Perfect on Paper

by Janet Goss

  “Boy, you know you’re young when you’re laughing so hard you can’t breathe and you still look cute,” Elinor Ann said from over my shoulder, causing me to jump.

  “You scared me!”

  “I didn’t mean to. But I couldn’t get to sleep, and I saw your light was on. I was wondering if you needed anything.”

  “No.”

  Just for you to be fine, I thought but didn’t say.

  She picked up the picture and smiled. “Remember how mad that photographer was when we ruined her shot?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “Tillie Tutweiler,” we said in unison.

  Elinor Ann hadn’t realized it at the time, but she’d hired the bossiest, most thorough wedding photographer in the Lehigh Valley for her big day. We were already running more than an hour late when this particular pose had been staged, and my friend was a nervous wreck.

  “Okay, Maid of Honor—I need you standing behind the bride, fastening the something-borrowed pearls around her neck.”

  Elinor Ann had sighed. “Do we really need to take another picture? There are an awful lot of people waiting downstairs in that chapel.”

  “Young lady, this is the most important moment of your entire life! You’ll be glad you took the time when you get to be my age.” Tillie had handed me the strand of pearls, and I’d dutifully shuffled into position.

  But just as I’d been about to close the clasp on the necklace, Elinor Ann had let out a faint yet unmistakable grunt of suppressed laughter, and that had been all it took to send the two of us into hysterics.

  “Man, was she furious,” I said, remembering Tillie’s malevolent expression while we stood there howling, frantically dabbing at each other’s eyes so our mascara wouldn’t run.

  “At least it got her to finally put down the camera.”

  “Until she corralled the bridal party after the ceremony and held up the reception line for forty-five minutes.”

  “Oh god—don’t remind me.” Elinor Ann returned the photograph to the bureau and turned to face me. “Dana?”

  Uh-oh, I thought, bracing myself for a well-meaning critique of my recent behavior that was bound to be both annoying and accurate. “Yes?”

  “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but… well, sometimes I look at that picture and I feel like you’re the exact same person now that you were then.”

  “So, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, I guess. As long as you’re happy. But don’t you want—I don’t know—more out of life?”

  “Like what?” I said, going into defensive mode so quickly that I completely forgot I was talking to my favorite person on the planet. “A husband and two boys and a mortgage?”

  She flinched, and instantly I felt like the biggest asshole in the entire universe. Or the biggest kid, which was apparently what I was destined to be for the rest of my days. “I didn’t mean that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry.” She smiled, shaking her head, and sat down at the foot of the bed. “You’d think I’d know better than to try to give you advice after all these years.”

  “Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you?”

  “I just… wish you had someone to share your life with, that’s all.”

  “I do. I have you, don’t I?”

  We both knew I was being manipulative, but I guess it was late enough and the situation was fraught enough that neither of us cared, because it worked. I scooted next to her, and she hugged me and everything was fine—at least until tomorrow.

  “Now, you’re sure there’s nothing I can get you?” she said.

  “I’m sure. Although I’d really like a copy of that photograph if you don’t know what to get me for Christmas this year.”

  “Of course.” She hugged me again, then got up and waved as she backed out the door.

  Way to go, Dana, I thought to myself. Elinor Ann’s the one with the problem, and she’s the one counseling you.

  As usual.

  But maybe tomorrow I could finally prove to her—and to myself—that I’d made some progress since that picture was taken.

  Just before I turned off the light, I looked over at the bureau one last time. What could have caused that happy, hopeful bride to become agoraphobic? Motherhood? Aging? Gluten?

  And how in the world was I ever going to fix it?

  I sighed and flipped over my pillow, wishing an answer would magically present itself in a dream, but knowing better than to expect one.

  I rose early the following morning—the better to hoodwink Elinor Ann into expanding her triangle to a square.

  “Ready for Adamstown?” I said when I swung open the kitchen door.

  She’d beaten me at the game. Pumpkin seeds covered two large baking sheets, and the countertops were obliterated by an ominous number of Tupperware containers. Cal slouched in front of a mug at the kitchen table, the picture of dejection.

  “Guess I’ll leave you gals to your hen party,” he muttered as he rose to his feet. “The pickup could sure use an oil change.”

  I helped myself to coffee and took his place at the table. “I thought we were going antiquing,” I said. “What’s with all the Tupperware?”

  “I had an overnight brainstorm,” Elinor Ann replied, a little too brightly. “I’ve got everything I need right here for turkey potpies. We can start on the dough as soon as I get those seeds toasting in the oven—I promised the boys I’d make them weeks ago!”

  “But—”

  “Potpies’ll be a much better dinner than boring old leftovers.” She was bustling around like a mad scientist on bennies.

  “Well… I guess we could always go over there later this afternoon.”

  I saw her freeze for a moment before responding. “Oh, I really don’t think we’ll have enough time to drive all the way to Adamstown. Maybe next visit.” She turned around to face the counter and began mincing an onion.

  All right, I thought. This is it. “Then first thing tomorrow morning we’re going down to Renningers antique market. You can drop me at the bus stop on your way back home.”

  The mincing noises stopped, and I watched her shoulders slump. “Well, Dana, the thing is—I don’t think I can manage that.”

