When She Was Good (9780545361910)

by Mazer, Norma Fox

No. I can’t say all that. If I say it, she’ll think I’m crazy. Anyway, you can’t tell everything at once. I used to do it. Tell too much, too fast. I’ll be careful. I won’t blurt. I won’t embarrass. I’ll ask her about herself. Where do you work? I’ll say. Do you like your job? I want to know everything about you. Do you like flowers?

  “We got nice trees and grass here, what do you want flowers for?” Mr. Bielic tips back in his chair and looks up at the pipes crossing the ceiling.

  “Flowers are pretty. They’re nice for everybody,” I say, trying to look appealing.

  “You got it pretty here already, plus no work.” He twists a lock of graying hair. “All you got to do is go outside, sit on a bench under a tree, sniff the air. The grass is mowed, everything is nice, you don’t have to do nothing.”

  “A garden is different. It could just be marigolds.” Mother always had a garden. In the fall she gave the extra stuff away by the bagful: squash, onions, turnips, all kinds of things. Once, someone gave her an apple pie in return — it was delicious.

  “A garden is work. Take my word for it. I have enough work already.”

  “Not you. Me. I’ll do it. I’ll do everything. Just a little garden, I won’t ask you for anything.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they all say.” He sounds gloomy. “There’s rules here. The problem’s not me.”

  “Marigolds, that’s all — a few marigolds. I won’t ask you for anything.” Saying the same thing again retard can’t you try another line of bull at least. Pamela’s voice comes through like someone on a fuzzy phone line. I hold out the packet of seeds, as if that will convince him. “It would only be a small garden, not just for me. For everyone.” Liar you won’t let anyone get near it. I turn my face away from her voice. “I’ll keep it neat, promise.”

  Mr. Bielic scratches his chest. The sound is like the mice I hear in the walls at night. “If I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone. People today want everything. I was brought up different. Do things for myself. Independence Day. Don’t worry about Mr. Somebody Else.”

  I nod. Isn’t that what I want to do, something for myself?

  “If it was up to me, what do I care? You could have it. But the big problem is the Big Cheese. Understand? I’m not the Big C here, I’m just maintenance. What’s he going to say? ‘Bielic, you got enough to do keeping the halls and elevators clean, what do you want the grass messed up with a garden for!’ And another thing, there’s rules here.”

  He takes a piece of paper and reads out loud. “‘No tenant should disturb the landscaping around the project or take it upon him or herself to cut, trim, or otherwise rearrange any of the foliage, leaves, et cetera, of the landscaping.’”

  A familiar feeling overtakes me: a heaviness in the legs, a thickness like dust in my head. It won’t happen. Nothing will change. I can’t have what I want. I groveled in front of this man for nothing. I’m so stupid. Just what Pamela always said.

  “No money! Where is it, where’s the money? Where are you? I need you!” I’m pulling out drawers, knocking things to the floor. Talking to myself, to the walls, to the pocketbook I can’t find. I race through the apartment, searching under the bed and behind the couch. What do I do now? I’ve lost my pocketbook. All my money’s in it. Now what?

  I’m sweating and breathing hard. No money no money no money. Pamela’s with me today, she’s been here from the moment I woke up, mocking and knocking in my ear. Stupid got no money no money no money. She won’t stop, she loves to see me like this, crazy and out of control.

  I find the pocketbook in the bathroom and sit on the tub and count the bills and change. Count once, then twice. Then once more to be sure there’s really so little left. I sit on the edge of the tub, and I don’t listen to Pamela. I won’t. I can’t. I concentrate, because I have to remember all the things you’re supposed to do when you look for work.

  You get dressed up and you go around to different places, and you fill out applications and say you have experience selling and you’re ready to do anything. And then they tell you they don’t want you, they don’t need you, and maybe you can come back and try again in a month or six months. And you feel bad, because people keep telling you they don’t want you, but even so, you have to do it again the next day. Just do it and pretend it’s okay, pretend you don’t mind how awful you feel when they look you up and down, or don’t look at you at all, or laugh a little and say, “Sorry, no work.”

