by Joanna Rose
“I was married four years to my first husband,” she said. “And that mother of his, may she rest in peace when she finally dies, she never once gave me a recipe.”
She hit the button on the blender again. When she turned it off, the talk in the living room had stopped. She took the lid off the blender and looked inside.
“It’s not like I would of showed up at a covered-dish supper with her precious apple pork chops,” she said. “Or her chicken-liver custard, which she knew I admired.” She picked up a dish towel, brand new, blue. She held it in both hands and looked at it. “Four years, and she never once gave me a recipe.”
Both of them reflected in the kitchen window.
“I said that to the divorce judge, too.” She wiped her hands dry. “That divorce judge asked what was my cause for requesting this divorce action? Like I needed a reason. I’m thinking this might be Missouri—that was when I was still living down in Missouri—but it is a free country, and I said to him, sir. Four years and she never once gave me a recipe.” She sighed, and the white buttons strained across her breasts. “Kris-and-Ritas, coming up.”
Lily came in and said, “Can I help?”
The way some women said that, Can I help? It wasn’t really a question. Some women said it when what they meant was Excuse me. Or maybe it was some kind of code. Like in this case, for instance, it seemed to mean, Okay, enough blender drinks, let’s get dinner on the table.
She said, “How lovely.”
There were Aunt Alice’s blue glass candlesticks, with white candles, in the middle of the table, which, with the leaves opened, took up half the kitchen, and with the three women in the kitchen, Angela’s breasts were even larger. Lily was sturdy and thick, but small. The short sleeves of her white blouse fit snugly around her arms. Substantial. Pattianne couldn’t see herself in the window. Just them.
Lily said, “I’ll put on a pot of coffee.”
“It’s all made. Just switch that switch.” Four brand new matching coffee cups were lined up on the counter by the pot. “The cups are right there.”
Angela poured Kris-and-Ritas into the glasses. She had a tiny waist, belted with a thin navy blue patent-leather belt.
Lily watched coffee drip into the pot. “Angela,” she said. “Why don’t you let me pour you some coffee? Don’t you take milk?”
“There’s half-and-half,” Pattianne said.
Angela laid a honeydew arrangement across each glass. She handed Pattianne hers and then leaned back against the counter, leaning back on her elbows, the plaid straining against the white buttons. Something pink and lacy underneath. “What a cute place,” she said. “Lily, remember when Kraskis lived here? What was her name? Maria?”
Lily watched the coffee drip, her hands held in front of her, like she was praying for that coffee. “Mia,” she said. “Her name was Mia, Angela, and his name was Kaspar.”
“Mia,” Angela said, fingering the button at the top of her dress and just smiling up into the air. “And Kaspar, how could I forget Kaspar? He taught upper math. I think she made potato liqueur.” There was a red ribbon at the neck of her dress. “Mia Kraski?” she said. “Mia had this theory about babies.” She pulled the ribbon out of its bow. “Mia’s theory was about how the sex of the baby was determined by who works hardest during sex.”
“Angela,” Lily said.
“Really,” Angela said. “I have all girls.” She unbuttoned the top white button. “Is it warm in here?”
Lily picked up the purple glass sugar bowl. “Isn’t this lovely.” And she set it back down. “Coffee’s done.” And she poured a cup, and turned and held it out to Angela.
“For me?” Angela said. “Lily, you are sweet. Misguided, but sweet.”
Lily picked up the potholders. “Pattianne, can I drain these potatoes?” The potholders were crusty with burn marks.
Angela set the coffee down on the counter. She leaned back on her hands and hopped her curvy plaid butt up next to it.
“What I mean is,” she said. “You are working at cross purposes here.” She crossed her legs. One blue high-heeled shoe slipped off her heel and dangled on her toe. “Now,” she said. “Don’t let me forget where I left off. I hate it when I forget where I left off—now that’s drunk.”
Her blue high heel dropped to the floor.
