≈
Mag spots the house. They have walked for miles through the lingering dusk, as they have every evening for weeks. “There,” Mag says with a note of finality. She points at a wreck half hidden behind an untended thicket. Trees sprout beside the foundation. The nearly-bare clapboard is the color of elephant hide.
A fixer-upper, a handyman special. Just what Wald had in mind, except now his heart sinks as the quantity of work registers on him. “Oh my God,” he mutters.
The windows are dark. The house looks abandoned.
“Let’s go around to the alley,” Mag says. She pulls at his arm, the first bit of eagerness she has shown for his project.
Wald devised this plan for their future. Buy a run-down house. Repair. Sell. Repeat as needed. Inside ten years he and Mag will become people of substance. That Mag does not share his interest is no surprise to Wald. As an artist, she considers herself removed from such dull concerns. He assumes she will not object when some day in the future she realizes that because of his foresight she is not a starving, middle-aged and somewhat pathetic artist.
Among the differences between them is that Mag is happy so long as they have enough for groceries, rent and her paint. When they are short on cash she takes a waitress job for as long as necessary. She charms her customers, men and women alike, reaping a harvest of tips. As soon as she makes enough she quits, certain there will be more whenever she desires. Her beauty is a form of currency. She smiles and gets the things she wants.
She pulls again at Wald’s arm.
A lilac hedge spills into the alley. The blossoms have faded, though a hint of the perfume remains. In the yard Wald sees a climbing rose, clinging to a rotted arbor. Ferns grow wild in the grass.
He remembers the first time he saw Mag’s paintings.
She had turned her pantry into a studio. In that tight space he felt like a giant, looming over her. She was delicate, fine-boned, barely over five feet tall. Paint fumes mixed with stale incense and patchouli, this being 1971.
“Do you mind?” he asked, setting a hand on the paintings leaned against the wall. When she nodded he flipped slowly through them. What he didn’t know about art could fill a library. He did his best to look discerning. Her subject was abandoned gardens in a fog that never seemed to lift. He wasn’t sure how she managed the effect. The mist seemed like a layer that could be fanned away, if only he knew the right way to wave his hands.
“Hmm,” he said at last, fearful that anything more would expose him as a fool.
“I’ve heard that before.”
“No, it’s that...”
“It’s what?”
“It’s like the thing you want most is just out of reach,” he said. He feared that the future could hinge on his answer. “You can’t quite get a hand on it.”
“If you know what you want…”
“Suppose I did?”
“…it’s yours.”
They were so close in the small room that he might have heard her heartbeat. She slipped on a man’s shirt, covered with paint, that hung to her knees. Her palette knife scratched against a plywood board as she mixed her paint.
On the day they were married, Mag wore her mother’s wedding dress, an old-fashioned confection of white silk and tulle. She could have been one of her own paintings. Beauty, enshrouded. Pale skin, bright lips, eyes of blue, set off by lustrous black hair and an antique necklace. That morning Wald managed so easily to lift her veil. There, he thought, so hopefully and so wrongly, lies the difference between life and art.
As they peer now through the lilac branches, Mag whispers, “Isn’t this exactly what you wanted?”
“I suppose,” he says, not quite convincing himself. “No one’s cared about this place for years.”
“Look, there’s a light on,” Mag says.
They see someone sitting at a table, in a room just barely lit.
Chapter Three
My mother had cared for her home, albeit in her own way. She had always been pleased by James’ scrupulous maintenance. Not as pleased as he was himself, surely. But she was touched by his desire to build up their nest, to provide for her. How many times had he dragged her to the basement to behold a bit of pipe he had replaced, or hauled her into the yard so she could cluck over a freshly glazed and painted window? She possessed no such skills herself, however, and after his death was too thrifty to pay for work intended to prevent damage that she might not live to suffer. She did not bother to have the trees trimmed, because she could not see the harm in their wild growth. She would not pay to repair the rotted shutters.
