Now I hesitated because it sounded important to her for some reason, and I imagined her blushing over it. But this was business after all, so I said, "I'd be glad to, Margaret."
"It's just something I'd appreciate."
"Margaret," I said to seal the pact.
"That's right," she said and sort of laughed again.
"I've always liked the name Margaret," I said and winked at Sheila sitting at our table. "Margaret's a lovely name."
"Well I doubt that," said the lady on the phone, still laughing a bit. "But it's my name at least."
The silence this time said for sure the thing was over, though I can't say that I was glad of it because I was enjoying making her laugh and sigh and telling her not to worry. But I had rolls and coffee getting cold on the table and other things to do.
"Goodbye now, Margaret."
"Oh . . . yes," she said as if I had interrupted her thoughts. "Thank you, Mr. Wells, and I'll see you in the morning."
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I gave Sheila a quick skeptical glance which met the same kind of glance coming back at me, and we smiled in that faint way of people who know each other well enough to be still at times. Her face was full of questions the answers to which she assumed she already knew, or knew well enough, which meant they would wait, and so I sat down at the table again and finished my butter roll and drank my coffee while she got up to do the dishes. She was working four tens at that time which gave her a three-day weekend and time to help me out when I needed her. It was not a happy business I was in then, and I'm glad it didn't last long. Within a year I was called back to the refinery in Houston and quit with buying the left-behind belongings of dead people, quit with the sweltering flea market where I sold the stuff once a month to bring in a little. Sheila paid the bills, but it was good to have some extra coming our way in case one of the boys, pretty much on their own by then, needed our help or we wanted to get out with our camper to the lake for a few days. I didn't like the business but I was good at it.
Sheila was through with giving me time to think and she wanted to be through with the dishes too, so she came over and got mine and gave them a quick scrub.
"Margaret, eh?" she said, lowering herself into the chair across from me, and she grinned at me with her gapped teeth that we'd been planning for years even then to get fixed.
"She's an old gal that lost her husband and needs my services. It'll make us some money, I promise you."
"And she needs my services too?"
"It's a lot. You won't believe what all's in there. Every kind of tool you can imagine, cases of motor oil, model airplanes still in their boxes, eight or ten pairs of brand new leather work gloves, that sort of thing. And the guy bought at least two of each. That shed's crammed to the rafters. It'll probably mean a garage sale on our part too, to get rid of it all."
"Have we got the room out there?"
"I'll straighten up a bit this afternoon. Seems like all I ever do in my life is clean out garages."
"And sheds."
"And sheds."
"What was the darned Margaret stuff?"
Something in the way she said it, as if she were making fun of her perhaps, sullied the nice feeling I had had in doing what the lady had asked of me and calling her Margaret as if we were friends. Sheila made the widow seem for a moment like something pitiful and lonely and distant. Which is how we usually were about my "clients," as I liked to call them, distant and cold and clinical in the way a surgeon must be toward the human specimen lying open on the table before him. It was business after all.
"I don't know really," I said in a moment. "For some reason she wanted me to call her Margaret instead of Mrs. Mulhollen."
"A real chum huh? She must remember you pretty well."
"I was a name and a phone number on a piece of paper, that's all, with two fifty and a dollar sign written at the bottom."
"I can see her reason, I think."
"You can, eh? Let's hear it."
She put on her wise look and shifted in her seat as she lit up a cigarette and then took a deep, heart-thumping drag.
"Wants her own identity back, now he's gone. It's only natural. You read about it all the time in the magazines." Then she smiled in a teasing way and said, "I'll probably do the same thing when you kick off. I'll say, "Call me Sheila please."
"And I guess they'll all do it too, won't they?"
"Sure they will."
"Out of respect for Old Miss Sheila?"
"That's right. Out of respect for Miss Sheila."
"But me? I won't, will I? You wouldn't catch me doing it."
"You speak the truth there, my friend. In fact I can't recall the last time you called me by my name. It's always, 'Hey, Honey,' or 'Hey, Darling,' or 'Hey, you,' or something like it."
