Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes)

by Lorna Landvik

  P.S. I know Sam I Am is kind of a stupid column name, but I couldn’t help myself.

  Phil sits for a long time, staring at the paper in his hand as if it’s a hypnotist’s pendant and he can’t look away.

  “And he got an A, huh?” he says finally, seeing the red grade circled at the top.

  Susan crumples a bit inside, thinking, What an asinine response! but then Phil adds, “It deserves it.”

  Crooking his forefinger, he wipes at the corner of his eye, and his sigh is long.

  “God, I miss Jim. I forgot how you used to read to me when he was dying. That meant a lot to me.”

  “We got through all of Lonesome Dove, remember?”

  Phil nods. His shoulders are hunched, as if all of his feelings are centered in his chest and their weight pulls everything in.

  “Would you . . . would you like some more?” asks Susan, holding up the bottle.

  Phil holds his hand above his glass.

  “Still don’t have much of a wine palate, I guess.” He smiles, but it doesn’t have a lot of mirth in it. He looks, Susan’s startled to see, like he might cry.

  “Phil?” she says at the same time he says, “I just wish—”

  They stare at one another for a long moment.

  “What do you just wish?” Susan asks softly.

  “That . . . that things were different.” He sighs and discovers a hangnail that needs his attention. Picking at it, he says, “I’m sorry for everything, Susan.”

  Susan’s head bobbles in a nod. “Me too.”

  THE LITTLE GIRL LAUGHS when Shelly raises her voice and says, “Not by the hair of my chin chin chin,” and laughs when Shelly lowers her voice and says, “Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!”

  “Read it again!” says the girl.

  “But I’ve got all these other books,” says Shelly, indicating the pile on the window seat.

  “I like The Three Little Pigs! They’re funny.”

  So Shelly reads the worn Golden Book again and makes her voice go even higher for the pigs and lower for the wolf, and when the girl laughs, it feels to Shelly like a standing ovation.

  “Sounds like we’re having a lot of fun in here,” says a nurse, entering the room. “Here, Ariel, I brought you some juice.”

  “She does really good voices!” says Ariel, and Shelly, who doesn’t beam, comes close.

  VISITING HAZE one day after work, she’d nearly collided with a candy striper pushing a cart. It was a feat for Shelly to not upbraid the young girl to “watch where you’re going!” but she held her tongue and accepted the girl’s sincere apology, albeit delivered with a nervous giggle.

  “Say,” said Shelly, a lightbulb of an idea blinking on in her head, “do they have an age limit for candy stripers?”

  The sweet-faced girl, whose cheeks were so rosy they looked freshly pinched, looked startled before saying, “Umm . . . I don’t know. I mean the candy stripers I know are all like my age . . . but there’s a volunteer coordinator you could ask.”

  And so Shelly had found her way to the blue-haired woman’s office, had her interview, and began coming on Monday and Thursday evenings to read to children. Sometimes it was hard—there was a bald little boy hooked up to wires and IVs who was so weak he couldn’t open his eyes but who smiled as Shelly read his favorite Clifford the Big Red Dog stories and who always whispered, “Thank you,” when she was finished—but she inherently knew to swallow down any lumps in her throat or warbles in her voice, knew that the last thing these children needed was that sort of nonsense.

  Shelly found herself practicing different voices she might use—how the kids loved different voices!—mostly at home and once in the employee bathroom at the Gazette, where a startled Ellie Barnes, responding to the gravelly “Fee, fi, foe, fum” emanating from a stall had asked, “Who’s there?”

  “GOOD BOY,” Sam says when he lets the puppy in from the backyard.

  His wagging tail a blur of motion, Cesar wiggles in reaction to the praise and adds several hops as Sam sets his food on the floor, practically burying his muzzle in the bowl full of tiny brown pellets.

  “Slow down,” says Sam with a laugh.

  Tasked with making the salad, he washes his hands and resumes his place at the counter.

  “Isn’t he the best dog ever?” he asks his mother.

  Susan smiles, thinking how he sounds about eight years old.

  “He sure has been house-trained fast, thanks to you.”

