The Listener

by Taylor Caldwell

  She could smile a little now. It was spring outside, and she recalled the forgotten drums of spring in the city, the slap-slap-slap of carpet-beaters everywhere, the carpets hanging on the line. It was part of spring. Just like the smell of tomato catsup and grape jam cooking was the smell of fall coming from the houses. It was the sounds and the smells that made people remember. Peaceful. People had a lot of peace in the old days. They worked harder. But they had a lot of peace. It was a long time from sunup to sundown, a long, quiet, happy time. Sometimes, in the summer, a breeze would come up and you’d hear all them Chinese glass things singing on the porches in the lovely quiet, especially on Sundays after church. And then the look of the white linen cloths on rocking chairs on the porches, with the little tatting on the edges. And somebody singing a hymn in the back yard. They had flowers and grass and trees in the back yards then. Now they had asphalt and garages. And everybody getting into cars after dinner and running up and down the streets, staring at the other cars or rushing down to the lake, where they’d sit and stare some more, and the kids would throw all kinds of trash around on the beach or the grass and whine, whine, whine! In the old days the mothers and fathers would sleep after hot noon Sunday dinners, and the kids would sit on the steps of the porches and talk, and maybe, if somebody wasn’t looking, they’d throw rubber balls at each other — the boys — but the little girls would just sit all nice and stiff and starched, with the lace gimps on their dresses, and their sashes and hair ribbons and their black patent-leather slippers, and they’d hold their dolls and maybe comb the dolls’ hair.

  Then around four the parents would wake up and come out all fresh and pink, and they and the kids would take a long walk to the park and sit under trees and eat ice cream cones and listen to the band, or maybe they’d go visit relatives and drink tea or coffee and eat a good, rich, homemade five-layer chocolate cake on other porches. Ami could hear the soft glittering rustle of the trees in the warm sun of many years ago, the clump-clump of a horse’s hoofs on the cobbles, the distant, sleepy rattle of a streetcar, a child’s clear and contented laugh, the Sunday murmur of a mother’s voice, and church bells. Even the poor didn’t worry much in those days. There was something to live for; it was so sweet and pleasant. She had been one of the little girls on the hot splintered porch steps, and so she knew. Her mother would put up her hair on Saturday night, after the bath in the washtub; she had pretty brown hair, but very straight, and Mama would roll her hair on long rags so that in the morning she’d have smooth and glassy tubes hanging around her face. Mama and Pa had been very poor, but somehow it hadn’t seemed poor. Somehow. It was so peaceful. And people had pride and gumption.

  There was always an old grandmother or aunt in the houses too. They got the tenderest pieces of the Sunday chicken or the roast beef because of their teeth. She could see her own grandmother, in the gray-print calico and her fresh white apron. Granny could make the best cookies for kids and tell the best stories. And Mama and Pa treated her like a princess, too. Or a queen. Once, for Christmas, they’d paid three dollars for one of them big old Spanish combs with all color beads at the top, and Granny had put it in the thin white bun of her hair and it had stood up, real pretty, over her head. She, Ami, would never forget that comb. Granny had left it to her; it was in her trinket box. She’d take it out and look at it, and sometimes she’d put it in her own hair, just for fun. It was like a little crown. That’s what Mama and Pa had thought of it, too: a little crown for Granny. Kids who didn’t have old grannies and grandpas in the house were jealous of those who did. It was something to have them. Peaceful.

  She could hear Granny sing right now:

  “Rock of Ages, cleft for me!”