“So, Lily,” she said. “This coffee business? Let me tell you what happens when you give coffee to a drunk person—not that I am a drunk person, two drinks does not add up to drunk, and besides which I really haven’t had but one thus far anyways. But you give coffee to a drunk person and they don’t get instantly undrunk. They get all alert. Wide awake. Then what you’ve got on your hands is a wide awake, alert drunk person, you see what I’m saying?”
Lily stood over the sink with the pot of potatoes in a cloud of steam.
“Now,” Angela said. “Kaspar Kraski. How could I forget Kaspar Kraski? Mia had all them boys.”
“Pattianne, would you like me to save this potato water?”
Angela kicked off her other shoe and leaned over behind Lily. She held her hands out over the back of Lily’s head and made a circle with her fingers, Lily’s halo. Pattianne got another wink and winked back.
“That’s okay, Lily,” Pattianne said.
They finally all got seated around the table. It was more of a squeeze than Pattianne had thought it would be—her at one end, Michael at the other, Angela and Max sat next to each other, Rick and Lily next to each other. Herman Walter right across from Angela. Herman offered to ask the blessing. They all held hands, Lily’s hand on top of Pattianne’s, her grip a little on the firm side for just grace. Herman Walter had a fine, deep praying voice.
“The Lord bless us and keep us, the Lord make his face to shine upon us, and be gracious unto us, the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon us and grant us peace.”
Amen. All of them in the window glass.
They let go of hands, and Pattianne waited for someone to say something in that weird moment after grace. She waited for Lily to say How lovely, but she picked up the dish of potatoes instead.
Angela picked up the platter of chicken, her countenance a little pink in the cheeks and definitely shining. “Herman Walter,” she said. “What a nice blessing. Now, would you like a thigh, or a breast?”
Pattianne didn’t laugh out loud, coughed discreetly into her napkin, gave Michael a quick smile, pleased with herself. One of his friends had a wife who could be her friend. How very married.
6: A STORY-LISTENING CHAKRA
Every morning except Monday, Michael got up and went running around St. Cloud in his red Montclair State sweatshirt and his green sweatpants, a Christmas elf ahead of schedule, and determined to stay that way. It was cold in the mornings now, except under the blankets, where his body had been, where she stayed, her face in his warm pillow.
The last dreams slipped away, and through the day she would sense them coming back, those dreams. She could be standing at the sink or walking under a pine tree, and a memory slipped by that she couldn’t quite catch, and that was remembering a dream. It never came all the way close, but being here, in Minnesota, out in the open, away from New Jersey, it seemed like she almost remembered, like that slipping-away feeling was sharper.
On Mondays, Michael put on school clothes instead of running clothes and went to Mass. Monday-morning Mass had started when two boys at school expressed an interest in going. It turned out the two boys were only interested in going once, and it ended up having something to do with a bet. Michael kept going. Usually.
But today was Monday, and today the Christmas elf went dashing off, and she got up. She put her feet on the cold bare floor.
She said, “Rug,” and dragged her bathrobe out of the blankets.
The rooms were dark, bedroom, hallway, living room. She turned every light on, bright rooms and glassy reflections, Loretta Young slipping out of the corner of the living room.
“Curtains,” she said. “Sears.”
In the living room, Loretta Young made a detour across to the thermostat and pushed it up to seventy. The red light on the coffee pot glowed red, and the coffee dripped and gurgled. Michael pushed that button and left, back in half an hour to a pot of coffee, the smell, and the way that smell worked its way into the rooms of a sleepy house.
He’d say, “Call me Mr. Coffee.”
He thought that was funny. She thought it was funny that he thought it was funny.
This church shit was not funny, and running today instead of going to church was a good sign. She turned on the radio—a loud, Midwest voice insisting that a new Ford would make her happy—and she turned the knob past blips and static and chatter until a long, smooth cello note floated out into the kitchen. Then a French horn, or maybe an oboe or something. She got out a stick of butter and put it on an orange plate that didn’t match anything else.
