Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

by Z. Z. Packer

  “You mean your flesh color. And Livia’s and Mr. Fott’s. Not mine.”

  Alice stared at Doris. “For the love of heaven, it’s just a word.”

  Livia said, “But why use the word if it’s not accurate? It’s simply not the color of everyone’s flesh.”

  “Well, how should I say it? What should I say when describing it? Say, ‘Oh, I bought a dress the color of everybody else’s skin except Doris’s’?”

  “I’m not the only one.”

  “I could say it was a flesh-colored dress and everyone would know what I was talking about. Everyone would know exactly what I was talking about.”

  “I’m sure they would, Alice,” Livia said. She laughed, high and free. “Everyone would.”

  Alice pinched her fingers together, as though holding a grain of salt. “It’s those little things, Doris. Why do your people concentrate on all those little, itty-bitty things?”

  WHY SHOULD she care about what Alice said? That phrase. “Your people.” Livia had kicked Alice out of the car right there on Newburg Road, where cabs didn’t come and buses were scarce. It was a hard thing to do—kick someone out of a car—and Livia had had to open the passenger side door, drag Alice out against her will, tug and tug until Alice, unwilling to make too much of a scene, finally stayed put on the sidewalk. Her face scrunched up mean and hateful, as if she was too proud to cry, though obviously she wanted to. Livia looked disappointed that Doris wouldn’t help kick Alice out, but Doris hopped into the front seat where Alice had sat just the same.

  “That’s better, now, isn’t it,” Livia had said, as if she’d done it all for Doris, but Doris didn’t speak to her the whole way home. Alice had annoyed her, offended her, but she didn’t see any sense in doing anything about it. Acknowledging too much just made it hurt worse. Livia’s self-satisfaction and self-righteousness felt just as bad as Alice’s thoughtlessness. When Livia drove Doris to the West End part of town where Doris lived, she seemed to delight in seeing so many Negro faces.

  During supper, Doris hardly said anything, and no one seemed to notice. Charleroy and Edgar talked excitedly about stickball, about grade-school gossip, about their teacher’s bosom until, finally, their mother told them to hush.

  IT WAS the family’s habit to walk after supper, a leisurely stroll that made them feel wealthy. Once they got to Stutz’s Fine Appliances, they’d stop and survey the fifteen or so TVs on display as if they were finicky purchasers looking for the exact one that would suit their needs. In the beginning, Doris’s mother would make noises of approval or disapproval of the various models, and her father would crane his neck to examine the side finish and sturdiness of the cabinets. They had all played along when they’d started going to Stutz’s so long ago, though they all knew that they didn’t have the money and wouldn’t for a long time. As far as Doris knew, she had been the only one to actually go inside and talk to the old man.

  They stood outside of Stutz’s swaddled in coats and watched Lucy and Ethel and Fred beg Ricky to let them on his show. Lucy, ridiculous in a ballerina costume, Ethel in a cha-cha dress, and pudgy Fred in the same dress but wearing a Shirley Temple wig.

  Old man Stutz came outside, hobbling. “Hello, friends. Hello, Dorrie.”

  They looked at Doris, and a chill went through her as if she didn’t have a coat on at all. Never before when she and her family visited at night had Stutz been there, only his son, the one he called Lazybones, who never made an effort to go out and greet window shoppers.

  “Hello, Mr. Stutz. Mr. Stutz, this is my family.” She went through the introductions, and her parents fell silent. The boys pinched each other and tried not to laugh.

  “All the answers,” Stutz said, wagging and pointing to Doris with a little too much exuberance. “She knows all the answers to all the game shows! You want to buy?” He gestured extravagantly at the television they’d been watching.

  Her mother laughed as she had at Livia. Nervous, uncertain. “Well, mister, we’d like to. We’re working on it.”

  “Work on it, work on it!” Stutz said, smiling broadly and bobbing his head.

  When they left to walk back home her mother said, “That little Russian man sure is funny-looking.”

  “Woman, you always got to talk ’bout how someone look,” her father said. “Someone nose always too big or too little. Or they teeth missing. Or they breath stank.”

