Clara at the Edge

by Maryl Jo Fox

  He’s in.

  Samantha’s room.

  Crack! That was a cabinet leg! He landed on the sewing machine cabinet directly under the window. Panicked, she almost cries out: the indispensable 1954 Singer, the machine Darrell bought at great financial sacrifice back then, the machine she still keeps faithfully oiled and serviced, the sewing machine she kept in the living room before Samantha died.

  Now she’s furious. Rage boils in her. She peers down the dark hall, braces herself in the bedroom doorway. He’s heading toward the living room and kitchen. He hasn’t seen her yet. His flashlight makes a jumpy light show on all her things. He’s tossing all her books on the floor from the bookcases Darrell made of oak he scavenged from the old J.C. Penney store in Eugene. He’s throwing homemade sofa pillows onto the floor, sweeping magazines off the coffee table. A tinkling crash. No!

  She’d know that sound anywhere. The robber broke the porcelain ballerina that should be safely hidden in her dresser drawer instead of out here on the coffee table for her to admire because it made the trip safely. She grasps her head. Darrell bought that figurine for her when she was pregnant with Samantha, and by chance the statue foretold the child’s talent in ballet. Samantha, now escaped from the memory room in Clara’s brain, dances madly in her mother’s head. Anger and devastation shake them both.

  The robber lifts and slams the small black-and-white TV back onto its TV tray. He shoves the old Emerson radio screeching across the oak end table to crash on the floor. Samantha flees back to her memory room, lit by an eternal bronze-lit light. Even in death, she knows her mother will protect the museum of her childhood home. This is a battle for her mother to fight, not her.

  Now he’s in the kitchen at the other end of the house, shining his flashlight, sliding out the canisters, sticking his filthy hands into the flour, the sugar, the rice. He sweeps his hands over the kitchen counter, opening drawers, throwing old phone books on the floor, her ancient plastic address file. He finds nothing. She has nothing. He starts back down the hall, heading for the bedrooms, where indeed she has a few things.

  She’s beyond fear now. She could tear him apart. As he approaches, she steps into the hall, arms tightly folded across her shivering chest.

  “There’s nothing for you here. Get out of my house. Now.” He’s so startled to see her small form in the hallway, speaking so fearlessly to him, that he bolts to the broken sewing room window, leaps onto the steps, and is gone.

  Listening hard, hearing no one, Clara throws on her green summer bathrobe and jumps barefoot onto the dirt of the vacant lot with a butcher knife in her hand. Her heart roaring, she carries the wooden steps back to where they belong and stands there, her small arms loose at her sides, hair skewed from sleep. The robber had carried the steps to her window. The air is still. Her ears adjust like a wily animal’s to a finer frequency. The desert sky is a stinging background hum. It’s the sound of power poles or her rushing blood. Cars pass by on the highway, the ripped air sounding like torn silk. The indifferent hum swallows everything. She feels invisible and savage in the vast starlit night.

  Darrell whispers from his eternal bronze-lit room in her brain, the room next to Samantha’s. I would’ve throttled the guy before he got inside.

  I know, I know. So why did you leave me?

  Silently, Darrell fades back into his unchanging museum. For a moment, everything is quiet and her mind goes blank.

  Her heart races again. The stranger knew he could be brazen, knew Frank was in the casino. He had spied on her! Then she thinks: This is nonsense. I will not play Terrorized Old Person. I will find this young man and talk to him. I will find out what the trouble is.

  Back inside, her impulse is to straighten the house, sleep be damned. She wipes her dirty feet with a wet rag, puts on her slippers, turns on the generator and all the lights, and goes from room to room, putting drawers and cushions and books back where they belong. She sweeps up the broken glass in the sewing room, pushes cardboard from a packing box into the empty window space, draws the curtain over it. He cracked a sewing machine leg. She can fix that. The Lladró figurine has a broken arm and leg. She won’t think about it. She leaves it on the coffee table to glue together first thing in the morning. Never in all her life has anyone tried to rob her house. She thought her house was a fortress. She covers her face with her hands.

