One Minus One (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries)

by Ruth Doan MacDougall

  Dishpan

  .25

  Dustpan

  .25

  Bed

  7.50

  Springs

  5.50

  Mattress

  15.00

  Couch

  3.75

  Couch cover

  1.75

  Chiffonier

  11.50

  Mahogany table

  12.50

  One chair

  4.00

  One chair

  11.50

  Piano

  300.00

  “Come on,” Kaykay said. “If I hang around here any longer I’m going to go berserk and eat Grace’s steak, not to mention all her frozen chicken pies and her liverwurst.”

  My stomach growled. Kaykay and I were trying the “Inches-Off Diet,” which meant no protein. I said, “I wonder what Grace is having for dinner at her folks’.”

  “Probably a ton of roast beef,” she said, and threw my coat to me. “Come on.”

  Such a windy March, wild and high. There’d been a snowstorm last week, bad enough to have the school close early, but by now the snow was melted again, and the mounds of gravel and piles of bricks that had been white hulks were visible once more.

  “Wow, this wind,” Kaykay said as we leaned into it, walking around the building. There were a number of cars parked here; most of the apartments had been rented. She said, “Let’s take my car, I’m a nervous wreck when you drive.”

  “So am I,” I said.

  We had to fight to get the car doors open against the wind. Kaykay’s Volkswagen was a convertible, yellow with a black top, like a bumblebee.

  I buckled my seat belt; Kaykay and Grace never used theirs. We jounced along the rutted sand, past cement mixers and stationary trucks, and we looked at the new buildings, judging, as we always did, how the work was progressing.

  “Where to?” Kaykay said. “Let’s try Hubbard’s, I haven’t been there for ages.”

  “Is that where I got my bedspread?”

  “No, that was the Giant Store. Hubbard’s is an awful place, but you can get a better deal on some things there.”

  It was on the other side of town, and the parking lot was crowded with cars. The turnpike screamed by overhead. The enormous dingy mill was old and weathered, and beside it flowed a brown river.

  I said, “Hey, it’s a real mill.”

  “It used to be, I don’t even know what they made. I guess they turned it into a store years ago.” We got out of the car. She said, “It always seems like every weirdo from miles around is here, and every female with her hair in rollers.”

  Many people were hurrying into the mill, and many people were coming out carrying bulky paper bags and howling babies. There were the women and girls with rollers either displayed quite naked or insufficiently covered with scarves or puffy pastel bonnets, there were mumbling old men, there were parents shooing along popcorn-eating children, there were lumpy old couples. Is this what people did nowadays on Sunday afternoons?

  “Sure you don’t need anything?” Kaykay asked as we walked along.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. Then, “Well, razor blades.”

  “We can get them on the way out. Anything else? I wouldn’t recommend their clothes, I never dare buy clothes in any of these discount stores. Do you? They’re always made in Taiwan or God knows where.”

  “You’re the social studies teacher,” I said.

  She hauled open the finger-smudged glass door, and we went up old wooden stairs worn shallow by how many years of workers and shoppers. Candy bar wrappers littered the corners, spittle speckled the steps.

  Then Kaykay opened the inside door, and although the place was not one vast brilliant arena, like the shining new discount department stores, and although I had automatically steeled myself, I was assaulted here as there with such a kaleidoscopic abundance of goods that I felt my blinking rate slow down, and, dazzled, hypnotized, I followed her along the aisles of plenty, suddenly wanting to buy everything.

  “Housewares,” Kaykay said, walking briskly. Her gaze had hardened; she was bargain hunting.

  There were big dark rooms here, a labyrinth of rooms overflowing bath powders and men’s shirts and children’s pajamas and ladies’ print dresses. Gradually everything I wanted to buy began to seem tawdry, and my senses began to return. The rooms smelled of people and popcorn and of something else. Was it the sweat the workers had sweated here long ago, as the shoppers sweated now? The wooden floors were worn and crooked.