  She agreed to let him keep Cesar, but only if Sam took full responsibility for him. It was the kind of blustery directive most parents give to children when it comes to a new pet, but much to her surprise, one that her son obeyed, diligently. For the first couple days, the puppy had a few indoor accidents, but not once had Susan cleaned up a mess or wiped up a puddle, and although she did buy the puppy chow, Sam was in charge of dispensing it. It was nice coming home to a being who greeted you with delight, nice to have a furry little creature snuggle between you and your son when you watched TV on the couch. With Cesar the whole house felt warmer, softer.

  “Routine,” said Sam sagely. “That’s what Christina told me. Dogs respond to routine.” As he takes the lettuce out of the salad spinner, he’s about to expound more on what he’d learned from the veterinarian, but in the non sequitur way a teenaged conversationalist takes, he asks instead, “Hey, Mom, what’s up with Shelly?”

  “What do you mean?” asks Susan, who’s just sampled the spaghetti sauce, trying to figure out if it needs more oregano or less.

  “She’s like so much nicer!” he says, ripping up lettuce leaves. “I mean, I doubt she could ever be really nice, but for her, she’s a lot nicer!”

  “Mitch was wondering if she’s got a boyfriend,” says Susan. The sauce definitely needs more oregano, as well as a lot more garlic and a little more pepper. “I told him she’s got some new friends and some are boys, but little boys.” She laughs. “He didn’t know about her hospital work.”

  “She even asked me if I could recommend some books for a nine-year-old patient she’s reading to. I was gonna say Harry Potter, but then I thought, one of those books takes a long time, and you’d hope no kid would be in the hospital long enough to hear the whole thing. So I told her about the Lemony Snicket books and those Wimpy Kid ones.”

  Spooning more oregano into the pot, Susan chuckles. “Somehow I never pictured Shelly reading a Lemony Snicket book.”

  “I know, right?” Sam laughs too. “What a world.”

  The cell phone on the counter chimes. Susan used to uphold a “no phones at dinnertime” rule, but now that Jack’s abroad, her phone is always on and available, and she asks Sam to see who’s calling.

  Handing her the phone, Sam says, “It’s Mrs. Garnet.”

  “One second, Liz,” says Susan into the phone. She samples the sauce and places the spoon on its ceramic spoon rest. “Man, I make good spaghetti. What’s up?”

  “Well, I’ve just got to tell you what when on in class today,” says Liz with an urgency that makes Susan turn to look at Sam. Only he’s not there.

  May 4, 2010

  Ahhh, glorious spring. I do like to walk, and I’m convinced a walking habit has caused my body to believe it is far younger than the birth date stamped on my driver’s license says it is. Today’s walk home was a real treat, surrounded as I was in the majesty of everything blooming and budding. Hyland Park is on my route, and occasionally I’ll take a little break, sitting on a bench to observe and listen to all that can go on in its playground.

  A curly-haired boy climbed to the top of the jungle gym, a feat that inspired him to shout, “Ta da!” A curly-haired girl pumped her legs on the swing, singing a song whose primary lyric seemed to be “nobody’s perfect!”

  Their mother (ditto on the curls) was on the bench across the playground from me, holding something in her hands that held her complete attention.

  Throughout the years, I’ve seen plenty of mothers with thei
r children at park playgrounds. I’ve seen mothers sit next to one another, gossiping as they watch their kids; I’ve seen mothers reading paperbacks or newspapers (always engrossed in my column, ha ha); and I’ve seen mothers, their faces tilted upward and smiling into a sunny sky, opening their eyes every now and then to check on junior. As involved in gossiping, reading, or sunbathing as they were, however, it always seemed they were aware and engaged, ready to leap up if Susie was climbing too high on the monkey bars, or to break up a sand-throwing fight between Billy and Bobby. I’m not saying mothers are more delinquent now, but it does seem their “devices” (I can’t help but think of that old truism that warns of no good when someone is left to their own devices . . .) enthrall them to almost the point of hypnotism. What words and pictures are they reading/viewing that are so interesting?

  I don’t have a “smart” phone myself, although the one I have I wouldn’t call dumb, seeing that it’s portable and I can take/make calls on it.