"And I have no plans to change either. Even when I'm croaked I'll still just call you My Old Lady from wherever I wind up. And when I'm dead and the guy like me comes to buy all my old tools and junk and what-have-you out there in the garage, I'm gonna whisper down and tell him don't do it. Don't call her Sheila." I was grinning at her now. "Just call her The Old Hag."
"Hah!" she said and slapped the table once lightly.
It was meant as a joke, and she took it as a joke, and we laughed a bit then and glanced at each other from under our eyebrows. Sheila picked at a crumb on the tabletop and shifted her sizable hips in her seat until it was clear the light moment had passed and we had nothing else worth saying to each other. Still we sat there a few minutes, sat there imagining the thing, smiling over it occasionally, postponing whatever else we had to do that day and enjoying the cool of the kitchen, enjoying the warmth of each other's quiet company, which at that time we'd been enjoying more or less regularly for twenty-four years. But Friday, then as now, is a workday all day long. Finally I lifted my long body from the chair I'd been sitting in, and she looked up and followed me with her eyes until at the door to the garage I mumbled, "Guess I better get back to it." She nodded her head then and gazed at me in a simple direct way that said quite matter-of-factly: I love you, Ralph Wells, and I already miss you, and you just better not die on me any time soon.
Family Photos
1
Still Life With Geranium
His mother, who had just come in from the hall, and his father, who had met them outside and ushered them into the house, were kissing each other there in the living room. He hadn't seen them do that in years. Teddy and Mary were making a big noise over it. "Yea," they cried, and, "Happy Thanksgiving."
Speaking to himself because none of them could hear him over the clapping and the boisterous talk, Randy said, "Strong affection, warm attachment, attraction based on sexual desire, a beloved person, a score of zero in tennis . . ." and he stood in the corner, his hands in his pockets.
But here came Teddy. Three steps and his brother was standing in front of him. He had a funny look on his face as if he were about to ask Randy whether he needed to go to the head.
"You okay?" said Teddy and now here was his mother's face, beaming, peering over Teddy's shoulder. She must be on tiptoe, Teddy's so tall. Then Teddy stepped aside and here came his mother's arms, up around his neck, pulling him away from the wall, and then here came her face: a kiss on the cheek by his mouth. And as her face moved away Randy smelled the woodsy breath of a cigarette smoker. She seemed so happy she might cry.
"Oh my goodness," she said. "It's so good to have you home. You look good. What're you doing here in the corner, come on over here, we've been looking so forward to having you, come on over here and have a seat." She pulled on his arm and he followed her to the couch as the faces of Teddy and Mary and his father passed by him. She said, "Here, take off your jacket, honey."
A simple "no" came to his mind but he caught himself and said, "Used to express . . . no . . . here, let me express the negative of an alternative choice or possibility." He smiled for his mother. Her face showed confusion at first but then her eyes tightened and her mo
uth dropped as if he had hurt her feelings.
"What'd you say, dear?" asked his mother. And she patted him on the chest. "Oh never mind. Are you cold? Just keep it on. . . . Hey, Hugh, why don't you turn up the heat? Randy's cold."
She pulled him onto the couch, sitting so close that her hip rested against his thigh. She looked at his face as if she were going to touch it and then looked away and then looked at his face again with a curious twisted smile. She seemed about to say something, her face frozen in a happy expression, but she only sighed and snuggled closer. Straining, she reached up, pulled off his red ball cap and tossed it onto a chair. "There," she said.
Settled now she turned her attention to Teddy and Mary as if she hadn't noticed them before and wanted to make them feel welcome. She said, "Now, you two, how in the dickens are you . . ." and they exchanged the usual pleasantries as Randy toyed with a piece of paper in the pocket of his jacket.