“Fiesta,” Michael had said, holding the plate in his hands at the garage sale, which she thought was funny and turned out not to be.
The heater vent in the kitchen rattled, the old oil furnace reaching for seventy. She got out eggs, milk, bread, syrup. She’d make French toast, a special, fabulous breakfast. He’d be so glad he’d gone running instead of going to seven-o’clock Mass. When he went to school, she’d do the crossword puzzle and then go shopping for housewares, maybe even curtains.
His cheeks were brilliant red when he came through the door.
“Mr. Coffee,” she said.
He had left for school, and the morning had fallen still when she saw the black bird with the yellow head hopping around in the bare lower branches of the sugar maple, and then the phone rang right next to her head. She slopped coffee onto the table, onto the crossword puzzle, and grabbed the phone.
“Hi, it’s me, Angela. Is it too early to call you?”
There was the sound of a TV and a kid yelling Mom, and Pattianne couldn’t remember how many kids they had except that it was all girls, and she just said, “No, it’s fine, I was up.”
She soaked up the coffee with the bathrobe sleeve. “Michael’s already off to school. I was just doing the puzzle.”
“Puzzle?”
“Crossword puzzle.”
Thirty-five across and the whole left corner floated in a coffee-blue-ink smear.
“Oh, my gosh,” she said. “Well, I knew you’d be good to ask, I just knew it. You are not going to believe this, but can I find a dictionary in this house? I cannot. MayAnn, get down off that table. Do I know what ecumenical means? No, I do not. MayAnn, go get your sister’s shoes from out the car, I think they’re still in under the front seat.”
“It means kind of all together,” Pattianne said. “Like worldwide. General. In a church way, Christian churches.”
“MayAnn, I am counting to three,” Angela yelled like she didn’t mean it, and she said, “Well, I kind of knew that, but how do you spell it is more what I don’t know.”
“Just a sec.”
She set the phone down and went in the living room, pulled out the dictionary and looked it up.
“E-C-U-M-E-N-I-C-A-L,” she said. “I thought there might be a T in it somewhere.”
Silence.
“So, where’s the T at?”
“Oh, there’s no T.”
“Well, thanks hon. I’m drawing up some fliers. I’ll bring you by one to the bookstore.”
“Wait, Angela. Do you know any of the birds around here?”
“You mean like pigeons and robins and crows?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” she said. “Pigeons and robins and crows. Sparrows.”
She hadn’t ever heard of such a thing as a solid-black bird with a yellow head, like it just dipped its whole head in a bucket of yellow paint.
Sears stores all smelled the same. Pattianne walked in through ladies’ shoes, kids’ clothes, past the Ladies’ Room, to an escalator in the middle of it all, drawing her right up to housewares, second floor. Drapes. A long row of hanging pastels, and more shades of beige than she could ever have imagined. Complicated and pleated drapes, with instructions for how to measure for them, how to order them, how to have them installed. The fabrics were brocade or woven, and stiff, and they were all arranged to look like peoples’ windows up on the wall.
Miss Mimi had purple drapes once.
There was no purple here. No Fiesta orange. No blackbird yellow. She kept walking and came to towels, and past towels she got to small odds and ends like throw rugs. She started touching. The rugs were thick and nubby, and here there were colors like a neatly shelved rainbow.
A wide curving pathway of gray tiles in the white floor led through arrangements of bathrooms and bedrooms and kitchens. And then the path forked, one way to major appliances the other way to the escalator back down to the middle of menswear, at which point she kept going, straight out a door that put her on the opposite side of the building from the O-Bug, facing another parking lot that looked west, over fields and fields. The sky was hazy blue. Nothing blocked the view. Her heart pounded in her ears.
There were notes from Jen, sloppy little notes full of news. Nana Farley’s new blood pressure medication made her cough, Aunt Maureen had a girl this time. The old elm tree in front of the house next door to Mom and Dad had to come down. Jen kept in touch with everyone, including her, now. When Michael and she had left, Pattianne had teared up, and Jen said, “Don’t forget your allergy medication,” and Pattianne said, “What allergies?” and Jen had rolled her own teary eyes.
