Emily, Alone

by Stewart O'Nan

  Everything she needed was in her secretary. She gathered her address book and the stamps, the bag with the cards and a pair of permanent markers she’d bought strictly for this purpose, and established herself at the dining room table, setting out her materials left to right in an assembly line.

  She did the grandchildren’s first, adding, All my love, Grandma, to the printed greeting, and was immediately dismayed by her handwriting. Since winning a plaster of Paris bust of Shakespeare for penmanship in the sixth grade, she’d prided herself on her cursive. In the last few years it had deteriorated, become shaky, her hand tremulous, as if she suffered from a nervous disease. It may have been the day, the exalted promise of the morning spoiled, but she saw her squiggly letters as more proof that she was bound to lose everything, at least in this world.

  Her address book confirmed it, the pages inhabited equally by the living and the dead. Helen Alford had been gone ten years now, yet Emily could bring back the ratty Swarthmore sweatshirt Helen wore to play touch football with Bud and the children Sundays in the park. George and Doris Ballard, who used to carpool to the symphony with them. Conrad and Hilde Barr, who moved to Roanoke. Ida Blair. Judy Burke. Each name called up raucous dinner parties and gin-and-tonics on sunny patios, lazy Saturday afternoons at the swim club, station wagons filled with noisy boys in polyester baseball uniforms. The temptation was to mourn those days, when they were young and busy and alive. As much as Emily missed them, she understood the reason that era seemed so rich—partly, at least—was because it was past, memorialized, the task they’d set themselves of raising families accomplished. The thought of Margaret was enough to remind her that not all of their times had been happy, that, in truth, much of it had been a struggle, one that was far from over, if that was in fact possible. No, probably not. Even after she herself was dead, Margaret would still be battling her, just as, occasionally, Emily still fought with her own mother, both guiltily and, being eternally wronged, self-righteously. Though everything faded, nothing was ever done.

  Based on last year’s tally, she’d ordered a hundred cards and envelopes. So far she’d completed twelve. In the living room, her puzzle waited, and the book review, the arts section. She could put on Bach’s Mass in B minor, pull the afghan over her and sink deep into Henry’s chair. Falling asleep while the sky outside colored and then dimmed appealed to her. It was Sunday, after all.

  The notion, like the temptation to give in to nostalgia, was fleeting, and impractical. If she quit, the cards would just be waiting for her tomorrow, ruining two days instead of one. It was her job. No elves would magically sneak in overnight and do them for her. It would take her hours, and they’d probably look awful, but, honestly, what else did she have to do? She took an envelope from the stack, found the next living person in her address book and kept going, pressing down hard so the words would be legible.

  KINDRED SPIRITS

  Every other Wednesday, Betty came to help her keep the worst of the house at bay. As fastidious as Emily was, she could no longer get down on her knees and scrub the tubs, or wash the shower curtains, or give the floors an honest mopping. For years Arlene had sung Betty’s praises, and though Emily had regarded the idea of hiring someone to do her housework as a badge of laziness and privilege—in the sixties most of her friends had had cleaning women—now she couldn’t imagine how she’d ever done without her.

  Tuesday night, Emily primed the rooms, gathering Rufus’s toys and straightening magazines. She lightly went over the stove and sink, polishing the water-spotted tap so it shone, and set out a new S.O.S. pad. It was all she could do not to empty the garbage.

  In the morning she counted down the minutes till eight, when Betty pulled up in her little silver Nissan, the back plastered with stickers supporting the troops, the Steelers and the unions. Emily lurked behind the curtains while she unloaded her vacuum and gym bag and bucket full of supplies. She was stocky and close-cropped in a puffy down coat, sporty warm-up pants and bright white running shoes, and at fifty possessed a briskness Emily envied. She was from Butler originally, and retained its broad, flat accent. With her bad teeth and disdain for makeup, there was something real and unspoiled about her. Not a lack of sophistication but an honesty and common sense that reminded Emily of her mother’s circle in Kersey, a small-town directness that put her at ease.

  Before she reached the porch, Emily had the door open for her. Rufus, who was losing his eyesight, lowered his head and growled as if he didn’t know her.

  “Don’t be rude,” Emily scolded.