He hadn't been so close to his mother in a long time. She felt soft yet heavy, solid, and he could smell her perfume and hair spray. The smells were strong and tickled his nose and for an instant he remembered himself as a little boy sitting on the toilet lid looking up at his mother as she made herself up for . . . for what? For work? To go out? Did she have a job once? And he remembered the face coming down to kiss him and the mask of makeup and the strange tickling smell of perfume and hair spray and he remembered that he always wanted to reach up and touch his mother's hair then but he never dared do it. He never dared because she would have been so kind, saying, "No, darling, don't muss it, you little sweetie." And she would have squeezed his face between her hands and kissed him on the lips. . . .
Just then his father's voice said, "I set the thermostat on seventy-four, how's that? Seventy-four ought to warm up ole Randy." And his mother: "That's good, that's good." Then to Randy, "Here, get close, I'll warm you up," and she laughed into his face, "You sweet thing," and her arm flew across his chest and gripped his arm, pulling him so close that his shoulders squeezed up high against his jaw. He felt warm.
The others his father, Teddy, Mary kept moving through the room. In and out of the dining room or the hall they went and then back to the middle of the room. Each would stop, smiling stupidly, and look down at him and his mother as if to catch whatever they were saying, as if it were very important.
Someone cried, "Look, it's Janet!" And here she was, saying, "Finally, we get to see him." His sister bent low and kissed him on the cheek. She looked pleased. She said, "You've lost weight."
He smiled for her such a friendly face but that hair! and his mother said, "We'll fatten him up today. . . . Oh my God, the turkey!" And she took away her arm. The couch gave a sigh as she got up, having trouble, putting a hand on his knee for leverage, then heaving her body forward. She stumbled, caught herself, threw up a hand to the base of her neck, laughed, "That couch is too low." Then: "Hugh, where's the turkey?" Randy watched her go into the kitchen. His father followed and he could hear their voices, low at first, but then loud. They were arguing.
Janet, taking his mother's place on the couch, said, "Well how've you been?" And he saw Teddy's face and Mary's face looking at him, waiting for an answer.
From the kitchen he heard his father's voice, in a stifled hiss: " . . . Would you hold it down, please. . . ."
Randy looked at Janet and shrugged, and shrugged again, then said, "I'm fine." They smiled at him and nodded as if to get him to continue but their eyes kept darting toward the kitchen. They were all silent until Mary said to Janet, "Have you changed your hair?" and Randy let out a quick laugh of course she'd changed her hair, it was orange and they all looked at him. His sister grinned for him, the grin they shared as children when an adult had said something stupid.
"Yes," said Janet. "Everyone's doing it."
Mary acted like she wanted to touch Janet's new orange hair but then here came his father, red-faced and sulky. He said, "Look, I'm going to run get some film, anybody want to go?"
"I'll go," said Teddy.
"Me too," said Mary.
"How about you, Buddy, want to go?"
And again the faces ogled him. He remembered similar trips in the car, everyone quiet at first and then making worthless conversation, comments about the weather or a piece of property up for sale, and he said, "Bathroom."
He got up, wobbly at first, found his footing, then pushed past them toward the hall.
"Hurry up, we'll wait for you," called his father.
He scuttled down the hall to his parents' bedroom, through the bedroom to their bathroom, stepped in and closed the door.
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Randy heard a whisper through the bathroom door: "Why's he been in there so long?" It was Mary, Teddy's wife.
Teddy said, "How should I know?"
"Maybe we should check on him."
"Leave him alone."
Mary knocked on the door.
"Don't!"
"What if he's sick or something?"
Randy suppressed a laugh. He said, "Separated from others, not including anyone or anything else."
"There he goes again with that gibberish," Mary said.
"So what. Let him be. Let's go without him. . . ."
He heard their whispers and footsteps fade away. He smiled to himself in the mirror above the counter, on top of which he had spread all sorts of items from the drawers: his father's safety razor and shaving mug, a comb, his mother's eyelash pinchers and tweezers, an eyebrow pencil, a lipstick, a hair net, a jar of cold cream, and several other less interesting things.
