* * *
You try to think, but mostly you fret, and you don’t know where fret stops and think begins, but this is what you think: You have no money, that’s a fact, and you don’t know what to do, although you’ve been trying to do the right thing, which is get a job, and you’re scared, and you’re tired from being scared and worrying and not eating enough. So you go to the market to buy food and you buy a lot of stuff — cereal, jam, cheese, bacon, eggs, bread — so much food, so much good food. And you want it, you want it all, you’re eating it up already with your eyes, but you can’t have it, even though you took it, even though you loaded up your basket, even though you brought it to the checkout counter. But when you open your purse, you see you don’t have the money, and you say you’ll just take the oatmeal and an orange, and the checkout girl with her stiff pink cheeks has to void the receipt and start over, and someone behind you says in a loud voice: You’d think people would check their purses before they went out of their houses, and your shoulders hunch in agreement, and you think that you could say you didn’t want to check your purse, you didn’t want to count your money, because you don’t have anything left to count and you were just hoping there would be something in there, but you were wrong, and you go home with your orange and your oatmeal. And all of this makes you fret even more, and now you have more trouble than usual sleeping, and when you don’t sleep you feel even worse, you feel so bad that there are almost no words to tell how bad you feel.
You feel all alone and wish someone would come and help you and save you, and you wonder where Father is and you even want Pamela back, and you think if you saw Sally in the street you would probably run up to her and beg for help. And if you knew where she and Father lived, you would go knock on their door. But even though you know where Louise D’Angelo lives, you don’t knock on her door, because now you know she’s not Louise the Angel, she wasn’t sent here on earth to save you. Nobody was. Nobody will. That’s just the way it is.
And then you think about the men coming to put you out in the snow, the way they did years ago when you had the apartment with Blossom Smith, although there is no snow now, it’s spring, and the weather is warm, so even if they put you out in the street, you wouldn’t freeze to death, and you could always go back to the shelter or the bus station, but the thought makes you cry and you lie on the couch and sob, and it’s not even the kind of crying that makes you feel better in the end, and you say to yourself you will never go to those places or beg anyone, and then you think you’ll be like that woman with the leather hands, with the filthy feet, with the terrible smell, with the plastic garbage-bag raincoat, telling people that you had a home once, also.
You think all these things, and you know it’s all happening because you have no money. And you have no money because you have no job, and you have no job because Pamela made you stay home. But she’s not here now and you still have no job, because you waited so long to look for one. Because you didn’t want to think about it, and you pretended you didn’t know that when she was gone you would not have a check every month, which was never very much, but which paid the rent and bought some food. And then you think that there’s no check anymore because there’s no Pamela. And no Pamela because you let her lie on the floor, you let her die. You didn’t think about the check then. You thought … what did you think? You thought you would be free, that’s what you thought, and if you thought anything else, it wasn’t about checks or money. What did money matter, how much did you need, how much did you eat? Maybe you thought you were like a mouse that lives on scraps and crumbs.
I have my job-hunting rules. Out of the apartment by eight-thirty. Downtown by nine. Go around for three hours. Ask for work everywhere. Say you will do anything. You mean it, so you can say it. Don’t stop. Keep going. After three hours, take a break. Eat something. Then go do it all over again.
Rules are good, they keep you going, but it’s still the same old same old. I ask, they say no. They are the managers. They are all named Carl Richard Jeff, they wear tight jackets and tiny smiles and say, “Sorry nothing now try us again in a month keep in touch thanks for coming in.”
* * *
At the end of the day, I stop in a dairy bar. “Double cone. French vanilla and chocolate almond,” I say. I need something sweet, I really do. Something good, something nice, something that will make me feel better, because I feel lousy. I feel dispirited. I feel scared! What if I never get a job?
“You want two flavors on one cone?” the boy behind the counter asks. He’s wearing a dirty white apron.
“Yes. Please.”
“We don’t give two flavors.”
“What? I just want one scoop of French vanilla and one of chocolate al —”
“You can only have one flavor.” He stares at me without expression.
“Why?” I want two flavors, French vanilla and chocolate almond. I really want both of them.
“You can just have one,” he says again. “Which one is it going to be?” He taps the counter. His finger-nails are long and dirty.
“Chocolate almond. Wait, no!” I feel anxious. I haven’t given myself a treat in a long time. I shouldn’t be doing this. I have to make the right choice. “French vanilla.”
He bends over the freezer, straightens up, drops the mound of ice cream into the cone, and presses it down with a dirty thumb. “That’ll be two-fifty.” He holds out the cone toward me.
I stare at the ice cream. The mark of his thumb is right there.
“Two-fifty,” he repeats.
“I — you — no thank you,” I stutter.
“What?”
“I — I changed my mind.”
“Hey!” he shouts. “Who are you? I fixed this ice cream for you. Take it!” His face is mean, and suddenly it’s not a boy’s face, it’s Pamela’s face, Pamela’s lips drawn up in a feral snarl.
My own face is on fire. “You — you — you put your thumb in it,” I get out.