  Rock of Ages. But there wasn’t no rock of ages for anybody anymore, anywhere. Now it was all plastic and ranch houses and stuff that wasn’t made of good cotton, linen, wool, and silk. Even the carpets were what they called ‘miracle fibers’. She hated them. Well, all this stuff was just like people now. What did they call it? Synthetics? Yes, well. People were synthetics now too. And no peace. Never any peace, never any long warm Sundays, or white winters, or Christmases with real trees, and real candles on them, and red popcorn strings, and peppermint-candy canes, and those wonderful, wonderful glass ornaments that came from Germany, angels, to hang on the trees, and little bags of candy, and helping their mothers make the mincemeat. Chop, chop. Cracking the nuts, washing and steaming the raisins, cutting up the citron, stirring the sugar with good butter that tasted like butter, sifting the flour — all in hot steamy kitchens with the wood stove and the sound of sleigh bells outside. So peaceful. No wars, no hurry, no telephones splitting the air, no radios screaming, no nylon sheets, no movies. Just people in their houses, loving each other and making every holiday something to remember all your life, even if you didn’t have a lot of money in your pocket. It was love. There just didn’t seem to be any love left now. Just that sex they was all talking about these days, even the kids!

  Synthetics. That’s what they all was these days, their houses, their cars, their children, their amusements. And, above all, themselves. No wonder you didn’t see happy people no more these days. They just weren’t real! That was it, they just weren’t real!

  There wasn’t even God — much. Not God like He used to be. Every house had a sign in it: ‘In God we trust’, or ‘God bless our home’, or ‘Jesus, be with us’. You’d just look at the signs, and you knew God wasn’t far off; He was right here, at the table where the papas said the grace, even though it was just corned beef and cabbage on the table. God was right here when it was very cold in your bedroom but snug under the feather beds, with the big bright stars showing even through the frost on your windows. He was right here when you got up in the morning; He was with you all day long, too, at school and when you worked. Why, sometimes, if you listened real close, you could hear Him breathing! You could hear Him singing in the trees, or in the high winds at midnight in the winter, when everything was so white and the moon was shining. People thought of Him all day long. He was just part of their lives. Where was He now? Who’d driven Him away? The radios blasting all the time, or the TV sets, or the cocktail parties, or the shows? No. It wasn’t that. People had just driven Him away. They didn’t want Him around. And that’s why there wasn’t no peace any longer. That’s why parents weren’t honored anymore but just thought of as nuisances that you hid away or thought were ‘problems’. That’s what they called them in the newspaper columns: ‘problems’. Granny wasn’t no ‘problem’. She was Granny. A queen.

  One of these days, thought Ami Logan, taking off her misted glasses to wipe them, people would begin to think that God was a ‘problem’ too. Or maybe they’d already come to that. They didn’t talk about Him easy in the houses anymore. In fact, they didn’t talk about Him at all! But how could synthetics talk about God? God was real, and they weren’t.

  It was terrible that they’d driven Him away. That left nothing for the kids and the grannies and the grandpas. That left nothing at all for anybody.

  It was funny. Pa worked in a machine shop. They didn’t call him Labor, then. He was a man. He wasn’t Labor. He was a person. Independent. He’d have his beer on the porch at night, and his neighbors would come and they’d talk politics and get real excited. And sometimes swear. Who were the Presidents then? She didn’t remember. Presidents come and then they go. Nobody remembered them, except when they did some kind of harm, and then the people cursed them. But it was a kind of happy cursing. Washington was a long way off. Now it was kind of everywhere. Who wanted it? It was like something looking over your shoulder all the time and breathing down your neck. Making you hurry, hurry, hurry. ‘Growth’. For what? And Washington wanted your money; she had to pay out taxes on what she earned by her hard work. For what? Who wanted your money and made Washington scream for it like it was a pack of policemen? It didn’t make sense. What a person earned was always his own, earned with the sweat of his brow, like the Bible said. Now, it look
ed like, it wasn’t yours. It was somebody else’s. Why? Did they earn it on their knees in somebody’s kitchen or doing somebody’s laundry? No sir. They didn’t. But they wanted your money all the same, even if they hadn’t earned it themselves. She wondered what Pa would say about all this. He’d say, “The country’s gone to the dogs, for sure. And maybe we’d better roll up our sleeves and get it back for ourselves.” Yes, that’s what Pa would say. And all the men like him. They talked all the time about the Revolution and the Boston Tea Party. Maybe what the country needed was another Tea Party.