  “This is it,” Kaykay said, and we turned past racks of blouses and miniskirts (NEW SPRING COLORS!) into the glitter of aluminum. Kaykay marched on past pots and pans and halted at appliances, and there were Warren and Valerie, studying an electric toaster-broiler.

  “Shit,” Kaykay said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, and, astonishingly, it was. I even was amused that they were looking at toasters; did this mean they were married, or getting married, or shacking up together? “Hi,” I said.

  “Hello, Miss Bean,” Valerie said, pushing back her sweep of hair with her left hand, to show a small diamond engagement ring. “How’s everything at Millbridge this semester?”

  “As ghastly as ever,” I said cheerfully.

  Warren was the one who seemed disconcerted. He fiddled with the coiled cord of the toaster. “How’s the jogging?” he asked in his in-person voice, not the radio voice we didn’t listen to mornings, except when there was a snowstorm.

  “I’m just dieting nowadays,” I said. “We’re on that no-protein diet.”

  Kaykay said, “It can’t be very healthy, we’ll probably die of something awful.”

  I said, “At least we won’t die of scurvy.”

  “Waffle irons,” she said, “that’s what I’m after. There they are.”

  And we walked on, the display shelves offering us electric coffee urns, electric carving knives, electric frying pans, electric can openers, and, at last, waffle irons.

  Kaykay said, “Her ring’s got a nice setting, but I like mine better,” and glanced complacently at her ring. “Now, the real stores are selling waffle irons for twenty-nine ninety-five. What are these? Twenty-two ninety-five, but, my God, I never heard of the brand names. Just what I feared.”

  “Does Bob like waffles?” I asked. David had loved them, and when we got married he had dug his mother’s old waffle iron with the frayed cord out of the attic, and for years on Sunday mornings we had waffles.

  “Oh, yes, and you can do all sorts of things besides on these new ones—pancakes and sandwiches and bacon and things. And they’re Teflon.”

  I remembered Grace’s sister Wendy. “Are you going to get one of those electric cooker-fryers? You can do other things in them too, or so I heard.”

  “Good Lord, I’ve already got one, it’s one of the first appliances I had to buy, Bob insisted, he adores homemade french fries. His mother always used to make them, just in a wire basket in a cast-iron pot, but the idea of doing it that way scares the daylights out of me, so I got the electric thing. Can you imagine me sitting around watching Bob devour french fries? I’ll weep.”

  “It seems people don’t need stoves anymore, all they need are appliances,” I said, and looked up past blenders and saw Warren watching me. And still he was just a guy, and I had to remind myself that he was the only guy I’d ever slept with, except David, that without him I might have gone insane in my apartment with my mirrors, that he had been important. My personality, I was learning, always somewhat disappeared into other people’s, and always had, even alone all day writing in Thornhill, when I became my people I wrote. I had been David nearly forever, but briefly, superficially, I had been Warren. We looked at each other, the blenders between us reflecting each other opaquely.

  “Twenty-two ninety-five,” Kaykay said, making a note on her list. “Well, I’ll tell Bob, but I think we’d better buy one at a real store. I guess that’s it, there’s nothing else I want here.”<
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  I bought my razor blades and we drove home. Grace was ironing blouses in the kitchen.

  “What did you have to eat?” Kaykay said. “Tell us every single thing.”

  “Roast beef,” Grace began, and Kaykay wailed, “I knew it! What else?” Grace said, “Let’s see, mashed potatoes and lima beans and a salad—”

  I said, “The hell with the salad. Did you have gravy?”

  “Oh, of course, and Mom had made gingerbread for dessert.”

  “With whipped cream?”

  “Well, with that Cool Whip stuff.”

  Kaykay said, “I bet she sent the gingerbread home with you.”

  “Yes, would you like some? I don’t suppose there’s much protein in it.”

  “Oh, God,” Kaykay groaned, and took an orange out of the refrigerator.

