The woman was standing a step aside and didn’t have much to contribute, but she looked at a man — at what he was making ready to take — and she held her hands with her palms turned away from her body with her fingers spread, as if she had dirtied herself.
At the curb, the woman’s car was an Opel, and the hood was up, and the door to the car was out, and what was its color? It was a butterscotch and a man, up to his elbows, was under the hood. Now and again he’d go back into the car and try the starter engine. Ted — that was that one.
It could be lovely, the woman was thinking. It was already lonely and there were mountains and mosses and grasses and violent deaths nowadays, and injuries and punishments, and the woman finds the merest suggestion of cheerful companionship and carousal — a bit too dramatic.
A MERE FLASK POURED OUT
The heavily colored area — it became a shade dingier — after I knocked over her decanter and there was the sourish smell of the wine.
I saw Mother reaching toward the spill, but the time that was left to her was so scant as to be immaterial.
The little incident of the accidental spill had the fast pace of a race, hitherto neglected or unknown.
“Go home!” Mother said. And I didn’t look so good to her she said. “How dare you tell me what to do — when you threw me away! You threw your brother away, too!”
Within a month, Mother was dead.
I inherited her glass carafe with its hand-cut, diamond-and-fan design, which we now use on special occasions.
We do well and we’ve accomplished many excellent things.
“Don’t do it that way!” I had cried. My daughter had tried to uncork a bottle of wine, but since I thought it was my turn, I took it from her.
Here are other methods I use to apply heavy pressure: I ask her where she is going, what does she want, how does she know and why. She should increase her affectionate nature, be successful and happy. Mentally, she must show me she has that certain ability to try.
BANG BANG ON THE STAIR
I said, “Would you like a rope? You know that haul you have is not secured properly.”
“No,” he said, “but I see you have string!”
“If this comes into motion—” I said, “you should use a rope.”
“Any poison ivy on that?” he asked me, and I told him my rope had been in the barn peacefully for years.
He took a length of it to the bedside table. He had no concept for what wood could endure.
“Table must have broken when I lashed it onto the truck,” he said.
And, when he was moving the sewing machine, he let the cast iron wheels — bang, bang on the stair.
I had settled down to pack up the flamingo cookie jar, the cutlery, and the cookware, but stopped briefly, for how many times do you catch sudden sight of something heartfelt?
I saw our milk cows in their slow parade in the pasture and then the calf broke through with a leap from behind — its head was up, its forelegs spread.
“Don’t leave!” Mother screamed at me, and she had not arrived to help me.
She tripped and fell over a floor lamp’s coiled electrical cord.
There’s just a basic rule of conduct that applies here — also known as a maxim — so I held out my hand.
She gripped and re-gripped my palm hard and all of my fingers before hoisting herself by pulling on me.
She kept tugging on my hand on her deathbed also for a long stretch, until she died. For don’t little strokes fell great oaks?
A girl from the neighborhood rang the bell today to ask if I had a balloon. I didn’t have any and I hadn’t seen one in years.
“That’s all you need?” I asked her. “How about some string?”
I noticed that the girl’s eyes were bright and intelligent and that she was delighted, possibly with me.
I went to search where I keep a liquid-glue pen, specialty tape, and twine. I kept on talking while I pawed around for some reason in the drawer.
A LITTLE BOTTLE OF TEARS
It should have been nicer — our friendships, our travel, our romances secretly lived — if we weren’t so old. But still it was an interesting situation to be in.
We all but ignored the wife’s tears — which could have filled a small bottle.
And the wife was petite and well groomed and I knew why she was crying. She thought her trials were all about adultery at that time.
As the evening proceeded, the wife cheered up for some of it and her conversation was drawing us in with topics she knew we would feel comfortable talking about, because potentially our relationship could be adversarial and her husband was tending to pontificate, showing off his legal wings with paragraphs upon paragraphs.
You find yourself in a situation where you have agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed and you realize this is not such a good agreement.
How did all this end? Oh, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine — although our process of digestion — they’d served us kartoffelpuffer and sauerbraten—was not yet complete — when the husband said finally about his wife, “Bettie’s tired.”
To my mind — she’s hysterical, sincere, easily distracted, and not adaptable. I remember when I wanted to know even more about her.
They lived only on the ground floor — the rest was rented out. A trestle table, where you could put your gloves, stood in the long hall that had stone floor tiles set on the diagonal.
Bettie’s thumbs were as I remembered — heavy and clubbed — and she wore the eye-catching turquoise ring, circa 1890, with three pearls, that I knew she was proud of because I had given it to her.
“Bettie’s tired,” the husband repeated.
“I am tired,” Bettie said.
And there was no polite way for him to tell us, “Fuck off now.”
There’d be no more condescending talk, no fresh subjects, never likely an opportunity to privately reminisce with Bettie about the times when we were side by side, experiencing that alternating rhythm forward and back.
“Can we give you a lift home?”
“No, that’s not necessary, we drove,” we said.
I went into their bathroom to urinate before we left. I am a man, if that wasn’t clear before this, and not a drunken one, not cruel — and I was holding myself then, gently — somewhat lovingly, to relieve myself.
I washed my hands and face and looked into the mirror. My face has changed so much recently. The lines of age were drawn everywhere like the marks made by a claw, and they looked to me freshly made. Then there are those growing fleshy abutments around my jaw and under my chin.
It was rainy outside and we were significantly dampened by the time we reached our car. And, in addition, a smelly ailanthus tree tossed a pitcherful of storm water — as if from a sacred fount — all over my head. There were continuing showers — it was dripping, gushy.
Still it was all so charming and heartening — that is — the summer storm, and the trees and our sky, alongside those several memories of Bettie and me.
My wife said to me en route, “Well, I suppose I’m on the wrong track, too.”
Of course, it took a long time for her to go downhill, all the way down it.
Meanwhile, we became very friendly with the DePauls — Clifford and Daisy.
They lived in an apartment crammed with blue-and-white china, for one thing. I thought Daisy usually looked pensive and sad and my wife thought that her scowl meant that she detested us.
A large oil painting of a female nude — hands together as if prayerful — had been suspended over their mantel. Their apartment was in disarray.