Women Drinking Benedictine

by Sharon Dilworth

  At six-thirty Mitch and Kevin arrive carrying stacks of styro-foam cartons full of take-out ribs. The milk shakes are dripping through the paper bag. They stain Mitch’s clean T-shirt with circles of chocolate. Carol opens everything in the sink and transfers it to paper plates. She has been too hot to think about eating, and she doesn’t know how they’ll finish the heavy slabs of ribs, the quarts of coleslaw.

  Mitch spreads a plastic tablecloth on the floor in front of the TV stand and the three of them eat picnic-style watching the news. Mitch is wearing shorts, and the hair on his legs is wet with perspiration. Carol watches him while he eats. Kevin is quiet, but seems pleased with the meal. He is engrossed in the television and seems to get more of the jokes than Carol does.

  The food makes Carol listless. The night is duller than she had imagined. She tries to stay awake but nods off during one of the situation comedies. She jerks up when she hears Kevin’s laugh. Mitch is in the kitchen trying to stuff all the paper trash into the small trash can. She opens a garbage bag for him and he fills it.

  “It’d be easier to adopt a child overseas,” Mitch jokes. “Think how simple it would be to mail in seventy-two cents a day.”

  “That’s not the point.” It occurs to her that maybe the only reason he is sticking out the volunteer job is that he wants to see her. This thought pleases her.

  He smiles. “Watching three hours of TV a night is?” He pushes the hair off her face and tucks it behind her ear. He is always doing things like this—touching her in small ways that make Carol feel he’d be a caring lover. They are alone. It is just the moment that he should kiss her. She waits, but he goes to the sink and washes the barbecue sauce off his hands.

  As soon as Kevin and Mitch leave, Carol goes to bed. She thinks of Mitch’s hand on her face and knows that they are getting closer. The next morning she’s awake by five-thirty, feeling refreshed and ready for the day to begin. She showers, dresses for work, and then sits on the front porch with her coffee and last night’s newspaper. The air is gray, and waking noises strike like echoes as they move across the silent city.

  Mitch’s side door slams shut, and Carol watches a woman walk down the drive. The woman smiles and says good morning, but Carol is too surprised to react. Instead she looks down at the newspaper in her lap and tries to understand the bold print of the headlines. Carol hears the sound of an engine, then the hum of tires, as a red Toyota disappears around the corner.

  She knows it’s not fair. It’s not fair that Mitch slept with a woman after spending the evening with her. He has never mentioned that he was seeing anyone, and Carol suspects he kept it from her deliberately. She feels betrayed by his touch in the kitchen—betrayed that he would go on to touch someone else more intimately.

  Though it is only six-fifteen, Carol decides to leave for the hospital where she works. She doesn’t care how early she arrives. Her coffee cup is half full when she throws it at Mitch’s bedroom window. She wants him to know that she’s seen his woman. The leftover liquid swirls around the cup, but the shot is just short of the window. There is no sound when it lands in the tangled, overgrown bushes.

  The temperature crawls past one hundred degrees and stays there as the week begins, then drags on, with the sun piercing steadily. The city traps the heat and holds it in the miles of cement. The windless nights do nothing to cool the air.

  Carol keeps an eye out for the woman and her red Toyota, but sees neither. One night, stepping out of the shower, she hears Mitch’s laugh, then the steady stream of his voice through the open windows. She flicks off the light and stands in the darkness, straining to make sense of his words. She is wet, and when the warm night air circles through the bathroom, she shivers. She sees the trail of phone cord as he paces in front of the stove. It is a relief to find him alone. She dries herself with the damp bath towel in the dark, still listening, trying to figure out who he’s talking to.

  On Thursday she crosses the front lawn to Mitch’s house half an hour before they normally leave for their volunteer jobs. She makes a reference to the heat, saying that she is anxious to be in the air-conditioned library. Mitch is surly, short-tempered. He tells her that he is too hot and too tired to spend another dull evening with Kevin. Carol suggests they go to a movie theater, and Mitch says it’s either that or the mall. She wants to bring up the woman but doesn’t know how to do it without appearing jealous. Instead, she tells him not to despair. “The heat can’t get any worse,” she promises.

