All for a Story

by Allison Pittman

  Max had accepted the bread, promised to consider the invitation to church, and politely declined the invitation to the movie. Now, with the neighborhood streets quiet, having emptied all of their occupants to school or work, he enjoyed the scent of the bread wafting from Uncle Edward’s electric toaster and dropped an egg in to fry beside the bacon.

  A week had gone by since shutting down production of Capitol Chatter, during which time he’d met twice with Thomas Harper and felt less hopeful after each encounter. Truthfully, he’d imagined the financial situation to be much worse, given the small number of subscriptions and the newsstand competition with at least ten other publications of its kind, but Uncle Edward ran his business with the same spartan approach as he did every other aspect of his life. A shoestring writing staff, no freelancers. Advertising cheap and plentiful, and little time or energy spent on the pursuit of redeeming society. Story after story of vice and crime—all things plentiful enough in the city, and endless enough to keep the bottom line bobbing in the black.

  “But don’t you think we could do more?”

  “Your uncle was never a man driven by profit,” the complacent Harper had replied.

  “I mean more for our readers. More for this city. Stories about heroes, maybe. Good people doing good things. Certainly that is all just as plentiful.”

  “It is a little harder to dig up.”

  Max thought of this conversation now as he dug into his breakfast, wishing he had somebody with whom to share his thoughts—somebody not so invested in the paper. Not that he had any investment in it, because the cleanest option would be to simply shut it down and walk away. It might mean a small refund to the subscribers, but there were few enough of them to buy off with the paltry amount in petty cash. Chances were slim that riots would break out at newsstands when the tabloid failed to make its weekly appearance, and the staff was small enough to be absorbed by the glut of other papers just like it.

  And Max? Well, he could make his way back to Sister Aimee, blame his outburst on the grief over losing his only living relative, and rely on her grace to take him back into the fold. Working on the Bridal Call might not have been the most satisfying position he could ask for, but at least their staff meetings had never been interrupted by a group of new converts crashing through the door with guns. Surely Manarola would find another home for his particular set of skills, and Mrs. Ovenoff could continue on as janitress for whatever tenant took over the office space. As for Monica . . .

  Here he paused, took a sip of his coffee, and stared at the empty chair on the other side of the table. He could still remember the feel of her tiny body tucked under his arm, the way she practically vibrated with what he thought was fear, but upon further reflection saw to be something more like indignation.

  “Monkey Business,” he said out loud, just to hear the sound of it.

  He finished his breakfast, rinsed his dishes in the sink, poured himself a second cup of coffee, and went into the front room to sit in the comfortable chair by the fire. His few halfhearted attempts to bring order to Uncle Edward’s book collection had only resulted in a more confusing jumble as he’d become engrossed in more than one volume as he perused it to determine just where it should be shelved. Now a stack knee-high sat between the arm of the chair and the wall, topped with The Invisible Man, of which about half remained to be read. Beneath that, The Tragedies of William Shakespeare, with a ribbon marking act 1, scene 1 of Macbeth. For now, though, the less-than-wobbly pile created a perfect place to rest his coffee cup as he settled back into the chair. Already the leather seemed to know him, conforming to his body in that perfected melding of man and furniture.

  His Bible lay beside the pile of books, and the leather scrunched as he reached down for it, along with the stenographer’s notebook in which he kept a journal of his thoughts and prayers. As testament to his state of mind of late, the last few pages were full of notations and numbers, offering to God the details of the choices put before him. He did not record his questions, for all of them could be summed up in a single petition.

  Show me, O Father, what to do. There’s no one else whose counsel I trust.

  He stared at the numbers, hoping God would supernaturally arrange them on the page, spelling out a clear message, much like he did for King Belshazzar. Even if it spelled a message of doom, pointing out Max’s clear unworthiness to create even the modest success that Uncle Edward had, at least he would know what to do. He didn’t need a promise of success, only a nudge of direction.

  It was his habit to begin each daily devotional time by reading a chapter from Proverbs, especially during those times when he was in need of wisdom. Quoting from this book had been a staple of his father’s conversation, but Max lacked the ability of precise recall. Too often, he hated to admit even to himself, his eyes skimmed over the all-too-familiar words, but sometimes, like today, everything came to a halt at a single verse. Proverbs 15:22: “Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established.”

  Max looked out the window to the iron-gray morning and laughed out loud.

  “And this multitude of counselors, Lord? Who would they be?” Harper had staunchly refused to offer any advice, remaining mathematically objective on the paper’s viability. “Maybe Trevor? He’s young, but he’s sane.”

  For the duration of the cup of coffee, his Bible remained open and unread as his gaze focused and blurred and focused again on Uncle Edward’s bookcase.

  No, his bookcase. His books, his house, his chair. His publication. All given to him not because he’d proven himself as a reliable steward but simply because of who he was in life. This wasn’t exactly a legacy; it was a weekly twelve-page tabloid. It would bear his name only because he bore his uncle’s, but no mistake—it was his.