  Bells and whistles are fine, but sometimes their clanging and shrieking gets in the way of the real hearing, the real seeing, the real being.

  After Elise read aloud Haze’s column, Liz had been prepared for a lively discussion—when weren’t the discussions lively?—but she wasn’t prepared for Brianna blurting out, “Left to their own devices is right! My mom found out my dad and his secretary have been sexting for the past year!”

  A bell jar of silence clamped down on the classroom.

  Hoo boy, thought Liz, and while she was figuring out what to say, Linnea, a girl who only speaks in class if called on, said, “My mom took my brother’s phone and computer away because he’s watching so much porn.”

  As if an arctic wind had swept in, her students sat frozen, staring at Liz with wide eyes.

  “Well,” she said ineffectually, “maybe we—”

  “I’ll bet there are guys in this room who should have their phones and computers taken away for the same reason,” said Charlotte.

  The blushes on several boys’ faces deepened.

  “Yeah,” said Elise, “Haze writes about mothers paying too much attention to their phones, but I bet they’re not watching porn or playing stupid games like Mortal Kombat on them!”

  “Yeah,” said Sondra, “you don’t see my mom taking away my phone or computer because I’m watching porn or blowing people’s heads off!”

  “Help,” said Kyle, sliding down in his chair. “I’m surrounded by a roomful of radical hags!”

  The silence that followed was as potent as a collective gasp but was quickly broken by shouts of outrage, over which Kyle cried, “Kidding! I’m just kidding!”

  SUSAN STANDS AT SAM’S DOOR for at least a minute, and just before she knocks on it, he says, “I hear you out there, Mom. And yes, you can come in.”

  “The sauce is ready,” Susan says, standing in the threshold. “Shall I put the noodles on?”

  “I guess,” says Sam, who’s sitting at his desk. He closes his computer. “And I wasn’t looking at porn, by the way.”

  Taken aback, Susan’s mouth drops open.

  “I . . . I didn’t, I . . .”

  Her son pushes himself away from the desk.

  “It’s just so hard, you know?” He yells as he stomps across the room. “When everything’s so easy!”

  When he flings himself on the bed, Susan thinks, is he crying? and when she realizes he is, she rushes to him, so jittery with worried surprise that she almost falls off the edge of the bed as soon as she sits on it. When she rights herself, she rubs her son’s heaving back, offering him the age-old sounds of comfort, “Shh-shh-shh.” It’s almost like a mantra, and she doesn’t know how much time passes until Sam heaves himself up into a sitting position, drags the heel of his hand across his eyes, and says in a ragged voice, “I’m such a baby!”

  “So,” begins Susan, her voice tentative, “I take it that was in reaction to—”

  “The girls were getting so mad—it was like they thought all of us guys were big pervs!”

  He shakes his head and exhales a quick puff of air.

  “I mean, it’s not like I haven’t heard you and Dad when you’ve lectured me and Jack about the dangers of online porn—I haven’t just heard you but agree with you! And how freaky is that?” His eyebrows crinkle, and he flares his nostrils, what looks to be a prelude to more tears, but he blinks hard, and none fall. “I can’t say I haven’t watched any, but the few times I have, it’s just so—I mean, it’s not the way I want it to be!”

  He’s folded his legs up and draws his arms around them, his chin resting on his knees.

  “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

  “You can tell me anything,” says Susan and means it, although a part of her silently begs, “but you sure don’t have to.”

  “Jacob’s dad’s got a bunch of old Playboys in their garage, and we’ve looked at those, but that’s different, you know? I mean, you can use your imagination when you just look at pictures, but watching people fu— . . . uh, watching sex, it’s just . . . super weird. What do you call those weirdos who get off on watching?”

  “Voyeurs?”

  A one-syllable laugh escapes from Sam.

  “I could only think of voyager. But yeah, I don’t want to a voyeur, like, to someone else’s story. And how you’ve said that porn demeans women? There might be stuff that doesn’t, but what I’ve seen—and really, Mom, I haven’t seen that much—does. I mean, even though they’re like the stars of the show, they really aren’t, you know? And they’re all so fake looking, like with these huge boobs.” Shaking his head, Sam reddens and reiterates that he can’t believe he’s telling Susan this.