  * * *

  I scrub my fingernails, shower, wash my hair. I go through all my clothes to find something that’s not torn, stained, old. I put on a dress I’d forgotten I had, blue and white, with white buttons down the front. I polish my shoes and do my fingernails again, and look at my face in the mirror. No pimples anyway. I change my dress for a skirt and blouse, then change back to the dress again. I brush my hair. How do I look? Will someone want me? I go out the door, then come back in and rinse my mouth to make sure my breath is okay.

  Half the day has gone by then, but I go downtown and walk around, and go in my first store and ask if they need someone to work.

  No.

  I go in another store. No.

  No. No. No.

  Walking across the parking lot, I see the dark-haired woman again. She’s getting out of a faded blue car. She locks the doors. Then we’re walking directly toward each other. I lift a hand, start a smile. Her eyes pass over me as if I’m nothing. Nothing to her. Nothing to anyone. We pass each other without speaking.

  * * *

  On the radio someone is singing: “Baby baby baby, I sure could use some good new-eews today.” Tears spurt out of my eyes. I’ve been crying for days. I never cried before. All these years I never cried. I was proud of it. Brave little me. Now I’m crying and I can’t stop. Crying and sleeping. Nothing but dreams and tears. First I sleep, then I cry, then I walk around in a wet-faced daze. And if I fall asleep again, I dream about tears, a field of red tears.

  * * *

  Pamela returns. She enters through several walls, climbs in the window, waits for me in the bathtub. It’s daylight, so I know I’m not dreaming. She shakes the apartment with her rage.

  My body vibrates: my bones clatter like teeth.

  You screwed yourself, she says. Look at you, you’re a mess. You need me, she screams, in her deep crazy passionate voice.

  Exactly like the first time, I’m waiting for the elevator when the front door opens, and the dark-haired woman comes in and heads for the stairwell. I want to speak, and I can’t. Everything I’ve thought of to say to her drains out of my mind. I stare at the signs on the walls:

  NO LITTERING

  NO LOUD NOISES

  NO SMOKING

  NO SPITTING

  NO RUNNING

  NO BARE FEET

  I read each sign as if I’ve never seen it before. My neck is as rigid as a post. My back is frozen. My legs will never move again. Only my ears, like two animals that have nothing to do with me, are alert, springing out from my head, listening for her steps.

  “The elevator’s coming,” someone says in a loud, terrible voice. A voice like Pamela’s voice. Like a moose bellowing. A train heading for a crash.

  “The elevator’s coming!” the voice brays.

  “Excuse me?” She turns. “Are you talking to me?”

  I point to the arrow creeping toward the first floor. “It’s coming.” I whisper this time.

  She will think I am crazy. Pamela agrees in my ear, cackling away. Crazy loony mad crazy crazy loony —

  “Stairs are better for your health,” she says. “Probably faster than that slow boat to China too.”

  Slow boat? I think. China? And then she’s gone, through the door, out of sight.

  I get in the elevator. The door closes, the elevator doesn’t move. That’s okay. I’ll just stand here and think about her. How I spoke to her, how she answered. I rearrange the conversation in my head. Make it slower, more leisurely. I say hello in a quiet voice. She responds with a smile. I say, Excu
se me, the elevator’s coming. She says, Oh, thank you, but I like taking the stairs — Suddenly I understand two things: I made the real conversation happen. And the elevator’s not moving because I haven’t pushed the button.

  On the fifth floor, the overhead lights are flickering again and the hall is dim. No matter. I could walk here blindfolded and find my way. I know every bump in the floor, every crack in the wall. Tan walls, brown doors, black floor. Smells of meat cooking, sounds of babies, TVs, and dogs. I must have smelled these smells and heard these sounds a thousand times. Then why is this like the first time? Have I been asleep all these years? Am I awake now — alive at last?

  Once, in grade school, our class was taken on an overnight excursion to a campground. The air was warm: we had a campfire and ate hot dogs; and as darkness fell, we were herded down to the lake. There were perhaps thirty children, so I suppose there were at least four or five adults. We trooped through the woods with flashlights. There must have been yelling and singing, the grown-ups chattering. A noisy expedition. At the shore of the lake we were presented, as if on a stage, with a doubled moon — one floating in the clear dark sky, one in the clear dark calm of the water.