  “Can’t help it if he’s funny-looking.”

  “Lord made him that way. He Russian.”

  “Rich as he is, he can do something to his face. Keep it from being so funny-looking.”

  “He’s Lithuanian,” Doris said, “not Russian.”

  And little Edgar, popping her on the thigh, said, “Who asked you?”

  A FEW weeks after the car ride and movie, Livia did not show up for class. Doris assumed she was playing hooky, but then two days passed, then three; still no Livia. Finally she went to Livia’s homeroom teacher to check whether Livia had been in school at all. She’d been marked present that day, and though Doris looked for her, she couldn’t find her. She was not in Fott’s class, hadn’t stopped by to lean up against Doris’s locker and dole out pithy bon mots.

  As soon as the last bell rang, Doris searched the front of the school, and when she did not find Livia there, she walked to the student parking lot. There, the white kids stared at her the way department store clerks stared at her family when they went to try on clothes. They stared, then looked away as if they hadn’t seen anything at all.

  Doris ran toward the gym, remembering how the smokers always hovered near it. Doris was out of breath, but Livia didn’t seem to notice or care. She stood there and smiled as though awaiting introductions at a cocktail party.

  “Doris,” she said.

  “Where’ve you been?” She wanted Livia to say, To and fro upon the earth and walking up and down on it. That was always Livia’s answer. Say it, Doris willed. Say it. She’d missed those lines from Job, missed Livia more than she thought she would. Say it.

  “I’ve been around,” Livia said. She sounded drunk. “Around and around.”

  “Around? What about school? What about—” She caught herself before she could say, What about me?

  “I hate to say it, Doris, but my time here is limited.”

  Doris thought death, sickness. Livia going insane like Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass; she imagined Livia laid up with satin sheets like Greta Garbo in Camille, the movie she’d seen for extra credit for French class.

  “No,” Livia said, reading her mind. “Nothing serious. I’m going to school up North. I can’t stand it down here anymore. You shouldn’t either.”

  She didn’t know what Livia could mean by that: Where would she go? What choice did she have? And had she known things to be any other way? Only rich folks like the Bermans could afford to go wherever they wanted.

  “My mother said you were in the sanatorium,” Doris said. “Was that where you were before? Is that where you’re going?” She checked Livia’s face for some crumb of emotion.

  Livia smiled brightly, as if Doris never ceased to amaze her, then drew Doris up in a hug. “Oh, Doris,” she said. “Don’t you know that the real crazy people are the ones who do the same thing over and over again? Expecting a different result every time?”

  ON THE school bus all the Negro kids talked like a party, relieved to be going home. When they spoke to her, it was either a question about Holy Rollers or a question about what whites did in class, how they acted and how they treated her.

  “Do they throw things at you?” one boy asked.

  “Naw,” a girl answered in her stead. “She’d beat ’em up like Joe Louis.”

  She got off right before Stutz’s. None of the televisions were on window display. Without the televisions, the windows were dustier than she’d remembered. It seemed as though someone had stolen them all, but there was no broken glass. She cleared the film of dust off the window and peered in. In the rear of the dark store, televisi
ons sat mutely on the floor like obedient children. Someone was moving around inside. The figure took a large box down from the counter and set it on the floor. He remained hunched over it for a long time, heaving, as if to gather strength for the next one. When the figure finally stood, she saw that it was old man Stutz himself.

  She tapped on the window, saw him frown, then, recognizing her, smile with all his wrinkles. He invited her in with a grand sweep of his arm, like a baseball player winding up to pitch. “Come in, come in,” he said, though the glass was so thick she could only see him mouthing the words. She threw her hands up. “How? The door is locked?” He frowned. Then, understanding, unlocked the door.

  “Mr. Stutz.” She started to take off her coat, out of habit, but the store was so cold she kept it on. “How are you?”

  He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, folded it in fourths, then eighths, then put it in his pocket. He rubbed his huge eyelids. “Oh, not so good, Dorrie. Moving out. Almost two weeks now, you haven’t heard?”