  It was later in the evening, after Kaykay and I had had our forlorn supper of salad and broccoli and tried not to ogle the chicken pie Grace ate, and we were watching The Bill Cosby Show with Bob who had come over bringing along a little snack for himself and Grace (a pint of fried clams and a pint of fried onion rings) when the phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Grace said. Then she said in an odd tone, “Emily, it’s for you. It’s not your mother, it’s a man’s voice.”

  I put down my scotch slowly. Nobody except Lucy ever called me. I went to the counter and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Hello, this is Warren.”

  He’d remembered that I couldn’t identify telephone voices. “Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to come over and watch Glen Campbell at my place.”

  Glen Campbell’s show had moved to Sunday nights.

  For a split second I almost said yes, because of the same reason he’d invited me, sex, and then I said, “No, no, thank you, I guess I’ll watch it here.”

  “Oh. Well.”

  “Good-bye.”

  I went back to the living room. Kaykay and Grace looked at me; Grace looked away again to the television, but Kaykay said, “It was that Warren, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some nerve. What did he want?”

  “A change of cunt,” I said, and was stunned to see Grace blush red. Bob and Kaykay began laughing, and I picked up one of Kaykay’s cigarettes and my scotch and went into the bedroom and got out my diary. I lay on my bed and smoked and sipped and read:

  Wed., July 13, 1955. Carol’s mother drove us to Stark’s Dairy Bar at twenty of ten. It wasn’t too busy, and we had fun. Nancy was taking “The Cow” apart, and took a strategic screw out of the nozzle. She plugged the normal hole with her finger and pulled down on the handle, just to see what would happen. Milk sprayed out of the hole where the screw was supposed to be, hitting Nancy square in the face. Rivulets dripped down the front of her uniform. Funny—Carol and Jeannine and I just about died. Then she tried to set off a whipped cream jet with the ice cream containers’ carrying hook. Then we had a hell of a water fight with the hose we use for cleaning up—that is, Nancy and Jeannine did, but Jeannine grabbed me as a hostage and I got soaked.

  During our break, Carol and I changed into our bathing suits and went to the beach. I fell asleep, and then Carol woke me up because there were some people from the Playhouse—Guys and Dolls cast—near us. They were singing, and seemed so relaxed. I wonder what it’d be like to work summer stock—going from place to place—but most of all, to be independent. They were comparatively kids—maybe five years older than me. I want to do new things and see new things—except for David. He’s a permanent resident.

  When we got back to Stark’s, the thunderstorm which had begun to threaten broke loose. Was it fun!! Rain poured down in sheets and the wind was just right so that it came thru the screen to us. Everything blew all over the place, and the electricity went off, and so did the water. The frappe machines, the frappe cup washer, the scoop trench faucets, the freezers, the cabinets, the clock, all didn’t work. Hurrah! Immediately we started eating. I managed to down a strawberry soda, a dish of vanilla ice cream with pineapple sauce, and a dish of frozen pudding ice cream. We sat on the cabinets, which we’re not supposed to sit on, eating and reading. I read my W. Somerset Maugham’s Theatre. I like it very much so far. He sure is fond of writing about affairs…Up at the Villa, Christmas Holiday, etc. The other kids read the confession magazines Jeannine brought the other day. In fact, Carol was so deep in a dramatic masterpiece entitled “Foolish Virgin” when the thunderstorm stopped and the electricity came on and customers began arriving again that she took the magazine home with her.

  David picked me up at ten after six. He was hot and filthy from the gas station, so we went to the beach and went swimming, except we did more making out in the water than swimming. I got soundly splashed and ducked. It was so much fun. After he dives underwater his eyelashes get all stuck together and sort of starry. He has such long eyelashes!

  Then he took me home, and Susan and Lucy and I had supper. A few of our peas were ready, so we had those, and our lettuce—Susan made the special dressing that Ma and Lucy make, out of tomato soup—and Lucy made cheese dreams. I ate in my uniform, and after my bath I put on my blue Bermudas and pink jersey, plus David’s little gold football, of course of course.