His mood, the touch of agitation, and the smell of the bathroom sweet here, pungent there brought on a crowd of associations, all of them from his childhood. Once he was certain Teddy and Mary had left him alone, he scooped the items on the counter top into a pile. He picked up the eyebrow pencil, licked the tip and started applying it to his face. Soon both of his eyebrows were dark and thick. Then he pinched his eyelashes, several times, until, by looking closely, he could see them curled, sticking together in pointed clumps like feather tips on a bird's wing. He put on lipstick, smearing it out past the corners of his mouth, then he dug into one of the drawers until he found two little disks of powder and rouge. He rubbed the rouge into circles on his cheeks and then dusted on the powder. His sparse whiskers made the powder glob up along the edge of his jaw. He ripped a piece of toilet paper from the roller, folded it, placed it between his lips and pressed, leaving a crescent of red on the paper. He stared at himself in the mirror but didn't know who he was looking at. It was no one he'd ever seen before.
He turned on the hot water and soaked his father's shaving brush and whipped up lather in the mug. Slowly, eyeing himself in the mirror, he smoothed on the lather. Half moons of pale rouge now protruded from behind the lather on his upper cheeks.
A noise outside the door sent a panic through his chest as if he were a burglar in his parents' house. He heard a door open and close perhaps a closet but whoever it was soon left.
Everything smelled so familiar. He had smelled it all when he was a child and used to watch his parents dress themselves. He remembered the talk that went on as the two of them moved around each other, telling the other to get out of the way or to hurry, and the talk always ended in his being told to move: "You're in the way, son." "Go on, now, sweetie." And when he left he always heard the voices, big sounding then, following him down the hall. With his father's heavy-headed razor he shaved himself, drawing blood only once with a nick on his Adam's apple. Then, the remnants of lather still on his jaw, he smeared cold cream over his face until it formed a greasy pap, and the sharp sweet smells filled his head. He cleaned his face first with a Kleenex and then with splashes of warm water and toweled dry. From the left side of the counter he picked up his father's aftershave and slapped a palm's worth on his face. And from the right side he picked up his mother's cologne. He dabbed some behind each ear.
Gazing at his pink face in the mirror, he said quietly, "A male offspring o
r descendant, Jesus Christ, a person deriving from a particular source, as a country, race or school."
The house was quiet when he left the bathroom and crept through the hall to the living room.
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Randy stood in the doorway of the kitchen. His mother was bent over the open oven door. When she stood up he saw that she was doing something to the turkey. Turning, startled, she said, "My God! I didn't see you there," and the long fork flew out of her up-thrust hand, clattered into the sink.
Randy didn't say anything. He'd been rather drowsy and listless and preoccupied with his inner life for weeks now and the medication he'd been receiving at the hospital had not yet made much of a difference. It was just as well: he had nothing to say to anyone. Each time he had one of these spells of melancholy the heart cavity in his chest got a little deeper, a little wider, while the opening at the top that led to his mouth got a little smaller, making it even more difficult to talk. And this had been the worst spell yet. What he had feared most about coming home after three weeks on the ward was that his family would somehow pry into the opening and make something come out.
"It'll be a couple of hours yet," she said. "You want something to tide you over?"
He shook his head no. She came up to him as if to kiss him again and he felt the muscles in his shoulders tense.
"My goodness," she said, sniffing the air around him. "You certainly smell nice. What have you got on? And you shaved."
She patted him on the chest, gazing into his face with huge glistening eyes. He smiled for her.
"Come on," she said. "I've been wanting to get you alone."
She led him into the dining room and sat at the table near the trophy case that used to be a china cabinet. His baseball trophies were shadows within the shadows of the case. Randy stood behind a chair. She appeared flustered having to look up at him but then said, "I want to talk to you." He nodded but glanced through the kitchen to the back door preparing an escape route.
"Your father and I have been talking," she said and, looking at her hands, added, as if for herself, "which is odd for us." And looking up again: "And I think we've decided some things."
Memorial Day Page 7