And, where did Otto go? He was missing and the window was indeed open and a small breeze lightly batted the venetian blind’s liftcord tassel against the wall.
In an hour he was back again and the look on his face was one of gratitude, and to add to this comforting effect, he smiled.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
“Kay,” he said. That’s my name.
“You’re all I have. Where did you go?”
“Do you like it here?” he said.
“No, I don’t like it here. Why should I?”
“I know. I know,” he said. “Some water?” He had to walk and to walk, to go such a short way, it seemed, to get that for me.
We had another such dialogue the next day.
“Do I have to say?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Suzette.”
“Oh, Suzette,” I said.
Later on he married the young girl.
I have had to wait for my own happiness. I married Eric Throssel, who is a good companion—and I thought I was very happy when we had finished supper one night. But the more important transport occurred en route to Long Grove while I was driving.
Eric spoke, and his words I don’t remember them, but thank God they served to release the cramping in my neck, and in my shoulders and my back and they provided for an unexpected increased intake of oxygen and can we leave it at that?
Day of Awe
I gave the beggar a dollar for his sorrows and my friend and neighbor David Yip gave him all the cash that he had.
And David said, “Look! I think the sky is lower! Well, look at it!”
And yes, a pretty mist, much like confetti descended, so that the day felt so friendly, even profitable. Although my gloves had become shabbier from icy water and dirt because I’d dropped them.
They were solidly on my hands when I found the Campho-Phenique that I needed at the Drug Loft.
The gloves are peach leather—quilted, with fur cuffs—and they have a lining that can become rather too effective.
The cashier was blushing or was that a saintly radiance?
I fear I lack deep feelings, have flighty ideas, and am often irritable over trifles.
The beggar was still there when my neighbor and I exited the shop and he said, again, “Change today, Miss?”
He was an ornate figure in a knitted cap—fastened by a long, wrinkly ribbon under his chin and I thought, No, no more. How much mercy is necessary?
And then my gloves unaccountably tumbled again.
The beggar returned one of them and my pal Dave knelt to retrieve the other.
At home, I stowed these along with my coat and then I went crazy in the hall mirror, as I sometimes do, over the glow from the heirloom I wear around my neck.
This rope of freshwater pearls was a gift from my husband when our son—now he is a man—was born.
Of course, I had dominion over our baby and I recently tended to my son’s new son, my infant grandchild, and was maintaining my grasp of him, and then I tripped, and there might have been an extreme penalty to pay for this.
But the baby made it through the crash well, has satin-slick legs for me to clutch at, and chubby arms that I can fit into my nice vise-grip.
This is an apt outcome for the story of the blest woman and the mendicant—yes, an apt outcome for the story about a woman better known as “Pearlneck.”
The Wilder People
Have Wilder Gods
I would like to see you soon in case you have the freedom was the note I sent to him while in an altered state. No reply came.
Mind you, I had not spoken to him for the last thirty years. But then on the first Sunday of this November—it was at Hart House, no!—it was at The Publick House where I saw the two of them sitting at a free-standing table near the open hearth.
The woman shouted out loudly (that’s why I looked over), “Listen, Bob! They jump nine feet into the air!—as high as our ceiling—”
Bob wore a bib—as did she. And, mind you, he is a noteworthy character.
I was on the point of asking Dorothy the server why they had bibs on, but Dorothy was nearly always bent over her heavy tray, and it would have been very unkind to distract Dorothy unnecessarily.
Their plates were not in view and I had bored through the menu, with no luck, looking for lobster.
This synchronicity—the two of them turning up at the historic roadhouse at the same time we did—was surely meant to be—for Ike and I had nearly missed ever finding the inn. We had roamed well past the playing field—well past the little traffic island several times and had signaled to a fellow on foot at the side of the road, who was eating an apple, who agreed to ride along as our guide.
Ike knew nothing about the note I had sent to Bob and less about my state of longing for the “Show time!” Bob had liked to promise us.
I went right up to them—saw no plates of food—and when I touched the woman’s ready shoulder, her mouth opened.
“You drunk?” Bob said to me, and the pair surely took in the full panorama of my chagrin as I turned and walked away. Thankfully they could not also see my headache, indigestion or nerve tensions.
And I missed out on ever setting eyes on them in toto, because when they left the inn, I’d been disturbed by the outcries of a tiny, timeworn woman whose chin was level with her table’s top. She extolled lengthily a man she called Masserman, but said it was a nuisance to have to keep going to him.
Eventually a reply from Bob arrived in the form of a letter. “From Bob,” was all there was to it.
I daily wear the bangle—a gift he gave me years ago that bears a finely etched design—berries plus their stems?—balloons attached to their strings?—spermatozoa?
I try to go back in time. Please don’t go back in time!
Try to go forward.
How to develop a yen for the future?—not just a yen—find a hankering—or even a stomach for from here on in.
The Collected Stories of Diane Williams Page 31
