“Lisa, my name is Lisa” she grumbled.
“I know. Hi, Lisa” I said. “You don’t think I know everyone calls me the buffer. I’m not an idiot.”
I backed away slowly “I don’t call you that,” I said
“You do. You all do. If only you knew what they call you, other than a stuck-up bitch.”
“It was nice talking to you Lisa,” I said as I turned to walk away. My initial urge to make small talk, and be kind, gave way to wanting to get far away from the ticking time bomb behind me.
“None of you know. You just stand around thinking you’re all hot shit, but you have no idea what’s on the other side.”
I stopped and turned to face her again. “What does that mean?”
“You know what it means”
“I don’t. You just said I didn’t know anything” I put my hand on my hip waiting for a response.
“There is so much more out there. They only want us here because then we follow their rules. We are animals caged for their amusement. Not me though. I know what’s going on.”
I shortened the distance between us. “Oh yeah? Then why are you still here?”
“Because no one will believe me. You are all fools. Soon though, this whole town will crumble, and I will be the only one laughing.”
I receded further. Something had truly affected Lisa since the last time I had seen her. I thought about whether that night at the dry lakebed was the last I saw her and maybe something did happen that night. Lisa saw something, something that changed her so much that she ceased to be The Buffer any longer.
Chapter 18
The next morning while at work, I flipped through a catalog of car parts that sat at the front desk. The paper was nearly falling apart from age. There was not much to do at Blethenfield Insurance daily. There were no games on the single computer in the office, and the reading material was all somewhere in the range of the car parts catalog that had most likely been sitting at the front desk for two decades. Carl had left the office to do fieldwork.
Since I started working there, he had left me alone in the office multiple times. I stood up from my spinney-chair and wandered through the empty office. Hard candies in a glass bowl sat at an empty desk, but the thin layer of dust on top caused me to refrain from grabbing one. The oil paintings of barns, ducks, and desert scenes crowded the walls without any sense of theme. A filing cabinet stood tall at the back of the office, next to the bathroom door. Carl had given me a crash course in filing for current clients, but those files were in the middle of the office. I took a few soft steps toward the back to snoop at what was hidden in the back. I had grown bored enough that peeking inside an ancient filing cabinet filled with dusty old papers was enlivening. I pulled open the top drawer and skimmed through the manila folders stopping on the file labeled “Abrams”.
My father’s file being so close to me was never a possibility I could conjure up even in my most imaginative state. It seemed foolish not to at least take a quick peek. My mother would be disappointed, and my friends would think I was morbid, but there was no one around to tell me these things. It was an ideal opportunity that was practically shining a spotlight on the filing cabinet.
Abrams, Daniel accident reported June 18th. I wondered why the company would file on the same day he died when the accident happened during a night shift well after 8 pm. I quickly shuffled to the copy machine, so I could read the details at home and returned the file to its proper place. I didn’t want to explain my snooping no matter how harmless Mr. Blethenfield may find the whole thing. The glass entrance door swung open alerting me to push the copies under my shirt only being strapped by the elastic on my skirt. When I came to the front of the office, there was no one. I investigated the room to see if someone had walked passed me and didn’t notice because of my preoccupation with not getting caught with the file.
Raucous laughter shook the large window. Outside were kids on skateboards making jumps off the sidewalk. Someone must have come in to see what was inside. It was an unsettling feeling, but I sat at the front desk knowing my unease arose from going through things I had no business going through. I looked out the front window once again, getting lost in my own thoughts for lack of anything else to do. Lucy strolled down the sidewalk across the street.
Once Lucy noticed me staring into an unending abyss of possibility, I knew my moment of quiet and solitary contemplation was over. I slumped in my chair as she crossed the street. As I sat at the front desk, she stopped short in the middle of the street as if she remembered something. Maybe she left something behind or simply remembered that she didn’t like me all that much at all and didn’t need to make a special effort to visit me while at work. Lucy never gave into an argument first. It was a talent of hers to know when I would break and apologize for whatever I may have done. Even if the thing I had done wasn’t anything to necessitate an apology. She knew I would also do anything to avoid a possible panic attack or overall disquiet. She played my emotional instabilities for her personal gain.
Of course, I didn’t see it that way or chose to ignore such a fact because I craved a connection of some sort. Lucy completed her thought and continued to walk toward me. Once again, before swinging the door open, she stopped to think. The glass that separated us was only moderately tinted making her display of such a slight, yet personal moment was more curious than why she was planning to see me in the first place. It was always so strange to catch those moments when familiarity becomes something uncomfortable. In the last year of high school, the familiarity dissipated, and she became a stranger in many ways. It was like when you stare at yourself in the mirror too long and suddenly you don’t recognize the person staring back at you.
“Hi,” she said in a drawn-out sing-songy voice.
“What’s going on,” I asked with trepidation.
“Eh, I was just thinking about going to a movie, but the screen is all messed up or something,”
“Did they get a different movie?”