Michael talked to his father on the phone every Saturday morning, and always came into the kitchen, the living room, wherever she was and reported to her. “He sounded good.” He always said those same words. Mrs. Bryn sent funny cards every couple weeks, and Claire sent drawings from the kindergarten class where she was a student teacher. Her mother did not send notes. Pattianne sent her notes, little Hallmark cards with cheery hello messages signed “Love, Pattianne and Michael,” and she called her, every couple weeks or so, usually after she got a note from Jen, so she could keep up her end of the conversation. Usually on Sunday.
She woke up knowing it was Call Mom Day. Michael slipped away early to run through the quiet streets. The furnace came on, rattling the grate in the bathroom. He was going to tighten the screws, but she said no, she liked that sound. There were cardinals outside the bedroom, their busy bell sound under the window, then farther away, then back under the window. Maybe they used to have a nest hidden in the vines. Maybe they wondered where the hazelnut tree went.
She didn’t want to call, she just wanted her to be fine, both of them. The parents.
The kitchen door opened, closed, a cabinet door opened and closed. Michael was singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” which is what he usually sang in the mornings, and after a bit there was the smell of coffee. He went in the bathroom, into the shower, singing louder. She pulled her bathrobe out of the blankets and pushed her arms through the sleeves, which were wide and dangerous in the kitchen, unless she was just waiting for coffee to drip. They fell back and showed her wrists, like she should have a jeweled bracelet there, and a cigarette in a jeweled holder. They usually ended up in the butter or the jelly.
The kitchen window was covered in starry frost. Frankie called it hoar frost, said it was rare except in drafty old houses. A hole was melting in the middle of each small pane, the world outside gray, with a flash of red.
Michael came in behind her, and she stood there between the smell of coffee and the smell of roses, his face by her ear.
“I had to use your shampoo,” he said. “Do I smell like a girl?”
“I have to call my mother.”
He leaned his chin on her shoulder.
“Darling,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Tell her,” he whispered. “Tell her ‘yo, Mom, what is it?’”
Sometimes she laughed.
“Okay,” he said when she didn’t laugh, and he picked up the phone and dialed, and there
was hello, yes, no, friendly-sounding back and forth, Michael chatting up the mother-in-law, and then he handed over the phone.
“Hi, Mom.”
The phone was warm from his hand.
“Your father’s not here,” she said.
“How are you?”
She paced between the sink to the table.
“We’re fine. He went to the hardware store to get a new air filter for the furnace.”
“Is it getting cold there?”
“Yes.”
If Pattianne didn’t say anything, neither would she. They would both let the long empty wires hang between Minnesota and New Jersey.
“How’s Nana Farley?”
“Fine. She got new blood pressure medication.”
Michael wrote on the edge of the newspaper and held it out. “Tell her you got new glasses.”
“I got new glasses.”
“Are you still working in the bookstore?”
“Yes.”
Michael left the kitchen and came right back with the glasses. He held them out, frames open.
“I only work part-time.”
He pointed to the frames, then the lenses, opened them and closed them, held them in his palm in front of her face. She pushed his hand away and didn’t laugh.
Her mother said, “Aren’t there any library jobs?”
Michael set the glasses down on the counter and went into the living room.
“No,” she said. “I like the bookstore, though.”
“Have you put up drapes yet?”
“No,” Pattianne said. “But we have rare frost. It’s shaped like stars.”
“Well.”
He came back in with Jen’s note.
“Jen wrote me about Aunt Maureen,” she said. “So, number eight is finally another girl. Bernadette?”
“Actually,” her mother said. “It’s Bernadetta.”
“Sounds Italian.”
“Really, Pattianne.”
Michael leaned on the counter. He whispered, “How’s the new washer?”
“How’s the new washer?”
She said, “It’s a very good machine.”
