Old Ladies

by Nancy Huddleston Packer

  When she leaned over to see whether he was hurt, she could smell the whiskey, the alcohol-saturated stale sweat, and the acrid odor of vomit. “Gene,” she said, “can I help?”

  He said, “Lemelone fucker,” and swung his arm so that she had to shy away. She grabbed Ozzie by his collar and dragged him out of the dell.

  A few years back, she and Martin had gone to a party given by the Clabaughs. The music had been fast and furious, the laughter loud and boisterous, the liquor strong and plentiful, and Lydia and Martin were at least twenty-five years older than anyone else. Youthful high spirits, they had thought, just as when they were young they had given and gone to rowdy parties and occasionally had a hangover. But not in a million years would she have expected to find someone like Gene Clabaugh, a pillar of the community, a presumably respectable man, lying drunk in the dirt and swearing at her.

  Jennifer Clabaugh was no doubt worried sick. Despite how embarrassing it would be, Lydia knew it was her duty to tell Jennifer that Gene was in the park. She hooked Ozzie to his leash and on the way home they detoured past the Clabaughs’ house. And there was Jennifer out in the yard, on her knees, planting pots of chrysanthemums. “Aren’t they beautiful,” she called. “I love the bronze ones best.” She smiled as though she hadn’t a care in the world, and Lydia nodded and walked on. Live and learn, she said to herself.

  ***

  Lydia took Ozzie to the park each morning during the week, but the next Sunday morning she wanted to avoid any possibility of again encountering a drunken Gene Clabaugh, and so she walked down into the town’s little shopping center.

  Starbucks Coffee was on a sunny corner and on the sidewalk there were tables and chairs under striped umbrellas and young men and women talking and laughing. The uphill walk home would be a little tiring, so Lydia decided to have a cup of coffee and rest a little. She tied Ozzie’s leash to the only empty table, and she went into the café.

  The menu boards were bewildering. She had never heard of all those coffee grinds, from Asia and Africa, nor had she drunk coffee with hazelnuts or gingerbread or Valencia orange juice. “Plain coffee,” she told the boy behind the counter, and not to look like a tightwad, she added, “and a bear claw. “

  When Lydia took her coffee and sweet roll outside, a woman was sitting at the table Lydia had thought was hers, stooped over talking to Ozzie, scratching behind his ears. She was plumpish, fortyish, and blondish, and she was wearing a bright blue velveteen sweat suit. As Lydia stood with her hands full, wondering what to do, the woman straightened up. “Hey, were you sitting here? Come on. Plenty of room for all of us.” She patted the chair next to hers.

  Lydia said, “Thank you,” and sat down.

  “So you’re Ozzie’s mother.”

  Lydia was surprised, “You know Ozzie?”

  “Oh sure. All us regulars know Ozzie.” The woman launched into a story about Starbucks and the new culture of coffee and how people were creating real neighborhoods, real friendships, meeting on Sundays just like old times when people went to church. “Me and Terry never would have become friends with Martin except him and us coming here for the coffee.”

  Lydia smiled and nodded. Martin had occasionally mentioned the coffee shop and people he met there and more than once had suggested she join him on his walks. She had said she preferred exercising on her stationary bicycle to chasing after a dog snuffling and snorting through the underbrush or making small talk with strangers.

  A very large middle-aged man wearing white shorts and a maroon-and-gold USC sweatshirt came to the table with a tray of coffee cups and rolls.

  “This is Ozzie’s mother,” the woman said.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ozzie’s mother.” The man set the tray on the table. “Cinnamon cappuccino coming right up.”

  “I didn’t want cinnamon,” the woman said.

  The man frowned. “You said cinnamon.”

  “I said caramel.” The woman rolled her eyes. “I had cinnamon last time. You don’t listen.”

  “Women,” the man said, smiling ruefully at Lydia. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

  “He didn’t make that up,” the woman said in a scoffing voice. “That’s as old as the hills.”

  “Did I say I made it up?”

  “But you didn’t say you didn’t so that was as good as claiming you did.”

  The man’s face reddened. “Will you for once in your life just shut up? I got you the coffee and all you do is bitch.”