  But what could you expect from a people that wasn’t real no more, people who was only synthetics, with no idea of duty and work and God? And no notion of earning their own way and asking nobody for a cent that wasn’t theirs?

  Oh, they said all these drugs and things kept people alive longer these days. What for? Just to be ‘problems’? Not to be honored when they was old? Just to be thrown out like a dying cat or dog? That’s what came of people driving God out. It wasn’t how long you lived that counted. It was how you lived. But people sure set a lot of store on how long you lived, like living was all there was. Just living in a world that didn’t have no peace and no God.

  That was a nice little man who’d just gone in there. An hour ago? He had problems too. He looked kind of white, like he was sick. He was sorry for me. I didn’t tell him I was sorry for him too! Dear God, I’m just sorry for everybody.

  Rock of ages, cleft for me,

  Let me hide myself in Thee!

  But, thought Ami Logan, I ain’t got anyplace to hide anymore. It’s all open, everywhere. No shelter. Like you lived in a desert. ‘The Shadow of a Rock in a weary land’.

  Funny she should remember that just now. A weary land. That’s what it was, everywhere, a weary land, in spite of all the new cars and the rushing around and the fun and parties and the washing machines and people talking about going to the moon. What was it they was running away from, that they wanted to go to the moon? Themselves? That’s what comes of having no peace and no God. That was what was making her feel so old, and she only seventy-one, and Granny was real chipper and did a lot of work when she was eighty-five, and went to church every Sunday and the Ladies Aid every Wednesday night, walking miles. Granny had lived to be ninety. She’d have lived longer if she hadn’t fallen down the porch steps and broke her hip. It was a terrible time then. Mama and Pa almost lost their minds, worrying about her. Who worried about people any longer? Except themselves? Who cared about their parents? They were ‘problems’.

  The chimes sounded for her. She started. She was all alone. She pushed herself heavily to her swollen feet and legs. She walked slowly to the door; her legs felt like logs. She opened the door and went into the quiet, white marble room with the blue curtains.

  She stood near the closed door for some moments. No one suggested that she sit down. No one suggested that she do anything. It was peaceful in here. The Man who Listens. He was waiting so quietly for her. He had all the time there was. All the time there was, like when she was a kid on a warm Sunday afternoon, with the church bells ringing and the Chinese glass things on the porch tinkling.

  She sat down in the marble chair, putting her large raffia bag next to her swollen knee. She folded her bloated and scoured hands on her lap. She said roughly, “You a minister, mister? That’s what I heard.”

  The warm white light gently enfolded her. So peaceful!

  “I can’t complain,” she said proudly. “I’ve worked most of my life, ever since I was nine. I’m not coming here for pity. It’s just I’m a ‘problem’. That’s what the newspapers call me, and my children.” She paused. “My children.” She sat up in the chair. “It’s funny, but nobody thought anyone else was a problem when I was a kid. But you don’t know anything about me, do you?”

  The room waited, tenderly enfolding her. “I’m a mother,” she said.

  The light became even more gentle. “I wonder,” she said, “if you’ve got a mother living who’s a problem to you.” She waited. “Did your mother work for you, hope for you, maybe, and worry about you? Did she make your clothes and everything? And cook for you? Did she pray for you when you was out? Did she wake up in the morning, thinking about you, and if she’d done the best for you? Did she make you go to school and tell you about God?”

  The room’s light appeared to hover about her. She looked at it. She was not a tearful woman, but now there were tears in her eyes. “She did? Well, then, maybe you can help me. I never asked help of nobody before. I just feel I kind of need it now.” She added hurriedly, “Not that I’m asking for money! No, it’s not that.”

  She scrubbed at her eyes with her broken knuckles. “It’s something else that kind of eats at me. It’s not having any place to lie my head. Now.”

