“I know, William.”
“Uh-huh! But you know what, I’ll give you the answer to the question. Everything is the answer. That is the right answer. Everything is funny. I think so. Ha-ha-ha,” he laughs to demonstrate. “Like, take life, Em. That’s what my mommy says. Take life, she says, take life, it’s very funny.”
“Do you think so, William?”
He looks into my face. “Yes. Take life, it’s very funny. So do you want to laugh? I do. I like to laugh.” He shows me again. “Ha-ha-ha-ha,” he cries mirthfully, and watches me for the effect.
“What’re you doing?” the child says. She’s wearing shorts and a dirty T-shirt. She stands over me, her hands on her flat little hips.
I don’t answer. I’m on my hands and knees, punching at the ground with a trowel. Stone after stone turns up. I need a shovel for this work. Mother had a shovel, which she wouldn’t let anyone else use. A good shovel is expensive, she said, but it’s worth it. I don’t dare carry a shovel in the building. If Mr. Bielic sees me, he’s going to want to know why.
“What’re you doing?” the child says again. She has straight hair and knees like little dirty doorknobs.
“What do you think I’m doing?” I pile the stones in a heap. I’ll have a stone wall anyway, even if I don’t have a garden.
“You playing a rock game?’’
“No. Why don’t you go away?”
“Want to know what you’re doing.”
“I’m trying to make a garden. Now, go away.” Aren’t children supposed to be cute? This one has a grim, downward cast to her face.
“Why you trying to make a garden?”
“Because I want to.”
“What’s that you’re using?”
“A trowel.”
“Why do you use a towel in a garden?”
“Not a towel, a trowel. Where’d you come from?”
“Over there.”
“Over where?” More stones.
“Towers. Is that where you live too?”
“You better go back now.” I stab at the ground. “Did you hear me? Go away, I’m busy.”
“I ain’t doing nothing. I don’t have to go away.” She squats down next to me. “Your towel is dirty. That’s nasty.”
“I told you, trowel. Trow. El.”
“Trow. El.”
“Right. It’s like a little shovel.”
“I know that,” she says scornfully. “Why don’t you have a big shovel?”
“Too much money.”
She nods sympathetically. “I got a little shovel too. Want me to bring it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Nobody but me can do this.”
“Why?”
“Why do you ask so many questions? Because it’s mine.”
“What’s your name?”
“‘Puddin’ tame, ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.’”
“My name’s Lana and I’m this old.” She holds up one hand, the fingers apart. “How old are you?”
“Old as the hills.”
“How old are you really and truly?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Whew!” She whistles between square baby teeth. “That’s old. I got a sister that old.”
I dig away at the soil, piling up rocks.
“When is your birthday?” she asks.
“April. When is yours?”
“August. August two-two. You know what that means? Twenty-two. August twenty-two is my true birthday. I’ll be six. How old will you be on your true birthday?”
“I told you.”
“Twenty-one?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is that your true true birthday age?”
I look at her. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. Is it your true true?”
“Sort of.”
“Does that mean yes or no?”
“No. Can you keep a secret?”
She screws her face up tight. “I’m a good secret-keeper.”
“Okay, then. I just turned eighteen.”
She considers this, breathing heavily. “That’s old, like twenty-one.”
I don’t know why I told her. It just fell out of my mouth. “You can’t tell anybody,” I say.
“Won’t.” She wraps her arms around her legs and settles herself more securely.
Someone’s in the parking lot before me this morning. All week, I’ve carried my two plastic gallon-jugs of water out of the building without anyone seeing me. Every morning, I’ve watered the garden, weeded it, taken out more stones. This morning I overslept, and it’s Louise out there in the parking lot, crossing toward the street. Seeing her, I forget everything — the garden and looking for work — and go after her.
I don’t think about what I’m doing, I just do it. The sun is up, a hazy smear in the sky. She turns a corner and I do too. A bus passes, panting out pink exhaust fumes. She walks fast. I do too.
