WORK WAS A BALM FOR HER. In the daytime, among her friends in the office, or out with pad and pen in hand, interviewing a quilter, a bird-watcher, a National Merit Scholar, she was able to bob above that riptide of grief that pulled her under at night. For five solid months after Royal died, she cried herself to sleep, waking up an hour or two later with a start, scared out of sleep by nightmares. She had been told of Royal’s last minutes by a sobbing Carol Meyer, the pediatric nurse who on her way to her station wagon in the hospital parking lot saw Royal stagger out of his car, clutching his chest, falling to the concrete, but Haze never dreamed of this scenario; instead she chased her husband down narrow bazaar corridors or stood in a crowd in front of a tall building, calling up to Royal through a megaphone, pleading with him not to jump.
The first time she slept all through the night, she woke up feeling not refreshed but guilty. Royal had died suddenly, painfully, and the least she could do was to be wracked by nightmares—what kind of wife was she anyway?
The first time she laughed, she immediately burst into tears. She’d been with Lois at a garage sale, browsing through a dusty collection of salt and pepper shakers displayed on one half of a ping-pong table.
“Look,” said Lois, picking up a squat figurine wearing a crown and holding a scepter. “It’s Myra Willouby.” This was the garden club president known for her imperious air. Lois shook the figurine, and a flutter of pepper was released from its crown.
“Always fertilize!” said Lois, her voice shrill. “One must always fertilize.”
Haze offered a chuckle at Lois’s impression, and the chuckle grew until both women, hunched over with laughter, made their way past Avis Stephens, the garage sale host, who’d been forced by her husband to sell a third of her collection, pleading with her, “How many damn salt and pepper shakers does a person need anyway?”
Haze and Lois laughed all the way to Lois’s car, but when Haze slammed shut her door, the tears that had risen through laughter changed their inspiration.
“Oh, Lois!” she cried. “How can I laugh? What right do I have to laugh?”
ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY of Royal’s death, Bill had said, “absolutely,” when Haze asked if he’d drive up Highway 61 with her to honor Royal’s wishes of having his ashes scattered on Lake Superior.
“I just couldn’t give him up any earlier,” Haze said as they stood on a rocky outcropping by the Split Rock Lighthouse, watching the last cloud of ash dust the dark water.
It was a raw, windy day, and after a long, forlorn silence, Haze said, “I almost wish I would have buried him. At least I’d have a tombstone to visit.”
“What would it say?” Bill asked.
Haze stared out at the cold expanse of gray.
“‘Dear, Beloved Husband.’ ‘Man O’ My Heart.’”
“I’d add, ‘True friend,’” said Bill solemnly. “‘Respected Doctor.’”
“I don’t know if I could afford all those letters,” said Haze, and they chuckled weakly, the way people do at old memories and regrets.
THEY STOOD SENTRY FOR A LONG TIME, and then as if they’d both received an invisible nudge, they turned away, making their way up the rocks to the path and the car.
On the second anniversary of Royal’s death, Bill stuck his head in Haze’s office and mouthed, “See you tomorrow night?”
She nodded in answer.
HAZE WROTE TO MAKE SENSE OF THINGS, so of course she had to write about the wild turn her life had taken. As was her decades-long habit, she addressed her thoughts to a woman whose high, halting voice she had heard on a radio broadcast, whose story her mother had told her, and whose books she later read. How the woman had fought as a child to communicate and how she learned to do what Haze herself loved to do—to read and write, albeit in different ways—inspired Haze as a girl to direct all journal entries not to “Dear Diary” but to “Miss Keller.” It made her feel her words were more substantial, more considered. By the time Haze got to high school, she had dropped using the formal title, feeling the person who helped her collect her thoughts wouldn’t mind the more familiar greeting.
June 18, 1973
Dear Helen,
My columns have served as my public journal; I get to write about what interests me and share it with readers. I am so glad I can share my private feelings here; I’d go crazy if I couldn’t vent with pen and paper.
