Driftless

by David Rhodes

  “I’m afraid not,” said Maxine. “We don’t have a place to put one, and Russell can’t see a need.”

  “Really, Russ! You’ve got to get with the times. I couldn’t live without a microwave. Nobody really cooks anymore. Nobody has time for it.”

  “We’re just old-fashioned,” said Maxine.

  “Where’s my room?” asked Marjorie.

  “Are you sure you won’t have something to drink?”

  “Do you have a downstairs bathroom?”

  “Right around the corner.”

  “Did you remember to bring my bags?”

  Rusty went to the car to retrieve the suitcases. As he pulled the luggage from the trunk, a shiny black Ford Expedition with tinted windows and a license plate reading MOVEOVER pulled into the drive with a blast of the horn, announcing the arrival of his daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren. The two families had ridden together from Chicago. They bailed out beside him, and his daughters carried his grandchildren into the house after learning that their grandmother and aunt were inside.

  “Where should I park this baby, Pops?” asked Drake, referring to the Expedition.

  “You can park it in the barn,” said Rusty.

  Drake surveyed the distance to the barn. “On second thought, I’ll just leave her here for right now. We won’t be staying overnight. This way I can keep an eye on her. We’ve got rooms rented.”

  “Maxine planned on you staying here.”

  “I know, but we don’t want to put you out. And anyway—you know—the swimming pool is a big feature. We also want to go to the Dells tomorrow and check out some of those water slides. I suppose you’ve been there many times.”

  “No.”

  “How ’bout them Packers!” shouted Tim. He was the younger of the two and, as Rusty recalled, a sports enthusiast.

  “How about them,” said Rusty.

  “Looks like they might pull it off this year.”

  “Hike!” sang out Drake, and the two young men jumped in the air and pretended to run forward with footballs tucked under their arms.

  “Here, we can take those, Pops,” said Tim when Rusty began carrying his mother-in-law’s bags across the yard.

  “I’ve got them.”

  “No prob-lem-o,” said Drake.

  “Hike!” they both shouted again and ran around hunched over as though carrying footballs. Drake tossed the diaper bag between his legs and Tim threw it to him as he ran toward the house.

  Inside, the younger grandchild cried while Brian, age three, ate cereal with milk and sugar. Maxine seemed to hover from one place to another, like a spider on a thread.

  “Sit down, Maxie,” said Marjorie. “You’re making the children nervous.”

  “There’s no reason you can’t stay here.”

  “Ashley didn’t sleep in the car,” said Elizabeth over the cries of her daughter. “Maybe I better go upstairs and see if I can put her to sleep.”

  “Brian slept most of the way—and he’s hungry,” said Rebecca.

  “Did you remember my bags?”

  “Yes, Mother, your bags are here now. Russell, put them in the guest room. Drake, what would you like to drink?”

  “We brought beer,” said Drake.

  “I told you not to bring the beer in,” said Rebecca.

  “I know,” said Drake, “but your parents don’t mind—do you, Pops? Everybody needs a little refreshment.”

  “I just don’t know how you can live without a microwave. But I guess that’s the way it was years ago. Right, Mother?”

  “We didn’t have microwaves,” said Blanch. “We hardly had a pot to piss in.”

  “Oh, please!” said Marjorie. “Let’s not have any of that crude language, Mother. You make it sound so unpleasant.”

  “Well, we didn’t,” said the old woman.

  “As I remember,” said Marjorie, “we were one of the more respected families.”

  “Tim, take that bowl away from him—he’s spilling.”

  “Here, I’ll get that,” said Maxine.

  “Hike!”

  “You two go outside if you’re going to horse around,” said Elizabeth. “Now you’ve got her started again.”

  “Who else wants a beer?”

  “I’m going to take her upstairs.”

  “Use Rebecca’s room. Marjorie’s staying in yours.”

  “Oh great, I’ve got to climb all those stairs.”