  “Aw, it’s all right. I know, Roof, you’re just doing your job. He’s like Bongo. Anyone comes to the house, he’s got to check him out first. That’s right, boy, you protect your master.”

  Emily took Betty’s coat as if she were a guest, hanging it in the closet next to her own. She asked after her husband Jesse, whose back had been acting up, and her daughter Toni, stationed in Norfolk with the Navy.

  “She’s talking about wanting to buy a house down there ’cause they’re so cheap, with all the foreclosures going on. I wouldn’t want to buy a house that way, I don’t know. It’s hard when you’re just starting out. Arlene tells me you’re thinking about getting a new car. Is that right?”

  “I’m just starting to look.”

  “Good for you, Emily,” Betty said, knotting her smock behind her.

  “I’m afraid you’re the only one who thinks so.”

  “You’re lyin’. No, I’m sorry, you can’t live without a car nowadays, especially if you’re by yourself.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said.

  “You can’t be any worse than Arlene, right? I’m just kiddin’.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “No, but yeah, you’ve had that Olds how long now?”

  She had to subtract. “Twenty-five years this year.”

  “So it’s officially an antique. How’s it handle in the snow?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “There you go,” Betty said. “What are you looking at?”

  “I’m thinking something small. But safe, like a Subaru, or maybe a hybrid like Marcia’s.”

  “Those are supposed to be nice.”

  They were standing at the foot of the stairs. Betty had her rubber gloves on and her bucket in one hand, and Emily didn’t want to hold her up.

  “Anything special today?” Betty asked.

  “We should probably start getting the kids’ rooms ready so we don’t have to do them all at once.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Having someone else moving about the house was always strange. From the kitchen, Emily monitored her progress. By upbringing as much as inclination, she was incapable of sitting around while someone else was working, and as Betty attacked the master bath, running water in the tub, Emily pulled on her own pair of rubber gloves and took the opportunity to polish the silver she planned to use at Christmas, envisioning Margaret and the children arrayed around the table, happily passing dishes.

  They spent the morning working separately, as if they’d agreed to stay out of each other’s way. Upstairs, the handle of Betty’s bucket clanked. A squirt bottle squirted—fssh, fssh, fssh. A toilet flushed. A vacuum roared back and forth, bumping furniture. Emily listened with satisfaction, knowing that with each passing minute, the two of them were getting the house ready.

  Just before noon, she went up to let Betty know what was available for lunch. Having lived alone for so long, Emily took pleasure in feeding her, as if she were company. She’d planned on their favorite grilled cheese sandwiches, and yesterday she’d picked up some of the nice tomato basil soup they both liked from the Crockery.

  “I don’t think that’s on my diet,” Betty joked.

  “What would you like to drink? I bought some Diet Pepsis for you.”

  “A Diet Pepsi would be great, thanks.”

  Emily set the table in the breakfast nook, and then, when Betty was ready, served them, pouring herself a cup of tea. She’d almost sat dow
n when she remembered: pickles.

  “I hope it’s all right.”

  “It’s wonderful, Emily. Thank you.”

  “I find I need something substantial on a day like this, otherwise I get chills.”

  “That’s ’cause you don’t have any meat on your bones—you and Arlene.”

  “Arlene doesn’t eat, she just eats sweets. I eat all the time, I just can’t seem to keep up my weight.”

  “I wish I had your problem.”

  “No you don’t,” Emily said. “I try to tell Dr. Sayid and he thinks I’m lying. He wants to give me this supplement that’s like baby formula.”

  “Ensure. Lots of people use it.”

  “I can’t think of anything more unappealing.”

  “Y’ever try it?”

  “No, have you?”

  Betty laughed at the idea. “I would if my doctor told me to.”

  “Okay, you’ve made your point.”

  “After what happened with Arlene, I don’t want to have to worry about you too.”

  “You don’t,” Emily assured her.

  “Just try and stop me. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Edgar died.”

  “Edgar?” For a second she couldn’t place the name, and feared she was losing her memory.

  “Arlene’s Edgar.”

  “Ah.” A fish.

  “It was very sad. We had a burial at sea.” She swirled a finger downward.

  “I’m surprised she didn’t call me.”