Oh, Helen, I am torn between dancing a jig and breaking all laws of science by evaporating from the face of the earth.
I have fallen in love with Royal’s best friend and my publisher, who happens to be married to a very lovely woman named Eleanor, who is a credit to the community and an impeccable hostess who graciously welcomes people (including me) into her home for elegant dinner parties. I feel shame and guilt and disgust over my actions, but the actions don’t stop because trumping all these feelings is love. I talk to Royal a lot, and although my mind hasn’t deteriorated to the point where he answers, I know he’s rooting me on. That sounds ridiculous as I write it, but one thing I learned from my good doctor was that contained within the utilitarian muscle that is the human heart, there is untold mystery.
“People can’t help their feelings, Haze,” he said. We’d been talking about his hospital administrator—a staid, personality-free guy as far as I’d been able to tell—and the gift shop volunteer, who’d both left their spouses to run off with one another. I, righteous in my morality, had sniffed and said, “People might not be able to help them, but they don’t have to act on them, especially when others will be directly hurt.”
I still believe that . . . but now I also understand actions like people leaving their spouses to run off together.
Oh, how to explain what seems unexplainable? It’s just that Bill was so . . . so good to me. I started to rely on him. Not for anything romantic or sexual—that was the farthest thing from my mind—but for his kindness, his helpfulness. When I could barely get out of bed, he had groceries delivered. He hired a high school boy to weed the garden and mow the lawn in the summer, and after the first snowstorm of the season, he sent the same kid over to shovel me out. And then his kindnesses started meaning more . . .
What the hell am I doing? The sad but exhilarating truth is, I don’t care.
12
Judging from the look on Bill’s face, their first kiss was as much a surprise to him as it was to Haze. Pulling apart as frantically as they pulled together, they stared at one another, eyes wild, their breath ragged.
My Year of Yodeling was an amusing book about a young American woman working at a Swiss ski lodge, but it quickly became apparent to Haze that while the author was funny on the page, she decidedly was not on the dais, and not wanting to nod off as it appeared many audience members had, she slipped out during the presentation. Coming out of the dank basement bathroom, she gasped as she and Bill McGrath, coming out of the Palace Theater’s men’s room, nearly collided.
“I didn’t know you were here!” said Haze at the same time Bill said, “Haze, what a surprise!” and after they shared a laugh, Bill said, “I haven’t read Miss Fredlund’s book yet, but if she writes the way she speaks . . . I believe I’ll skip it.”
“It was much livelier than you’d think,” said Haze, but she might as well have said, “You drive me wild, Bill McGrath,” because a second after her words left her mouth, she and Bill flung their arms around one another, and her mouth became occupied with an entirely different enterprise.
“What . . . what,” began Haze after the suction of their lips loosened and they staggered apart, staring at one another.
“I . . . I’m sorry,” said Bill.
Haze fumbled in her purse for her lipstick. “Don’t be sorry,” she said, taking off the tube’s grooved gold cover and turning the base so that a bullet of red rose. Gliding it over her mouth, she pressed her lips together.
“Okay?”
Not quite sure whether she was questioning the state of her lipstick or offering reassurance for what had just
happened, Bill nevertheless nodded, and because he believed himself to be a man of action who seized opportunities, he said, “Could I come over later tonight?”
“Lois and I were planning to go to the Sundown after this,” said Haze, but before disappointment had a chance to settle on Bill’s face, she added, “but I should be home by ten.”
They heard footsteps on the marble stairs, and they exchanged another wild-eyed look before Bill ducked into the men’s room and Haze patted her hair and smoothed her skirt, and as she ascended the stairs, she said to the woman descending them, “How are you enjoying the lecture, Mrs. Snell?”
“Thankfully Joseph got free tickets through the Rotarians,” said the over-rouged woman. “So it wasn’t a total waste of time and money.”