  “Now who got up on the wrong side of the bed?” The woman winked at Lydia and laughed. “Just listen to him. Martin always called us the Battling Baxleys. Said our marriage must have been made of re-enforced concrete to hold together like it has, despite you-know-who being so bad-tempered and grumpy.”

  Lydia could not imagine saying such a thing about Martin, obviously baiting him, nor had he ever told her to shut up. Well, but not in public. She finished her coffee and pushed back her chair. “I’ll be off now.”

  “You haven’t eaten but a bite of that sweet roll,” the woman said.

  “I’m running late.” Lydia dumped the coffee cup and the sweet roll in the trash, untied Ozzie, and nodded goodbye. As she turned up the hill she heard the man say in a low voice, “Cork up her butt,” and the woman chortled and then called after Lydia, “See you next week?”

  Lydia just waved her hand and hurried on. Surely these crude and vulgar people weren’t friends of Martin’s. She had been embarrassed to be at the table with them, even in the same café. Quarreling. Sniping at each other. And that woman laughing right in the man’s face. Now that she thought about it, she remembered Martin had mentioned the Baxleys and said they always amused him. Was their behavior what that psychologist called “games people play”? A kind of performance for themselves and others? Just theatre?

  As she turned the corner out of sight, she shook her head. Well, they did put on a pretty good show, better than anything television dished up.

  ***

  The next Sunday morning, Lydia headed west toward the hills. The houses she and Ozzie passed were pretty much like the other houses in the little suburban town, pastel and well kept, with flowers and trees in the fenced yards and shiny late model cars in the driveways.

  At one house, a woman in a faded green bathrobe was on the porch, stooped over to pick up the newspaper. When she looked up, she called, “Hey, Fritzi, here’s Ozzie,” and an enormous dog five times the size of Ozzie came bounding out of the house and down the steps to the gate. The two dogs sniffed each other as best they could, given the fence and the mismatch, and moaned in high-pitched friendly voices.

  “Now the pups can have a play date,” the woman said, tightening the belt of her robe as she came down the steps. “I’m Edie. Come on in.”

  “Thanks but we have to be going.”

  “Oh, maybe just a short visit?” the woman said. She put her hand on the gate closure. “Martin and I used to laugh about how different Fritz and Ozzie were, yet such good friends. Fritz has sure missed Ozzie. Two minutes?”

  How could Lydia say she didn’t even have two minutes when Martin apparently had stopped to let the dogs play? Reluctantly she nodded. Edie opened the gate, and immediately the dogs raced to the other end of the yard, Fritz bounding and leaping and Ozzie motoring along like a wind-up toy. The lawn, Lydia noticed, had large brown spots where the grass had died, no doubt Fritz’s work.

  “Fritz is pure German Shepherd.” Edie looked after the dogs and smiled. “I’ve always had big dogs.”

  “German Shepherds?” Lydia said, thinking that little dogs were trouble enough.

  “Different kinds,” Edie said. “Diarmuid was a Rough Collie—that’s a Scotch breed. He was the smartest dog I ever had but you could fill a mattress with the hair he shed. Same for my Malamute. Sakari—that means sweetheart in Inuit and she sure was. I cried buckets when she died. Torkild was a Great Dane, the best looking but dumb as wallpaper. Fritz—that’s short for Friedrich, you k
now, German? He’s the bravest.”

  As they watched the dogs tumbling in the back yard, Edie told a story of how one night when her husband was away and she was alone, a burglar had broken in and Fritz went after him and tore his pant leg and probably some flesh, and the burglar had run from the house. When she had finished her story, she smiled and said, “I don’t guess little Ozzie could ever frighten anybody.”

  “Probably not,” Lydia said. “We have to be getting on now.” She whistled as Martin did, and Ozzie came running.

  “Well,” Edie said, “next time plan to come in for coffee so the pups can cavort.”

  Lydia hooked Ozzie to the leash, smiled at Edie, and started back toward home.