  Were there exclamations, shouts of amazement, loud giggly praise for this sight? There might have been, but for me there was only silence. An unprecedented silence, tranquil and immense. Silence, and the moon on the lake — a sight so pure I nearly staggered under its impact. I knew, without the words to say it, that the lack in my life of what this moon and lake represented was the other side of the coin of happiness. Not unhappiness, but shame, which was possibly the same thing, and which then rose up in me in nauseating waves. Shame for my disorderly, precarious home. Shame because we were different from everyone I knew. Shame because we lived in a trailer, because my father drank too much and my mother was sick, shame because my sister was crazy, and I was small and scared.

  I wondered how I had lived without knowing such calm was possible, that such pure peace existed. Without being able to phrase any of this in these words and terms, I remember quite clearly wanting this for myself, feeling almost dizzy with the force of the wanting.

  Standing in that doubled light, I felt that I had stumbled on a truth, which was simply this: if I had it — “it” being not the moon and the lake, as such, not its stark and startling beauty, but the itness of it — if I had that, I could finally be happy and like other people.

  The dark-haired woman is sorting through envelopes in the mail alcove as I walk in. “Junk, junk, junk,” she says, and drops a handful of envelopes into the wastebasket. I fumble with my mailbox key, glance quickly at her.

  When she leaves, I reach into the basket for one of the discarded envelopes. Louise D’Angelo is her name. She lives in 7M.

  * * *

  The seventh floor is different from my floor: there are more doormats laid out, the ceiling light is better. Apartment 7M is at the far end of the hall. A sign is taped below the knocker: THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING. A smiley-face makes the period. I touch the smiley-face with the tips of my fingers.

  * * *

  Someone is telling a story in a shadowy room. I pay no attention, just go on searching in every corner for someone. I know who I’m looking for, I just can’t remember the name right now. This is probably a dream, I think, but maybe not. I want her to see the sky. It’s amazing. Enormous stars all over the place, every one a different color. She strolls toward me. “Louise!” I cry out. There are so many things I have to tell her. How I long for transformation. How much I want to be like her: defined, strong.

  * * *

  Walking across the field behind the building, I’m saying her name under my breath. Louise D’Angelo. Louise the Angel. A perfect, perfect name. I’m happy thinking about her until money and jobs sneak into my mind. Rain spatters the ground. A wind springs up and drives bits of paper into the bushes. Mother used to say, “You’ll never go hungry with a garden.” I could make a garden right here where I’m walking. It’s just a big empty field, full of nothing but trash and weeds. Nobody cares about it. One little garden wouldn’t even be noticed.

  I drag a stick in the ground, marking off a rectangle behind some bushes. Stones poke out of the ground everywhere, and the soil is as dry as dust. I could bury my food garbage here, plant over it. Mother always had a pail of potato peels and fish bones for her garden. I could plant chives, chard, lettuce: garlic too, but not until Columbus Day. And marigolds, little gold heads to smell good and keep away the bugs. Frucking crazy nuthead, Pamela bawls. My arms fly up to push her away. The wind and rain come down hard and I take off, running. I haven’t run like this in years. I get into a rhythm, pump my arms, and run straight across the field.

  “Hello, Em!” William sits down next to me on the bench.

  “Hello, William.”

  “You can sit here.”

  “Thank you, William.” There’s spit on his chin.

  “Are you happy today, Em?”

  If I see Louise D’Angelo, I’ll be happy.

  I have things to tell her. That I’ve started using the stairs. That I’ve been up and down them a dozen times already. They’re empty, so empty. My steps drum, the gray cement walls echo, I hold my breath from landing to landing.

  “You look happy today,” William says. “Are you really, really happy?” His voice rises, sings out really, really. “You’re pretty, Em.”

  “Thank you, William. You always say that.”

  He giggles. “Want to go for a walk?”

  “Not now.” I hand him a tissue.