HOURS LATER Haze opened her kitchen door, and Bill stepped onto the little coir mat as he had done dozens of times before, but this time his arms were empty of crossword puzzle books or a pie or hot dish Eleanor had made. This time, they opened and Haze stepped into them.
Their embrace wasn’t tight so much as it was steadfast, the way two people would hold each other after surviving a storm, and they stood that way for a long time, until Haze pulled away. At the same time, she took Bill’s hand, and he quietly followed her.
THEIR LOVEMAKING had a seriousness to it, their sounds of pleasure soft and subdued, and when Haze climaxed, she didn’t shudder so much as pulsed.
Haze wasn’t a smoker, but Bill was, and when he asked if she’d mind if he had a cigarette, she shook her head.
“It reminds me of my dad,” she said, watching Bill as he got up and fumbled in the pockets of his sport coat, draped over the sewing table chair.
There was a click, and then a flare of light rose against the shadowy light, and Haze leaned over to get the ashtray that was in the nightstand drawer.
“Here,” she said, handing him the metal dish that sat atop what seemed to be a plaid beanbag. “I keep this for when my sister and her husband visit. They smoke too.”
“It’s a filthy habit,” said Bill, and exhaling, he added, “Most of the good ones are.”
Haze chuckled and held out her fingers in a V.
Bill passed her the cigarette even as he protested that she didn’t smoke.
“I’m not going to inhale,” said Haze. “It just seems a good way to mark the occasion.” She puffed quickly on the Pall Mall and just as quickly blew out a puff of smoke.
Leaning against the headboard, Bill drew one arm behind his head. When he took back the cigarette from Haze, he took a long drag and released the smoke in a row of wavery rings, which they watched until they deflated and disappeared.
“Haze, whatever happens after tonight, is up to you. I have my hopes, of—”
“What are your hopes?”
Bill studied the glowing end of his cigarette for a moment before he tapped the cigarette, the ash falling with soundless resignation into the tray.
“Well, I thought this was a pretty big ‘occasion,’ and my hopes are that it’s the first of many.”
“Why?” asked Haze, her voice as small as a girl’s.
“Because I think I love you.”
His words were true, but he didn’t know it until he said—and heard—them out loud.
“Oh God,” he said.
“That’s how I feel too, Bill.” Tears welled in Haze’s eyes. “I’m both thanking Him and asking for forgiveness.”
Bill nodded, his head so heavy his chin grazed his chest.
IT WAS SURPRISINGLY EASY to carry on their affair. Bill had a decades-long habit of taking long, late-night walks, explaining to Eleanor that it not only helped soothe his insomnia, but he liked to think about the day’s news and how the paper had presented it. After their two sons were grown, Eleanor occasionally joined him, but although he was a good sport about it, she could see that her presence defeated the whole contemplative idea of the walk, and besides, she was an early-to-bed-early-to-rise person and was often under the covers and softly snoring by the time he laced up his walking shoes.
“DO YOU THINK ELEANOR SUSPECTS ANYTHING?” Haze asked, the fourth time she and Bill slept together. It was a question she didn’t want to ask him, even as she had asked herself a million, zillion times.
“I don’t,” said Bill, his voice clear but flat. “It would never occur to her to even wonder.”
“That sounds so mean.”
“That’s not how I meant it,” said Bill, rolling his broad-shouldered body so that he faced Haze. “What I meant was Eleanor’s a trusting person, and I’ve never given her a reason not to trust me—until now.”
“You never had another affair?”
Bill laughed. “I don’t know if I like your tone of voice.”
“Well, according to Marilyn Sagerstrom all successful, attractive men do.” Seeing the look on Bill’s face, Haze added, “The entrepreneur from Taylors Falls who was in my column last week? The one who invented that quick-dry fabric? She spent about a third of our conversation on what cheating bastards successful, attractive men are.”
“Was she married to one?”
