“It was just at the Y, Mom.”
“Were lots of kids there?”
“Tons of them. I couldn’t even hang up my coat, had to wear it all evening, and the cheese—”
“The cheese?” her mother repeated, and just then noticed the Limburger in the middle of the table. “I wondered what smelled.” Her nose wrinkled as she picked up the package. “This is the Limburger cheese? The cheese I gave you for Milly? What’s it doing here?”
“I brought it home. I couldn’t find Milly’s house. I went to her house on Montcalm, I thought it was her house, but they said she didn’t live there.”
“But, Mimi, honeypie,” her mother said, putting the cheese into one of the refrigerators, “I told you Milly Tea moved to Howlett Avenue.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Mimi said, stiffening.
“Why, yes, I did, honeypie. I’m sure I did,” her mother said softly, in the same wheedling voice she used to ask Mimi to scrub the bathtub. “Howlett Avenue. I told you.”
“You never did,” Mimi said. Had her mother given her that stinking lump of Limburger on purpose? It was a very crazy thought. But Mimi remembered how her mother had come dashing out after her and Robert, so insistent Milly Tea had to have that cheese tonight. And now she didn’t even seem to care that the cheese had never been delivered.
“You never told me about Milly Tea moving. I had to carry that cheese around all evening.”
“All evening,” her mother repeated in a small voice. “It must have been terrible.”
“It was,” Mimi said unsparingly. Sure, things had come out fine in the end. But no thanks to her mother. She pushed away the cocoa cup and went to her room. Her mother followed, apologizing.
“I ruined your evening. I can see it on your face, you’re mad at me.
“Mom, I’m tired.” She kicked off her shoes and sat tensely on the edge of her bed. That fine swimming feeling, that lightness was draining away. Why couldn’t her mother leave her alone?
“The cheese in your coat pocket all evening,” her mother lamented. “That awful smell—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mimi said furiously. Okay, okay, maybe her mother hadn’t done it maliciously. Had just had to see Robert and didn’t care what excuse she used. So she’d come running out with that cheese. Had to live Mimi’s life every minute!
Sitting down heavily next to Mimi, her mother put her arms around her. “Your first date,” she mourned, “and I ruined it.”
Mimi stiffened under the weight of her mother’s moist arms, suffocated by her mother’s smells of meat and sweat.
“Mimi, I’m sorry! I wanted you to have a wonderful time on your first date. It only comes once, it should be perfect. I remember. Oh, I remember.” Her mother rocked Mimi back and forth. She felt trapped, unable to struggle free of her mother’s grasp. Let go of me, she wanted to scream. Let me go. Let go.
“Life goes so fast, Mimi,” her mother said, rocking her. “Those wonderful days, I think of them now and I can’t believe it was so long ago. First you’re young and happy, and then suddenly you’re grown up. And it’s all different. You’ll find out. You’ll see.”
Something wet fell on Mimi’s face. She looked up, astonished. Her mother’s eyes were shining with tears. “Oh, Mimi, I am sorry. I am so sorry.” Her face wrinkled with tears. “I wanted so much,” her mother cried, rocking Mimi back and forth.
It was terrible to hear her mother cry. Mimi thought of her mother behind the butcher counter, joking with the customers, or in the dim varnished kitchen, or in the narrow closed bedroom with her silent father. And she ached with a new dumb pain for her mother.
Her mother’s tears fell on Mimi’s cheeks. “Oh, Mimi,” her mother said in a strangely agonized voice. “Oh, my Mimi.” She patted Mimi’s head heavily, clumsily, caressing her, yet at the same time pushing her head down in that loving, strangling embrace. And Mimi let her. Just for that moment, she gave up fighting. She bent her head, almost willingly. It was like a gift to her mother. She could be generous. She was young. She could let her mother hold her, dreaming of Mimi’s life as her life. Because even now, with her head bent, she was moving away. She was moving away from her mother, out of this life, these closed rooms, swimming free, swimming toward her own life, into her own blue sea. Swimming strongly and freely away. Mimi the fish! Good-bye, she sang in fish language. Good-bye, good-bye!
Dear Bill, Remember Me?
