The Widow’s Husband

by Sheila Evans

  However, I dredge up a good story from my days as a Molly Maid. “I’m on my rounds, I go in this house—I had a key—I was vacuuming away, thinking I was alone. Then the bedroom door opens, and this woman—she’d stayed home sick, had forgotten about me coming—lunges down the hall with a gun. I thought I’d had it. This wild woman, red hair, green nightgown. She about gave me a heart attack.” Now that I think about it, she was a lot like Maggie Quinn. Could it have been her? The idea makes my bile rise, threatens me with indigestion. No, too long ago. Maggie would have been a child, or not born yet.

  A woman standing next to Helen has been listening. She has a hard, tough appearance, bleached blond hair, rows of earrings up her lobes. She leans across Helen’s shoulder (I assume she’s aware of bar etiquette, has received tacit permission to do this) and adds her own bad job to our litany. She once worked in a hospital emptying bedpans, changing soiled sheets, sponging feces from smeared bottoms. It was an Alzheimer’s ward, and her descriptions of their confusion, and inexplicable and frightening behaviors seems to strike a cord with Helen. The two of them split off from us, sink into their own pool of talk, like animals at a waterhole. Bruce heads for the john; I return to my pattern of wet circles on the bar.

  A new person appears beside me, filling the gap Helen and Bruce left. He calls for the barkeep to bring me a new beer. I don’t know this guy, but he wants to talk about gun control, and how wrong I am to tell about the woman coming down the hall at me with a pistol. Those sorts of stories give the other side more ammunition to attack our freedoms. He urges me to rethink my reaction to the situation. “What would you have done if you were alone in your own home, sick, and you heard a noise in the house? Wouldn’t you have wanted to protect yourself?” he says in a silky reasonable tone.

  Feeling nettled—he’s undermining my best story—I slide a nervous look across his face, upon which I fancy I see a smirk. He’s a distillation of the kind of guy you’d imagine hangs out in here. A bit scruffy, maybe from the work he does. He needs a shave, a bath, a scrubbing down. He’s wearing the uniform: name-appliqued shirt (this one is RICK), blue jeans, baseball cap. His cap reads Husqvarna. I’m about to placate him by telling him that Emmett kept guns, but instead I say, “Don’t you think it’s ironic that the chainsaw crowd, that staunch bunch so in love with our American freedoms, prefers a Swedish product?” His face clouds; I see the wheels turning, he’s trying to put it together because that cap has become a part of his head and he’s forgotten what it says.

  Just then another guy, interchangeable with this one—whose name, according to his shirt, is LOU—joins us. “Hey, Rick,” he says, “what’s going down, man?” To me, “Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s full of it, right?”

  Now with the two of them, I feel trapped, which is ridiculous because they are not focused on me, but on each other, and in giving each other a jokey bad time. I want my own people back, I feel let down by them, I regret the breakdown of our integrity. I search for Helen through the crowd, which has grown. A few people here are coupled, but most are floaters from the nearby shops that are closing. Finally I spot her; she’s still into it with the hard-looking blond broad … yeah, I’d call her a broad. And Bruce … he’s talking across the bar to the owner’s wife—I assume that’s who she is. I turn back to my two guys, smile uneasily. I didn’t put in a request for them. Why aren’t the international rules of bar etiquette working? Or maybe they are, and I’m sending out a signal I’m not aware of. Rick and Lou are still blithely insulting each other, playfully horsing around, although there’s a real breath of belligerence, too. Bruce, looking down the bar to me, sees the guys laughing, me smiling. He returns to his conversation with the dark woman behind the bar. It’s only after he looks away that I realize he’d been checking, and I could have given him the high sign for a rescue.

  There’s a stir at the door: the band has arrived, begins hauling in its equipment, setting up on a small dais in the back of the room. Rick tells me they are the Screw Drivers, a great combo. Lou adds that last week the Purple Enemy had been dynamite, or, as he puts it, bad. “Baaaad, man.” Maybe this place is Tiffany’s style after all.

  I’m making up my own names for bands. How about the Magenta Enema? Or the Sperm Squirts, which would fit this ragtag bunch. To me they look like kids, seedy, too young to be out on their own, too young to live.