  “You can share Mother’s room if you’d rather.”

  “No thank you. No offense, Mother, but privacy is a commodity you can’t be without these days. It’s the main reason homes are so much larger than they used to be. Living on top of each other like this is no longer civilized.”

  “You girls were always spoiled.”

  “Did you hear that, Maxie?”

  “Tim, I told you to take that bowl away from her.”

  “What are you doing, Maxie?”

  “I’d better get the roast in the oven.”

  “Does old Mrs. Jackson still live down the road?”

  “She’s not that old,” said Maxine. “She still lives alone, though she uses crutches now. She still has a big garden.”

  “No, you can’t watch television, Brian. We’re not here to watch television. Maybe you’d like to tell Grandma what you did at day care. No, you can’t watch television.”

  “Anybody know who’s winning the game?”

  “I’ll just check,” said Drake, disappearing into the living room, followed shortly by Tim.

  “Russell, you’d better show them how to work the television.”

  It was in times like these that Rusty most regretted his retirement. In earlier years his work had humanely limited the time he spent with company. He felt trapped. It seemed unnatural to be in the house—with company—in the middle of the day. The television playing in the afternoon had profoundly unwelcome associations: one of his daughters home sick from school, visiting people in the hospital, the invalid sister of a salvage yard owner who knew the names of all the soap opera actors. As for sports, Rusty could not remember ever watching a game from beginning to end and sincerely hoped something would come up to prevent him from sitting through this one. Sports were for people who didn’t have enough work to do, and now he found himself among them.

  Sitting stiffly in a recliner next to Tim and Drake, watching football, Rusty entertained the same question that social situations always posed for him: Just who’s paying for all this? Before his retirement this question had an answer—he was. Some people could talk and watch television and do nothing all afternoon because others were working.

  Of course there were people all over the world who sat around talking, drinking, eating, and watching television, and there was nothing really wrong with that, but while they sat around other people worked. Both were necessary. Society was glued together by one group sitting around and another group doing something useful.

  But now everyone had money. Even discounting all of his and Maxine’s savings, his Social Security alone could cover the expense of the next couple days of sitting around. In addition, Tim and Drake, though barely thirty, were employed by large corporations and made more money than he had ever dreamed of. Everyone had money now, and sitting around, loitering, had become a way of life. His grandchildren were being methodically instructed in how to enjoy living while doing nothing.

  And it wasn’t just the expense. There was also the lingering feeling that everyone in the house unwittingly engaged in something slightly immoral, disreputable. Only he, Rusty, remained aware of it, and felt the need to counterbalance them, redeem them, by having something else to do.

  Maybe only older people like himself could understand the need for work, real work—the sanity that comes from keeping busy.

  “Fourth down!” yelled Tim. “Punt, you suckers!”

  “Hike.”

  Rusty wondered what his brother, Carl, was doing, and resolved to try to find him.

  ENVY

  OLIVIA LA
Y IN HER DARK ROOM WITHOUT SLEEPING. OUTSIDE the window she could see a thin sliver of moon nailed against the sky. The house was quiet except for Violet putting things away in the kitchen, and Olivia felt lonely.

  She remembered her childhood—much of it spent with her mother, who had fretted over Olivia’s poor health. She remembered countless doctors and “cures.” They had once driven all the way to St. Louis for a jar of something that looked like muddy water and tasted like mold. One year she had taken “light therapy,” lying in her underwear beneath a very bright light with special, healing filters. She had improved slightly during her teenage years and had even attended Haviland College in Kansas, an interval that now burned in her memory with particular clarity. Her Independence: extravagantly merry years filled with making her own decisions and feeling normal. But it did not last. Long before graduation, sickness forced her to return to Words, to the bed she lay in now.