  There’s a long-enough silence that Susan thinks he’s done talking, but then, almost wailing, he says, “Everything’s on a screen! Haze wrote about moms being distracted by their phones, and it’s true—something about a screen draws you in and kind of . . . puts you in a trance! You can shoot up zombies in a video game or blow up a whole village, and it’s . . . and it is, like, exciting for a while, but for me, the more I play, the more I feel . . . well, sort of like there’s less of me. Sort of like I’m not all there. And I don’t want to feel like I’m not all there. I want to be here.” He bangs his hand on the bed, emphasizing his words, and a moment later tips his head back and says to the ceiling, “Oh, God, I am such a weirdo.”

  “You’re not a weirdo. You’re a wonderful, sensitive young man.”

  Sam makes a face. “Like I said, a weirdo.”

  Susan smiles and gives his shoulder a gentle push.

  “Come, on. Let’s go eat some spaghetti.”

  27

  Lois once posited the theory that age didn’t bother her because she’d never been good-looking.

  “I beg to differ,” Haze had said. “You’re a real glamour puss.”

  “I’m talking about having beauty, not just a beauty routine,” said Lois, whose budget allowed for weekly hair appointments as well as decades-long subscriptions to both Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and who, unlike Haze, didn’t think “serviceable” trumped “fashionable” when it came to one’s wardrobe. “I’ll always take care of my appearance, even as I’ve never had that great appearance to begin with.”

  “Lois, you’re a lovely—”

  “No need to say anything,” said Lois, raising a precisely manicured hand. “I’m not fishing here. I’m only saying because I was never thought of as pretty, I don’t have to worry about losing my looks. Style’s something completely different—I can be stylish into my hundreds, and therefore, age doesn’t bother me.”

  “Don’t achy joints and liver spots bother you?”

  Lois frowned; she thought she’d been winning the argument.

  “Well, of course,” she said finally. “But I accept those things . . . that the body gets a little cranky.”

  Haze chuckled. “A little cranky!”

  “You know what I mean. Just look at Janet Oakes—remember how pretty she used to be? And now it’s
so hard for her, trying to hang on to what she had but what’s gone, always on this diet or that diet, slapping on so much makeup a clown would warn her to go easy.”

  Lois pretended to be offended by Haze’s laughter but after a moment joined in.

  “And then there’s you!” she said finally, after taking a sip of her drink. “You were good-looking enough, but that wasn’t your main calling card. You were your main calling card, and you’re still you, so you don’t seem to age at all.”

  Haze reached over the tabletop—she and Lois had been enjoying Sunday brunch at Zig’s—to squeeze her friend’s hand.

  “The reason I don’t seem to age at all is because you’re so vain about not wearing your bifocals, and you’re on your second Bloody Mary.”

  AT THE SOUND OF A KNOCK on her car window, Lois startles.

  “Oh!” she says, transporting herself out of memory and into the present. She rolls down the window. “Oh, Caroline. Hi!”

  “You okay?”

  “Yes, I was just—” Lois unfastens her seatbelt and grabs her purse on the passenger seat—“I was just thinking about Haze.”

  “You were smiling,” says Caroline.

  Arm in arm, the two walk into the hospital.

  THROUGHOUT HER CAREER, Mercedes had seen patients whose recovery or deterioration had baffled the medical staff. She believed in miracles, because she had seen them, but she also believed in the inevitably of death, and she knew that for Haze, the window through which a miracle might blow in had not just closed but had been double latched, and the shades had been drawn.

  Now a small group is gathered in Haze’s room, with the intention not to visit but to say goodbye.

  “SO WEIRD,” Sam texts to Elise, and after adding a crying face emoji, he presses send.

  His word and picture message are terse, but they also convey his many feelings; it’s weird to be watching Haze die, weird that she’s an old lady but feels like a friend, weird that it’s through her written words that he’s gotten to know her, weird that he’s not embarrassed to send Elise an emoji as well as tell/text her just about anything—and send it to her!—no matter how lame it makes him look.