  I’m thinking now’s the time to go. I’m also thinking how I’ll make Mr. Purdy laugh with their name, the Screw Drivers … when it hits me: I have stood him up. We were supposed to have had oyster stew at the Soup Kettle, and I have deserted him, forgotten him in the blitz of this day’s events. I’m appalled, make my excuses to Rick and Lou, hurry into my coat. Bruce scuttles down to me, “You going? I thought you were having a good time.”

  I tell him that I’ve let an old man down, a lonely old man who was counting on me. I’m ashamed. I know that if Mr. Purdy were to fill out a grid, I would be numbered within his two friends to sit with.

  Bruce says, “I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you.”

  “Okay, walk me out, talk to me as we go.”

  “Well,” he says opening the door—the air outside is cool and fresh and I wonder again what I was doing in there. “This is awkward, but Peg … well, I thought that since you and Helen were such good friends—”

  “Helen and I? I thought the two of you were good friends.”

  “We are, but not like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Since she’s a lesbian, I thought you were, too.”

  “Lesbian!” Then a light goes on, and I see … I don’t know what I see. I mumble some nonsense—it takes all kinds, stereotyping, hasty judgements, etc., all the while thinking what a simpleton I’ve been.

  “Since that’s not the case, I was wondering if you and I, if you and me, if we could get together, go to dinner or something.”

  “Bruce! You’re asking me out? On a date?” My face burns in embarrassment. The antiquated term.

  “Oh, no, not a date. Well, yeah, a date, although that sounds odd. Okay, how about it? You want to go to dinner some evening?”

  “Sure. But not tonight. I’ve got to mend my fences.”

  “I can’t make it tonight, either. Isabel and I have chores to do.”

  “On a Friday night?”

  “Yeah, because it’s a short work week coming up. Thanksgiving. But I’ll call you, okay?”

  I ride home with my head in a whirl. What a day. Such new influences in my life—the bar scene, hard drugs, lesbianism. Office politics. Sociological grids. A date, a real date, not a blind one, but a date with a man I know and like, I guess.

  Wouldn’t Emmett be amazed? I am.

  I drive across town, slowly—after all, I’ve got beer on my breath—and I plan how I’ll blitz Mr. Purdy with such a load of hardy frantic stuff. Tell him I am so sorry, please forgive me. I’ll ask him to go to the Soup Kettle tomorrow night, which is chicken noodle night, somehow I’ll make it up to him.

  However, after I knock on his door—he’s left his light for me—he is stiff with what he views as my desertion, and I see I’ve hurt him badly. He says he doesn’t like chicken noodle soup, any fool can make chicken noodle soup. Even his Millie, who was no kind of cook, could make chicken noodle soup. It’s oyster stew he wanted; oyster stew takes a fine hand, knowing just when the oysters are done, but not cooked a moment longer because that will make them tough as pieces of inner tubing.

  In desperation, I invite him to share Thanksgiving dinner, I cajole him, I plead that I need him, I count on him; I promise him a lovely feast, with cheesecake from Fleischmann’s Bakery on Main. I tell him Amy’s coming with her friend who I’ve yet to meet, although I’ve heard a lot about him. I need his opinion about this fellow. Coolly, he accepts.

  When Bruce does call, I invite him, too, because I remember that Thanksgiving is a bad anniversary for him, marking four years that he’s been on his own. Or was thrown out of his house, out
of his family except for the faithful Isabel, who is deserting him to eat a Thanksgiving feast with Jan. My invite is a lifesaver, he says. What the hell, I ask Helen, too. That will make six of us, a nice round number, enough to keep us off-balance, neutralized, unable to connect in a real and deep way. I’m appalled at myself for thinking this, and at the obligation I’ve taken on, cooking for six disparate people when I’m used to cooking for one.

  Unlike Halloween, Thanksgiving was once my favorite holiday. Emmett would be home, settled in his chair with football on the TV. We’d have a fire, a glass of wine, the air full of the aroma of roasting turkey. But the air will not be full of it this year: both Amy and her friend are rampant vegetarians. Vegetarians are a pain in the ass, I think darkly as I head out to the fish store after a brief argument with the Bronco that doesn’t want to start. The fish market! Whoever heard of fish instead of turkey for Thanksgiving?

  However, I turn not into the fish store, but into the parking lot of the thrift shop, the one where I got the Chinese dress. I need something new, and the real stores are full of winter’s dark colors, heavy fabrics. I need something light and frothy. Summer passed me by this year, and I want it back.

