by Arthur Day
She was bored and casually glancing at her watch to see if she could politely get the hell out of Dodge without embarrassing her parents currently in deep conversation with Roderick Carroll and go back to her apartment where she could strip down and lie on her couch listening to a little soft CSNY. She took a sip from her glass, but the tonic and lime had gone warm and a little flat. Yecch. Time to go.
“Excuse me.”
Pamela turned towards the voice and found herself looking up into a face that seemed to go on for miles topped by black hair cut unfashionably short almost a military cut. “The hunk,” she blurted before she had time to think about it and immediately wished that she had not opened her mouth. She felt the hot flush of embarrassment on her cheeks and looked down at her shoes as if inspecting them for any trace of dirt.
The man laughed, a deep throaty sound of amusement. “Believe me I’ve been called worse. My name’s Mike McCaal. What’s yours?”
“I’m so sorry. Pamela. Pamela Peese.” She held out her hand and it was instantly swallowed up in his. His grip was surprisingly warm and gentle. He smiled down at her and she could not help but return it still wondering why he would want to introduce himself to her in the first place but feeling comfortable now that he had done so.
Pamela felt sweat breaking out on her forehead as she turned left off the road onto a dirt road that circled the lake and the many camps along its shore. She strode past a patch of woods and then looked to her right at the small white farmhouse owned by somebody named Newhouse according to the name roughly painted on the mailbox. It was an old box. The lid was rusted and slightly sprung, and it was attached to a cedar post that tilted slightly to the left. As she walked past Pamela wondered how many people had passed by that box, how many hundreds of letters had been pushed into it over the years, for how many harsh winters had it stood there? She dismissed the box as she looked to her left where a couple of ruts led down the hill towards the lake. She wasn’t sure who had that camp. No sign. No box. Probably picked up their mail at the post office in town or maybe had it held at the place where they spent the winter. An empty Lays potato chip bag lay in the shallow ditch on the left edge of the road just past that turn-off. Some people are just plain pigs she muttered. She picked it up but, having no pocket in her shorts, she stuffed the bag into the back of them feeling the paper scrape against her butt. She glanced down briefly at her cross trainers flashing in and out and listened to the crunch of small rocks and pebbles as she went up a slight slope and came out with a view down the hill to the lake beneath, a postcard scene for sure, she thought. Behind her she could hear Doug Worth puffing away like a freight train on a steep slope. He insisted that he could walk with her even though she’d told him that he was out of shape and could not keep up. What an asshole and a drunk to boot. Why he insisted on walking she had no clue but she had to give him credit for at least trying but she still didn’t like the man. He was physically and, more importantly, emotionally loud, crude and rude. Pam grimaced remembering the scene in her apartment a few weeks previously and she thought he had been stalking her before that. Hard to believe that he was the son of the old man in the wheel chair whom she had assisted for several months. Out of respect for Andrew she would not turn the law on her cousin but if he died of a heart attack on the road behind her she would not mourn his passing.
The road slipped beneath her feet as her mind travelled back and forth as if it was a leaf on a windy day turning around and around before settling only to fly up and around again. New sneaks these are wearing out be walking on my socks pretty soon not so bad now but winter is coming definitely don’t need that expense so maybe I’ll wait a bit longer. Walked a lot as a kid in the big pink house up and down running around the back yard all hill up and down playing hide n seek and playing house with that huge doll house on the third floor it had lights and everything but the dolls didn’t light up not at all and the little people in the house never spoke except when the dolls were sleeping beside me in my bed and then I could hear their little squeaky voices as they moved about from room to room. There was Marty who was our neighbor at least that’s what my dad called him and there was Flo I have no idea where that name came from and I pretended that there was a little girl like me and I named her Rebecca because it sounded romantic. They were scared of the dolls who were much bigger of course and I could never understand that because the dolls simply sat around staring off into space and ignoring Marty and Flow and Rebecca totally just like my parents who walked back and forth without looking at me except when there was company and then my nanny would get me all dressed up in my prettiest dress and I would go into the big room where everyone was sitting and make a curtsey and say good evening to everyone and all the grownups would smile and say what a pretty girl I was and what wonderful parents I had and how did I like school. Lots of dumb questions especially since I hated Miss Ethel’s Day School where they nicknamed me PeePee after my initials I guess but I would get on the big yellow bus and sit in a seat looking out the window and trying to become invisible but it wasn’t so bad in retrospect not as bad as some things like what my father told me once about a big scandal in the family but he never went into detail but simply said that part of what I was and what I might hear when he and mom died was due to that time in the family history but I was in college and not interested in what I considered ancient history so I did not press him for details for I thought all families have problems and I never thought my parents or their parents or their parents’ parents were any different than anyone else’s family and it was not until I was fully grown that I realized that my family was very different and that I had been brought up much differently than most and that would be part of my life until I died and then part of my children’s lives and on and on.