We climb a hill, cross another street. Trucks dog the road, gears grinding. She picks up the pace. “Brandon!” a girl yells out an opened window. The water bottles are getting heavy. I should dump them, but when I think of my sorry, dusty little garden, I can’t bring myself to do it.
Stone angels with sleepy faces stare through a wire fence. We pass a diner, gas stations, a sound studio, a man sleeping in a doorway. Louise never looks back.
A crowd of women stops me. They’re laughing and calling to one another, streaming through a factory gate. Suddenly I’m looking for Mother. I stand there and search for her, wait for her to walk by wearing her green sweater, intent on the day ahead of her. The women pass, one after the other, and when they’re gone, swallowed by the factory, I still stand there, dazed. Maybe I’m dreaming. Dreaming the women, dreaming the water bottles hanging off the ends of my arms. Dreaming myself, scanning faces for Mother’s face. Dreaming that I’m following Louise.
Louise! I don’t see her anywhere. I rush on, past a shoe store, a cluster of little pink houses with tiny yards, a bakery with bread piled in the window, a computer store, another gas station. I’m at the corner before I realize that it was Louise I saw behind the counter in the bakery.
I turn back. At the bakery, I stand at the side of the window and look in. The walls are lined with shelves of bread. Round loaves and long loaves, baskets of rolls and bread sticks. Customers crowd the counter, and behind it are Louise in a white apron and a man wearing a sailor’s cap. They’re both wrapping bread, taking money, giving change.
The door opens, and a woman carrying an armful of long bread bags emerges. With her comes the smell of fresh bread and Louise’s voice. The door bangs shut. I watch through the window for another moment, then walk back home. My arms ache from the weight of the water bottles. I like that ache. It’s a real thing. It lets me know that I saw what I saw. I didn’t dream it: Louise at work.
I stand outside her door. Just stand there and look at the smiley-face, and think about her. Then I sit down on the floor, in the corner, against the wall. I think how close she is. I think of her moving around her apartment, making a meal, sitting at the window to eat it. Suddenly the door opens, and it’s her.
“What do you want?” she says. The look she gives me is awful.
I scramble to my feet, stammer hello.
“What are you doing here?” She folds her arms across her chest. “You’re following me, aren’t you? I know you are.”
“No, what do you mean?” My voice quivers.
“Look, do you think I’m stupid? I saw you. You followed me to work.” She looks at my hands, as if she’ll see the water bottles still hanging there.
“I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I didn’t mean, I didn’t —”
“So it was you. I thought so. What is this anyway? Are you stalking me?”
“Oh, no, no, no.”
“Just bad behavior?” she says. “Just really bad behavior?”
“I’m sorry. I just want to be friends.”
“Oh, my
God,” she says, and steps back inside and shuts the door.
* * *
Lana’s sprawled on her stomach, grubby hands playing around in the dirt. “What are you doing here?” I say. “Who said you could come here?”
“I’m waiting for the flowers.” She twists her head to look up at me. “You said there’d be flowers. I don’t see no flowers.”
“They’re sleeping. Go away.”
“Where’s their beds?” she says.
“Under the earth.”
“Is that a fat lie?”
“No. That’s the bed for seeds. Why don’t you go away?”
“Do they like it in the bed? Is it nice and warm?”
“Yes.” I get down on my knees and start weeding.
“What’re you doing now? Want me to do that?”
“Don’t touch!” I push away her hand. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I do too.”
“No you don’t. If you want to come here, you have to follow rules. And the rules are you don’t do anything in this place unless I say so.”
She gives me a weary shrug, as if she’s heard this kind of stuff a thousand times before.
* * *
In the morning, it is always better whatever — it is. This is possibly the only rule of life I know for sure.
If, at night, I’m depressed and sad, then in the morning even if a shadow is still hanging over me, it’ll be a smaller shadow. If the sadness is there, it’s an edge of sadness: the border, not the whole dark blanket of it.
