Nevertheless, She Persisted

by Mindy Klasky

  As she waited by the door, Erin’s righteous anger grew. When Rachel came back, she was resolved.

  “All three of them,” Rachel reported. “By the big house.”

  “There’s a small house?”

  “Three small houses. One giant one. Three interviewers. Very pretty sandwiches and cakes. Chairs and cups for us.”

  “Damn them,” Erin said. “I want to keep them waiting.”

  “So do I,” admitted Rachel. “Also suss things out.”

  “You’re the same as me, then, not sure?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then let’s deviate from this very pretty path of theirs and have a bit of a look, shall we? Right or left?”

  Rachel hesitated a moment and then said, “Left. The big house has a wing that eats everything on the right. Then there are two houses. Left leaves room for other things.”

  So Rachel had already checked out the right. She wasn’t pushing the girl into anything: they were collaborating. Erin smiled.

  They walked along the solid stone wall and admired the tiles that topped them.

  “French,” Rachel said.

  “I’ve never been to France,” said Erin, wistfully. “I’ve never been out of Australia.”

  “You need a bucket list.”

  “I’m not that old,” retorted Erin, indignantly.

  “Still need a bucket list. I started on mine when I was twelve. Makes up for bad things, having a bucket list.”

  The two walked silently a bit, mulling over this wisdom. They kept to the wall, and neither was much surprised when a hole appeared.

  “Holes in walls, holes in hedges. All we need is a portal for fairyland,” Erin said resignedly.

  “Yep,” said Rachel, half distractedly. She peered into it. “This is wrong,” she said.

  “In the annals of wrongness, just how wrong is it?”

  “Let’s find out!”

  Erin contemplated Rachel’s enthusiasm distrustfully. “Why do you even think this might be a good idea?”

  “Sunlight on water. Lots of water.”

  On their side of the wall, the sun was hidden by cloud. Still, maybe it was a small cloud. She looked up at the sky distrustfully, and it was a consistent pale steel gray from edge to edge. Erin sighed. “Let’s go then, since we’re doomed to have adventures.”

  They walked through the wall into a surprisingly rocky tunnel and stopped before the opening on the far side.

  “Well, I’ll be,” said Erin. “It’s a lake.” A large one.

  They were in the middle of the Great Dividing Range. Puddles were expected. Even pools. Lakes, however, were not. This was an impossible lake. A very pretty English lake, with a fake temple on the distant far side. A Capability Brown lake.

  “Stupid,” Rachel declared it, in a strong voice. The strong voice was swallowed by the rocks.

  “It’s a real, honest-to-goodness magic portal,” agreed Erin. “We should go back to the garden.”

  “Yep,” said Rachel, and they turned as one and beat a calm retreat. “Though if we’d gone through,” she finished her thought when they were safely back in the garden and walking along the wall again. “We might’ve emerged in twenty years.”

  “What’s the good in that?” objected Erin.

  “The interview panel!”

  “God, I hope they’re patient.”

  “D’you want the job, then? Or Sydney?”

  “I honestly don’t know any more. How about you?”

  “Dunno.”

  “I’m not even sure I want answers,” confessed Erin.

  “I don’t want to be bullied.” Rachel’s voice was hard.

  “Yes! That’s it! It’s not the job. It’s not our future. It’s the whole dragging us through things and treating us like…”

  “Yep,” said Rachel.

  “Treating you like what?” A man’s voice interrupted.

  “Who’re you?” asked Rachel. Erin totally supported the suspicious tone underpinning Rachel’s question.

  “I’m the gardener.” And the owner of the voice stepped around a tree and was visible. Tall, middle-aged, smile-wrinkles, and a spade. Also, thought Erin, someone she wouldn’t mind seeing more of. There was something about his face. Dismiss the thought, she said to herself firmly, and just explain things. Explanations might get us answers.

  “We don’t have words,” said Rachel.

  “I’ve got words,” said Erin, “but they’re not nice. We’re being interviewed for a job, and we don’t like the interview panel.”

  “What have they done that’s so very bad?”