The road sloped gradually upwards curving gently to follow the lake below. Pam could feel the sweat on her face and her ears where it escaped from below her cap. Family memories always ended up depressing her. They always ended up with the conversation that she and her father had shortly before his death. He asked for her and she had gone into the master bedroom where he was propped up on pillows, a skeletal pale shadow of the man who had raised her. She hated being there looking at what he had become. She had been a freshman in college then. Brash and judgmental as most children are, reacting to fear by lashing out at it, reacting to doubt by asserting a view through a small window as that of the whole world, messy and belligerent, eager to shock people around her.
“Hi Pam.” He turned his head towards the door and stared at her. His eyes seemed to burn right through her and she could not look at him but stared at the wallpaper above his head.
“Hi Dad. How’re you feeling?”
Her father gave a ghastly caricature of a grin. “Okay, thanks.” He weakly gestured to a chair beside his bed. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks but I’m okay like this.”
“Sit. You may thank me for the chair before we are through.”
“Mom said you wanted to see me.” Pam walked slowly across the room and sat down in the chair. She glanced at her father and then immediately down into her lap. She couldn’t stand the sight of him and by extension of herself.
“Not pretty is it?” The question was almost a soft whisper, a soft hiss of rain on a night breeze unseen, unknown almost unheard. Her father pushed himself further up the bed, his eyes widening in pain with the effort. “For this part of your inheritance you may not thank me because not everything we get from our parents or their parents is good.” He collapsed back into his pillows gasping for breath.
“Dad.”
“No. Listen. Just listen please.”
Pam sat there listening to the silence, to the rustle of the sheet as her father moved his hand slightly, to the hum of a car passing by on the street outside, to a tapping noise that she could not identify, to the soft thump as a door banged shut on the first floor. She thought she could almost hear the clock change
from one minute to the next even though it was electric and noiselessly passed the time of day for anyone attending to it. The sun outside moved a fraction in relation to the earth and a shaft of sunlight shot through the window by her father’s bed lighting the floor and illuminating dust motes in a descending array. Pam wondered if dust motes made a sound even if one could not hear them. Having stared at the sunlight she could not help but look up and found her father looking at her, his gaze so direct and thoughtful that she felt smaller and more compacted in mind and body somehow larger in spite of this as one might feel in the presence of a thought larger than oneself that you could not define but that you knew was true.
“In any family,” he began in almost a whisper, “there are good people and not so good people. The human condition does not discriminate.” He wheezed slightly and then fell silent.
“Dad,” Pam said softly and touched his shoulder
“Dad?”
But her father was beyond all earthly calls.
MJ 2010
I can’t say how it all came about, my time in Mays Corners when I knew Dianne at least as much as I would ever know her and the events that occurred there. There are moments in our lives that define us and that we remember down to the last detail and there are other times when our lives change but we neither recognize or remember those times and indeed we seldom know that anything had changed at all. Such was the situation when Pamela disappeared.
I should start at the beginning, well not the actual beginning because I can’t remember back that far but the time when Pam Pease and I first met or ran into each other at the party if that is the current expression for meeting someone accidentally and becoming infatuated or maybe even in love within a minute or so. Time compresses to meet the demands of the emotions so it could have been seconds or perhaps less. She could have been just another face in the subway, indifferent, detached, mindless until her stop came, and life once again flooded into her face as it did for the other mindless bodies both sitters and strap-hangers of whom I was one. I can remember every detail of that moment when I looked over the shoulder of another middle-aged gentleman in a tan trench coat that hung on either side of his limacine middle and saw one blue eye staring out mindlessly, emotionless at a point on the subway wall advertising a new skin cream guaranteed to make you look years younger. If it can be said that a person could be hooked by an eye, then I was. I tried to shuffle my way forward to see the other eye along with the rest of her face, but the cars came to a halt at the next station and she disappeared. I came out onto the platform as quickly as the crowd allowed but she was gone, and I stood there as the crowd surged around me heading for apartments, wives, kiddies and cocktails not always in that order. The best I could do was note the station stop, the time and the local subway number and hope for the best. I felt a sense of loss somehow that I had found something and immediately lost it like a kid who sees his kite soar into the sky only to catch a downdraft into a tall tree. I stood there for what seemed like forever turning slowly around trying for just a glimpse of her but there was nothing to see except a sea of grey, red, brown, yellowish blank faces pushing by, an unending kaleidoscope of flesh none of it of any interest to me.
It was weeks before I saw her again, days of riding that particular train that was always jammed at rush hour enduring grunts and elbows and curses as I tried to move from car to car in search of her eye. Had anyone known my mission they would have categorized me as one of the thousands of nut jobs that inhabit a metropolis of eight million souls. Businessmen with their ties loosened, sweat standing out on their heads, briefcase in one hand and the other holding the strap, professional women in black tops and gray pantsuits their hair coming slightly loose after a long day below the glass ceiling, secretaries, house fraus, kids holding onto mommie’s hand and young men staring with great determination at the floor of the car or the ads placed in holders above the seats. The cars always stank of sweat, smoke and perfume and male pit stink. I breathed in recycled air full of onions, garlic and poor dental hygiene, or no dental hygiene in a few cases. It was all for naught and I was beginning to despair and wonder why I was spending so much time on a fool’s errand when I saw her again. She was at the other end of the car, of course, but I caught a glimpse of her cheekbone and one eye through the packed bodies and felt instantly alone with her and only her and I neither saw nor felt the bodies between us as I pushed my way to where she was strap hanging with one arm sheathed in a sage cotton jacket and the other clutching a book, a thick one full of verbose intentions by the look of it and I wondered for part of a second whether the manuscript on my computer would turn out to be a similar size and then I was beside her balancing perilously and reaching back to place my hand against the wall of the car between a large black lady with a tiny black velvet hat and a thin man probably in his eighties sitting hunched forward as if at stool.