I guess I know one other rule of life. Take a walk, you’ll feel better.
I do. I go for a walk. Try not to think about Louise. Try to believe something will change. Wait to feel better.
When Louise exits the stairwell door, I spring forward, holding up my index finger. “I’ve got a splinter, will you take it out for me?”
An odd smile lifts half her face, as if this is the most bizarre request she’s ever heard. It probably is. I know people don’t do things this way, just barge up to other people and start talking about splinters. But I meant to do it better, to say good morning first, to tell her that I was sorry about following her, and then ask about the splinter.
“All you need is a needle and peroxide,” she says. She marches toward the front door.
I run alongside her. “No peroxide.”
“Well, surely you have a needle?” She opens the door. A drizzle has turned the world gray. “Everyone has a needle,” she says.
“I do,” I say quickly. “I have a needle.”
“There you go. Sterilize it with a match, and you’re all set. Just poke away, and you’ll get it out.”
We’re halfway across the parking lot. Suddenly she stops. “Are you following me again? What’s going on? Who are you anyway?”
“I’m Em.”
I say it, as if it explains everything. Why I followed her. Why I sat outside her door. How I got the splinter making a post for the garden and tried to get it out, but it was in too deep and I couldn’t. How I woke up this morning thinking of her, of her name, Louise, Louise D’Angelo, thinking Louise will take out the splinter.
When I was alone, imagining it, it seemed so possible. She’d smile at me, say of course she’d help me, and we’d start on the way to being friends. It’s absurd. I know this now.
And still I can’t stop. I say, “Will you do it later?”
“I. Don’t. Think. So,” she says. Like that. And then, into my face, “No. No, I won’t. I won’t do it later.”
My face aches as if Pamela were squeezing it. That’s it, I think. That’s the end. I feel so bad.
But of course there’s more to come.
In the mail, I have a letter telling me that the rent on the apartment is in arrears, and I’m endangering my tenancy. The letter says I should call the number above immediately. I read everything three times. Arrears. Tenancy. Endangering. I stare at those words. What if I didn’t know what they meant? Then I stare at the signature. Stanley J. Saxon, Senior Manager, Bradley Towers. I read the letter three more times, and it still says the same thing.
Any moment, I might start screaming. I yank at my ears. They’re burning, burning, burning up. I tried. I did. I tried so hard, and now everything is going wrong anyway. Three months in arrears! Burning ears! I probably have a terminal disease, I’m going to die, the first symptoms are burning ears. Arrears in my ears. Crazy words, crazy thoughts. Louise will nurse me through the illness, she’ll kneel by my bed, holding my hand and kissing me on the cheek. Be brave, my little Em, I love you.
I crumple the letter and throw it across the room. I pretend it’s not there. I walk away from it, try to ignore it, but I can’t. I pick it up, smooth it out, read it one more time. Okay, I’ll call him. I can do that. Just dial the phone and say, Mr. Saxon, I’m looking for work. I’ll pay as soon as I can.
“I’m looking for work,” I say out loud. “Looking as hard as I can, and I’ll pay as soon as I can. I promise.”
Is that enough to say? Will he let me stay then?
I don’t know what I’ll do if he puts me out. This is the first time the rent hasn’t been paid. Even when she wouldn’t let me out to work, when we had less and less money, even then the rent was paid on time, and I was the one who made sure it was.
I’ll call and say I’m going to do the right thing. I’ll say, You can trust me. I’ll say, Please, just don’t put me out.
Looking for work again. No. No. No.
It’s raining, and the sidewalks glisten with tiny pink worms. At home I change my clothes and fill a plastic bag with the tiny segmented pink bodies. In the field, I dump them out in the garden, and they hurry to screw themselves into the earth. Gulls float overhead, like scraps of paper. They’re hungry all the time. “Haaa! Haaa!” they scream.