“Nope. Same thing they’ve had the last couple of weeks. You would think they would have more of a selection. They’re supposedly classics, aren’t there like a lot of old movies in the world?”
“It’s probably just hard to get the reels now,” I said.
Manere’s single movie theater once had two screens but was downsized to one when a small fire destroyed part of it. The movies that played were always old because that was the only thing they could get. It had been years since the truck drivers brought in anything resembling modern entertainment. With such a small selection, the theater owners were in no hurry to change the movie regularly. Because of this, fewer people were going to see movies. The only reason people did go was that it was one of the few buildings in Manere with an air conditioner rather than just a swamp-cooler that never worked on humid days.
“So, I was thinking. I feel terrible about what happened at the dry lakebed. I don’t want us to talk to each other like that,” Lucy said.
When Lucy mentioned our conversation, I only remembered the detached account of the events like so many other times in my life. I felt like it wasn’t me who went to the dance or hung out at Beanies for karaoke while these things were happening. I felt like I was watching it all on television while sitting underwater. After these things happen and I try to recall the event, it feels like someone else entirely. Like I'm putting the visuals together in my mind to set the scene but since I wasn’t there, there was no way to know if I was completely in the right. I read in a psychology book, that I checked out at the library, that it was a way of coping with anxiety most likely caused by the loss of a parent, but such disconnectedness from life made me even more anxious. “We should just forget about it,” I said.
“I noticed you left with Milo. So, you guys are cool now,”
“Um. I guess we are. We are definitely cooler than we were a few months ago.”
“I bet you’re super happy about that,”
“I am.”
I wasn’t po
sitive if Lucy was being kind and genuinely interested in Milo and me, or if she was circling the conversation to something about me being a bad friend. It had happened before and being prepared for it was the only way to survive.
“Well, life looks pretty great for you Angie. You can leave us all and have the life you always dreamed about.”
“I’m going to miss you so much, Lucy,”
“No, you won’t. You’ll be fine. Plus, you have Milo again. He won’t live too far and he’s the only one you ever really cared about, anyway. I was just the understudy until your real best friend wasn’t mad at you anymore,”
“Lucy. That is not true. You have to know that’s not true,”
Lucy looked away, “Yeah, well. It’s all good. I got to get going. It was nice chatting with ya. See ya later maybe” Lucy rushed out the door. I was beginning to hate the way people in my life kept leaving before I could say goodbye.
Chapter 19
Walking home had become an entirely different experience. The darkened skies and constant drizzle went from a welcome moratorium from the typical unbearable heat to an ominous foreboding of something to come. The mystery of Rachel had become all-consuming for me and yet, it didn’t seem to even provoke a response large enough to expect anyone else to join me in investigating. The chill in the air and through my bones made me want to hide away until the feeling went away. Perhaps, it was normal. Perhaps, part of the feeling was just me feeling uneasy about moving far away from family, friends, and the only place I had ever known. It would be reasonable to ignore such a feeling but going home should have felt safe and provide me with endless comfort which it could no longer do once I noticed a strange woman standing at my front door. I stood frozen.
The woman was unfamiliar in her lanky form and long stringy hair. Her clothes appeared just as odd as her presence. A mid-length gray skirt over black slacks. An oversized men’s jacket, and a pair of gloves. She was bundled up. Bundled up in July. The weather had been unpredictable recently, with atypical showers but this woman was dressed like she didn’t belong in Manere. She had the look of a traveler who found the wrong town, in the wrong season at the wrong point in time.
My summation of the woman kept me still, and she had yet to turn around fully to see me watching her. I took a moment to contemplate my next step. Ordinarily, I would just assume she was spreading the word of God or something, but lately, things had seemed much more out of the ordinary. My stillness was the only thing that made me certain she had not seen me, but as soon as I walked away, the movement would no doubt alert her. There was a time when the most basic social interaction would give me intense worry. I would agonize over whether to say hello to someone and once the words left my possession, I cringed over all the potential responses. That was some time before, and I believed myself to be a different person at this point. A person who had not been to extensive therapy sessions, a person who did not have a daily intake of anxiety-reducing teas and expired supplements from the outside. That was a person who was untouched by doctors and specialists and yet was worse off than someone who spent hours under scrutiny. Yet, even with professional help, I stood there just as terrified as anyone else. Nothing was keeping me from running down the street in a desperate hope that this woman would not hear my feet slamming on the gravelly road. “Angela. Excuse me. Angela dear, may I ask for some help?”, I heard from over the browning bush that separated our yard from open desert. On the other side of the land was the neighbor’s house. Mrs. Edith Brown.
The difficult next-door neighbor who always put on a sugary sweet voice when asking for favors, though no one was fooled. She was a truly awful individual most of the time. Noise complaints, near-constant grievances of “Visual assault” when neighbors would choose a specific landscaping design that didn’t align with her delicate sensibilities. However, all that was expected to be forgotten when she needed assistance with her groceries, which was often.