Dear Bill,
Well, guess who this is, writing to you after all these years! Four years, to be exact. Today is Sunday, October 5, and the last time I saw you was on a Saturday in May. May 7, to be exact. Four years, five months, and two days, to be ex—
Dear Bill,
Remember me? It’s been a long time since I saw you last. I figure (roughly speaking) about four years. Mucho water under the dam, as the saying goes. I wonder if you would recognize me now. I bet you wouldn’t call me Bitsy anymore, even though I’m still not the world’s tallest woman. But I’ve changed quite a bit (Nature, old boy, Nature) and so have certain other people around here that you used to know.
My mother, for instance, has gotten plump! What happened was, she decided to go back to work (driving a bus—cool, n’est-ce pas?) and give up smoking at the same time. But she still wants to smoke like crazy, so instead she eats every chance she gets. You should see the lunch bag she takes to work. Dad says everything except the kitchen sink goes into that bag. Dad is the same except he had to get glasses because he can’t see little stuff like telephone numbers. And the other person you might be interested in hearing about, Judy—well, Judy is Judy. She’s in college and, actually, I don’t see that much of her anymore.
And what about you? Have you changed? I hope not. I always thought you were perfect, and I still th—
Dear Bill Old Chum,
This is Kathy speaking. Kathy Kalman. (Bitsy, to you.) Remember? Well, it’s been a long time all right, Bill, plenty of water flowing under the dam, and thank goodness no one calls me Bitsy anymore. I never liked that name. Still, if we could have one of our good old long talks again, I wouldn’t care what you called me—Kid, Bitsy, KK, Shorty—anything would be okay!
I’ve never been able to talk to anybody the way I talked to you. You listened to me, Bill. You took me seriously, me and my ideas, and even though you were so much older (seven years, remember?) you didn’t look down on me, you didn’t think it was beneath you to talk to me. You’d come over to see Judy, carrying a book under your arm and you’d be early, as usual (you said it was a bad habit, that you had to get everywhere before everyone else), and if Judy wasn’t ready, you’d say, “Come on, Bitsy, talk to me. Keep me company.” Remember?
We’d go outside by the kitchen door and sit next to each other on top of the wooden steps leading from our back porch down to the yard, and we’d talk. Talk about everything. Sometimes, it would be about school. I told you once how Miss Fish, my gym teacher in fifth grade, had paddled one of the girls in front of everyone. Pulled down her pants in the shower room and paddled her over her knee. I said to you that if she ever tried to do that to me, I would kill her. You didn’t laugh. You didn’t say, Oh you know you don’t mean that, the way people do all the time. You put your arm around me, and you nodded, and said you knew how I felt.
Another time, you asked me, “If nobody hears the tree fall in the forest, has it fallen?” At first, I didn’t know what you meant. It sounded so funny. But you were serious. You said philosophers had thought about this for thousands of years. “My own version, Bitsy, is: If I sit in my room and no one knows I’m there, how can 7 be sure I’m there?”
“But you are there, Bill.”
“How do you know, Bitsy? How do I know? How do I know that I’m real, that I truly exist? What if it’s all a dream? What if you’re in my dream now, and I’m only part of your dream? How can you be sure?”
I wanted to laugh. I couldn’t understand it. (I think I understand now.) You were always saying funny things,
mocking things, mocking yourself, your nose especially.
Are you surprised how much I remember of things you said to me? I remember other stuff, too, like the time you kis I only wish I could remember everything, instead of just bits and pieces.
Well, Bill, reading back over this letter, I can see that I’ve really strayed off the beaten path, gone all around Robin Hood’s barn, as my mother says. What I started out to say, what I wanted to write about was, Congrats, Old Chum, congrats. It’s not every day a good old friend ups and—
Dear Bill,
Remember me? It’s been one heck of a long—
Dear Bill,
Surprise! After all these years, you must be wondering why you’re suddenly hearing from—
Dear Bill,
Just a brief note to say congratu—
Dear Bill,
All morning I’ve been trying to write you a letter and not getting very far. Every time I write something it sounds stupid to me and I give up. Do you remember me? Judy Kalman’s little younger sister? I guess you remember Judy, all right. (Ha-ha.)