  Erin could see the slightly repressed laugh. She changed her mind about his face. Her next words were biting.

  “They stole Rachel’s father’s body,” she said.

  “His what?” The repressed laugh was gone.

  “His body. In his coffin. Because they said I lacked respect. I’m being taught a lesson. And Erin, they pretty much told her she’s only being interviewed in order to drive me round.”

  “Who said these things? I mean, which of them?” His intent face and the tip to his shoulders sang his belief.

  “The young man,” Erin offered. “He wore a sharp suit.”

  “Sharp suit, sharp eyes, sharp tongue,” Rachel added, unnecessarily.

  “Damn. We try to keep that branch of family out of things. They’ve got nothing useful. But they’re family, so the old lady insists that they be given respect. He’s on the panel out of courtesy.”

  “I don’t need that kind of courtesy,” said Erin. “Rache, do you want to meet them, or should we go on to Sydney?”

  “Sydney.”

  “Didn’t you say they have your father?” The gardener obviously thought this was a major issue.

  “That’s where they mucked up,” said Rachel, then fell silent.

  Erin realized that this was a silence she had to fill.

  “Her father was not a worthwhile sample of humanity. Rachel was retrieving him out of duty. We’ve decided that the selection committee can make an altar of his coffin and worship at it, if they want.”

  Rachel giggled. Erin felt empowered, and smiled at her.

  The man looked across both of them, then smiled. “Then why are you here?”

  “We needed to see the house,” said Rachel.

  “And to find out if it had anything to do with the strange stuff.”

  “Both of you?”

  “We deal with it better together, too,” said Rachel. “Time to go?”

  “Time to go,” agreed Erin.

  “Wait, please. I want to be clear.” The women waited. “You both of you see things?”

  “We said.” Rachel was impatient.

  “We need to tell someone about the pies,” prodded Erin. This might be their last chance, and they worried her.

  “I forgot them,” said Rachel.

  “They’re better forgotten,” said Erin. “Especially when they…er…got together. But what if they produce offspring?”

  “What?” The gardener was obviously bewildered.

  “Our directions here were encased in two wildberry pies that were quite, quite alive,” Erin explained. She wondered if it was the very English garden that made her sound like something out of an English novel, or if she always sounded that way.

  “Erin saw them fucking each other shitless.” Now that she was safely away from the pies, Rachel found this exceptionally amusing.

  “Someone should know. You know, just in case there’s a plague of wild pies in Robertson.” The women dissolved into laughter.

  “We gotta go,” said Rachel.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Erin, and held out her hand.

  “Charmed,” said the gardener, and shook it. He had a nice handshake, firm and dry and comfortably warm. “I’ll pass all your messages on.”

  “If they don’t know what to do with Dad’s body, they can throw it off a cliff,” Rachel said.

  “I prefer the altar idea,” said Erin.

/>   “That’s because it was your idea.”

  “Your father and my ex-husband and all the bullies of this world—”

  “May they rot in hell together,” agreed Rachel. “Let’s go.”

  And so they went. Through all the doors and across all the land and they left all the strangeness behind them.

  A week later, in Sydney, Erin opened a letter addressed to both of them. No one knew where they were yet.

  She felt a moment of pure fear. Would she ever be safe?

  There was much polite obfuscation, and a brief word of explanation. It was a job offer. It came with a reassurance that the members of the selection committee were no longer assisting with recruitment for the house. Rachel’s father had been buried with respect in Wollongong. Erin summed it up for Rachel. “They’re sorry. The gardener was the owner’s grandson. They’re very sorry. Would we like the job? They’re very, very sorry.”

  “Given yesterday… In fact, given that last week was so very odd and that there was no road trip to blame…” Rachel was more amused than worried.

  “Given yesterday, we know we can’t escape strange stuff. What does your gut say?”

  “I want to live there.”

  “So do I. If strange things are going to happen wherever we are, we might as well be somewhere interesting. Let’s cancel everything here. We can be there this afternoon.”

  “You mean we have to take the short route?”

  “Dinner, then?”

  “Fine with me.”