Unfortunately for the condition of her home, my mother enjoyed remarkable longevity. She celebrated her eighty-fifth birthday in a house that all but begged for fresh paint, extensive plaster repair, a new roof and boiler, and other repairs too numerous to tally. Her house was the source of grumbling among her neighbors, most of them young couples who kept teams of contractors employed. In the days after my mother’s mishap they could not help but speculate, with glee a bit too thinly veiled, that finally Audrey Brimsley’s place might be sold off and restored.
My mother’s accident was an everyday tragedy. Let me show you how innocently it begins. She takes a glass from the dish drainer, the very same drainer employed since long before my father died. Her hand is covered with age spots now, and is far from steady. She turns the tap and is pleased by the coolness of the water, communicated through the glass. The miniature pleasures count for more and more these days. As she turns to take the glass back to the table, she feels a jolt of pain in her hip. In an instant she lands heavily on the floor. The glass shatters. Blessedly the water flows away from her, toward the wall. The floor has been out of kilter for years. Thank God for small favors, she says to herself. At least she has been spared a soaking.
Her hip is broken. She has no doubt of that, having heard the description from so many of her friends. She breathes as evenly as she is able, trying to control the pain.
My mother continues to count her blessings. It isn’t winter, that’s one stroke of good luck. She would freeze in the cold draft that sweeps under the warped kitchen door. She is wearing her sweater, which cushions her somewhat. She pats the floor in search of her glasses and soon finds them. They are not broken. Another favor there. She slips the glasses back on. As she does she notices a mouse staring at her from the countertop. Normally she would not count the mice among her friends. They gnaw at her cracker boxes and leave their little calling cards on her counters. She set out traps when her back does not ache too much to bother. But now she is comforted to have the company of any creature. It might be a while before another human being comes along.
What day is it? Friday, she is almost certain. Lucille and Marcella will not come by until Sunday morning to take her to church. Richard, the gentleman from Meals on Wheels, will not return until Monday. Of course she wouldn’t be in this fix in the first place, had she not needed a glass of water to wash down the bone-dry meat loaf that Richard brought by that morning.
Who did that leave to rescue her? Her boys? She couldn’t count on them now, just as she had never been able to count on them in the past. The neighbors are so involved in their projects and jobs and children, endlessly dashing hither and thither in their bright station wagons, that she cannot hope they will turn their thoughts toward her. She will have to help herself as best as she is able.
My mother tries to sit up. She barely moves before the pain pushes her back against the worn linoleum. Another blessing, she supposes. She hadn’t listened when the boys suggested that she replace the linoleum with ceramic tile. Imagine being laid out like this on a slab of glazed ceramic! She has worn black trails into the linoleum over the years. Now it feels almost warm against her skin. She tries to push herself along the floor, toward the phone. She doesn’t have the strength. In any case, the phone is attached to the wall. She doesn’t see how she can reach it.
There is nothing to do but wait.
Wait until…
>
Until help arrives. That is the only way to think about it, she tells herself. Wait until help arrives.
The early summer sun bursts through the kitchen window. The leaves on the oaks are still fresh and startlingly green. The birds do their business, singing and chirping. A cheerful noise. The sun touches her toes as it makes its slow arc across the room. My mother is grateful to feel the warmth on her feet. The light climbs slowly up her legs, heating her injured hip and softening some of the ache. Then the sunlight travels further over her torso.
How long has it been she had felt the sun’s delicious heat like this? It reminds her of those times she and James had taken the boys on summer trips to that rented cabin. She spent the afternoons stretched out in the sun while James rowed the boys around the lake, fishing. She could all but hear again the oars groaning in their locks. She remembers how the muscles jumped beneath that sleeveless undershirt James wore on their holidays. A sweet memory, that, which she does her best now to prolong.