  She tried to remember the last time she’d seen him. Perhaps a month ago. “No. I guess I haven’t been by in a while.”

  “This is the problem. You see it? This is the very problem. People come by. They watch. Laugh at Lucy. Ha ha ha, look at Lucy, love Lucy.” He made a crazy face, though whether it was supposed to be Lucy or Ricky, Doris could not tell. Then Stutz’s face went from crazy to somber. “The people, they love Lucy, they go home. No one buys. No sales, no money. No money, no Stutz.” He threw up his hands like a magician making himself disappear. “No Stutz,” he said again. He ambled over to the nearest chair, brought out a second one for Doris. She sat, watching him settle into his. He coughed for a long time, then brought out his handkerchief and pressed it against his lips. “And other things,” he said, “but I don’t want to offend.”

  Her skin prickled. “What other things?”

  “The neighborhood.”

  “They’re good people.”

  “Yes,” Stutz said sadly, his eyes wise and sclerotic, “Good people.” He swept his hand toward the barren store window. “This neighborhood. Good people, yes, but what’s-their-name, right here on Fourth Street. Chickens in the yard. Scratch, scratch scratch. Cock-adoodledoo. Lithuania in America. And those boys, playing baseball in the middle of the street. Do cars want to stop and buy from Stutz if they will get a crack on their windshield? I don’t think so.” Stutz shook his head in a slow, ancient way. “Good people. Yes. But.”

  It was true. Sister Forrester still kept chickens in her yard, and her brothers’ friend Juny Monroe got every boy a mile around to play stickball in the street. The games lasted for hours. She could understand how, surrounded by televisions all day, one would be able to see that the rest of the world was different from Fourth Street, prettier, more certain, full of laughter and dresses and men who wore hats not only when they went to church but when they went to work in offices and banks too.

  Old Stutz seemed to see something in Doris’s eye and said, “Aha! But as they say, there is a silver lining. A smart girl you are, Dorrie. You go learn, come back, make better. You see. I planned it all out for you. Just do.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  He waved his hand. “Easy? Easy? I come from Lithuania. I leave my wife and my Lazybones son behind. I work. I send money. They come. Now my wife watches television and points. She wants a fur. Okey, dokey. I say, ’I go to the wood and catch you a fur.’ She says, No no no no, and slams all the doors.”

  She wanted to say, But you’re white. She wanted to say, In another generation, your Lazybones son will change his name from “Stutz” to “Stuart” or “Star” and the rest of America will have forgotten where you came from. But she couldn’t say it. He coughed and this time unfolded the handkerchief and spat into it, so instead she said, “And I suppose you had to walk to school, twenty miles, uphill, in the snow.”

  His face brightened, surprised. “Aha! I see you are familiar with Lithuania!”

  SHE WALKED from Stutz’s and up along Fourth Street. When she got to Claremont, the street where she lived, she kept going, past Walnut and Chestnut and all the other streets named after trees. She hit the little business district, which was still lit for New Year’s, the big incandescent bulbs on wires like buds growing from vines, entwining the trees and lighting the shop façades. When she walked farther, she felt, for the first time, some purpose other than solitude motivating her. She rushed, and did not know why, until she found it. Clovee’s Five and Dime. As soon as she saw it, she knew what she was doing.

  It was warm inside, and she made her way to the soda fountain, even warmer from the grill’s heat. A white man stood at the ice cream machine and whirred a shake. Two white men sat at the counter and talked in low, serious tones, occasionally sucking up clots of shake through a straw.

  There was one waitress, hip propped against the side of the counter, wiping the countertop with a rag that had seen cleaner days. Without looking up she said, “Sorry. We don’t serve colored people.”

  “Good,” Doris said. “I don’t eat them.” She remembered Helen telling her that this was the line someone had used during a sit-in, and Doris was glad to have a chance to use it.

  The waitress frowned, confused, but when she finally got it, she laughed. “Seriously, though,” the waitress said, turning solemn, “I can’t serve you.”