  Welcome to the party, hon, snorts the raucous hum in her brain. It’s a wild world out here. It’s about time you leave your prison cell. We’ve all been waiting, you know.

  Startled, she looks around. A brief shimmer of lavender wings passes before her eyes. The voice is so close, right in her ear.

  chapter 3

  She hardly sleeps. The smell of someone else is in the house, a stranger’s sweat, rancid, unwashed. Where’s Frank? Where’s someone, anyone—a non-robber—she could talk to? She sets the two wasp jars on the table to distract herself while she eats. The creatures are unusually disoriented this morning. They collide into each other in their cramped quarters, have angry tiffs. Rinsing her dishes, she looks out the window, watches cars come and go from Desert Dan’s parking lot. She puts the wasp jars back in her closet. She’s got to get her mind off all this.

  Well, she always was a movie fan. Set close to the highway, Jackpot Video is maybe 15’x15’, packed with velvet pictures of Elvis and dogs; T-shirts, mugs, shot glasses, and coasters, all labeled “Jackpot.” Videos line a few shelves: Star Wars, Independence Day, the blockbusters.

  The puffy-looking owner, pale and agreeable-looking, says he just got the new Harry Potter movie.

  Clara grins. “How about some Claudette Colbert, Myrna Loy, Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell. How about His Girl Friday?”

  “Sorry. People around here want Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee, The Terminator.”

  “That’s not surprising,” pipes up a voice from the back of the store.

  It’s the woman who photographed Clara’s house yesterday. Clara cringes but at the same time feels friendlier this morning after the break-in. The women smile at each other.

  The owner looks at them apologetically. “We’ve only been open three months. Who knows, maybe I’ll get up a classic section. You two like Charlie Chaplin?”

  “Love Charlie Chaplin,” they chorus, then alternate, laughing, as if cheerleading:

  “Modern Times.”

  “The Gold Rush.”

  “City Lights.”

  “The Great Dictator.”

  The owner smiles, encouraging them. “W.C. Fields? Buster Keaton?”

  Clara frowns. “Nix. Screwball comedies and selected oldies. I’m actually very fussy.”

  “I love W.C. Fields and Buster Keaton,” the woman says, as if she were being personally attacked.

  She’s not from around here, Clara thinks, intrigued, noticing the woman’s expensive-looking slacks and T-shirt, her large horn-rimmed glasses, her caffeinated air of fanatical concentration.

  Bemused, the owner looks from one to the other. “Well, ladies, keep coming back. Maybe we can set something up.” He gives them each a chartreuse fluorescent key chain that says Jackpot Videos, Highway 93, Jackpot, Nevada. They thank him and wander outside together.

  The woman turns cautiously to Clara. “Nice talking to you again. But where’s your house?” Clara smiles and points to the vacant lot. The woman laughs. “Maybe you should chain it down.”

  Clara likes hearing the woman laugh, likes being around someone who’s not going to rob her. And the woman isn’t pushy this morning. On impulse, she invites her in for coffee. In Eugene, it might take her months to warm up to a new acquaintance.

  “I’d like that very much. By the way, my name is Arianna Paul. And you?”

  “Clara Breckenridge.”

  Before they go inside, Arianna runs her hand along the rough siding. “What is this here? All this lumpiness and dried bits of something?”

  Clara starts at the woman’s bluntness. “Lilacs. Dead lilacs caught in the paint.”

&nbs
p; “What?”

  “The painters were cheap, always in a hurry. They held the branches out with one hand and painted with the other. They let the lilacs slap back onto wet paint.” Clara’s eyes glisten, much to her dismay. “I was careless for not checking. The bushes were thick around the house. The painters knew I’d probably not check. I had the same painters for years. So on the bottom half of the house, all you see are lumps of paint with bits of brown, beige, and gray sticking out, withered lilac petals in all states of decomposition. My house is a museum for dead lilacs.” She clears her throat, looks down at her hands.

  The woman gives her a long look. “Would you mind if I took a few more exterior shots? I was in a hurry yesterday.”

  “It’s just an old house. The trip wasn’t good for it, see?” Clara pulls on a loose window frame, stares at the eager woman. “Well, if you’re quick. I really need that coffee.”