“Hello!”
For a moment, I think it’s the gulls again.
“Hello!” A woman pushing a shopping cart piled with blankets approaches me. “Hello!”
“Hello,” I say slowly, standing up, thinking of Mr. Bielic. Did he send her? Foolish thought. Her feet are bare and covered with a thick crust of dirt. Her body is hidden by a black plastic garbage bag with armholes cut in it.
She stops in front of me. “Spare some change?” she says.
“No. I don’t have anything.”
She comes closer. An overpowering, unwashed smell drifts toward me. “I used to be like you,” she says. “I looked nice like you. Better than you.” Her voice is even, almost soft. “I wore nice dresses, not like that.” She gestures at my torn jeans. “I wore earrings every day, a different pair every time. I had a beautiful house, better than yours.”
“I believe you,” I say. The thought comes that she is to me as I am to Louise: supplicant, beggar, someone desperately trying to convince someone else of her worth. I don’t like this. I want her to go away.
“You sure you don’t have any change? Where do you live? Can you go get me some money?”
“No,” I say. “No money. None.”
She walks away, pushing the cart roughly over the stony ground, then she stops and looks back, tapping her shopping cart, as if thinking of giving it to me. As if she knows that any moment now I’ll be homeless like her.
* * *
I discover that worry is no color, not even gray. And no shape, although it feels long and thin, like a cylinder rolled so tight you can never unloosen it. I discover that worry sits on your shoulders like something metallic and inanimate, a dead weight, but also breathing and alive, waiting to sink its metal claws into you. It’s a thing so real you should be able to grab it with your two hands, but you never can.
There are things you can do when you start worrying to stop yourself. You can:
Sleep a lot.
Look for work.
Watch TV.
Take a bath.
Go to bed early.
Look for work again.
Think about writing Louise a letter.
Write that letter.
Dear Louise,
I only ask to be your friend, to see your smile.
Your pure eyes tell me you haven’t been hurt by life.
I don’t ever want to upset you.
Love, Em.
Think about Louise writing you back.
Write that letter, too.
Dear Em,
It was so wonderful to get your letter.
I hope to see you very soon.
Much love to you from your new friend,
Louise.
Tear up both letters.
Go to her floor, even though you have promised yourself you won’t.
Walk slowly to her door. Make the experience last.
Hope you will meet her.
Hope you will not.
Think of things to say to her.
Tell yourself, Be real, she’s not interested in you.
Memorize her door. It is not just a door. It is her door.
Say good-bye to her door.
Remind yourself no one knows what you’re thinking.
Remind yourself you’re not crazy.
“You gotta be ready,” a man standing on a street corner bellows. He waves his arms in the air. “You gotta be ready, you folks, hear me.” He’s wearing a brown coat buttoned up to his neck, although it’s a warm day. “You gotta be alert for what’s coming down the pike, because they’ve fixed everything up in outer space. The government’s got a secret program and you gotta be awake, alert, ready.” He looks directly at me and starts again. “You gotta be ready, you hear me?”
Awake, alert, ready.
I am. At least, I’m trying to be. I remember Mr. Elias so long ago telling me to act upbeat and confident. I didn’t have to really feel it, he said. I just had to pretend.
Awake, alert, ready, confident, upbeat.
Five good words. But none of them help.
“I’m looking for work.”
“Sorry. Nothing.”
I try again. Nothing.
Again. Nothing.
And again. Nothing.
* * *
I rest, sitting on the rim of a fountain outside a church. A group of teenagers prances down the street. The boys are big, thick, they look like hefty children suddenly grown tall. The girls have sunbaked hair, bright lips, they are like glowing animals. They touch each other, turn their faces to one another, like flowers, like deer, like dogs or cats. They talk and sing and leap into the air. They are probably my age. But they are young, so young. I don’t feel old, exactly, but I don’t feel young, either.
When She Was Good (9780545361910) Page 10