Haze nodded. “She asked that I not write about him, but really, she’s so bitter, I don’t know if she can enjoy her success. And she just got huge contracts with the air force and the coast guard!”
“Well, for the record,” said Bill. “I’ve never been unfaithful to Eleanor . . . until now.”
Haze’s eyes blurred with tears. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
Bill enveloped Haze in his arms and whispered into her hair, “Neither do I.”
September 12, 1974
I don’t think the little head shot that accompanies my column flatters me, but apparently it’s a good-enough likeness that people recognize me now and then. Even though our paper’s circulation has a wider radius than you’d think, being recognized outside Granite Creek is uncommon (make that extremely rare). I had spoken at a Women in Business luncheon in the Cities, and driving home, I decided to get a little grocery shopping done at the supermarket near my highway turnoff (it’s always a little exotic to shop at an unfamiliar store), and it was in the cereal aisle that I had a little bumper-cart incident with a woman.
We both apologized, and then, with a big smile, she said, “Say, I know you! I never miss one of your columns!”
Her smile was gracious but fleeting, and she wagged her finger, saying she had a bone to pick with me.
“I have children,” she said, her jaw now tight, “and some of the subjects you write about are not for kids! Your last one, for instance, where you railed against our new president—how am I supposed to teach my kids respect for our country and its leadership?”
I could have just offered a weak, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” and vamoosed, but her cart blocked my exit, and besides, sometimes I just like to engage.
“How old are your children?” I asked sweetly.
“Mikey’s ten, and Penny and Pammy are twelve.” Her chest puffed out. “They’re twins.”
“And they read my columns?” My voice was as sugary as most of cereal surrounding us.
“They read the Sunday funnies, but that’s about it.”
“Then why do my columns bother you if your children aren’t even reading them?”
“Because they might someday!”
Instead of doing the sane thing, which would be to offer a cheery ta-ta and barrel past her on my way to the frozen foods aisle, I said, “All right. Say they did read my columns—even if you disagreed with them, don’t you think it might incite some interesting debate? A good exchange of ideas?”
“No—they don’t need to be exchanging ideas!”
(Readers, I may be guilty of paraphrasing now and then but always strive to capture both the flavor and intent of conversations. These words, however, were verbatim.)
“And my latest column,” I began, “the one about President Ford’s pardon of Nixon?”
The woman nodded her head, her nose wrinkling as if she’d just tak
en a whiff of sour milk.
“You thought it didn’t show respect for our country and its leadership?”
“Exactly!”
“But Nixon was charged with high crimes and misdemeanors! What respect did he show? He should have gone to jail!”
“He resigned—isn’t that enough for you people? What good would it do us as a country to have our president in jail?”
A gangly stock boy heading down the aisle toward us abruptly turned around, like a witness fleeing from the scene of a crime.
“As I said in my column, it would have shown us all that no one—not even the president—is above the law!”
“This way we can all move forward! Like President Ford said, it’s in the best interest of the country!”
“And I happen to disagree,” I said, and finished with the debate, I shoved my cart, not so that I would bang into hers, but close.
“And you know what else?” said the woman. “You should print more recipes! Less columns and more recipes!”
“The recipes are an occasional dessert! The columns are the regular meals!”
I don’t know why I was so rattled, and if that woman in that particular supermarket reads this (although she may never read me again, but at least I hope she appreciates that I changed the names and sexes of her children), I apologize.* Not for the views I expressed in that—or any column—but for my parting, unnecessary shot.
“Here!” I said, “If you won’t treat your kids to different opinions, to new ideas, give ’em these!” My aim was good; next to the two boxes of bran flakes and canister of oatmeal in her cart landed my well-aimed box of Lucky Charms. “They really are magically delicious!”
*Please take note of my largesse in giving this woman what she wanted: another recipe. It’s not for a dessert, but these, hot out of the oven and served with butter and jelly, are delectable in their own right.
My mother would have tsked at my additions to the recipe name, but then she would have laughed.
Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes) Page 12