  Donald is standing by the water fountain, and when Carol walks into the library, he gives up his place in line.

  “I was thinking about your name,” he says.

  Carol did not expect him to be there so soon. She is slightly annoyed to see him already.

  “Your name is like who you are,” Donald continues. “Care. Caring. Carol.”

  “Oh, really?” Carol plans her dinner with Mitch. Since it is her night to pay, she thinks she will suggest a restaurant where they can order a nice bottle of wine. A place where they can be alone.

  “It came to me this weekend when I was practicing reading,” Donald shows her a piece of paper with her name written across the top. The О and the L are crossed out and an E has been inserted. “You work just like your name. You care about people.”

  Carol is uncomfortable with this praise. She is just about to change the subject when Donald does.

  “I’m learning to read because my wife killed herself.” Donald is speaking too fast, and Carol misses the conjunction.

  “Excuse me?”

  “My wife killed herself last October.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carol says. “That must be difficult. To be alone and all.” She makes a vague gesture with her hand as if to include all his sorrow.

  “I’m not alone,” Donald tells her. “I’ve got kids. Four kids.”

  I’m sure they’re a help.”

  “Sometimes,” Donald says. “But mostly they’re a drain. A financial drain.”

  Carol nods in sympathy.

  “I couldn’t read my wife’s suicide note,” Donald says.

  Carol motions for him to lower his voice. He is not bothering anyone, but she feels that the things he is telling her should be whispered—at least talked about in low tones.

  “She left it on the table for Julie to find. That’s my oldest, Julie, and she’s always the first one home.” Donald rips the newspaper article into long thin strips, then shapes them into different-sized spheres that remind Carol of spitballs.

  “Did your wife know you couldn’t read?” Carol had always assumed that adult illiterates hid the fact that they couldn’t read, especially from people close to them. But through the program she had found that there are just as many who are proud of the fact that they can’t read. One of her students was arrogant about her illiteracy. The student saw herself as a member of a private club—a club with only a few members and the numbers dwindling.

  “Of course she knew I couldn’t read. I was married to her, wasn’t I?” Donald arranges the newspaper balls in a line and flicks them with a snap of his thumb and index finger. They fly off the table and disappear into the gray carpet—the same color as the newspaper.

  Carol puts out her hand to stop Donald from littering in the library, but he thinks she is playing a game and aims directly at her hand as if it were a net.

  “That’s why she wrote the note,” Donald says. “She wanted Julie to read it to me so that I would stop her. She wanted me to get there in time to save her.”

  Carol does not encourage him by asking about the note, so when Donald explains what happened, she tells herself that it’s not her fault. Donald talks the rest of the hour, and even though they have read nothing, when she fills out his progress card she checks the box marked satisfactory improvement.

  “It’s so sad. Just a sad, sad story.” Carol stops talking to sip her wine. “This guy is absolutely devastated and ashamed that he can’t read. And talk about a punishment. Nothing as simple as losing a job. He c
ouldn’t read his wife’s suicide note and didn’t give it to anybody in time to save her.”

  “I don’t get it,” Mitch says. “How could the wife be so sure that he could have saved her?”

  “They own property in Milan, just south of Ann Arbor,” Carol explains. “And that’s where the wife said she was going to kill herself. Only she didn’t drive on the highways. She was scared to death of trucks. She thought they’d stray out of their lanes and smash her car into the guardrails. So when she’d drive out to the property, she’d take the back roads.”

  “The back roads to Ann Arbor?” Mitch says. “That’s got to take a couple of hours.”