  She looked at the wet tears on her knuckles and grunted. “Haven’t cried since Chris was eight and had diphtheria and I thought he was dying. Maybe I’m getting old, after all. Maybe they’re right. Mister, did you tell your mother to go into a home? Or maybe I should call you ‘Reverend’. That’s what they called ministers when I was a child. Reverend. Reverend, did you ever want to send your mother to a home? Give her to somebody else to take care of?”

  The light, the white walls, the closed curtains were so peaceful. She felt a listening, a deep tenderness. But she could hear no sound. She sat and thought, and she thought of her childhood and her grandmother and her parents. Especially her grandmother. She started.

  “What did you say?” she said anxiously. “Oh, I guess you didn’t say anything. But I thought you said something about your grandmother. I must be getting old, thinking I heard something.”

  She paused. “I called my granny ‘Granny Ann’. She was old, but she was young to me. Granny Ann. Mama worked around the neighborhood. Pa worked twelve hours a day. Granny Ann used to tell me stories, mostly Bible stories. Maybe you never had a granny you knew?”

  She bent forward, puzzled. “Seems like I heard you say yes. You see how old I am? Thinking I hear things? Excuse me, Reverend.”

  She sat back in the chair. It was very comfortable. A person could sleep in this chair; the edge didn’t eat into the backs of her calves. Her heavy, tired body relaxed.

  “They say you listen. That’s fine. I want somebody to listen. Nobody ever listens. It’s hurry, hurry, hurry. Make the bus in the morning, make the bus at night. Get in the store before it closes. Run home and get your dinner. I hear this TV program. ‘Be alert,’ it said. ‘If you’re nine or ninety, be alert’. What for? Nobody asked you to be ‘alert’ when I was young. You just did the best you could on your own time. They didn’t want you jumping around and grinning and being all agog. What’s the matter with people now? They don’t seem to get anything done as well as we did it when I was a child. They just fly at things, then fly away, then fly at something else. Like they had a fever or was out of their minds. Moving their legs real fast. And everything just plastic around them. Nothing real. No homes, no places to rest, no quiet. Just plastic. You know what I mean?”

  The room seemed to give her a sad affirmation. She let her weary legs spread out before her. She looked at them. “It’s kind of nice, knowing someone’s listening. Like they did when I was a little girl. Always time to listen to anything, anybody. All the time there was, though they worked twice as long as they do now. Sometimes the days run out of your fingers like water. They’re not there. Ain’t that the silliest thing to say? I heard that’s the way it is when you’re old. But it wasn’t that way with Granny Ann, and she was ninety when she died. The days were just — solid — to her. They had hours in them and lots of time to read and sing and have picnics and go walking and talk about God. Lots of long hours, lots of long days and nights. Peaceful.”

  She forced herself to sit up. “But that ain’t why I came here, to talk about that. You see, I was seventeen when I got married. His name was Eli Logan. It’s from the Bible. Nobody names any kid from the Bible anymore. Come to think of it, my nam
e’s not in the Bible, neither. Mama was kind of romantic. She named me Ami. She said it meant love. The teachers put it down as Amy. What does it matter? But still, I like to think of my name as Ami. I write it that way. I make them make out my checks as Ami. It kind of means something to me. I just can’t explain.”

  The silent white room with its soft light appeared to be full of understanding. “Is that name French, or does it mean anything?” she asked. She tried to listen for an answer. Then she smiled. She had been answered. She was certain of that, even though she had heard no voice.

  “My husband. He was twenty when we got married. He was a man, not like these little boys who’re twenty and think they’re kids. Eli was a big, grown man. And I was seventeen and a big, grown woman. Pa was dead then. I’d been working all my life, like Mama. Papa and Mama had a house; it’d cost two thousand dollars, and there was a mortgage on it. Eli and me got married, and Eli moved in, and there was Mama. Eli didn’t have no parents; they died when he was fourteen, fifteen. He was glad to have Mama as his own mother. ‘We’re a family,’ he said to me, and he kissed Mama first when we was married.”