  As their health declined, her grandmother and then her mother went to live with Violet in Grange. Aunt Leona came to live with Olivia and her father, and her aunt took care of her for nearly ten years. Then Violet moved back to Words, and a few months later Aunt Leona went to live with one of her daughters, she said, but Olivia knew better. Violet forced her out—her ways and Violet’s conflicted. Violet refused for anyone else to care for her father, who lived until that Day of Great Sorrow, eight short years ago.

  Never once had anyone wondered if Olivia would find someone outside the family to love. Of course she wouldn’t. And no one had ever wondered—since her mother died—if anything extraordinary or even interesting would happen to her. Of course it wouldn’t. Normal people had things happen to them, but the only things happening to Olivia originated from the befuddled machinations of her own body. She happened to herself. She hardly existed except as a project of Violet’s. She would never be like heaven to someone else—only a charitable activity for earning the right to get there.

  As Olivia lay in the dark thinking, she realized that, unlike Pastor Winifred, she had never really had something important to say. When she talked, people’s eyes glazed over, as though they were beginning a long train ride through Iowa and Nebraska with nothing to eat and nothing to drink and nothing to read. No one expected God to actually show His Favor to her, to let her into His Hiding Place. His Grace would never ever be available for Olivia other than in the general way all people share it, like ants in a bag of sugar. The Lord had never touched Olivia.

  She listened as Violet finished cleaning up the kitchen. Then, from across the hall, she heard the brushing of teeth. As the rapid swishing and sloshing continued, a feeling gave birth to an idea inside Olivia. It might have amounted to nothing more than a passing thought, a notion entertained briefly before falling asleep but after Violet had climbed into the bed across the hall, followed by the sounds of sagging springs and heavy breathing, other sounds had come into Olivia’s room. Her neighbor beyond the hedge began playing her bass, and the deep tones filled the night air. The low, melodic phrases haunted Olivia, encouraged her to entertain her new notion, turn it over and over, make it into something more real, nurture it into a plan.

  The following morning when Violet prepared to leave for town, Olivia said she wasn’t feeling well. She would stay home and write a note to Nancy Droomiker in the nursing home.

  After Violet left, Olivia called the bank where she had a savings account that had been started for her thirty years ago. The account had been increased in tiny amounts, sometimes from an auction or other sale, sometimes from a family member worried about her future, and in later years from the money left over from her supplemental security income.

  Yes, the account was still there, she was assured, earning interest per annum, safe as a bug in a rug.

  Next, Olivia had to get the hatbox down from the top of the tall cabinet in Violet’s bedroom.

  It wouldn’t be easy, mostly because of the woven throw rug at the foot of Violet’s bed. Throw rugs were fine for rolling straight over, but when turning was required, her wheelchair’s swiveling front wheels had an uncanny way of picking up folds and trapping her between two insurmountable humps of fabric.

  To solve this problem Olivia took the broom down the hall with her. She also had a gripping device for picking up small objects from the floor.

  With the broom, Olivia pushed the rug under Violet’s bed, giving her just enough room to navigate to the bureau. Here, she used the broom to work the hatbox to the edge of the bureau top and topple it over. As it fell, it turned upside down. Olivia’s mind emitted an audible shriek when the papers inside—curved upward on the corners from years of lying in a cramped container—skidded across the floor. Some of them slid under the bed.

  “Ha!” said Olivia, a sound more like a bray or a bugle note than a laugh. “You will not prevail.”

  With the broom she guided the overturned hatbox toward her until she was able to catch it and place it securely on her lap. Then, still using the broom, she maneuvered the papers within reach of the fingers of her long-handled reacher. She dropped many in midair before they made it to the hatbox, but she kept working.

  The box prevented her from leaning far enough ahead to reach those papers directly before her feet. So she backed out of the room, down the hall, and into the kitchen. She left the hatbox on the table and returned to the bedroom, backwards. Faced in this direction, she was able to reach the box top and two of the three papers still remaining under the bed—including the deed to the house. These she held in her teeth while she inched the last piece of paper toward her.