  “Right.” Carol tears off a piece of bread and Mitch passes her the butter dish. This small gesture pleases her. It shows her that he is aware of her needs, and she rushes ahead with her story. “That’s what the wife was counting on. She thought the daughter would read Donald the note as soon as he got home. Donald would be frantic, and he’d drive out to the property in time to rescue her. But his daughter got sick, and the neighbor across the street came over to borrow something, and Donald forgot all about the note in his pocket.”

  Mitch asks her if she’s going to eat the rest of her chicken. Carol tells him he can have it. She is irritated that he’s not more taken with the story. It is just the kind of thing that they usually share about their volunteer jobs.

  “His wife was waiting out in the country listening for car tires on the gravel roads. I can just imagine her sitting there on the grass while the sun went down, waiting for someone to save her. I guess when it got dark and no one had come to rescue her, she decided she had to go through with it. Donald thinks it’s because no one came that she went ahead and killed herself. She must have gotten lonelier and lonelier, thinking everyone hated her. I mean why else would a whole family ignore a suicide note.”

  “Did she do it with a gun?” Mitch asks.

  “No, she hanged herself.”

  “That’s brutal,” Mitch says. “Really brutal.”

  “I keep thinking about Donald and how guilty he must feel about the whole thing. He says he’s embarrassed to go anywhere. He thinks people point at him and say, ‘There’s that dumb man who couldn’t even read his wife’s suicide note.’”

  “Has he asked you out yet?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It sounds to me like your friend Donald is hitting on you.” “He tells me about his wife killing herself, and you think he’s hitting on me?”

  “Don’t get excited.”

  “Then tell me what you meant.”

  “How about if you tell me how much time you spent reading tonight?”

  Carol stammers and Mitch laughs.

  “See, I told you.” Mitch cuts her leftover chicken into squares. “The guy’s interested in you.”

  “He is not interested in me,” Carol wipes her mouth and then tosses the napkin onto the table. “He’s not like that. He’s just a sad man with real problems.”

  “And you’re a young woman willing to listen to him.”

  “That’s right,” Carol says. “I’m showing him some compassion.”

  “An awful lot of compassion from what I can see.” Mitch smiles.

  “Well, at least it’s normal compassion,” Carol says. “What does that mean?”

  “He probably doesn’t make his women leave the house at six o’clock in the morning.”

  Mitch drops the fork with the square piece of chicken onto his plate. He is quiet for only a moment. “How long have you been spying on me?”

  “I’m not spying on you.” The conversation has taken an odd turn, and his anger upsets her. She has no idea how to make herself desirable to this man she wants so desperately.

  “What would you call it? Keeping watch on my house?”

  “I wasn’t watching your house.” Carol can feel the perspiration dripping from the backs of her knees onto her calves. She remembers the night in the bathroom, but knows that it would have been impossible for Mitch to see her. “I was reading the newspaper on the porch.”

  “At six o’clock in the morning? You were out there at six o’clock in the morning?”

  “I was up. I wanted to be outside before it got too hot.” Her story is true, but her tone is defensive. She shakes her head as if she can physically get rid of this feeling that she has done something wrong.

  They are two blocks from home when Carol apologizes. “I’m sorry I upset you.” She is not used to admitting that she is wrong, and her words sound awkward.

  Mitch nods. “It’s me. I’m just hot. Tired, too. Tired of being hot, I guess.”

  “Me too,” Carol agrees.

  “Hey. I’m off the hook for next Thursday.” Mitch turns down the radio.

  “You quit the program?” Carol tries to rid her voice of the tension she feels.

  “No, no,” Mitch says. “Kevin got sponsored for camp.” “He’s going to camp?”

  “A CYO camp up in Port Huron,” Mitch says. “Right on the lake.”

  Mitch pulls into his driveway but does not shut off the motor. They talk in the cool of the air-conditioned car. “I don’t know what Kevin’s going to do in the wilderness. He doesn’t seem the type to go into sports or swimming or anything like that.”