  I was determined to play dumb for as long as it took to elicit a confession. “Sure you can. It’s—what?—five miles down the road. Not even. You’ll be home in time to make lunch for the boys.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” She turned to face me, tears streaming down her face. I sat there, feeling like an utter shit for forcing her to confront her deepest fear—until I realized that the onion was most likely responsible for her tears, and the sooner she conquered agoraphobia, the better.

  “I mean, I could definitely make it to Renningers,” she continued. “But the drive back here from the bus stop?” She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Impossible.”

  It all came out then: the terror that gripped her every time she backed the car out of the garage, the indefinitely postponed trips to the doctor and the dentist and the post office and the mall.

  “I’m fine as long as someone’s with me,” she explained. “And of course now that Angus can drive, he’s always begging to take the wheel. Which has been making things progressively worse since he got his learner’s permit. The last time I went someplace on my own was… jeez. June. The semiannual plant sale at Home Depot.”

  “But—wait a sec. I’m confused. You wouldn’t have been on your own if we’d gone to Willy Joe’s yesterday. There would have been five of us in the car.”

  “Oh, that. It wasn’t the driving I was worried about—for once. It was Cal’s triglycerides. The doctor read him the riot act after his physical last week.”

  The doorbell interrupted us: UPS with a delivery from Land’s End, just as Cal had presaged the day before. Elinor Ann slit the box open with a knife at the kitchen table. “I’m pathetic,” she said with a sigh, pulling out a half dozen pairs of socks.

  “Lis
ten,” I said. “I don’t know how to handle this any better than you, but it seems to me you’re going to have to force yourself into driving alone.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Can’t what?”

  We’d had our backs to the door, so neither of us had noticed when the boys entered the kitchen. Now we turned to face dual expressions of fear and concern.

  “She can’t make her potpie recipe without onions,” I explained—rather brilliantly on such short notice, I thought. “But just look at her eyes! She’s torturing herself!”

  Satisfied, they proceeded to the bread box, removed the remains of last night’s pies, and headed toward the door.

  “We’re Wii bowling,” Angus said.

  Eddie paused on his way out and returned to the table. “Your potpie’d be just as good without onions, Mom.” He hugged Elinor Ann, and I experienced one of those rare moments when I understood why humans propagate their own species.

  “Okay, you’re on,” she said once the boys had raced each other to the top of the stairs, pounding her fist on the table for emphasis. “I can make it back alone from the bus stop tomorrow. I hope.”

  The door to the master bedroom cracked open when I tiptoed to the bathroom at seven the next morning, but it was Cal who poked his head out.

  “Where’s Elinor Ann?” I said.

  “Shoot, she’s been down in the kitchen since—I dunno, before daybreak. Told me the potpie wasn’t sitting well, but it’s pretty obvious that weren’t it.”

  “She admitted as much yesterday.” I told him about our planned excursion to Renningers. “If she can drive herself home—well, at least it’s progress.”

  “I’ll say. I sure do appreciate this, Dana.”

  “It’s going to be okay.” Briefly I considered giving him a reassuring hug, but we’d never had that kind of relationship. Also, he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  “I sure hope you’re right.”

  I sure hope I am, too, I thought, dragging my overnight bag down the stairs, where I almost tripped over Eddie. He was leaning against the balustrade on the bottom step, semicomatose. “Fiiiinally,” he groaned when I took a seat by his side.

  “What are you doing up?”

  “Saying goodbye. Took you long enough to get ready.”

  “It’s my prerogative as a female. We’re entitled to take forever.”

  “No kidding.” He paused and glanced toward the kitchen door before saying, “Aunt Dana?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is Mom… okay?”

  “What makes you think she isn’t?”

  “Angus and I were up late playing computer games. Really late. Like, four in the morning. And then right after we turned out the light, I heard her go downstairs.”

  “Oh, that. It was nothing. She had indigestion from the potpie.”

  “But she always makes potpies. They never make her sick.”

  “Well, your dad just told me this one did.”

  I watched relief replace the apprehension on his face, but only for a moment.

  “Aunt Dana?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’d tell me if my mom was gonna, like, die, right?”

  “Is that what you’re worried about? Believe me, Eddie—if your mother was sick, I’d be moving into your guest room, not taking the 11:14 back to New York City.”

  Finally Eddie relaxed, hugged me goodbye, and retreated upstairs to sleep off his gaming hangover. I used my sleeve to blot my suddenly moist eyes before joining Elinor Ann in the kitchen.

  She was pacing between the stove and the refrigerator, gnawing on a thumbnail and hyperventilating.

  “Ready to go?” I said.

  In response, she leaned over the sink and threw up.

  “God, I wish I could blame the potpie for that,” she whimpered, flicking the switch on the disposal.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE CAT IN THE HAT COMES BACK

  By the time we pulled into Renningers’ parking lot, Elinor Ann had run through nearly half a roll of paper towels mopping the sweat from her palms. “Thank god you remembered to bring these,” she said, tearing off another sheet. “If my hands had slipped on the steering wheel—”

  “But they didn’t,” I interrupted. “And you didn’t crash the car, and we didn’t die, and nothing bad’s going to happen on your way home, either.”

