Pay the Piper

by Joan Williams

  Mrs. Wynn smiled. “I’m going Thursday. I’ve got to wash my clothes.”

  For that moment, Laurel thought about their long association. She thought about the past they shared that no other human being alive knew about. She did not want her mother to die, she thought. In looking back, she supposed she had moved to Delton searching a haven one more time. After so many months alone in Soundport, her teaching stint ended, nothing else available, after so many months of singles groups, Southport seemed a dead end. Her mother had told her not to go back, that she would not be happy there, but she had sold her house and moved. Her mother once again stayed put, adopting her wait-and-see attitude, and then Laurel came back.

  I would have come back sooner, she told herself, if I could have found a sublease for that condominium. It had brown walls, and to live in it was like being buried; the walls closed in gigantic with shadows. People she had known thirty years ago were as remote as if she were in Connecticut; she was cut off from some people because of her past association with Hal and should have realized that would be the case. Anyway, it was all too late for her to have come back. She was not used to a city, and driving about a sprawling one with endless wide, flat streets was like being in a terrible maze. She longed for water of any kind, a pond, a brook, a stream. She had little in common with people she had long known and needed to find a whole different group of friends in the place she had come from, an arduous and long process and one that seemed too difficult. She went to the dog pound and got a puppy. While she paid for him, a black man came from the cages holding the dog gently in his arms. He spoke to it. “Now you don’t have to be lonely anymore,” he said.

  Her throat had filled with tears. It is I who am lonely, she had wanted to say. The dog was impossible to keep confined; it yapped all the time at night. She put it into her bed and could not keep it on the other side of a pillow barricade. The puppy had to sleep against her. She had to return it. But, too, this dog taught her about life. She liked its determination in climbing over anything she erected to get out of the kitchen and find her. The fact that it would not sleep except next to her taught her more than anything else that people were not meant to be alone. At Christmas, she returned to her mother’s. It was not fair to ask Rick to come where he knew no one. Delton would never work out. And really, she had expected her old high school days, girls going about in groups to sorority meetings and going by carloads to drive-ins to see boys.

  Her old friend Catherine gave her a party in Delton and invited all the single men she knew. Laurel had felt she was making her debut late in life or as if she were on an auction block. When none of these men asked her out ever, she felt she had failed Catherine. And Henry, Catherine’s husband, had followed her about at the party, and said, “Who’s been eating you lately?”

  A waiter had been nearby moving glasses. “Hush,” she had cried out. “Are you drunk or crazy? The waiter can hear you.”

  “Let him. The nigger probably does it too,” Henry said.

  Laurel was appalled and tried to escape him. “Well, who has been?” Henry said, blocking her way and laughing. “You’re blushing.”

  “No one,” she hissed at him.

  “Remember when I did?” Pushing past him at last, she said coldly, “No,” because the one time they met, they had not been that intimate. Had this memory really failed him, or did his male ego make it necessary to brag, now that he was in his sixties and sexual escapades could not quite match the past? Growing older herself, she was no longer so interested in adventures, just when, being alone, it was necessary for her to have them or go crazy staring at her walls in solitude every night.

  She wandered away into a room with women she had known a long time. She sat down gratefully on a sofa and listened to their discussion and wanted to join in. She wanted to belong and not to be the different person who had left home and come back again. It was difficult enough being a single woman in a society of couples, having attached to her the aura that her husband had left her, and for someone younger. People would assume that. The word was about in Delton that Hal was remarried; it made everything so obvious.

  The women were talking about estrogen. Her acquaintance Rosemary said, “Pills don’t help me. I have shots. I know when it’s time for one. I find myself driving down the street gripping the steering wheel and gritting my teeth. Gnashing them. Like this.” She made a snarling, animal-like look.

  “I have to use estrogen cream for dryness now,” another woman said. “Poor Larry. What he’s been through. Sometimes I just screamed.”

  “Having that dryness and sleeping with someone is worse than childbirth,” Laurel said. Then she was embarrassed, for who was she supposed to have to sleep with now that she was single? She thought of the men there had been from singles groups and chance encounters, young, old, and middle-aged.

  “I ground my teeth so at night, my dentist gave me a plastic mold to sleep in to see how I was wearing them down. When I went back, he asked where it was and I told him, ‘I chewed it up,’” Rosemary said.

  Laurel nodded to mean she did belong. And yet she was apart and separate from them, no longer being a securely married, middle-aged matron. She had her secret singles life, one they could not have conceived of. It went on in Delton. A ménage à trois took place with a professor at the university where she taught and a female student who was his friend. By tacit agreement, she and the girl did not touch one another, except in a brief strange instant. Making love with the professor, she reached past him to the girl on his other side. The girl clutched her hand just as hard. “Reach for it, baby,” she told Laurel. She asked to stay on in Laurel’s apartment and drank beer and ate food Laurel cooked. After three days, Laurel had to phone the professor to come and get her. She supposed the girl was looking for a mother too.