Except that I lack a heart, it would break to watch her. Not for her predicament, which is far from unusual. We all must die. However bad this is, it could be worse. She has not been thrown into the commotion of a traffic accident, with a crowd of firemen and cops all vying to cheat death. She is not stuck in the horror of a hospital bed, and the months’ long process of being dumped bit by bit into her grave. In her lonely, threadbare surroundings, there is a sense of tranquility. There is that at least. Still my phantom heart aches, because she is grateful for so little. This is what she has come to expect.
The hours pass. For entertainment she has her memories and a view of her kitchen ceiling. A triangle of plaster has fallen in the corner. It must have landed on the cabinet top. She wonders how many years have passed since she has cleaned up there. The cracks in the plaster put her in mind of a river, fed by streams and creeks, like a map of the Mississippi. Except this river flows through the cooking grease and dust stuck to the ceiling. She remembers the day James painted the ceiling white. That was so long ago that she cannot even manage to identify the decade.
My mother wonders about those dribbles on the wall, near the bare lath where the plaster has fallen. Could it be water leaking from the bathroom? She hasn’t used the toilet there for years. She will not ascend that Kilimanjaro of steps, not anymore. The less she has to do with those steps, the better. For a number of reasons, to be sure. No need to dwell on that. She forces that thought out of mind. In any case, the half-bath on the first floor serves well enough. She has some difficulty washing herself without a tub, but she has found ways to manage.
She wishes she had not thought of the bathroom. She is reminded now of her bladder, which nags considerably. She has her pride, of course she does, but there is no point in being ridiculous. She hikes up her skirt a bit, so it will not be soaked, and lets the urine flow. Like the water in her shattered glass, it runs quickly down the slope toward the wall. Whoever finds her will have to understand. She feels much better now, except that with one need taken care of she is more aware of another. She could use a bite to eat. The Meals of Wheels meat loaf from lunch is almost untouched on the table. It might as well be on Mars. She will just have to wait.
The sun settles behind the neighbor’s house. She looks at the clock over the refrigerator. Nearly seven. She has been on the floor for eight hours. Her hip throbs now in a familiar rhythm. Her skin feels oddly tight from the swelling.
She supposes she may have to consider the prospect of …
No. She will not. There is no point in surrendering so quickly.
The line between sleep and wakefulness becomes blurry for her. Dusk comes, then night. The house makes all its usual noises. The timbers groan with the evening chill. The pipes clank. Pigeons murmur in the eaves, where they have built their nests. The mouse is back at work in the cupboard, gnawing at a cardboard box. For better and for worse, she has never felt alone in her house. It is no different now.
She pulls her sweater tight around herself. The night will be cool. She drifts into something like sleep. She tells herself that the sunrise will be beautiful.
≈
My mother wakes suddenly to a racket. Pounding at the door. Someone shouting her name. The window is still black with night.
“What?” she says feebly, disoriented. “What?”
She doubts she can be heard over all the banging. Another crash, then splintering wood. The door flies open.
“Hey! Hey, Audrey!” she hears. And then, “God damn, what the hell is that stink?”
“If you would please watch your language, Mr. Worth.” This is an old issue between my mother and her neighbor. Their relationship is one of grudging love and everyday disdain. “I’m over here. Careful, I’m on the floor.”
“I didn’t see any lights. At supper I always see your lights.”
They have had sharp words over the years. His crudeness rankles her, while the disrepair of her house provokes in him something close to physical pain. “Buy the paint and I’ll paint the son-of-a-bitch myself,” he offers, often and uselessly. She will not be buying any paint. “You’re bringing down the whole block,” he complains. And now it is Worth who has saved her.
Soon the kitchen swarms with uniformed men. Paramedics, firefighters, police — more people than have been in her house at one time since… Since she cannot remember when. My brothers, Max and Ernest, arrive. All these people, she thinks, and mostly what she sees is their shoes.
“At least offer them a cup of tea,” she says to Max.
“That’s not why they’re here, Ma,” he replies.