  Then Violet’s car pulled up next to the house.

  As quickly as she could, Olivia went to the hallway and, working the broom behind her, attempted to pull the rug from under the bed and into its flattened position. It was impossible. She had to be pointed in the other direction.

  She left the broom in the hall and wheeled to the kitchen, where she put the remaining papers in the box. As Violet walked up the front ramp, Olivia, inspired with frenzy, put the box in the oven, closed the door, and opened the refrigerator. The cold air made contact with the sweat pouring from her forehead.

  When Violet came inside, she found her sister attempting to reach a pitcher at the back of the refrigerator.

  “Land sakes!” said Violet. “You’ll have milk all over the floor. Here now, look at the state you’ve got yourself in. You’re sweating like a butcher. Come out of there.”

  “I want to get it myself,” said Olivia. “You go out and bring in the mail.”

  “It’s too early for mail,” said Violet. “The snow slows them down.”

  “I heard him. Go out and get the mail.”

  “All right, all right, but first let me get the milk. And look at this—you’ve got cereal all over the top of the stove.”

  “Get the mail!” shouted Olivia, summoning her most despotic tone of voice and allowing Violet to peek momentarily into her underground cavern of caged anger, which both sisters were dedicated to keeping tightly sealed. “I can get the milk myself.”

  Violet put her coat back on and went outdoors.

  Olivia sped down the hallway, recovered the broom, entered Violet’s bedroom (facing forward), and straightened the rug. Then she tossed the broom into her own bedroom and returned to the living room just as Violet came back in.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  “No. I told you it was too early.”

  “You can get the milk,” said Olivia. “I couldn’t reach it. And I’m sorry about spilling the cereal.”

  “I’ll fix us some tea,” said Violet. “Here, let me push you. Are you ever sweating! You must have fever.”

  During the next several days Olivia telephoned Byron and Pauline Roberts, who later invited Violet to supper one week from Saturday evening, without Olivia. Violet tried to beg off, but they would not be placated. They insisted she needed a break from her caretaking duties. They would be having fried chicken, and they suggested that Violet bring one of her special pies.
r />   The following day, Olivia asked to be taken into Grange to have her hair done. While she was in the beauty parlor there, she sent Violet on an errand to Wal-Mart and wheeled across the street to the bank. She met with Louis Brinkle, who could remember when his father had handled the Brasso family loans.

  Olivia took the deed to the house (bequeathed to the two sisters by their mother but placed in Olivia’s name at the time of their father’s death), out of her handbag.

  “Should I assume this loan will be for a similar purpose as your last?—which I believe was, let’s see, fifteen years ago, for porch and roof repair.”

  “You could make that assumption,” said Olivia.

  “Then I might at this time caution you, Miss Brasso, that the amount of the loan we discussed on the telephone is substantial in relation to the income of both you and your sister.”

  “Oh, I quite understand,” said Olivia, “but there is no need to worry.” She took out her recently updated savings book and passed it over.

  “I see,” he said, thumbing through the small pages with professional ease. “My sense of fair play now advises me to advise you that it would be better to withdraw the funds from this account and save several points of compounded interest. Why take out a mortgage when you have the needed assets in your savings account?”

  “My savings account has sentimental value to me,” explained Olivia. “My mother and father started it and I have never once made a withdrawal, as you can see.”

  “Very well. Then we may begin,” said Louis. “How would you like the money?”

  “In cash,” said Olivia.

  By the time Violet returned from Wal-Mart, Olivia was back at the beauty parlor, curls from her hair lying all over the floor.

  Three days later she withdrew all the money from her savings account and put the entire amount—in one-hundred-dollar bills—into a plastic shopping bag along with the cash from the loan.

  When Saturday arrived, Violet assumed Olivia would want to be left in her bed with the head cranked up to its semireclined position. This was customary, with all of Olivia’s necessities—telephone, books, crafting supplies, television remote, and police scanner—in easy reach.