  The two men talking looked over at her and shook their heads. They began talking again, occasionally looking over at Doris to see if she’d left.

  “What if I stay?”

  The waitress looked to the man making the shake, eyes pleading for help. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just don’t make the rules and I feel sorry for you, but I don’t make ’em.”

  The man walked over with a shake and gave it to the waitress, who bent the straw toward herself and began to drink it. “Look,” the man said to Doris, “I wouldn’t sit here. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  She sat. Shaking, she brought out her World History book. She’d made a book cover for it with a paper bag, and she was glad she’d done it because she was sweating so much it would have slipped from her hands otherwise. She set it on the counter, opened it, as if she did this every day at this very shop, and tried to read about the Hapsburgs, but couldn’t.

  It occurred to her that other students who did sit-ins were all smarter than she; they’d banded together, and had surely told others of their whereabouts, whereas she had foolishly come to Clovee’s all by herself. She stared at her book and didn’t dare look up, but from the corner of her eye she noticed when the two white men who’d been talking got up and left.

  The man at the ice cream machine made himself some coffee and beckoned the waitress to him. When he whispered something to her, she swatted him with the rag, laughing.

  Once Doris felt the numbness settle in her, she felt she could do it. She tried at the Hapsburgs again.

  The waitress said, “Student? High school?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Central.”

  “My daughter’s over at Iroquois.”

  “We played them last Friday.” Doris didn’t know what the scores were, didn’t care, but had heard about the game over the intercom.

  “Well.” The waitress started wiping the counter again, going over the same spots.

  When Doris closed her book, about to leave, she said, “I just want you to know I’m leaving now. Not because you’re making me or because I feel intimidated or anything. I just have to get home now.”

  The waitress looked at her.

  “Next time I’ll want some food, all right?”

  “We can’t do that, but here’s half my shake. You can have it. I’m done.”

  The shake she handed over had a lipstick ring around the straw, and a little spittle. Doris knew she wouldn’t drink it, but she took it anyway. “Thanks, ma’am.”

  OUTSIDE Clovee’s Five and Dime, the world was cold
around her, moving toward dark, but not dark yet, as if the darkness were being adjusted with a volume dial. Whoever was adjusting the dial was doing it slowly, consistently, with infinite patience. She walked back home and knew it would be too late for dinner, and the boys would be screaming and her father wanting his daily beer, and her mother worried sick. She knew that she should hurry, but she couldn’t. She had to stop and look. The sky had just turned her favorite shade of barely lit blue, the kind that came to windows when you couldn’t get back to sleep but couldn’t quite pry yourself awake.

  Acknowledgments

  This collection would not have been possible without support from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the Wallace Stegner/Truman Capote Fellowship program, and the MacDowell Colony. Much love to my two families, the Northing-tons and the Packers, both of whom raise storytelling to an art.

  Many thanks to my mentors at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Frank Conroy for his ever-vigilant eye; Marilynne Robinson for her infinite wisdom; Stuart Dybek for his unflagging support and friendship; and James Alan McPherson, who is an example to us all.

  I am forever in the debt of Connie Brothers, Deb West, and Paul Meintel, all of whom preserved my sanity and made Iowa a happier, brighter place. John Barth, Stephen Dixon, and Allen Grossman at Johns Hopkins University were incredible models of how to live a “writer’s life.” Special thanks to Francine Prose for her sharp wit and constant support.

  John L’Heureux, Tobias Wolff, and Elizabeth Tallent at Stanford were invaluable to me in revising this manuscript. Thanks also to Gay Pierce, who kept the Stegner program running smoothly.

  My thanks to friends and peers who have read these stories in their numerous incarnations: Julie Orringer, Edward Schwartz-child, Adam Johnson, Bridget Garrity, Doug Dorst, Ron Nyren, Malinda McCollum, Katherine Noel, Lysley Tenorio, Jack Livings, Otis Haschenmeyer, Rick Barot, Jane Rosenzweig, Carrie Messenger, Brian Teare, and the glorious Salvatore Scibona.