Finally a pair of solid, uniformed men load her onto a gurney, as if she is nothing more than a bag of leaves. “They’re taking you to the hospital,” Ernest explains. She is neither pleased nor surprised when, after her hospital stay, her traitorous sons deliver her to a nursing home called the Sheltering Arms.
Chapter Four
My brothers Max and Ernest do not trouble our mother with the news that they intend to sell her house. They hire a real estate agent, Gloria Taberna, who is a hustler and a schemer, sharper than my two brothers put together. Architecture and aesthetics interest her considerably less than a dollar bill. She is a perfectly put-together marvel with her lacquered blonde hairdo, tailored red blazer and matching nails. Beside her my brothers look like exaggerated versions of what they are: two overweight, poorly-dressed men in their sixties, with a few stray white hairs swirling around their otherwise bald heads.
I visit them now and then for clues of what I might have become. In terms of personal development, given the evidence my brothers provide, death was not the worst option. They are not monsters; they would not kick a dog or steal candy from a baby. They hum along at sixty miles an hour on a well-paved road with unremarkable scenery. Trust me: my own non-life is more interesting.
My brothers rarely think of me. True, they have their excuses. My picture was not kept on display in the home. If my name was mentioned it was an unhappy accident. But still. You wouldn’t think it possible. They have millions of thoughts. Surely they could spare one for me.
Picture my brothers and Gloria Taberna now in my mother’s home. The air is still. The fusty odor is enough to tell you that an old woman lived alone here for years. Gloria looks around at the avocado green carpet, the water-stained walls, the turn-of-the-century plumbing fixtures. She wonders aloud if the property might be worth more with the house demolished. For five thousand dollars she could have the house put in a dumpster and present a clear lot in a now-fashionable part of town. Or, better still, she could put my brothers in touch with a contractor she happens to know, who could build a house on spec. Share the risk, share the profit, enjoy a small kickback herself. Risk, however, is not a word in my brothers’ active vocabulary. In any case, the house must remain standing. It will be bad enough when mother learns that they have sold her home.
Because she is above all a pragmatist, Gloria quickly abandons any notion except for pricing low and selling fas
t. Unless my brothers do the work themselves, an unlikely prospect in her estimation, the expense of rehabilitation cannot possibly be justified. She gives Max and Ernest the card of an antique dealer with whom she has a back-scratching relationship. She advises that they rent a pair of dumpsters and throw out whatever cannot be sold. An empty house, she explains, will fetch more than one cluttered with old junk.
In the end, predictably, sloth trumps greed. My brothers sell a few furnishings and pile some others in the dumpster. Their shirts damp with sweat, their rarely-used muscles aching, they give up before the container is half full. They leave behind old rugs, solid tables, beds, most of the living room furnishings. They do not bother to open the attic door, which has been nailed shut for so many years that they do not regard it as unusual. Nor do they trouble themselves to remove an immigrant trunk filled with old photo albums. The albums hold pictures of long-dead relatives, strangers who mean nothing to them.
Gloria Taberna sweeps through the house again after Max and Ernest tell her they are through. She does not bother to describe her disappointment, since the time spent doing so will hardly pay for itself. Instead she adjusts her expectations further downward and discounts the house by a few thousand more. Showing it will be like offering a guest a drink from an unwashed cup. It is a fixer-upper, a handyman’s special, the type of place no mature adult seeking reasonable habitation will consider for an instant.
Wald and Mag tour the house a day after noticing the For Sale sign in the front yard. Gloria suggests that they focus on the treasures left behind. They are a young couple, this is a big house. They can claim, free of charge, furnishings they will otherwise be unable to afford. Better an abandoned sofa than no sofa at all.
“How could they leave these?” Mag asks. She runs her hand over the stack of old albums in the trunk. The leather covers are worn to soft suede.
“It’s like having the house speak to you, don’t you think?” Gloria says quickly. “Telling you a story.”
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