  An hour of browsing, and then I leave Cheap Frills with an old-fashioned broomstick skirt—the kind you tie onto a broomstick to dry, to set in a million little pleats—and a drawstring blouse. Both are too young for me, and unseasonable, but they recall my hippie days and I must have them.

  Then a dutiful stop at the fish market where I buy salmon. But at the real market, I defiantly lower into my cart a turkey frozen hard as stone, and I wonder if it will thaw in time, and if there is any truth to thawing a turkey in the dryer. Wouldn’t that create a thunderous racket? Like Amy’s heavy sneakers going round and round. Won’t Amy be upset with me? Suddenly I don’t care. It’s my house, it’s my life.

  However, Amy doesn’t seem upset by the fragrance of turkey in the air. What gets her is my outfit. “Mom! You look like a gypsy. Aren’t you cold in that?”

  “No, of course not,” I snap. “Aren’t you hot in that?” She wears a sweater and wool pants, and I remember that day of walking on the beach. Have we changed places? I haven’t seen her for a month, not since we met for lunch at her health food café. We’d seemed wary of each other, out of touch. Or maybe I’d been adversely affected by my baked tofu with tahini sauce. Now she appears fuller and pinker, with a bloom on her.

  Amy lays a hand, with decorously shellacked nails, on her guy’s arm. “Mom, this is Phil, Phil Llewellen, he’s a teacher, Mom. He teaches History.”

  I hold out my hand, but he gives me a hug. “Mom,” he says.

  I’m not your mom, but I try not to pull away. I also try not to stare, because she’s brought home a young Emmett, blond, blue-eyed, a reincarnation. But it won’t work, I think, smiling into his white grin, experiencing a flash of hostility. This time I’m wise to you; I’m on my guard, buster. Just then Mr. Purdy comes down the hall from my bedroom. Amy frowns, and in spite of myself, I hurriedly explain: he’s been reprogramming my VCR (which, thanks to Mountain Valley Cable, I can do myself, but I wanted to make him feel useful).

  Mr. Purdy says, “I set my specs down on that bedspread of yours. Like to never found them again on that field of daisies in there.”

  Amy smiles in a superior way. “You and your daisy bedspread.”

  “It’s wonderful and I love it. Go see how I’ve rearranged the bedroom, shuffled furniture around. No? Well, I’ll tell you,” I add defiantly, “it’s great having the big TV in there.” Dozing off with Brian Williams and the news; then, rousing, going on to reruns, old movies, talk shows.

  I say to Mr. Purdy, “Will you pour the wine? Go in the living room, please, make yourself at home.”

  “Mom, you moved the furniture around. No wine for me. PawPaw!” Amy makes over the cat, but he sidles over to Mr. Purdy, who comes in with glasses for himself and Phil. No wine for me, either. I have to think to get this complex meal on the table. Salmon and turkey … am I nuts? I should have gone with one or the other.

  “Yes, the furniture … you like it this way?” We survey my rearranged living room, but I still see it the way it was. Traffic patterns, furniture dents in the Berber. Emmett over there, watching football.

  “Maybe it’s time to rethink the rug. Otherwise, it’s okay.” Amy frowns.

  She’s frowning at either Emmett’s big chair, or at Mr. Purdy sitting in it. He’s wearing the brown and green combo he’d had on during the garage sale, his best outfit. In spite of myself, I feel a contemptuous familiarity, and impatience. Amy settles in my little plaid chair, Phil on the couch. I’ve got a fire going, I take a break from kitchen duties to perch on the hearth, admiring the fall of my skirt, the way it drapes my legs, the hippie boots I dug out for this outfit. They’re suede, dark blue, with just a bit of a heel. Why haven’t I worn them more often? Because Emmett had disapproved, that’s why.

  Amy says it’s too hot in here. She frowns when I tell her to take off her sweater. “It’s not that kind of a sweater,” she says.

  I’m on my way to open a window when the doorbell rings. “That will be Bruce,” I tell them, “or maybe Helen.”

  It’s Bruce, bringing flowers, roses from Safeway. “A Thanksgiving dinner invitation, it’s so special, I can’t tell you … well, I appreciate you asking me. So long since I’ve been invited into someone’s family like this.”