  “Me too.”

  Arianna takes out her elaborate camera and shoots more closely the dead lilac petals, the loose window frames with crazed green paint, the bedraggled oak doors that lead to the kitchen and the living room. In the trailer cab, she shoots owner Todd’s crucifix and plastic Betty Boop hanging from the rearview mirror, the ripped vinyl upholstery, the fecund trash on the floor. She shoots Clara irritably standing there in her faded jeans and orange T-shirt, her arms folded across her chest, a tendril of wavy hair blowing across her forehead, her brown eyes alert and impatient. The photographer backs off to take quick shots of the casinos, mountains, sky, sagebrush. She studies each shot, adjusts her gauges, then a rapid click, click, click. She holds her breath as she shoots, exhales softly or explosively when it’s over, like a musician breathes to match the phrasing.

  They go inside. Arianna takes in the simple furnishings, the lack of pretense. She watches Clara pour bottled water into a saucepan and turn on the heating plate. “You’ve really uprooted everything, haven’t you?” she says in amazement. She is watching Clara carefully.

  “My son and I just got in from Eugene last night,” she blurts. “We’re going to live here. Maybe.”

  This is the first time she’s spoken to anyone about the move. She feels a little crazy speaking to a stranger. It’s as if she can’t control herself any more. She shivers. Maybe she’s on a thinner edge than she realized. In fact, she doesn’t know what she’ll do with the house. Will she stay? Go? Everything depends on how things develop with Frank. If he stays, she’ll stay. If he goes, she will go. But where? How much more traveling can the house take? Is it still sound? She’s got to get running water, for Pete’s sake. She had assumed Frank would stay: Frank and Scotty are lifelong friends. She made this move in the heat of passion, and now her thoughts are crashing into a scary reality.

  She hears the wasps buzzing loudly in the bedroom. They are trying to tell her something, but they’re holed up in the beef jerky jars. She wants them near her. Too much is happening: robbery, harassment, this inquisitive woman.

  She tries to still her shaking hands as she and Arianna sit on the couch and sip their coffee in silence. Finally Arianna says, “I’ve always lived in apartments or lofts, never a house. Your place makes me homesick somehow.”

  “Me too.” Clara smiles.

  With quiet resolve, the woman pulls out a plain white business card from her shoulder bag and hands it to Clara: Arianna Paul, photographer. Lower Manhattan gallery address and contact information. “Would you mind if I took a few interior shots, Clara? I promise to be quick.”

  A little dotty from her sleepless night, Clara stares at the woman. “Don’t know why you’d want to.” She yawns, sets her coffee cup on the coffee table, and massages her temples. The two wasp stings are still sore. Again the wasps buzz loudly from the bedroom, as if they have something to say.

  Oh, dear God. How many days are left before my wasp dies? I’m not making any progress, am I? Where’s Frank?

  Arianna leans toward Clara with sudden urgency. “Right, my dear. You’re tired, and I’m on my way to Elko. Look, I’ll bring you the prints in a couple of weeks or sooner. Who knows if we’ll get another chance?” She pauses, writes a cousin’s address and phone number on the back of her card, and hands it back to Clara. “Here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking about this ever since I saw you. I’m going to be in a photography show at the Met opening July first called ‘Hidden America: Photography in the New Millennium.’ Your house is a perfect fit. I think New Yorkers would really appreciate it. Why not take a chance?”

  Clara laughs, pointing to loose plaster fallen in the corner. “You have to be kidding. It’s just an old house. Why would New Yorkers be interested in a small house built in ancient times with no money? Or in an old woman foolish enough to drag her house from near-rainforest to desert? What you’ve taken pictures of, my dear, is an old house starting to fall apart and an old woman ready for the madhouse.” A sudden rush of feeling startles her.

  “Now that’s nonsense, Clara, and I think you know it.” They fall silent again, finishing their coffee.