  She winced at my mention of her pending solo trip. “I’d really rather not talk about that right now.” She parked, and we entered the low building that housed the antique dealers: two narrow aisles of jam-packed booths that connected at one end to a larger structure occupied by a farmers’ market. I turned left toward the market, but before I could take a single step, Elinor Ann’s hand clamped onto my shoulder.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “The Plain & Fancy Donut Shop, where else?” We always kicked off our visits to Renningers with their Long Johns, éclair-shaped sugar bombs roughly four times the size of a normal doughnut. In the unlikely event I make it to heaven, I expect to see Long Johns sharing space on the buffet table alongside the more traditional fare of manna and ambrosia.

  “Don’t make me eat anything today,” she pleaded. “I’ll just barf again on my way home from the bus station.”

  Her expression was so mournful, all I could do was envelop her in a hug. “It’s going to be okay,” I said, stroking up and down her spine. I could feel her whole body trembling. Over her shoulder, the sleazy antique firearms dealer whose booth we always took pains to avoid leered at us unabashedly.

  “Have a super day… ladies,” he said, in a tone reminiscent of the late Barry White, after we’d let go of one another and passed by the front of his display case.

  “What’s with him?” Elinor Ann whispered.

  “I think he mistook our exchange for girl-on-girl action.”

  She rolled her eyes. “No wonder I’d rather stay home.”

  “Well, you’ve come this far. Let’s find the crazy woman with the four-foot-long braids—she ought to have vintage dish towels.”

  Elinor Ann picked up eight towels, and I expanded my collection of amateur dog paintings with an astoundingly awful portrait of a German shepherd that appeared to have both eyes on the same side of its head, and then it was time to face the inevitable.

  “I’m sure you can manage this,” I said.

  “I’m glad one of us thinks so.”

  “Of course I do. Why, I’ll bet you could even handle a detour to the convenience store on our way to the bus stop.”

  She groaned. “I should have known. Your precious New York Times.”

  “Hey—you can’t deprive me of my Saturday crossword. I’ve already been denied my Long John.”

  She made a show of consulting her watch. “We still have a few minutes. I’m sure that creepy gun dealer would be delighted to provide you with his Long John.”

  “A joke! There’s hope!”

  “Shut up.”

  I refused to let Elinor Ann wait with me for the bus to arrive from Reading. “Keep your momentum going,” I instructed. “And call me the instant you get home. The bus isn’t due for fifteen minutes; I’ll still be sitting right here.”

  She sighed. “I know this is stupid.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Yes, it is. If I can manage to get back and forth to work every day, you’d think I’d be able to drive the five miles home.”

  “Well, sure—that’s the logical way to look at it. But you’re crazy, remember?”

  Finally she managed a smile. “I knew I could count on you for moral support.”

  I gave her a parting squeeze, then stood and waved and prayed—even though I don’t usually go in for that sort of thing—until the car was out of sight.

  “She has to get better,” I beseeched the vaguely face-shaped image embedded in an overhead cloud formation. I’d been praying to sort-of-faces in clouds ever since I was a kid, preferring a visible embodiment of my alleged creator over the amorphous “fo
rce of nature” that many agnostics espouse.

  “Please let Elinor Ann get home safely,” I added. “And while you’re at it, maybe you could just… cure her?”

  I sighed and sat down on the curb. The next few minutes would be harrowing for both of us. Thank Cloud I had the newspaper to pass the time.

  I was all the way up to the Metro section, more than enough time for her to cover the distance between Fair Street and the Burkholder homestead, when the bus rounded the corner. What the hell was going on?

  Nothing, I answered myself. She’s probably so happy she made it back, she forgot to call. Or one of the boys woke up and distracted her with a breakfast order. Or she stopped to chat with the old lady next door.

  Or she’s stranded on the side of the road in a state of coronary arrest.

  I reached into the little side pouch of my purse where I always keep my cell phone, but it was empty. With growing anxiety, I rooted through the entire bag, but to no avail. Even though I knew I hadn’t put it in my duffel, I checked that next and confirmed the obvious. Had it slipped out onto Elinor Ann’s car seat? Had I laid it down while paying for the dog portrait?

  I cursed under my breath. Of course I hadn’t. I could see the phone in my mind’s eye, still attached to its charger, which was plugged into the socket next to the bureau in the Burkholders’ guest room.

  Which was fine. Elinor Ann was home, and she was fine. She’d taken the first step. And she’d take another step on Monday, just as soon as I convinced her to drive to the post office and send me my damn phone, which I was a stupid, stupid idiot for leaving behind.

  But there was nothing I could do about that now, so I might as well get on the damn bus and solve the crossword.

  Since it was just under a half hour’s ride from Kutztown to Wescosville, and since the devious Saturday puzzle often took longer than a Sunday, I always challenged myself to complete it before the doors of the bus opened for the next influx of passengers. For the past several years, I’d achieved my goal even before the bus made the turn off Route 222, but as soon as I opened the Arts section and located the puzzle, I knew today’s ride would be a race against time. The byline on top of the grid read “W. W. W. Moody.”