See what I mean about sounding stupid?!
The thing is, my head is full of stuff I want to tell you, and questions you haven’t been around to answer for four years, and—
Look, I don’t mean that as an accusation. Lots of people break their promises. I’m positive you had tons of other stuff on your mind. Anyway, if you want to be exact about it, I guess it wasn’t actually a promise. I mean, you didn’t say, I promise in so many words. You just said, “Bitsy, we’ll keep in touch. Okay?” And I said, “Yes.”
I can see now that I was really a dope to think that was a promise and to go on waiting for years to hear from you. I guess you’d laugh if you could have seen me jump when the phone rang, or run for the mail every day after I heard you went away to college. My mother used to say, “Who do you think is going to write you, Kathy?” And I’d say, “Oh—nobody.” And she’d say, “That’s what I thought, because you don’t write anybody.” But I would have written you, Bill, if I’d known where. Would you have written me back?
Dear Bill,
This is ridiculous. I’ve been trying to write you a letter all morning and not getting anywhere. Well, this is it. I’m just getting on with this, writing whatever comes into my head, and the heck with it!
One thing I’ve been dying to tell you is that we read Cyrano in English. And guess who it made me think of right away! I love Cyrano, Bill. I adore him. “A great nose indicates a great man—genial, courteous, intellectual, virile, courageous …” Cyrano de Bill!
All those jokes about your nose. You said your nose was so goddamned big it got in the way of your seeing straight. (It never occurred to me then that you might be self-conscious. Well, you shouldn’t have been. Big nose or not, I thought you were terrific-looking.) You used to intone, Who knows what evil lurks in this nose? The Nose knows. You’d put on your Fiendish Murderer face. And remember Mr. P.R.O. Biz Kiss, the Inquiring Reporter? “Where my nose goes, I follow, sniffing out the truth wherever it may lead.” Mr. P.R.O. Biz Kiss could flare his nostrils and twitch his nose like a rabbit at the same time. Very talented, he was!
Bill—remember the time I sneaked up on you and Judy? That was a kid-sister, bratty kind of thing to do. I always wanted to explain to you about that, because I felt you were disappointed in me. (Were you?) That day, I was coming home from school, thinking how strange things were. I don’t know why it happened just then, but all of a sudden that day, I had a different view of everything. Cars looked weird to me, and the clothes people wore, sidewalks, houses. As if everything was unreal. I kept thinking, Where did all this come from? How did it all get here? I had a feeling that someone, maybe God, could just peel off our whole city from the face of the earth like some cruddy scab. I suppose, for the first time, I was really thinking about things the way you always did, not just accepting everything—here I am, here’s my parents and Judy, here’s our house, school, the stores, and here it belongs. Instead, I had this dizzy feeling of it all being—well, superficial, not really rooted.
It was spring, I remember, and the city maintenance crew had just come along and filled up the potholes in our street and suddenly it terrified me that beneath the smooth, seemingly solid road was just a lot of dirt. Everything was so flimsy, everything I’d ever thought of as solid and unmovable. Cars and trucks traveled over roads, and houses stood on foundations, but I felt that in a moment it could all crumple like paper.
And then I came to our house—we were living upstairs on Second Street then, but we’ve moved, did you know that?—and as I started up the stairs, I was testing every step because I still had that queer scary feeling of everything being impermanent. And suddenly I knew that you and Judy were in our living room, that you were all alone in the house, and that you were making love.
As soon as I thought that, I started creeping quietly up the stairs. I didn’t know why, but thinking about you and Judy made me forget the other sickening, frightening thoughts I’d been having. I stopped feeling dizzy and went on quietly, as quietly as I could, up the stairs. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I really and truly didn’t know, didn’t think to myself that I was doing something sneaky or wrong.
I just kept creeping up, opened the door as quietly as I could, and walked quietly into the living room. And just as I’d somehow known I’d find you, you both were there, on the couch together.
Judy saw me first. “Get out!” she yelled. The two of you fell apart, sort of jumped up or scrambled off the couch. I couldn’t move. I felt—I don’t know how to say it—hurt, I guess. Isn’t that stupid? I mean, I knew what I was going to see. I’d had sort of a pre-vision. And yet, I just felt so hurt, so bad.