As if Mrs. Brown wasn’t an aggravation on a typical day, she made herself even more unlikable by being the one to call me out when I am so obviously trying to remain hushed while a stranger hovered around my front porch. It was even more maddening when I considered Mrs. Brown had to walk a good distance from her home to mine just to ask for help. For someone as helpless as Mrs. Brown, she sure didn’t mind the walk. With so much of the chatter, the mysterious figure who was momentarily fixated on my feet but quickly met my eyes discovered me.
“Can I help you?” I asked, my voice so perceptibly shaky. The words shot out of my mouth so quickly that I stood standing with utter humiliation and terror. She did not waver. Her eyes did not gleam a reassuring kindness. Her lips did not form a smile or anything that would comfort me.
“I said, is there something I can help you with?” I called out once again, this time with exaggerated concern as if she was a lost soul who was merely trying to get roadside assistance or an elderly woman who was confused about where exactly her son lived. The darkness in her eyes warned me that these were none of the reasons she was at my door. “I think you have the wrong house. That’s the Petersons. I know most of their friends and family and you may have the wrong house,”. The Petersons. A name sprouted from my imagination that was neither clever nor believable but there was nothing else to say.
The woman leaned down with care as to not creak her unforgiving body. Her right hand drifted down as if she had lost control, but it appeared she intended on her movement and was setting something on the swinging bench that adorned the front porch. An urgency in my bones inspired me to approach the woman. Once close enough to speak in a reasonable tone, rather than shouting from afar, I asked again. “Do you have the right house?”
“Angie? Is that you? I can’t believe it.” My heart felt like it was fighting my body to be released as it pounded its way out. I could no longer pretend to be someone else or claim this woman had found the wrong home. She knew me, and I started to think I may have known her too.
**
After weeks of convincing myself that I was creating my own mystery and the peculiar things that were happening were all in my mind, I finally met someone who only cemented my belief that things weren’t normal. “Are you saying you’re my grandmother? Aren’t you a little…?”
“Old? Are you asking if I am too old to be your grandma? How could you? I’m only 35,” the woman responded with a toothy grin.
“Great Grandma. I’m Ethel. Ethel Mary Markson. I am your mother’s grandmother,”.
“I always thought you were gone. I mean I thought you passed away before I was born. No offense,”.
“No offense dear. I will 100 this August. I am aware at this age; people expect you to be long dead. Or maybe they just wish it,”, she chuckled to herself.
“Where do you live?”
“With your Grandma and Grandpa. Your mom’s parents, dear,”. Her answer startled me.
“They’re alive?! My mom said they died when I was little. I could barely remember them, but they came to visit but had to leave because Grandpa was sick. Mom said I couldn’t visit them anymore because they both died from old age,”.
Ethel chuckled again. Her half of the conversation was rife with comedy whereas mine was with utter bemusement. “They are very much alive and well. They still play doubles tennis three times a week. Very athletic. Too hard on the joints for me, but good for them,”. Everything this person was telling me seemed unreal, but I couldn’t help but believe her.
“Perhaps, your mother just didn’t want you to worry your mind about what they were doing. Maybe she didn’t want you to visit them and engage in more modern teenager excitement. You know how things are here. Behind in the times and all. Such little communication. Though I do appreciate you teenagers talking to each other in person, enjoying each other’s company instead of being glued to your phones and texting one another if that’s the proper word.”
Ethel became, even more, puzzling with each statement she made. I wasn’t sure if I should believe her completely or as
sume, she was lying to me for some ulterior gain, but there wasn’t anything to gain from telling me this story. Her facts seemed much more like facts than anything I grew up within the always secretive Manere. Ethel expectedly watched for my reaction. Her facial expressions, which were like those of my mother’s, brought tears to my eyes I fought from being exposed. She really was my great-grandma. I could see it. I could see me in her eyes, veiled smile, and nervous energy.
“I’ve never really had a grandma before. Thank you for finding me.” I didn’t know what else to say. I wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be at my house. She could have had a history of mental illness and that was why my mom kept her away from me. Then again, my mom had a tendency of keeping things and people away from me for my benefit.
“Where is your mother? I know she might want to keep me, and her mother separated from her life here, but I would like to see her. It has been so long,” Ethel asked earnestly.
“She’s on one of her weeklong excursions. Two times a year she stays in the nicest hotel just inside the border of Manere. I always heard there wasn’t much of a town there either, but the hotel is so luxurious that it’s like a vacation all on its own or something.” I explained.
“Does she ever take you with her? Or is that another one of those forbidden activities this place came up with?” Ethel asked me with mockery in her voice. Her age had not curbed her self-awareness or her wit.
“She and Peter, my stepdad. I don’t know if you knew she was remarried. They went together. But yes, I guess that is one of those rules again. Since it is near the town limits and I’m not quite eighteen yet,”
“August 16th. You’ll be eighteen on August 16th, the same day I turn 100,”. Ethel said with delight.
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