  And this is the story of how Erin and Rachel became house managers. It’s also the real reason why neither woman ate pies and why Erin’s natural response to the word “platypus” remains, “Cursed and misbegotten evil hybrid.”

  Reset

  Sara Stamey

  Author’s Note: This story is adapted excerpts from my upcoming novel Pause, about a woman’s sometimes painful, often humorous midlife journey.

  Lindsey rolls down the window and takes some deep breaths as she turns off the country road into her parents’ drive—a long stretch through a field of tall ripening grasses and darting goldfinches. At the end of it, the artificial pond and waterfall, green watered lawns, trimmed flowerbeds, and what she calls the Friedan Folly—the ostentatious house her parents built for their retirement.

  The two-story, three-bedroom oak and tiled “dream house” has become an oversized mausoleum for mother Opal to rattle around in like a dried pea. Coerced into moving from the house in town she loved, now she’s isolated out in the county with her failing strength and vision, unable to drive and depending on visits from her daughters. Meanwhile, Lindsey’s father Arlen roars around in his huge diesel pickup truck, wheeling and dealing with his cronies, or gone on fishing and hunting trips.

  Lindsey suspects he made a deal with the devil to stay so energetic at eighty-five. When she was younger, she’d blithely assumed she could choose what she’d inherit: her father’s toughness and adventurous vigor; her mother’s songs and gentle spirit. Now as the days come down to her (Joni Mitchell on her inner playlist), she has to face the flip side of these traits: Dad’s restless self-absorption and hair-trigger anger; Mom’s singing voice turned to a fussy whine of suffering.

  Lindsey suddenly puts on the brakes. Partway down the dirt drive, she shuts off the motor, closes her eyes, and takes another deep breath. She gets out and walks into the hayfield. Moving slowly, holding out her arms to feel the scratchy stems, she lets the fringy tops slide through her fingers. Childhood habit kicks in, and she breaks off a stem, strips out the tender inner shoot, tastes the sweet greenness. Chewing on the bobbing stem, she returns to the Subaru, pulls out the audiobook reader she’s bought for Mom, and heads to the house.

  “Linny!” Opal blinks through her thick lenses, then beams. She struggles to rise from the oversized lounger where she’s propped up with back and neck cushions, heating pad, afghan, and napping shapes of striped cat and spotted terrier.

  “Don’t get up, Mom.” Lindsey sets down the box and hurries over to perch on the arm of the lounger, leaning over to give her a kiss on the cheek. She fluffs the thinning gray strands her mother still has permed into a pouf that now reveals a lot of scalp. “How’s it going?”

  “Oh, I decided to add another half pill at night of the Remeron. I just couldn’t get to sleep worrying about Eric and the baby.”

  “Mom, did you talk to Dr. Nichols about that?” Opal loves to tinker with her meds, which sets off Lindsey’s alarm bells. Last time, she overdosed herself by upping her antidepressant.

  “These young doctors, they just don’t understand how I suffer!” Opal looks indignant, and Lindsey makes a mental note to call Dr. Nichols. She’s the new GP, really sharp and specializing in geriatric patients. The family doesn’t want Opal changing docs again.

  “Mom, remember what your counselor said. It’s best if you just pray for the grandkids, try not to worry so much about them.” The latest on her sister Joanie’s oldest is he’s lost his job after falling back into the heroin habit, and his now-ex-girlfriend’s in jail for stealing to support hers. How Joanie is coping with custody of their toddler, who has developmental problems, Lindsey has no idea.

  “Here, Mom.” She resets, puts on a smile. “I brought you something, I want you to try it out.” She steps over to the box and opens the flaps, sets aside the audiobooks she’s checked out of the library, then pulls out the compact player.

  She wants to plug it in and demonstrate with the earphones while she’s caught Mom in position, let her see this could work, since she refused to try the magnifying reading lamp with the large-type books she can’t read any more: “It’s too bulky, it won’t fit by the lounger. I’ve got my little table there with my pills and everything.”

  “Okay.” Linsey turns back to Opal, ready to plug it in.