  He set his cup back down on the stack of books and thumbed through the pages of his Bible until he found the well-worn folded slip of paper. One of his first assignments as part of the staff of the Bridal Call was to create a page listing the parables of Jesus, chapter and verse in corresponding Gospels. “The words of Jesus Christ,” Sister Aimee had said, “our Rabbi, our Teacher. In them lie the answers to our questions of how we are to live as his disciples.”

  And she’d insisted that they were all disciples, Christ’s followers and students, daily at his feet, attuned to his voice through the Scriptures. It had been Max’s job to create a cheat sheet.

  His eyes skimmed down the column, though he knew exactly what he was looking for. The parable of the talents. Though he nearly knew the passage by heart, there was something comforting about the soft turn of the pages. The Bible was a gift from his parents upon his graduation from high school, and one of the few things he had from his childhood home.

  He adjusted his glasses, focusing on the red text, and took in the familiar story of three men, each entrusted with a portion of their master’s fortune. Two double their portions’ value; the third—much to the master’s ire—simply buries his.

  Which would he be? Already an answer was beginning to form.

  Just when he began a second reading of the parable, a familiar form passed by his front window, and a purposeful knock soon followed. Curious, he left his Bible open in his seat and moved to the door, trying to hide his surprise at the sight of the woman standing on his front step.

  “Mrs. Ovenoff?”

  “Is Tuesday,” she said as a way of greeting and brushed past him. “I did not come last week out of respect for your privacy to mourning. But I am here today.”

  She was wasting no time, tugging off her gloves and taking off her hat. Once she’d shrugged off her coat, she opened the small closet and hung it on a hook inside—clearly a task of habit.

  Max backed out of her way. “Can I get you something? Put on some coffee?”

  Zelda looked at him indulgently and clucked her tongue. “Sweet boy. No, I am here to clean. Every Tuesday, nine o’clock. Until ten thirty. Then we have tea.”

  “Te
a?”

  “Your uncle and I had tea.”

  Her voice caught on the final word, and a shadow crossed her narrow face. The woman who, to this point, had exhibited the strength of a Russian bear seemed to be on the verge of girlish tears, and he brought a hand out to touch her thin shoulder.

  “That’s nice, knowing that the two of you were friends outside of the office.”

  “Yes,” she said, obviously fighting for composure, “that’s what we were. Friends. Good friends. Edward was a good man.” Her eyes darted around the room. “Messy, though. I see you are like him that way.”

  Max estimated that woman was old enough to be his mother, and he fought the emptiness that threatened to push him into her arms. Whatever made him think she would welcome such an embrace had already passed, as she was rolling up her sleeves and trudging toward the kitchen with a purposeful step.

  “I sometimes bring food,” she said, speaking as if he were following her, so he did. “But I did not know what to bring for you.” She stopped short in the kitchen and sniffed. “You cook?”

  “Just bacon and eggs,” he said, feeling sheepish in the shadow of her subtle approval. “And as for food, the neighbors have all been so generous. I think I’m set for a month.”

  “That is how long you are staying?”

  He tried not to recoil at the directness of the question. “I haven’t decided, yet, exactly what I’m going to do.”

  “Hmph.”

  Zelda disappeared into the tiny mudroom long enough to retrieve a bucket, which she set on the floor with a clatter before opening the tap on the kitchen sink, filling it with steaming water.

  “I can take care of those,” Max said, feeling self-conscious at the idea of watching this relative stranger wash his dishes. But she ignored him, and with that same strange familiarity, found the box of soap flakes in the curtained-off space below the sink and sprinkled in a generous amount.

  “If you will gather your clothes, I will take them to wash. I will have them back on Thursday.”

  “Mrs. Ovenoff, please.” He’d hit the necessary note to make her stop, turn, and face him. Outside of the few neighbors who had barely made it past the threshold of the front door, this was the first guest he’d entertained in this home. She might present herself as a mere cleaning lady, but she was a cleaning lady of prior acquaintance, and one who clearly held a place in her heart for the former occupant. More than all of that, she may well be one of the many counselors promised in the proverb he’d read just minutes before her arrival on the porch.

  He gestured toward the table. “Please. Sit with me. Have a cup of coffee.”

  She looked suspicious. “We usually have tea after.”

  “We can have both.”

  She stiffened. “I don’t care for coffee.”

  “Then just sit with me. Ten minutes while the dishes soak.”

  This—in light of the congealing bacon grease—won his argument, and though she didn’t look particularly pleased, she brushed past him and stood while he pulled out a chair for her. By the time he’d excused himself to fetch his cup from the other room and poured himself a cup rich with the final dregs from the pot, she’d used the back of her hands to gather every errant crumb and dropped them into a scrap of rag that must have been hiding in her apron pocket.

  “I didn’t know my uncle well at all,” Max said once he’d settled in across from her. “Do you think you can tell me a little more about him?”

  She folded the rag into a small, tight square and worried it between her fingers. “I came to this country twenty years ago with my sister and her family. Her husband had a good job working in the steel, in Pittsburgh. Good for an immigrant, because he spoke English already, and we all lived in a little apartment. I helped with her children, and they gave me a home. That was not in this town.”

  Max nodded but remained silent, curious to see how this would eventually come to answer his question.