  “That’s great,” Carol says. In the side mirror she sees their neighbor, Mr. Schott, and his son playing catch. Their shadowy figures move slowly in the fading light.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to live without my heavy metal video fix,” Mitch laughs.

  “Won’t the program want you to take care of another little brother?”

  “The kids aren’t interchangeable,” Mitch explains. “It’s not like we’re baby-sitters.”

  “I know that,” Carol says. “I just thought they might have someone else who needs a big brother.”

  “The idea is to form a bond with your little brother,” Mitch says. “Not to overload us.”

  “Donald asked me to do him a favor,” Carol says. She had not planned on telling Mitch about Donald’s request, but she wants to show him she understands the role of a volunteer worker as much as he does.

  “What kind of favor?”

  “I guess his wife was in some financial trouble before she killed herself. She wrote a few bad checks that Donald can’t make good on right now.”

  “Is that why she did it?”

  “Donald didn’t say that,” Carol says. “There’s this one beautician who keeps calling the house and asking for his wife. Donald can’t bring himself to tell the woman that his wife is dead. He asked me to go to the beauty shop and talk to her.”

  “And you’re going to do it?” Mitch asks.

  “I think so.” Carol nods even though until this moment she had not planned on carrying out the favor. She had told Donald she was in the middle of a busy work week and that she’d let him know.

  “You’ll have to let me know what happens,” Mitch says.

  Now Carol has no choice. She must call Donald and tell him that she’ll go through with the favor.

  “Be careful.” Mitch turns the key and they get out of the car. “You know how goofy people can be about money.”

  “Thanks.” Carol is touched by his warning. She invites him over for a beer. Mitch suggests another night.

  Carol’s mood turns sour at his refusal. She wants to ask if that woman is coming over, but she knows it’s none of her business.

  “Are you sure?” she asks.

  “Thanks, anyway,” Mitch says. He watches Mr. Schott and his son toss a baseball back and forth. He is calm, clearly unaware how much his casual, non-interested attitude frustrates her.

  Carol has never been so forward with a man. Most of the others simply assumed that she was interested in them and took it from there. But with Mitch, she doesn’t know what to say to express how she feels. This night she doesn’t get a chance. Mr. Schott misses his son’s throw, and Mitch runs to retrieve it. The three of them form a triangle and toss the b
all back and forth. The rest of the daylight disappears, and soon it is too dark even to see the ball, let alone catch it.

  The beauty shop is at the dead end of a one-way street in the center of Ann Arbor. The closest parking structure is full and Carol circles the block three times waiting for someone to leave. Finally she drives down a residential street and parks in the shade of a mountain ash. The shop is a converted Victorian home with window boxes full of geraniums and a white railing up the front steps. Carol tells the receptionist that she’d like to see the manicurist, Pamela. Before she can explain that she doesn’t want to have her nails done, the receptionist calls Pamela’s name on the intercom system. “There’s a walk-in here if you can take her.”

  Carol starts to explain that she just wants to talk to Pamela, but the phone rings again and the receptionist flips the large pages of the datebook forward. She puts her hand over the receiver.

  “You can go on up.” She jerks her head to the stairs and then resumes the conversation. It is obvious by the fast pace of her conversation that the person on the other end is not a customer but someone close to the receptionist. Carol climbs the dark-carpeted steps to the second floor, where the hand-printed sign directs her to Pamela’s table. Pamela stands up from her manicure stand and asks Carol to take off her rings and watch.

  “We give hand massages here,” she explains. “You don’t want any metal on your body.”

  Carol slips off her jewelry and sets it next to the dish of soapy water. She feels intimidated by Pamela’s looks. Her hair is wound tight on top of her head, and her hands and makeup are perfect. Nothing is out of place, and Carol feels underdressed, more like a tomboy in her jeans and faded button-down.

  Pamela examines her hands, picking the loose skin with a pair of tiny silver scissors.

  “I don’t usually get manicures.” Carol feels she must explain why she is here. “Except if I’m in someone’s wedding.”