“I was about to wrap everything and pop it in the freezer. I don’t suppose you’d like a slice or two.”
“You suppose wrong,” Michael said. “That’s why we’re here.”
The two men sat down at the kitchen table while Chizzy sliced the bread and brought out butter and jam and put milk on the stove to heat for chocolate.
Howard said, “What time did she get home?”
“About fifteen minutes ago.”
“I didn’t hear Ben’s car.”
“She came in a taxi,” Chizzy said. “Which in my opinion was the rightful thing to do under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“Married women should not be seen at this time of night with younger men in sports cars.”
“Ben took her to a concert. I asked him to.”
But the explanation didn’t satisfy Chizzy’s hunger for reassurance. She added twice as much cocoa and sugar to the milk as she should have, so there was enough hot chocolate for half a dozen people. Whatever was left over she would of course finish herself, and the flannel robe would become tighter and her self-image more distorted, a thin woman followed by a fat shadow.
“Won’t you join us?” Howard said.
“No, thanks, I’m not hungry.” This was certainly true since she had eaten the first loaf that came out of the oven in order to test its quality and half the next loaf as well to make sure it conformed. “All this aggravation has disturbed my appetite. And I bet there’s someone sitting in this very room who’s just as aggravated as I am.”
She glanced pointedly at Michael who responded with a shrug. “Aggravation has never disturbed my appetite, especially if I don’t know what I’m supposed to be aggravated about.”
“Things aren’t normal around here,” Chizzy said. “They’re not normal.”
“Normal changes from day to day, Chizzy.”
“Why?”
“Because events happen. Circumstances change and so people change. The world is always in a state of flux.”
Bulloney, Chizzy thought, but she didn’t say it out loud. Although she had no religion herself, so many people did that she was forced to concede the possibility that there was Somebody Up There listening and she didn’t want to be heard talking back to a minister. It seemed only fair, however, that she be allowed to disagree politely.
“I don’t buy that flux business, begging your Reverend’s pardon. No sir. Everything around this place went along the same, year after year. That was normal.”
“And you want it back.”
“Oh, I know I can’t have it all back. But Miss Kay and Mr. Howard, I could have them.”
“You’re talking about me as if I’d gone away,” Howard told her. “I didn’t. I’m still here.”
“Not to me you aren’t, not like in the old days. All I’ve got now is the old man and the two dogs and a bunch of silly-looking fish.”
“Don’t let my father hear you call them that. He paid twenty thousand dollars for the big black one.”
“He got taken, if you ask me.”
“My father’s not easy to take. I learned that before I entered school. The black fish is a magoi, eighty-three years old. You know that, Chizzy.”
“I’ve been told. That doesn’t make it the truth.”
“The magoi belonged to the same Japanese family for three generations. These koi have pedigrees much like dogs.”
“Well, give me an eighty-three-year-old dog any day.”
“This,” Michael said glancing at his watch, “is definitely not normal. I’m sitting at midnight eating hot homemade bread and discussing an eighty-three-year-old fish. Flux, Chizzy, flux.”
“What’s so great about getting old anyway? It’s not as if we become more valuable like koi. I certainly don’t want to live to be eighty-three.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t,” Howard said, “unless you lose some of that blubber.”
“I have a glandular disorder,” Chizzy said coldly. “You paid for me to go to that diet doctor and that’s what he told me.”
“Is it?”
“Well, if you can believe that damn fish is eighty-three years old you can believe I have a glandular disorder.”
“I think it’s time for me to leave,” Michael said, and no one gave him any argument. Chizzy was prepared to defend her glandular disorder to the death and Howard was unlikely to subtract even a year from the age of the fish. “Thanks for the snack, Chizzy.”
“Just a minute. I’ll give you some to take home.”
She put four loaves in a large paper sack and followed him outside. By the time they reached his car, an old Buick bequeathed to him by a member of his congregation, Chizzy was puffing as if she’d been carrying bricks. He put the bag in the trunk of the Buick and waited a minute or two until Chizzy caught her breath.
“You really ought to lose some weight, Chizzy. Exactly what did the doctor tell you?”
“That I eat too much. Imagine getting paid for telling fat people they eat too much. What a racket.”
“No glandular disorder?”
“No. But I can’t admit that to Mr. Howard. I wouldn’t want him to think he had wasted his money.”
“That’s very considerate of you,” Michael said gravely.
“Also I’d hate him to think I was just a pig. Because I wouldn’t be if things were normal again.”
“They’ll never be the same again. But they’ll be normal because your concept of normal will change.”
“Highfalutin words like concept and flux don’t mean a hoot to me. What’s right is right.”
“You’re a hard case, Chizzy. Good night. And thanks for the bread.”
Howard went upstairs and knocked on the door of what had recently been his own room.
“Kay?”
“Come in.”
She was standing by the window still wearing her concert clothes, a long-skirted, royal-blue velvet suit with fake diamond buttons that looked exactly like the real diamonds she wore in her ears. He had given her the earrings as a wedding present before he found out she didn’t much like jewelry of any kind. Tonight she was not only wearing the earrings, she was drawing attention to them by having her hair pulled back severely into a French knot.
He noticed that there were a few strands of gray in her hair. He still thought of her as a girl and the gray hairs disturbed him, made him feel that he had turned away for a few minutes and looked back to find that years had passed.
He said, “Did you have a good time?”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence.
“Is that all, yes?”
“Do you want a blow-by-blow description? All right. Ben picked me up at seven-thirty. We arrived at the theater early so we had some wine in the lounge. Chablis, I think. I wasn’t paying much attention to the wine because I could feel people staring at me. They probably thought I should be at home crying. Then that dreadful woman from down the road, Mrs. Cunningham, came up and started a conversation. I guess it was a conversation. I could hardly understand what she was saying. She kept talking about a meat loaf, and how she was allergic to meat loaf and that’s why she couldn’t accept it. She babbled on while that son of hers stood there not saying a word, smiling that nasty little smile of his. The music was fine though I can’t remember what it was. I kept thinking of that damn meat loaf. Do you know anything about a meat loaf?”
“I could write a book about meat loaf,” Howard said. “Meat loaf prep school, meat loaf college cafeteria, fraternity, country club, Mother’s, Chizzy’s—”