  I laugh, try to lighten the emotional freight he insists on hauling around. “No big deal. Mr. Purdy, from next door, Amy, my daughter, and … Phil.”

  Amy gives Bruce a cool once-over, and I try to see him through her eyes. He’s attractive with his silver iron-filings hair. Tall, thin, wiry; upright posture, good teeth and skin. Nice gray eyes with generous lashes behind wire-rimmed aviator styled glasses. What she disapproves of, and I suppose I do, too, is his outfit. He’s wearing what looks like a brown leisure suit (another oxymoron, like industrial park). It’s fuddy-duddy, and too formal. Phil, in contrast, is just right in a cashmere sweater over a button-down shirt, which reminds me of Bill Moyers. Tailored khaki pants like Docker’s, no pleats.

  Mr. Purdy pours more wine, leads Bruce into the living room. I escape to my dinner prep. From the kitchen, I hear them struggling with small talk.

  Helen arrives in a blast of good cheer, and presents her own bottle of wine. Mr. Purdy sees to her while I try to make gravy with no lumps, no giblets. Emmett liked giblet gravy, I hate it. PawPaw will eat royally. Amy comes out to see if I need help. Yes, I tell her, and put her to work. But what she really wants is to make her report on Helen. “Mom,” she breathes, “that woman, she’s so butch.”

  “What?” I’m distracted with the damn fish, which I’m trying to poach.

  “That hair, those clothes. Who is she?”

  I fix Amy with a look. “She’s my friend from work. Put the butter on.”

  I hear Mr. Purdy booming forth in the living room. He says the weather is weird, it’s global warming. He complains about the cost of energy and real estate, rush hour traffic. He rattles on to Phil, Bruce, and Helen about the latest car chase through town. He’d just seen it on the news. A patrol officer tried to stop a kid in a primered pickup with no license plates. The cop cornered him out on the frontage road, in the parking lot of Allied Tool, the outfit that provided Emmett’s nudie calendar almost a year ago. But the kid drove over a planter, through a barricade, and down a sidewalk, scaring the hell out of pedestrians. Then he sideswiped two cars, a van, and an SUV towing a boat. He escaped by going the wrong way down a one-way alley and disappeared. The cop had to let him go due to new restrictions against reckless pursuit.

  I’m getting serving bowls out, stirring the gravy, turning the fish—and I hear him peppering them with his favorite James Bond-ish cures for reckless driving. If you start your car with alcohol on your breath, a sensor will kill the engine and activate handcuffs that pinion your wrists to the steering wheel. If you’re being tailgated, y
ou push a dash button and spray the bastard with a cloud of noxious smoke. His favorite (I’ve heard it before): you are not allowed to drive a car that has more horsepower than you have IQ. “Think what that will do for law enforcement!” he shouts. “The cops would know right off if they got Hannibal Lector or O.J. Simpson.”

  I yell from the kitchen, “But then there’d be no more car chases. Think what that would do to your TV viewing.” Mr. Purdy’s favorite fare is Cops, American Justice, and America’s Most Wanted. He turns the sound up so loud that in my back yard I can hear tires squealing and gunshots from his set next door.

  When I call them, “People, come and eat,” they arrange themselves around the table. The only seating plan I have is Mr. Purdy at its head, me at the foot. I make a last foray into the kitchen for the cranberries, and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the kitchen window. I look grand, the foxtail streak, the pinecone earrings, the eyeliner and mascara; pink in my cheeks from kitchen heat. The gypsy outfit is perfect, and I love it. Then when I approach the table to sit, Mr. Purdy stands for me. My heart is going to burst; I’m in love with this moment.

  But an awkward silence follows, as we pass food. Amy says something about her dad, how she wishes he were here, and Bruce’s smile freezes. I yearn to throttle her. She must know I want her to stifle this weak-kneed trip down memory lane, at least for now. But she goes on about how she misses his wall of self-congratulatory accolades, and the old way the furniture was arranged.

  This kills our incipient conversation; the silence is leaden. Then Mr. Purdy tells a food joke, bless his heart. Seems this fellow went to see the doctor, with a banana stuck in one ear, a cucumber in the other, a cherry up one nostril (“that’s a medical term, nostril”) and a raspberry up the other. “Doc, I just don’t feel good,” says the man. “No wonder,” says the doctor. “You’re not eating right.” We groan, then laugh dutifully.