  But by this time her mother’s already struggling upright, plucking at the afghan with helpless little movements, fumbling with the button that releases the extended leg rest. “I’ve got to get up and get lunch ready. Your dad will be in from the shop in a minute.”

  “Wait, it won’t take long…”

  Too late. The window of opportunity creaks shut as Opal pulls herself to the edge of the lounger, grimacing and rubbing her back. Spike the cat and Bingo the terrier stir and protest the disruption. Opal grunts and bobs forward in a false start at launching herself to her feet. Lindsey drops the player on the cushions and takes her mother’s thin shoulders, gently eases her up onto her feet.

  She sways for a second, knit pants and matching top with appliqued roses hanging loose on her shrinking frame. She finds her balance and shuffles toward the kitchen on the other side of the breakfast counter.

  Lindsey plugs in the audio player, sets it temporarily on her mother’s side table, where there’s plenty of room once she eases aside the water jug and tray holding all the prescription bottles. She inserts a book CD, slips on the headphones, and fast-forwards to the first chapter of an Agatha Christie novel.

  “Okay.” She follows Opal around the counter to the sink, where she’s holding a kettle under the faucet, hands shaking. “I can do that, Mom.” She takes the kettle, fills it, starts to set it on a burner on the stove.

  “Wait!” Opal plucks up a tea towel, clutches Lindsey’s arm, and wipes a couple of drops off the bottom of the kettle before she’ll allow it to be set on the burner.

  Lindsey refrains from rolling her eyes, the old teenage response, and lets Opal direct the lunch preparations, lets her explain for the hundredth time the right way to set out the plates, how to use the can opener and which container to put the fluorescent orange preserved peaches in, the exact thickness the American cheese must be sliced “or Arlen will growl.”

  “Who’s the goddamn idiot blocking the driveway?”

  Having announced his presence, Lindsey’s dad slams the door. Still a handsome man with his deeply tanned face and most of his formerly-black, wavy hair, he stomps over in work boots and coveralls to give her a roug
h hug. “Where the hell you been? Figured you must’ve moved off to Oregon again.” From Arlen, this is a big display of affection.

  “What about you? The last couple times I was here, I figured you’d moved to Canada.” Lindsey plays along, doing the “good ol’ gal” back at him. “You score any fish?”

  “Big waste of time. Humpies weren’t running yet, goddamn river all screwed up. Tree-huggers!” He turns to Opal. “Where the hell’s my sandwich? I told you I’ve got to get to town this afternoon.”

  Opal’s hand tremor is worse as she hastily picks up the spatula, checks the white-bread cheese sandwich toasting in the buttered pan. She utters a little exclamation, flips the sandwich, reaches to turn down the heat. Black charring streaks the bread.

  Lindsey finds herself moving quickly over to hide the sight from her dad, figures they can scrape off the bit of burned bread. But Arlen’s already spotted it.

  “Goddamn son of a bitch! Jesus Christ, you’re worthless! All you do is sit there popping pills all day, can’t you manage one little thing for me?” He strides over, jostling Lindsey, and grabs the pan off the stove. He jerks around with it, face flushing, thrusts it clattering and hissing into the wet sink, as Lindsey pulls her mother aside, feels her trembling.

  Something snaps inside Lindsey, her spine straightening in protest of that hunched-in posture of her mother’s. She guides Opal back to the lounger, tells her to just sit a minute, then she strides back over to her fuming father, who’s ripping into the fridge and throwing out packets of bread and cheese, slamming condiments onto the counter, swearing in a nonstop rant.

  “Stop it!” Lindsey plants herself in front of him as he turns.

  He stops short in surprise, then glares at her. “Get the hell out of my way.”

  “Not unless you stop swearing.” Lindsey has no idea where this is coming from, or going.

  He scowls, takes a step closer, fists clenching as he uses his height to force her to look up.

  “Don’t.” Lindsey fights her own urge to back off, cringe.

  Arlen still glowers, but he’s shifted somehow, not trying to loom over her now. They stare at each other for a minute, punctuated by some heavy breathing. Then he shakes his head, turns away, stomps down the hall into the bathroom. Bingo, yapping, runs after him.