  At eight he picked me up. We drove downtown, parked the car, and entered the theater after Bob Hope in The Seven Little Foys had begun. It was pretty good. The second movie was Return of the Creature, a continuation of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. God, was it scary! Toward the end, there was a part where the hero was looking for the creature along the shore, and all of a sudden a hand reached out. The audience, as one, shrieked—including me, and I threw myself against David, burying my head on his shoulder. It was only the hand of the heroine. Up to that point, David and I had just been holding hands, but I guess then he figured that I needed a little more protection, so he put his arm around me. He laughed and laughed at my fright.

  Afterward, we went to Joe’s Drive-In and he had a chocolate frappe and I had a cheeseburger and Coke. I absolutely couldn’t face any more ice cream.

  Then we went to Bickford Park to go parking, but all the swings and stuff were up, as they hadn’t been the times we parked there this spring, so we clambered out of the car, and I swang while David made like a gorilla on the trapeze, and then we both swang and investigated the swimming pool, and I sat down on the merry-go-round and David started pushing it and I nearly died of dizziness. We crossed the little bridge over the brook. Then we played on the seesaw; David weighs so much more than me that I was up in the air all the time. At last we returned to the car and finally settled down, after David had made several flattering remarks about my legs. And then awaaay we went! He got fresh again, but what the hell.

  We came to at midnight and drove to my house. We just couldn’t part, and when finally he walked me to the door he kept right on walking in and we found ourselves making out like mad on the living room couch. Lucy and Susan had gone to bed, thank God. David got overwhelmed by everything, and we nearly Went All the Way. Oh, I want to!!! He’s so wonderful and I love him so much!!! But I made him stop, and he sat up and gathered me into his arms, and I tried to explain to him how it wasn’t right, we couldn’t. He was quiet for a while, and then he said, “I know, I know,” and he said he was sorry. He asked, “We love each other, don’t we?” “Yes,” I said, and he continued, “Then that’s all that matters, isn’t it?” We talked in whispers, and everything was okay. He left at about one thirty, after lifting me off the threshold when kissing me. Devastating.

  The office secretary’s voice over the intercom said to the classroom, “We have received another bomb threat. Everybody is asked to leave the building in an orderly fashion.”

  Jesus H. Christ, I thought, and my kids were muttering the same. It was the third bomb scare in two weeks; it was no longer exciting.

  “All right,” I said, “you know the procedure.” As they began to wander out of the
room, I considered staying here and trying to find some way of letting them discover what “The Road Not Taken” was about, and then I looked out the windows. Friday afternoon, with a week of vacation ahead. A warm sunny April day, our first true spring day. I wouldn’t even need my coat. So I followed the kids outdoors.

  The buds on the trees were a pale-yellow-green mist. If I were in Thornhill on a day like this, after I finished my writing I would put on my bathing suit and go out back and sunbathe on the chaise longue, reading seed catalogs, deciding what we would plant this year in our gardens.

  The house we rented in Thornhill was on a dead-end street on the outskirts of town. It was an old, decrepit house, but it had a big backyard. In the summer, a good part of the yard became David’s garden. There was corn, his favorite vegetable, and there were radishes and tomatoes and lettuce and summer squash and carrots and cucumbers, and, after the agonizingly long wait of four years, asparagus, my favorite. And around the house were my flower beds, daffodils and narcissus and tulips in the springtime, and then nasturtiums and marigolds and zinnias and petunias, and the morning glories were a wondrous blue when we ate our summer breakfasts on the porch.

  “Hey,” Cliff Parker said, walking toward me. “Guess what’s happened.”

  “They haven’t found a real bomb!”

  “Oh, hell, no, the cops aren’t even here yet. It’s this: Miss Higgins is going to retire.”

  “Who,” I said, “is Miss Higgins?”

  “Who is Miss Higgins? Who is Miss Higgins? Miss Higgins,” he said, grinning at me, “is the head of the English Department at North Riverton High School. She has been the head of the English Department at North Riverton High School as long as anyone can remember. She was my teacher. She was my folks’ teacher. She was, for all I know, my grandparents’ teacher. That’s who Miss Higgins is.”