  “I’m sure you’ll hear about it.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Now, tell me,” Betty said, “who thinks you shouldn’t be buying a car?”

  It was rare that Emily had the chance to explain herself to someone who knew her situation—it was rare that anyone would be interested—and she eagerly framed Margaret’s and Kenneth’s reservations versus her needs as if pleading the case to a neutral observer. There was no need. A friend, Betty had already found in her favor.

  “They’re just worried about you. They don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “Or anyone else, yes, I get it. I could say the same about Margaret but I won’t.” When Margaret was drinking, she’d been in several accidents, and at one point had her license taken away.

  “Come on, Emily, that’s not fair.”

  “No, you’re right. They don’t trust me. That’s what hurts the most.”

  “It’s probably a shock to them. You stopped for a long time.”

  “Because the Olds was too big for me. They don’t even make cars that size anymore.”

  “It is humongous.”

  What a luxury it was to have someone who listened instead of contesting every point. Betty’s visits reminded her of how starved she was for conversation, and counsel. For so long Louise had been her sounding board, the one person she could go to when she and Henry disagreed, as they often did, about the children or Arlene. Betty served the same purpose, but with the extra advantage of knowing what Arlene was up to—a kind of double agent—and yet Emily for the most part spoke openly with her, secure in her belief that Betty wasn’t spreading her secrets around town. She was well aware that now and then Betty might leak word to Arlene, being a direct conduit between them, but that was different. She depended on Betty to return the favor, maintaining a constant low-level intrigue that kept things interesting and, in a strange way, brought them all closer.

  For dessert they indulged in a plate of mint Milanos, and then, too soon, it was time for Betty to get back to work. As always, over Betty’s protests, Emily cleared the table and did the dishes.

  In the afternoon they changed places. Rufus turned circles on his bed as if fluffing it, then folded himself down. The whole upstairs smelled tartly of lemon and ammonia. Betty had left the lights on, as if encouraging Emily to inspect her work. The water in the toilets was foggy. In the master bath Emily rearranged the pain relievers on the shelf above the sink, and the brushes on her vanity, putting everything back exactly the way she liked it.

  She spent the rest of the day in Henry’s office, sitting at his computer with her credit card on the freshly polished desk, ordering Christmas gifts. The shipping was outrageous, but at this point what choice did she have? She crossed off her lists, keeping a tally of how much she’d spent on each grandchild, trying to be fair-handed, which was difficult, since she had so many ideas for Ella and Sarah and so few for Sam and Justin. She would not buy them video games. There was too much mindless, hateful entertainment as it was. If Arlene wanted to, that was her business, but she would not be party to it. She’d hoped they would have outgrown them by now—they were in college, for God’s sake—but their wish lists were nearly identical: Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. At the risk of further solidifying her reputation as a fuddy-duddy, she bought them clothes they could wear to the club.

  The mail was late, and contained a glittery card from Nicky Ouellette in Hilton Head, whom Emily hadn’t heard from in ages and had therefore dropped from her list. She immediately retaliated, sharing her irritation with Betty as she penned an overjoyed note. So good to hear from you!

  “You know what I hate,” Betty said. “The ones that come from out of nowhere right before Christmas.”

  “And there’s nothing you can do about them.”

  “I haven’t even started mine, so you’re way ahead of me.”

  “You’d better get going.”

  “I know. I’m gonna have to do them this weekend, along with everything else.”

  “It’s just a bad time of year,” Emily agreed.

  “Are you doing a tree this year?”

  “Are you kidding me? I’d never hear the end of it if I didn’t. I’ll let them help me with it. That’s something we can all do together.”

  “There you go, put ’em to work.”

  “Don’t laugh. You know who’s going to end up taking it down—the two of us.”

  “That’s all right,” Betty said. “I like a tree. It’s not Christmas without one.”

  “It’s true,” Emily said. “There’s something about the smell.”

  “And the lights at night.”

  Just fond small talk, yet it meant so much to her. She wanted to stay and chat, but Betty had finished the dining room and was moving on to the kitchen, and Emily retreated upstairs to write her a check. That reminded her: she’d have to stop at the bank next week and pick up Betty’s bonus—five crisp twenties in an envelope with an oval cut to show Andrew Jackson’s face. She wrote it down so she wouldn’t forget.

