

  "Hamm's."

  She gave me one and I popped the pull tab and drank it straight down while she watched. I slammed it against the tabletop, scaring some flies huddled around spilled ketchup.

  "Another," I said, and repeated the process. By the time I finished Hamm's number two, I was light-headed and wobbly, two shotgun beers being a lot for an old woman whose weight and age are closer than she'd ever care to admit.

  "Thank you kindly," I said. Then I stumbled off and made the entrance and when the ticket girl Wanda said, "Nice to see you again, Mabel," I waved a saggy forearm without looking at her.

  I got in my big old Buick. Backed out and made sure I took out the headlight belonging to the car that'd had enough nerve to occupy my spot under the oak tree. Then, so my final departure would be dramatic, I did something I'd heard one of the cage boys brag about once: I pushed my left foot against the breadloaf-sized brake pedal while revving the engine hard with my right.

  Understand, my Buick has a fair-sized engine, 425 cu. inches to be exact, and though this doesn't mean a whole lot to me I've been told that's a sizable bit of liveliness under the hood. The engine roared like a lion wanting to fight. I let my left foot slide off the side of the brake, the pad springing upward with a thwock. The tires spun like a son of a bitch, the front of the car staying in one spot while the back swung in a sideways arch. It came crashing against a big old woody station wagon that'd been parked next to the car in my spot. There was the sound of breaking glass and crumpling metal and screeching tires. The air was filled with black smoke. The smell of rubber was something awful. I drove slowly on out.

  A minute later, I heard sirens. Was another minute before I realized they were after yours truly. So I took an off ramp and parked on a side street.

  A tall, lean cop got out of the cruiser. Immediately I knew I wasn't about to buy my way out of this one, it being a strange truth the skinny ones are rarely crooked. Sitting there, I pined for the days when cops barely got paid and appreciated a gratuity from time to time.

  He stepped up to my side as I was rolling down the window. I was just about to hit him with the "Is there anything wrong, Officer?" when he proceeded straight to the "Step out of the car, ma'am."

  We were in a black neighbourhood. While he looked at my fake driver's license, which bore a picture of me taken in 1952, I had myself a look about. Behind me was a little strip mall with maybe four or five storefronts, three of which were papered over. Still in business was a liquor store with the word Michelob flashing in neon blue, and of all things a creole shack. What a creole shack was doing two thousand miles from the bayou was anybody's guess, but I can tell you at that moment it hit me I hadn't eaten in the better part of a week and would've killed for a hot ladling of etoufee. Goddammit, how the circus used to cheer itself up whenever we crossed the Louisiana state line, and believe me it wasn't the humidity or the gators or the French whores or that funny squeeze-box music they had down there. Uh-uh. Was the food.

  I was planning to ask the officer if he could spare me for a minute when he told me to stand on one foot and close my eyes and touch both fingers to my nose.

  I practically laughed.

  "Might as well ask me to flap my wings and fly, sonny Jim. You're looking at an old lady, and old ladies have trouble staying upright on two feet."

  He stewed on this a second. I even saw a flicker of sympathy cross his face, something that made me think he'd never last.

  "All right," he said, "count backwards from a hundred by sevens."

  Again, I had to laugh, this being a test as old as the hills. Back in the days when the Ringlings were hiring Pinkerton agents to help thin the grift a little, there were a few months when John Ringling's fastidious wife, Mabel, decided she wanted to rid the circus of alcohol too. This made us all snicker, Mabel Ringling having a husband who drank schnapps all day and who never went to bed without having a dozen pints of German lager. Course, maybe that was the reason she was so keen to see the circus turn temperate: she was worried her husband's drinking would kill him, which of course it eventually did. In the meantime, she'd stand near the workingmen's train on nights off, bushwhacking those on their way back from the blue car and asking them to count backward from a hundred by sevens. Was about as unfair as unfair gets, seeing as a typical workingman'd never made it out of grade school and couldn't have done it sober. They'd fluster up and cipher in their head and usually go mute with nerves. Then Mabel would fine them 50 cents, an amount the front office boys never bothered to collect, seeing as they were the ones who sold them the beer in the first place.

  Though I never got the test myself, I knew enough to practise. It wasn't hard, once you got the hang of it, so when that officer asked for it I knew I had him licked, the sharpness of my mind being about the only thing I still took pride in.

  I started.

  "One hundred," I said, proceeding by memory to the next step, "ninety-three" and the next, "eighty-six."

  Now here a distressing thing happened. I couldn't recall what the next number was, though this didn't overly concern me, for it'd been more than forty years since I'd practiced Mabel Ringling's sobriety test. No problem, I told myself. I'd just figure it out. Problem was, by this point I seemed to have forg
otten the number I'd just said, so I had to go back and repeat the count in my head: One hundred ... ninety-three ... oh, right, eighty-six. Once I got the eighty-six back, I had to minus the seven, though I found pulling the number out of thin air was like pulling teeth: instead of just landing on the number like I would've years earlier, I had to count backward from eighty-six, embarrassed the whole time my lips were moving.

  "Seventy-nine?" I said weakly.

  You could see by the hopeful expression on the young man's face he was rooting for me. I guess he figured if a woman as old as me could handle this test then maybe old age wasn't so fearsome after all. His eyes widened and his lips parted. I thought he was even going to mouth the next number. Course, he didn't, and by that point I'd forgotten what I'd just said, so I had to start all over in my head, stalling at eighty-six, counting my way down past seventy-nine and losing my place somewhere in the mid-seventies. Meanwhile, my stomach was growling and my head was hurting and sun was getting in my eyes so I decided I'd take a guess.

  "Seventy-four?" I croaked, my tongue seeming to quit on me as well.

  The young officer immediately looked guilty as a sinner. Was like he was the one who'd smashed a few cars in the JungleLand parking lot.

  "Ma'am," he said softly, touching my sweatered elbow with two fingers.

  In this way he led me to his squad car. He opened the front passenger door and I got in. When he got me home he said he wasn't going to press any charges but that I wasn't about to drive again either; to emphasize this fact he took my old forged license and slid it into an inside jacket pocket (which didn't bother me unduly, as I had four or five others sitting in one of my kitchen drawers). After promising him I had someone to look after me, he nodded and drove off. I went inside my house and immediately hated the green, the garden, the little kitchen, the me-ness of it. Believe me-it wasn't possible for a person to feel lower than I did at that moment. I knew I couldn't be alone-in fact, I could practically feel my memories reaching from the walls and trying to grab me by the throat and it surprised me when I realized there was only one living person in the whole world I wanted to see. I picked up the phone and dialled the JungleLand cathouse. When I got through I asked for that little Okie job-stealer Roger Haynes.