  There were others at Catherine’s with whom she had a long association. There was the gynecologist she had gone to, trying to get pregnant with Hal. “Do you know,” she said, “for all those years when Hal was drunk he’d tell me you and I cooked up the whole scheme about proving him sterile to embarrass him.” The doctor said, “Laurel, I’ve always thought Hal was dumb.” And present was one of Hal’s lawyers who had come up from Mississippi. It took courage, but she brought up the subject, saying, “I don’t understand still why they left the boy down in a small-town hospital.” Ben Wray said, “That boy was not going to live from the moment the shot was fired. It was a steel-headed bullet which didn’t expand. It went on a downward path to his lower stomach.” In a moment, he said, “You know, Hal was always kind of pretty-looking to me, with those small bones. Why did you marry him?”

  She tried to explain how it all had been, about growing up in Delton society and not feeling part of it. He broke out in loud laughter. “There’s never been any society in Delton. It’s made up of horse traders, gamblers, murderers, and country people from Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. There’s never going to be any real society here.”

  She smiled then. “I’ve learned that, but too late. I was in the mainstream all along.”

  She had wandered on through the various groups at the party thinking of her Master’s requirements and how she was required to take a foreign language. While many of these middle-aged housewives were setting out on their orderly days, she was sitting at 8 A.M. with people half her age saying, “Hasta luego.” She had been asked to be a teaching assistant and teach Freshman English: a T.A. in my mid-fifties, she kept thinking to herself. There was a woman present whom she knew to be a widow of a few months, wearing a cherry-red dress like a badge of courage. She had drawn her aside to say, “You’ve lived here all your life. Never moved away. Are things any different for you? Do old friends call now that you’re alone? Can you tell them about your loneliness?”

  “My friends don’t want to hear my troubles.”

  “Why can’t you cry out to people, I’m in pain? Why can’t you say, I’m devastated by what has happened to me? Why can’t you say to people, I suffer?”
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br />   “I don’t know,” the woman said. “But you can’t.”

  When she was driving back to Connecticut, she told herself it would be the last time she would make that trip. She supposed now she would go back to Delton to bury her mother some day. She did not want to be buried there herself, despite there being a family plot. She might be buried by her grandmother, Laurel thought, beneath cedars and in a graveyard in Mississippi, which was different from a cemetery.

  She had driven back to Connecticut alone with her jade plants wobbling on the backseat. She went past the WELCOME TO CONNECTICUT sign and held out her money to the attendant at the Greenwich toll. A young man leaned out of the booth and waved her on. “It’s free today, miss.”

  “Why, thank you,” she called out. And breezed on. She had been glad to be called “miss.” She found out the Mianus Bridge on the Thruway at Greenwich had collapsed and that the tolls were waived to encourage people to use the Merritt Parkway instead. But she chose to go on believing that the free toll had been her welcome home.

  As the waitress set down her chowder, Mrs. Wynn reared away from the bowl. “I couldn’t eat all that in a million years.”

  “Eat what you want,” Laurel said sharply. “You need to eat, Mother.” Mrs. Wynn was more frail and thin since her operation. She couldn’t let her mother die of loneliness before her eyes; she would find an answer. And Laurel reminded herself to have patience. A reversal of roles was taking place. Her mother was becoming the child, and she the parent. No longer afraid of her mother, she told herself not to feel fury again. Instead, Laurel leaned forward over the table and spoke to her mother gently. “I see a clam.”

  “Ugh. I don’t even want one.”

  18

  She walked from Grand Central Station, saving cab fare. She was determined not to be afraid of New York’s early evening streets. If she was afraid all the time, she wouldn’t go anywhere. Here goes nothing again, Laurel thought. Attending Poets Essayists Novelists gatherings was becoming ridiculous since she continued not to know anyone there, or how to start up a conversation, and after standing around awhile, smiling a frozen smile, standing hopefully at the edges of other people’s conversations, never being included, she would have one more glass of wine, get her coat, go out back into the evening hollowness, take a cab and the train, and go back to the suburbs. She never told anyone that was her evening. She made her outings sound like fun: “I went to New York—”

  Several poets were reading tonight, ones she would like to hear. She gave her coat over to an attendant and went downstairs to the powder room, as she needed that place to tell herself, Don’t be afraid. Try to meet someone. People here are interesting. She breathed in deeply in front of a mirror and adjusted her bra straps, pulling up what she had to look a little more interesting—not like Frederick’s. She told herself again, This is ridiculous at your age. Her turtleneck sweater already felt too hot in the overheated building; in a sweater, she had thought she might look her best. She needed air going back upstairs; her cheeks were flushed. She felt how hot they were with both hands. Droplets of perspiration went down her spine. She must remember never to wear tight wool sweaters to places where she could not control the heat—where she could not rip off the sweater when she wanted. She thought back to the conversation in Delton about estrogen. Complicated, like everything else, she said to herself, stepping smartly along the dark oak stairwell. Smile, my dear, whether or not you look like an idiot. And don’t let anybody see that wadded-up toilet paper you are dabbing yourself with. Why do you always forget Kleenex?