My heart is beating like crazy. Am I wrong not to take the cone? Am I bad? Will I be punished? Maybe a drunk driver will cross the meridian and smash into me. A thunderstorm will take down high-tension wires and I will step on one. A stray bullet will find me as I take out my house keys. It will happen. I will be a body beneath a blanket, lying on the sidewalk, unattended, one bare foot sticking out. And all because I don’t want to eat ice cream with his dirty thumbprint.
“Are you nuts or something?” He looks like he’s going to leap over the counter and attack me.
“Yes … nuts. Totally nuts.” I back away and walk out. Behind me, the boy yells something. I cross the street fast and walk toward home. It takes me most of the way before I start laughing. I think of his face, his eyes bugging out crazily, and suddenly I’m happy, and I feel good. I know I did right. Nobody should have to eat ice cream with dirty thumbprints. That’s another rule of life.
* * *
Another day. My feet are sore, my eyes and legs ache. I have been walking for hours, stopping in every store and shop I pass. I hardly even hear them say “no” anymore. I walk in, I ask for work, I watch their eyes, I see the refusal, and I walk out.
I lean against a garbage can, then sit down on the curb. My arms hang, my head slides onto my lap. Cars pass. Swooooossss … Swooooossss … Swooooossss … I could be at the ocean listening to the water. Only I’m not, I’m in the city, sitting on a dirty sidewalk, aware of how much effort it takes not to let my mind slide away into the white place, the numb place. It would be so easy, like going down a chute-the-chute, arms out, flat on your back, and no resistance. You just sliiiiide. Down, down, down, and then for a while you don’t have to feel anything. I know all about it. How to let myself down there. How to be stupid. How to float above, watching as if it’s someone else down there. How to feel nothing but a touch of pity for that girl there, that dumb one. But not be there, not there, not anywhere.
Don’t, I say to myself. Not now. Don’t do it. I make myself sit up. I clench my teeth and hold on. It�
��s like getting a grip on a rope that’s being yanked through your fingers, burning your hand. I hold on. I do it.
And then, I don’t. I let go. And I slide, tired, too tired to stop myself. Tired of everything, of the same thing all the time, hope and disappointment, like the head and tail of a donkey, always yanking me in two different directions. Tired of getting nowhere, of always being stuck in the same place.
I drop my head to my knees and stare blankly at the gutter. Something small and silvery glitters up at me, and after a while I reach for it. It’s a tiny tarnished pin in the shape of an oak leaf. I breathe on it, polish it against my sleeve. The donkey pulls me again, pulls me forward a little.
* * *
At home, I go through all the pockets of all the jackets and pants and skirts. I lift the pillows on the couch and crawl under the beds. I search the drawers, comb through the dark corners of closets and cupboards. My take is two dollars and fifty-six cents. In the market, I buy baked beans, day-old bread, and spaghetti.
* * *
A man wearing gray sweats comes toward me, limping, waving, giving me a smile. In a moment I recognize him. St. Toothbrush. It’s early in the morning, the air is bluish and cool still, the little leaves on the trees look black. I’m a little surprised to see him, but not that much. I touch my sleeve, where I’ve pinned the tiny oak leaf. I knew something good was going to happen, I just didn’t know what.
“What happened to your leg?” I say. Not even hello. Just that, as if we know each other.
“I fell on some stairs.” He answers the same way. “Wrenched my ankle. Not serious. Hey, it’s great to see you. We never got introduced, did we?” He puts his hand out.
His name is Warren Weir. He wants to know how long ago it was it that we met. “I’m thinking it’s about two months,” he says. He’s still got my hand. His hand is warm and soft, like a paw on a stuffed animal.
I tell him March. I give him the exact date and say I know it for sure, because it was the day before my sister’s funeral. He looks sort of amazed and asks how old she was and if she was sick.
Twenty-two, I tell him. I know if he asks how old I am, I’m not going to lie. “It was a stroke,” I say.
He whistles. His fat throat pulses. “Well, poor thing!”
Does he mean me or Pamela? Me. Feel sorry for me, not her!
Did he hear me think it? He’s smiling at me in a certain way, and even though I smile back, I see that he’s old, maybe as old as Father. His eyes are young, though. They’re brown and they look directly at me.
Walking home, I think about him. I think about kissing him. And his eyes.
* * *
Sometimes Mother cried. Tears would appear suddenly on her face. I hated this. It frightened me. I’d pet her neck, bring her a cookie, a flower, beg her to talk to me, ask her why she was crying. “No reason,” she’d say, sitting at the table, a cup of tea cooling in front of her. “Pay no attention to me, Em. It’s okay. No reason, no reason.” And the tears would go down her face.
She must have been sick of reasons by then. Reasons are like weeds, they grow and grow. There’s a never-diminishing supply of them. But your heart gets tired of reasons, doesn’t it, tired of waiting, of being patient and good. It becomes weary with its disappointments. It wants what it wants.
* * *
When I unlock the door, the apartment is dark and empty.
The apartment is empty. No one is in it.
Of course not.
But the emptiness comes as a surprise. As if I hadn’t known. As if the emptiness is new.
The apartment is empty and this news comes to me, now, in this moment, as a shock — huge, final.