  “Dry your chin.”

  “What?”

  “Your chin. Dry it.”

  “What? I can’t hear you.” He puts his hand to his ear.

  “Your chin, William. There’s stuff on it.”

  “What? What? I can’t hear you.” He laughs and slaps his knee. “Fooled you, didn’t I? I fool my mommy a lot. Fooled you, Em, fooled you good.”

  If I see her, I’ll nod, say hello. That’s all. Reserved. Dignified. No yelling. She’ll say hello too, maybe smile. I’ll walk toward the stairwell. We’ll go up together.

  “What?” William says.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t say anything?”

  “No.”

  “Yes you did. You said ‘No’! Ha-ha-ha,” he sings. “I got a tease on you!”

  I’ll be casual. I’ll say, I always use the stairs now. Since you recommended it.

  The front door swings opens, and Mr. Hunniger comes in. He’s ninety-four and tiny, with a face like a creased paper bag.

  “Hello, Mr. Hunniger!” William sings.

  “William, my boy.” Mr. Hunniger walks with fast little shuffling steps. “Did you make yourself rich today?”

  William rocks on the bench, cackling. “‘Did you make yourself rich today!’ ‘Did you make yourself rich today?’ That’s good, Mr. Hunniger, that’s a good joke!”

  I’ll tell her I use the elevator now only when I have packages.

  She’ll say: So, the fifth floor is where you live.

  Yes, I’ll say. What’s your floor?

  We’ll walk up together. We’ll talk. I’ll tell her about writing down words again and keeping them. Maybe I wrote a poem. Probably not, probably it’s just a bunch of words that I got in my head. She’ll say: Can I see this? Can I read it?

  Pamela shouted in my ear the whole time I was writing the words. I knew she’d hate them. I wrote as fast as I could. Kicking up heels breath a bellow tongue hanging out like a dog. Jackass dog monkey, you menagerie, you human zoo. Darling, did she do it, make you the dog the jackass in harness leather tight around the heart oh darling oh little girl your tears your tears. Pamela kept shouting, like spitting into my brain. I threw away the paper to stop her, to shut her up. I cried. I didn’t cry when Mother died, and now I’m crying all the time, crying about nothing, about a piece of paper, a handful of words.

  In the middle of the night I got up and fished the paper
out of the trash. Even though I didn’t really need it: I knew the words by heart. I memorized them. I always memorize things, ever since she tore up my notebook. Because even if you can’t write, you can say words in your mind, and if you keep saying them to yourself, after a while they’re like a little tower of blocks that can’t be toppled. They’re there in your mind. You remember them. For a long time, I did that. Then I stopped. That was after Vermont. I couldn’t get away from her then and I felt too bad. When she squeezed my face, it was as if she squeezed all the words out of me.

  “You’re pretty, Em,” William says. There’s spit on his chin still. “I like girls. Did I tell you you’re pretty?”

  “Yes, William. Three times. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  He giggles. “That’s three times too. Want to go for a walk?”

  “I would rather sit here right now, William.”

  Two women with shopping bags and curled white hair come in from outside. “Hello, William,” they say together. “How are you today, dear?” they say with one voice.

  “I’m good today. This is my friend Em. She came to visit me and sit with me. Pretty soon, we’re going to take a walk.”

  They smile at me. “Hello, Em,” they say, with the same voice and the same smile they had for William. “How are you today, dear?” They give me kind smiles and bustle to the elevator.

  I sit there, stupefied. Me and William? Yeah you you you, you and your stupid words you and William — Pamela’s voice bangs in my ear; my heart bangs in my chest.

  “Em,” William says, “put your head up, Em. Put your head up. Are you laughing? What’s funny? Tell me!”

  “Nothing,” I say, my voice muffled. “Nothing. Everything.”

  “One or the other,” he cries. “Must choose, Em! Give me the right answer, Em. Nothing or everything?”

  I look at his jolly, drooly face. “I don’t know the answer.”

  “Oh, too bad!” He’s sympathetic. “Are you getting sad? I get sad.” He pinches his chin. “I’m retarded, you know.”