  She bought a ticket for a drink—well, maybe two tickets; waiting in line had been so long. Don’t drink much, you’re alone. You’re responsible for getting yourself home. Remember the little escapade when you slept all the way to New Haven and had to take a taxi back to Soundport.

  She walked around, smiling, sweating. If she stood by someone, they looked around as if she might be a waitress hovering there; or as if she were strange. She smiled. “Oh, I was looking for someone.” A blond woman in one little group gave a dubious smile toward a man in the group, her lip curled. Drunk? she wondered. A mental case? There were going to be odd types at a place like this, hangers-on. And if you were not in, you were out. Why the hell didn’t they open a window? Then a man bent, fiddling at the casement. “Thank goodness,” she said, standing behind him. “Hasn’t it been hot in here?” Are you by any chance single? she wanted to say. Are you the janitor? I don’t care. He gave her a weak smile and walked away. Maybe she wouldn’t stay for the reading; it must be scheduled late in the evening. She might as well spend her drink tickets and then go.

  Who was that? A tall man who looked familiar stood laughing in a group of other men. She wore a name tag which no one had read, because no one cared who she was. If they didn’t already know her, they didn’t want to. Look a little lost and lonely and you’re dead.

  Laurel circled the group of men again. The tall man went on laughing. If it was he, then he was heavier and his hair now was gray. His cheeks were much fuller. She went as close as she dared, knocking accidentally into a man’s elbow, who gave her an annoyed glance. Squinting as hard as possible, her eyes like a mole’s, she read enough of his name tag, without her reading glasses, to clasp her hand to her own name tag, to stand further forward and say, “Edward, do you know who I am?”

  “Laurel,” he said. “Of course I know who you are.”

  “It’s been about twenty years. I wasn’t sure it was you. I’m divorced from William.”

  “I believe I heard that somewhere along the line.”

  “Did you come over from Princeton for this?”

  “I live in New York now. I’m divorced too.”

  “I didn’t know that. I mean, I didn’t know either thing. I wouldn’t have assumed you’d get a divorce. You seemed happy back then.”

  “Can you excuse me? The bar’s closing before the reading. I’ve got to use up these tickets.”

  “Oh, of course. It was nice to see you.” She wondered how she looked to Edward, knowing he would not be interested in someone her age now. She headed for the window, to some escape from the heat of the sweater and her body’s heat. There she paused and let cold from the street chill her; it was worth getting flu to end her perspiring and dripping. A man was sitting alone on a small sofa. What are you doing there, man, lost in thought in the middle of all these people? How do you ask, Are you married? “Those are the most wonderful-looking boots,” Laurel said, sitting down. He explained they were very practical for where he lived in upstate New York; she told him she had gone to Bard College. “Not recently,” she said, smiling. What do you and your wife do there? she was going to say.

  Edward stood above her, saying, “Well, there you are.”

  “Edward,” she said, because she couldn’t think of what else to say; she was glad not to have made one of her numerous forays to the powder room, which she visited continually in order not to be observed simply standing around. He might have missed her. Having to crane up at him, she stood. “Do you come here often?”

  “No. I’ve never been before. I only came because a friend is reading. However, I didn’t realize if you stayed for one reading, you’d have to stay for all three. I don’t really like them. Are you interested in staying? Or would you like to go out to dinner?”

  “Dinner,” Laurel said quickly. “I mean, that would be nice. It’s going to be too late for me to stay for all three.”

  When she went to the hat-check woman, Laurel remembered the long-ago period when, on one of the few times she saw Edward, he held her coat, saying, “Here you are in your little white coat.” It had been made of pony skin and was left over from Delton days. Her mother had wanted it for her and saved for it out of her grocery allowance, as it was a luxury her father would have raised Cain about. Her mother had her first fur when she became a widow and bought herself a mink jacket.

  It had begun to rain when they went outdoors, a light mist that could end up as sleet.
Edward turned up his coat collar, and she lifted her face to the mist and gladly breathed in. Dampness against her skin felt wonderful. It was always the case, they agreed, that you could never get a cab in New York when it rained. They began to walk, and Edward lifted his hand when cabs passed, and they watched them speed by with the white faces of passengers inside like little demons. “We’re almost at the restaurant. We might as well just keep walking.” But Edward that moment caught himself up and sagged on one leg.

  “What is the matter?” Laurel asked quickly. “Is something wrong?”

  “This is a long walk for me.” He had injured a knee that would have to be operated on.

  She didn’t want anything bad to have happened to Edward; she was sympathetic and took his arm as if to help him. She looked along the street herself for a cab, but only the slickness of streetlights reflecting on dark pavement came back.

  When they were in the restaurant, at a table in a window recess, Laurel said, “How did you happen to ask me to dinner? You were with friends.” She cupped hands beneath her chin and then rested them in her lap, not quite knowing what to do with them, or almost how to behave. It had been so long since she was out with someone compatible. She thought of going rowing through the night singing, “Row row row your boat,” and of the three hundred dollars wasted on the dating service.

  “You seemed lonely there,” Edward answered.