“You little spy,” Judy said. Her cheeks were all red, shiny, as if she had a fever. “Spy! Sneak!” I shook my head. I wanted to explain, to say something, but nothing would come out.
I could hear my heart, or feel it, I wasn’t sure which, making this hollow sound inside me. I’d never heard it before and it scared me terribly. I thought, I’m going to die right now. Because I did this. And still, all I could do was stand there and shake my head. I think I was waiting for you to say something. It was like I was in a spell and only you could break it. You were looking at me, your blond hair sticking out every which way, and your eyes sad, I thought, because I’d done something to hurt you.
And then—isn’t it funny, queer, I mean—then I can’t remember what happened next. I don’t remember leaving the room or anything like that. The next thing I remember is Judy following me around offering me money not to tell Mom. I hated her for that, for thinking I’d betray her or you. And I guess she hated me, figuring I was holding it over her head. But torture wouldn’t have made me reveal one single tiny fraction of what I’d seen. (One day I locked myself in the bathroom, poked a needle into my thumb four times, one time for each letter of your name, and with each drop of blood swore myself to silence.)
Are you laughing your head off, Bill? I wouldn’t blame you, but I hope not. I hope you can understand that I was eleven and you were eighteen and I thought you were very special. Once you said to me, “Bitsy, when you grow up, you’re going to drive some guy crazy.” That was the time you kissed me. I guess you hardly remember it, since it wasn’t a real kiss. I mean, it wasn’t on the mouth or anything. You kind of stroked my hair and then you kissed me on the cheek. And you said, “You better be sure and let me know when you’re sixteen. I want to be there when that time comes.”
Well, I’m fifteen and one-half now, Bill, almost there, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. I mean, I read about you and Lucille Lacy Heller Marginy in the newspapers—
Dear Bill,
This is a letter from an old friend who will probably remain nameless, but who wants to speak frankly to you concerning the Marginy woman. 1. She is thirty years old. 2. She has been married before. 3. She has two kids who are both spoiled. I know this for a fact because Randy Southworth a truste
d friend has been Mrs. Marginy’s baby-sitter twice when she couldn’t get her regular sitter, and this friend could do nothing whatsoever with the children. 4. She is too old for—
Dear Bill,
It’s been quite a few years since I saw you last. Over four years, since it was in May four years ago that you and my sister, Judy, broke up. I happened to be there at the time it happened. Do you remember?
We were all out riding in your car, your old jalopy you called Spirit of Syracuse. I think Judy was mad at you because you let me come along.
I kept wishing you’d say, “Bitsy, come on up in front with us.” Over and over I imagined you saying, “Move over, Judy, make room for Bitsy.” But I didn’t say anything. I was conscious of trying not to butt in, not to make too much of a pest of myself. I was just glad to go anyplace with you and Judy. I never thought Judy was nice enough to you, and I told myself you only liked her because she was so pretty. (Mom and Dad have noticed that my CQ—clumsy quotient—goes up when Judy comes home and they’ve tried to straighten me out—or up—by telling me I have no need to be jealous just because Judy is prettier and basically more successful in school.) I’m not jealous, truly. I like who I am. I’ve liked who I am ever since I knew you, Bill, because you liked me. But that didn’t stop me from having spiteful eleven-year-old thoughts about my sister.
I was telling myself my pretty sister looked like a Talking Barbie and, sitting behind her, I decided I could see a short piece of cord sticking out of her back. Pull the cord and Talking Barbie says, “Hello! I am Talking Barbie. I am taking a ride with Talking Ken. Talking Ken and I are having fun. Talking Ken and I are going to swim. Watch me swim in my sexy bikini.”
I got myself all wrapped up, concentrating really hard on that idea. Mind over matter. Maybe if I concentrated superhard I could really turn Judy into Talking Barbie and then you and I would pack her up and ship her back to the Barbie factory to find Malibu Barbie, Talking Francie, and Growing Barbie.
Dear Bill, Remember Me? Page 9