  Cavort. Of course Lydia had seen that word in print, but she didn’t think she had ever heard it spoken. Pretentious, that’s what it was. Why not just say “play” or “race around”? And those names. A German Shepherd with a German name. The collie with a Scottish name Lydia knew she couldn’t possibly pronounce, a Malamute named something like sweetheart and the Great Dane was what? Tork-something. Some Danish name, of course. Just imagine the trouble it took to find those crazy names, checking the breed to see which one fit. Edie probably was an educator, maybe a professor at the college. Anyway, educated. And, really, when you thought about it the names were imaginative and kind of fun.

  Lydia glanced at Ozzie cavorting in front of her. She should rename him, something fitting his breed. As they turned the next corner, she said, “Well, Mutt, you may not chase burglars, but at least you aren’t eating me out of house and home and defecating like an elephant.”

  And that made her laugh so hard she had to cover her mouth so no one driving by would think she was a lunatic. Ozzie looked up at her, slathering and grinning as though he caught the joke.

  ***

  The next Sunday, Lydia lay in bed wondering where she would walk Ozzie this time. They had gone north and found a drunken Gene Clabaugh, east to the Battling Baxleys, and west to Edie and Friedrich. “Shall we go south this time, Ozzie? No telling what we’ll come on.” At the sound of his name Ozzie leaped up and ran over to her. He put his paws up on the bed, and Lydia reached over and scratched him behind his ears.

  Dust Catchers

  If she didn’t really wake up, she could perhaps go back into her dream. Ivan had looked so handsome in his officer’s uniform—pinks they called them. They were driving along Point Reyes in his little Studebaker Champion. The sky was cloudless, the ocean glistening, the white caps rising and falling. Look, he said, pointing at an immense whale frolicking off shore. And then he was shouting angrily and banging his fist on the steering wheel.

  Jean opened her eyes. The sun was already streaming through the western windows. Though she had only meant to rest a moment, she must have been asleep on the sofa for hours. Usually people just went away when she didn’t come to the door, but this one kept on shouting and knocking until Jean was afraid the glass pane might crack. Perhaps it was important—the house on fire or a message from Carolee or Andrew. She sat up on the edge of the sofa and waited for the throbbing in her head to subside and her eyes to focus. Then holding on to the chair, the highboy, the wall, she began to walk toward the front door.

  As she passed the hallway mirror she caught a glimpse of herself. She was still in her nightgown and her old tattered plaid robe. What a sight, she thought, patting down her tangled hair and scraping her thumbnail over the crusts of spit on her chin. She really should freshen up, but there it was again, someone shouting and knocking.

  On the other side of the glass door panel was a very large woman with copper-colored hair and a big moon face. Perhaps one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses—they sometimes came by, simple, good-hearted women, cheerfully resigned to rebuff. Ivan had once let in a very tall bony young black woman and a very fat old white woman, and for five minutes they had spoken to him about the state of his soul, and he had pretended to be remorseful and eager to be saved. Finally he had tired of the game and told them he couldn’t give his soul to God because he had already sold it to the devil for a dollar and fifty cents. The poor things had scurried away, red-faced but still smiling. Jean had said nothing—it would only have made him angry.

  “I admire what you’re doing,” she said through the glass panel, “but I don’t discuss religion with anybody.”

  “What? Religion? You think I’m trying to convert you or something? That’s a good one.” As the woman laughed her cheeks ballooned and her little eyes almost disappeared and her tongue bobbed up and down. When her laughter subsided, she leaned close to the glass. “You don’t recognize me, do you? Lived in the Tudor down the street?”

  She pronounced it two-door, like a car, and it took Jean a moment to realize she meant the house with the crossbeams in the next block. The house was dilapidated for the neighborhood, a rental with a constant stream of families passing through. Jean didn’t remember ever knowing anyone who lived there, but then her memory wasn’t what it used to be, and she wouldn’t be rude to an old neighbor. She slid back the dead bolt.

  As the woman stepped over the doorsill, her face grew solemn. “I just heard the awful news about your hubby, and I come right over.” She engulfed Jean in her immense flabby arms and swayed wordlessly for a minute. She smelled of talcum powder and stale sweat.