The apartment is empty. I know this. It is nothing new. It is empty of Pamela. It has been empty of her for months.
It is empty.
It will always be empty of Pamela.
Always.
She is quiet now. She is gone. She has left. Standing in the doorway, I understand this at last.
And then I understand something else: I am empty too. Like the apartment, I am empty of her. I understand, at last, that I am free.
A hand-printed sign in the window of the store says HELP WANTED. Inside, a red-haired man is crouched in front of a huge console TV, fiddling with the dials. “Hello,” I say, “excuse me, I’m—”
He waves his hand at me. “Be with you in a sec.” He turns up the volume and goes behind the TV. “Do you want something?” he asks in a moment, sticking his head around the side of it.
“I saw your sign.”
“What? Can’t hear you.” He puts one hand behind his left ear. His cheeks are covered with large pockmarks, like the surface of the moon.
“Your sign,” I repeat, louder.
“What about it?”
“I saw it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It says ‘help wanted.’”
“Right, I want help. You want to help me? Wait a second, it’s only a joke. Help wanted, I want help. Get it?” He eases back on his heels. “You type?”
“Yes.’’
“Shorthand?”
“Yes,” I lie.
He looks me over. “I put the sign up this morning. You’re the first person that’s asked about it. Some people say it’s bad luck, taking the first person.”
“Oh.” I turn to go.
“Wait a second! Don’t be in such a hurry. You think you’ll be good for this job?”
“I’ll work hard.’’ I’m hungry, and my legs are starting to shake. This morning I found half an onion in the back of a drawer. I peeled off the soft, smelly bits and boiled it with dill seeds and drank it.
“Sit down,” he says, pointing to a stool. “Don’t be nervous. I’m not such a bad guy. What’s your name?”
“Em. Em Thurkill.”
“Tell me something about yourself, Em. Are you a good worker?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you want this job?”
“Because … because … I want a job. I need a job.”
“You have somebody to support?”
“Me.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what.” He looks me over again. I have the sense that he takes in everything about me in that one moment. “I’m an old-fashioned guy — I do business on instinct and a handshake. You want to start tomorrow? Eight o’clock sharp.”
“I have the job? When do I get paid?” I blurt.
“The usual is the end of the week. But what do you say I give you a little something as advance against your first week’s pay?” He hands me a bill. Then another.
I stare at the money. I should stuff it in my pocket-book and leave before he changes his mind. “I can’t take this.”
“Sure you can. I told you, I have an instinct. You’re not going to run out on me.”
“I lied to you. I don’t know shorthand.”
“You don’t?” He looks disappointed, then shrugs. “Don’t worry about it. You can make up your own shorthand. I only do two or three letters a week, no big deal. What do you say, you want this job or not?”
I nod. I can’t speak. Of course I want it. Doesn’t everyone want it? Isn’t he an angel, the true angel I’ve been looking for? Why aren’t there hordes of people here, pushing me out of the way, jostling me aside?
“See this here, Lana? This is a weed. You want to take out a weed? Okay, here’s the way.” I close my hand over hers and we pull the weed together. “Carefully! Don’t pull anything else. We’re just going to take out the weed. There!” I hold it up. “We did it.”
“Good for us,” she says.
“Right. Now get your hands out of there.”
“I want to pull another weed,” she says.
“Okay, we’ll do it together.”
We do, and then I let her pull her own. She holds it up like I did and looks it over. Then she says, “What’s a weed?”
“You don’t know what a weed is?”
She shakes her head.
“A weed is a plan
t, but it’s the kind that takes up room from the plants we want to grow.”
“Like flowers?”
“Right. Flowers and veggies.”
“Veggies!” She glances at me, then caresses the tiny glossy spinach leaves that have poked through the ground. “What else does that weed do?”
“Well … it gets its roots in the soil and sucks up all the good soil food.”
“Beat its butt,” she said. “Beat its nasty butt.”
* * *
On the street, I see a baby in a stroller, wheeled by its mother. The baby’s legs toss about and its feet tap rhythm against the drum of air. Naked, solid, clean, brown, fat little feet. I want to run and kiss them. Wasn’t I like that once? Didn’t I also have baby feet once? Didn’t Pamela? Didn’t Mother and Father and even Sally? I’m disturbed and thrilled by this thought which seems, all at once, to contain the whole secret and puzzle of life. Baby feet.
I dream of Pamela on the ceiling. She sneers at me, heavy arms crossed over her chest, furious about something, but I don’t get what it is. I notice slabs of ice all over the place, mini glaciers glittering like cold jewels.
Beautiful, I cry, and wake up.
My eyes go straight to the ceiling. A shaft of light pierces it diagonally. Otherwise, it’s empty.
The clock ticks. I stretch and listen to the silence inside, the Saturday morning sounds outside. Yesterday was my eleventh day with Mr. Becker. I have food in the refrigerator and a money order made out to Stanley J. Saxon, Senior Manager, in the mail. It’s not all the rent money I owe, but it’s a beginning. Next week, I’ll send another money order. I get up, thinking about the day, thinking Once more. Let me try once more with Louise.
When She Was Good (9780545361910) Page 11