“Hello,” I began turning my head to the right and looking at her.
Pamela did not reply. Indeed, she did not even acknowledge my greeting but stared straight ahead as the train pulled into her station with a squeal of brakes and a chuffing of air. The packed lump of humanity stirred in anticipation; I wanted to put my arms around her to avoid losing her in the mob but contented myself with making sure that I was right behind her as we shuffled forwards to the open doors.
Once on the platform she hurried towards the stairs looking straight ahead, her stride simultaneously hurried and determined so that from behind it looked as if she was goose stepping. “Excuse me,” I tried again hurrying to catch her and walk beside her up the stairs.
Pam still did not answer. Okay, talking with strangers in a subway station may not turn out well but I thought that I appeared as innocent and friendly as possible. “My name is Michael,” I tried. “What’s yours?”
She stopped and turned to look at me as if I had exposed myself right there in the middle of the station. “If you don’t leave me alone I’ll mace you,” she snapped and unslung her hand bag from her shoulder as if to reinforce her warning. I smiled and held up my hands in a gesture of surrender. We were much too close for her to pull anything out of her bag before I had taken it from her. I think perhaps she realized the problem because she looked up at me nervously while gripping the book in her other hand with such force that her knuckles were white.
“Your name is Pam Peese and mine is Mike McCaal. We shook hands at the Caroll’s party.”
She turned without a word and started walking again up the stairs towards the evening light which slanted down from the street level turning those descending into shimmering shadows and those ahead of us into haloed stick figures. Pam moved with a jerky assuredness that told of many trips up and down these stairs. We came out on the sidewalk with Central Park on one side and a long gray array of apartment buildings on 59th Street on the other. “We could be friends, you know. Compatible even. What’s the harm? C’mon. Let me buy you a drink. End of day type of thing.” I heard myself whining but I could not more stop that than stop the evening crush of traffic. “I won’t come near you and if we don’t hit it off you can go your way and nothing lost.”
“I’ll tell you what’s lost and that is my patience. I don’t want to talk to you, drink with you or do anything else with you. I’ve saw you at the party. You were surrounded by a bunch of chickadees and I was not impressed.” She reached into her bag and brought out a can of pepper spray and held it out in front of her like a shield. “Say one more word and I’ll spray you and scream rape and you can spend the night at the local precinct. How’s that sound for entertainment?”
“This is silly,” I told her and snapped out my arm and took the can away from her. “I am not the monster you seem to think I am. I am in fact quite housebroken. I saw your face on the subway and felt that I had to meet you. I can’t explain it.” I stopped. I had no more words. If she was determined not to give an inch, then whatever feelings I had would go unrequited. “One drink and
then I’ll give you your spray can back and you can do what you want.” She was so beautiful standing there in a rage with her black hair curled around her long face that I could only stare at her and hope for the best outcome to all of this. I had a fleeting thought that there could not be many men who had such a lame come-on line or foolish approach.
She did not back down. She stood there looking up into my eyes and I was enveloped by the huge grey eyes and the long aristocratic nose. It was probably only a few seconds, but it seemed much longer as we stood there at the entrance to the subway while rush hour crowds pushed by us in irritation. “All right,” she agreed and turned and marched off down the avenue. Bemused, I trailed behind wondering if all this was going to be worth the trouble.
I was settling into a new house, in reality a one bedroom cabin in the woods that I thought would be conducive to my writing and that put me in the same area as Pam. I do not think that I consciously wanted to be near her and certainly I, at least, thought that I was over the pain and anger caused by our parting of ways. We had been divorced for five years. I had adjusted to my life as a born-again bachelor; although my sex life remained that of a monk – well perhaps a step above that since I do not know if monks masturbate - at least Pam wasn’t around to remind me of that fact. I don’t remember thinking about her much at all. When I try to remember what was happening with my life then I cannot remember even wondering how she was getting on. I was frustrated with my writing. I would sit for hours in front of the computer, type in a sentence and then delete it, type in another and delete that one as well. Words in my head looked trite and banal on the screen. I saw an ad for homes in the Times and called the agent to arrange to see them thinking that I needed a complete change of scenery and it was only after I had clicked off my phone that I realized the significance of the town near which the cabin was located. Somewhat surprised but not depressed by that fact I went ahead with the appointment. That I would be in the same area as Pam even added a little spice to the trip and I spent the time driving up to northern Connecticut thinking of her and me and our times together, particularly the first year or two of our marriage. Those memories brought on a slight erection and, since it had been a while since I had last had one, I enjoyed it while it lasted, and arrived in Mays Corners in the middle of the afternoon.