  Jean’s stomach kicked and bile rose into her mouth. Feeling the way she did, she should never have answered the door. She didn’t want to see anyone, not until she got herself together. Her neighbors and the people from her church seemed to understand that and no longer came by.

  “I know exactly what you’re feeling,” the woman went on, “because I lost my Warren last year.” With a deep sigh of reluctance, she released Jean. “Cancer of the bowel. I won’t describe what I went through. It’d make you sick to your stomach. Innards coming out. That was about the awfullest way he could of chose to go. You remember Warren, don’t you? My height but real skinny?”

  Jean couldn’t recall knowing anyone named Warren, but she murmured “Umm.”

  “Thought you would. Nobody ever forgot my Warren. Cute as a button. Now come on, let’s have us a heart-to-heart, beings as we’ve been through the same thing.” The woman walked past Jean into the living room. “I always liked this room,” she said. Her gaze hopped from the Oriental rug to the bric-a-brac cabinet to the mantel and the pictures of Ivan and the children. “There he is,” she said, pointing at Ivan’s picture. “That hubby of yours was more fun than a barrel of monkeys.”

  More fun than a barrel of monkeys? Ivan was a somber man, moody, not at all social. Days could go by without his saying more than Pass the salt or answering Yes or No to one of her questions. Jean had learned not to insist, just to walk away. The minister said that was the best thing to do.

  “Do you mean Ivan?” she said.

  “That’s his name, ain’t it?” The woman pointed at the pictures of Jean’s children when they were little. “And that’s…shoot, I can’t rightly remember their names.”

  “Carolee and Andrew,” Jean said.

  “Carolee, of course.” The woman shook her head. “I guess I’m getting forgetful.”

  “Me, too.” Jean smiled. “I can’t remember your name.”

  “Sylvia?” the woman said. “Sylvia Smith? Down the street? Now do you remember?”

  Jean nodded though she didn’t at all. Since Ivan’s death, and really long before, she was slow in recalling things she had once known perfectly well. If she could take one of the orange pills the new doctor had prescribed, her mind would be clearer. “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

  “I don’t mind if I do.”

  “Milk? Lemon?

  “I like everything straight—tea, whisky, and men.” The woman began to laugh and her face swelled and reddened and her tongue flicked in and out. “Get it?”

  Jean said, “Have a seat. I’ll just be a minute.” She went into the kitchen and put a kettle of water on the burner and set out cups and saucers an
d some cookies from a box. Then she took a bottle of medicine from the cabinet above the sink. The new young doctor—Carter? Farmer?—had said she could take one of the pills every four hours, and since she hadn’t had one since morning and here it was late afternoon, she shook out two pills. She took the gin from under the sink and poured some into a glass and used it to wash down the pills. Gin helped to dissolve the medicine so it acted more quickly.

  When Jean went back into the living room with the tea tray, Sylvia had opened Ivan’s bric-a-brac cabinet and was holding the gold thimble up to the light.

  “You mustn’t touch those things,” Jean said.

  “Them your souvenirs?” Sylvia asked.

  The thimble was one of what Ivan had called “my heirlooms,” valuables that his family had managed to sneak out of Russia when the Bolsheviks took over. Ivan never let anyone touch them. He dusted and polished them himself and kept the glass cabinet gleaming.

  “Ivan’s grandmother brought them from Moscow a hundred years ago. Ivan didn’t want anyone to touch them.”

  “And looks like nobody has in a month of Sundays.” Sylvia turned from the cabinet and eased herself down at the tea table. “At least an inch of dust.”

  The best thing to do, Jean thought, was say nothing at all and just let the conversation die, and the woman would leave. She had often done that after Ivan’s death, when people were still coming by to see her. She handed a cup of tea to Sylvia and offered the plate of cookies.

  Sylvia took a sip of tea and a bite of cookie. She made a hideous face and spat the glob of cookie onto her saucer. “Tastes like a cow pat. Not that I ever tasted a cow pat.” She laughed and slapped her thigh, and her copper colored curls shook, and her bright red tongue shot in and out like a live thing. “And just look, this plate has dried gunk sticking to it.”