  Clara studies the floor, trying to hold back entirely inappropriate tears. Finally she says, “Oh, all right. But hurry. I’ve got to get some lunch.” She feels worn down and tired. But something about this woman, her steeliness, the light in her eye, intrigues her. Forty years ago, she was like that herself, untouched by tragedy, a fanatical teacher who wanted to change her students’ lives.

  At Clara’s “yes,” the wasps go wild in the bedroom. Arianna smiles as if Clara has just given permission to photograph rare jewels before they are snatched away. Camera whirring, she scurries from room to room, starting with the kitchen. A wash of sunlight from the window shines on the chipped porcelain sink, the heavily chromed appliances, green Formica table and chairs, cream tile countertops, scuffed linoleum floor. Motley canisters line the counter. Crocheted hot pads hang from magnet hooks on the oven door. In the living room, the twelve-inch TV sits on an old metal TV tray, a VCR under it on the floor. A shapeless sofa in worn navy velvet occupies the opposite wall. The plain oak coffee table is thick with magazines. An adjoining wall has a matching easy chair and two oak bookcases stuffed with dog-eared books. Opposite is a plain oak rocker and oak end table with the old Emerson radio on it. Darrell made all the furniture. Somehow she’s irritated that Arianna’s looking at it.

  Click! Clara freezes. The broken ballerina—I should have put it away! she thinks in dismay. It’s as if Arianna had X-rayed the special room in Clara’s brain where her daughter lives and handed the X-ray over to the National Enquirer. Arianna senses that she has blundered onto something she must not inquire about.

  Clara turns her head away and speaks gently to her daughter, who has begun to walk the corridors of her brain. Not now, she whispers, determined not to weep in front of this visitor. The lost daughter looks at her mother with sorrow and retreats to her Brain Room.

  Collecting herself, Clara is bewildered, then annoyed. Her furnishings are just utilitarian. No outsider could ever understand how this simple house, unchanged for almost fifty years, has shielded her, cocooned her, let her just live despite the horrors of 1963. It has kept her safe. Without the physical comfort of the familiar, she would die. She’s sure of that. Bursting with these thoughts, she tries to calm down, desperately wanting to end this encounter.

  They walk down the short hall to the two dingy off-white bedrooms. Worn oak floors are strewn with multi-colored rag rugs Clara made. Samantha’s old room now holds only the Singer sewing machine in its maple cabinet, a floor lamp, and a cabinet for sewing supplies. The broken window is hidden by curtains. Cases of bottled water cover the floor.

  In Frank’s old room, a single bed is covered with an army blanket. A stained suitcase is open on the floor; another one is closed. Clara hasn’t seen Frank since they unloaded the furniture. In the bathroom, there’s the tiled peach floor with avocado trim Darrell installed the year before he died, and the camp toilet, plastic basins, and bottled water that will barely do until plumbing is resto
red.

  In Clara’s bedroom, Arianna shoots the ’50s blond dresser covered with old squeeze-spray crystal perfume bottles, a framed picture of Clara and Darrell on their wedding day, a photo of Frank and Samantha when they were three and five, a backyard snapshot of the whole family picnicking among the lilacs, a mirrored tray with a silver-plated brush and comb from Darrell. Scattered on the dresser are more family pictures that Clara took from a big manila envelope last night to soothe herself after the attempted robbery. Flanking the bed are blond nightstands with table lamps. All lamps in the house have the same white satin lampshade in different sizes she ordered from the Sears catalogue years ago. In the doorway is a small Turkish rug Darrell gave her on their fifth wedding anniversary.

  Arianna pauses, transfixed. Two small paintings hang on the wall facing the bed. Vibrant colors surge in abstract waves. These paintings belong in a different house. “Did you do these, Clara?”

  “My sister Lillian painted them.” Her face closes.

  “Talented woman.” Arianna moves right on, points to the bed. “Did you make the quilt?” Clara nods, her face expressionless. Arianna gushes, “You’ve put the pieces together so inventively, according to what adjacent squares suggest in pattern and color. Artistic talent runs in the family. Do you pursue it?”

  “Not really,” she says lightly. This woman wants to know everything. Clara will never talk about her own acrylics of landscapes and people, done in her own colors, not true to life. These are private, stowed in boxes.