  “They had more children, and the apartment got smaller, so small that I slept on a couch in the kitchen. I know they wanted me to get my own family, to find a husband of my own. But I liked being useful. I never was a beautiful woman, so I did not have many men interested in me. My brother-in-law was trying to save enough money to buy a little house, and I knew they did not want to take me with them. I worked as a janitress for our building, and I asked if the landlord would keep me, to let me have a single small room. He told me the owner had several properties in different cities, so I came here.”

  Journalistic instinct told him there was much of the story missing, and she had yet to even mention Edward. He leaned forward. “I mean no offense, Mrs. Ovenoff, but I’ve never heard of a landlord transferring a janitress. Why didn’t you stay in Pittsburgh?”

  She studied the cleaning rag in her hand. “I had to get away. It was not good, those last days. So crowded, and my sister pregnant again, hardly enough room for her husband in the bed.”

  Now he understood, or he thought he did, because unmistakable shame had invaded their conversation. Why Zelda would have chosen to reveal such a story he had no idea, but he felt the urge to rescue her from the memory.

  “And that’s how you met Uncle Edward?”

  She brightened. “It was a little more than five years ago. He had just taken the offices for his newspaper, and they were a mess. I worked in that building, mopping and such, but not for that tenant. I saw him that first day, pacing in the hallway, so angry and scratching his head.” Zelda fell into an accurate impersonation, her face adopting his scowl. “And he is saying, ‘Oh, what will I do?’ I was walking by and he grabbed my arm—” she demonstrated—“and begins to yell at me, saying I must not do my job because this place looked so terrible, like pigs and goats had been doing their business in there.”

  “What a charmer,” Max said.

  “So I clean his office. One hour later, he was looking and looking for something to complain about, but I left him nothing.” She smiled, reliving the satisfaction. “He would always say, ‘Zelda, you could make porcelain out of pig—’ Well, I won’t say the word he used. But you understand. He appreciated me, and he paid me above what the owner paid. And we would talk almost every day. I would see him being nice to me, talking so sweet right after yelling and cursing at someone else.”

  “You were friends.”

  She nodded—short, severe nods that carried through clear up to the loose bun of hair on the top of her head.

  “One day, he asks if I can come to his home and wrote the address on the envelope with my pay, and I worried that it would seem improper. But it was for me to clean, only.”

  In his mind’s eye he saw her, carefully grooming for that first visit, brushing and pinning her hair, pressing her blouse. “And tea after?”

  “Yes. To clean, and tea.”

  She couldn’t look at him, and a sweet tinge of pink enhanced her regular rosy complexion. The silence that followed told him clearly that there had been more. Lovers, perhaps. But at the very least, companions.

  He reached his hand across the table to still her fidgeting ones. “I’m glad to know he had someone who cared about him.”

  “Everybody think he was such a grouchy bear, and he was. But he had a tender side, too.”

  “Did he ever talk about me?”

  Now it was Zelda’s turn to look upon him with something between affection and pity. “He did.”

  Max was prepared to press no further, but Zelda patted his hand with motherly affection.

  “He wondered, often, how he could bring you into his life, I think because he did not want you to be all alone like him. I say to him, ‘Call the boy. Or write a letter.’ But men are stubborn. One month goes by, and then a year.”

  “I didn’t try any harder than he did.”

  “You are young. You don’t have a road of loneliness to look back on.” She took her hand from his and stood, smoothing her apron. “That has been ten minutes, I think. And if you will please gather your laundry? Just your cl
othes—I get the sheets from the bed.”

  Max stood too. “Certainly. And I don’t know if you can do anything about the bookcase—”

  Zelda cut him off with a guffaw. “I don’t touch the books, except to dust.”

  “Fair enough.” He remained standing there, hands loose in his pockets, not sure what to do with himself, when the telephone jangled in the front room. Relieved, he answered it, identifying himself to the familiar voice on the other end—Nelson Bolling, Uncle Edward’s attorney.

  “Are you free tomorrow morning, Mr. Moore?”

  Max looked at the precarious pile of books and the open, waiting Bible. “I am.”

  “Very good. If you will meet me at Capitol Bank and Loan, let’s say nine. They are prepared to sign over the contents of your uncle’s safety-deposit box.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  He hung up the phone and sat back down, feeling welcomed by the chair. The Bible remained open in his lap, but the text did not call to him. Instead, he leaned his head back against the crocheted afghan and listened to the sound of the crackling fire accompanied by the soft humming of the woman in the kitchen. In that moment, he knew for certain that, whatever the extent of their physical relationship, Uncle Edward had loved this woman, because he found himself on the brink of caring about her too.

  “Mr. Moore?” she called out, interrupting her tune. “May I have the remains of your coffee?”

  A curious question, given she’d declared earlier not to like coffee. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ovenoff. I drank the last of it.”

  “No, I mean this.” She stood in the kitchen doorway with a pile of coffee grounds on a piece of newspaper.

  “I suppose so, but I’m afraid you won’t get a very good drink out of them.” He didn’t want to hurt her feelings or sound suspicious, but what in the world would a woman do with a pile of coffee grounds?