  After mopping the kitchen floor, the last thing Betty did was take out the garbage. Emily heard the back door open and close, and then, seconds later, the rumble of the big wheeled drum. Tomorrow was garbage day, and though at first Emily had insisted she was perfectly capable, Betty had taken upon herself the job of rolling the container, with the heavy recycling bin perched on top, down the driveway to the curb. Emily waited for her to come back in the front and summon her, calling up the stairs, “Okay, Emily, I’m all done.”

  Emily fetched Betty’s coat from the closet. In the front hall she thanked her and handed her the check. “Please give my best to Jesse.”

  “Say hey to the family for me,” Betty said.

  Emily saw her off, waving from the bay window as she ducked into the little Nissan and then headed down Grafton Street, stopping at the stop sign. She signaled, turned into a gap in traffic and was gone. For practical reasons, Emily had kept the stereo off, and now, without her music, the living room was silent. After having company all day, the place felt empty, yet at the same time Emily was relieved to be alone again, and pleased to have a clean house. She crossed to the front hall and made sure the storm door was shut tight, then gently shot the deadbolt, sealing herself in. Rufus knew that meant dinnertime, and barked once to prod her.

  “Yes, yes,” Emily said. “Just hold your horses, Mr. Fatty.”

  FAMILY PICTURES

  Emily thought it was not morbid but absolutely natural that as sh
e grew closer to her own end, she became more and more interested in her origins, and wanted to pass that knowledge on to her children. Her mother and father had come from clans whose roots traced the valleys of northcentral Pennsylvania, linking towns like Kersey and Ridgway and Saint Marys. The Waite and Benton men were farmers and loggers and miners at first, and only later tradesmen and merchants, the women generally housewives, along with a few unmarried Sunday school teachers and missionary aunts. Her own father had worked as a building inspector for the county, while her mother taught kindergarten and first grade. They had struggled to achieve and maintain their middle-class respectability in the face of a depression and a world war, a feat Emily thought was lost on her own children, accustomed to an affluence that must have seemed their birthright as much as it had been Henry’s and Arlene’s, born to fortune.

  As if to remind them of her own humble beginnings, every Christmas Emily gave Margaret and Kenneth a framed picture of another forgotten branch of the family, and if these gifts were initially met with indifference, that was fine. Emily had conceived of this as a long-term project, one that might take their entire lives to finally resonate, as it had with her. She’d come to appreciate her Kersey upbringing only well after she’d fled the town and made the long-wished-for transformation into a fashionable city dweller. Not that her teenaged estimation of the place had been wrong—it was even worse now, a dying Appalachian backwater—but, looking back, she saw that, like Margaret, she’d been an ungrateful child, stubborn and arrogant to no real purpose beyond her own vanity.

  At the dining room table, as she scavenged through her mother’s loose black-and-white snapshots with their quaintly pinked edges, the month and year neatly machine-stamped in all four margins, she found photos of herself standing with her arms crossed on a dock or leaning against the fender of the Plymouth or sitting on their back steps eating an apple, always with a slightly fiery scowl, as if she’d specifically asked not to have her picture taken. As a child she’d been emotional, a crier, a brooder, a showy thrower of tantrums. Once she’d begun, she could not be appeased. Why, her mother pleaded, did she have to be that way? There was no good answer. It was just the way she was. Difficult. Touchy. Mean. Her relatives blamed it on her being an only child, spoiled from too much attention. Her father tried to turn it into a joke. Little Miss Moody Patootie. Don’t look at her cross-eyed. Wait till you have kids of your own, her mother threatened, as if Emily would pass her temper on like a disease of the blood, unitil, inevitably, she did, and oh, it was rich, there was no end of the I-toldyou-so’s. She remembered, many times, trying to coax Margaret and Kenneth to smile—Kenneth, who had Henry’s sweet nature but followed his big sister’s lead—so as not to ruin a group portrait (so as not to embarrass her). Those were here as well, the prime of their family life carefully documented in album after album, an editing job put off until the children had left, then attacked with commemorative devotion. The patent falseness of so many shots staged to mark an occasion only deepened the mystery of the past, its unhappiness dressed up, hidden, invisible to the camera.