“Can we go now?” the girl asked. “My sister is a little bit upset.” It was clear that she was comfortable in her skin, bright and dependable, the kind of girl Rommy had been. “I told her that none of those stories are true but, you know,” the girl shrugged, “she’s just a kid.”
“Here’s a story that’s true,” the older boy said and popped up the front tire of his bike. “Old women who live all alone sometimes get robbed at night. Sometimes they get raped,” he stretched the word out in such a frightening way that the little girl buried her head in the stomach of the older girl and the other two little ones ran toward the complex, leaving their bikes behind.
“Really?” Rommy shook her head. “That’s shocking and sad. I feel sorry for whoever is so lost to the world that he’d do such a thing.”
“We find condoms out behind your house all the time,” the boy said. She recognized him. She had seen him spit a wad of chewing tobacco into Mister Simmy’s cage and then run off behind the apartments. She had seen him tease Simmy with a banana, yanking it away at the last minute. He stepped closer, an apple in one hand, as he eyed Simmy’s cage. “People go out in your backyard late at night and do things you can’t even imagine.”
“Oh, I can imagine,” she said. “There is so much activity of a sexual nature in my yard you just wouldn’t believe it. Some plants, like those pomegranates, have to mate in order to bear fruit. That kiwi vine, too. Just like in human life, you need a male and a female in order to produce. And then there are those lilies whose loud colors scream out that they want to be fertilized right that second.” She breathed out and unclasped her hands. “And the modest little yucca who closes up once the process has taken place.” The children were watching her, waiting. “Sometimes all you need is a good breeze,” she whispered. The leaves were turning and soon they would cover the ground. This year she would get out and rake just as she and Albert had always done. She wished she could hire some of the children to help her. She would teach them all about her yard. They would love that, love gathering apples and pears for preserves to spoon onto piping-hot biscuits. She could have all kinds of goodies ready just as the school bus stopped at the corner.
“May we?” the girl asked again. “May we go now?”
“Of course,” Rommy said and they were gone; the boy raced off on his bike and the two girls crossed the cluttered yard of the apartment complex. They stopped and sat down on one of the concrete stoops that looked just like all the others.
She walked around to her side yard and began picking the pomegranates that were ready. They were best when they began to split open all by themselves, the thick skin cracking so that you could reach in and pull it apart, two perfect halves of shiny red seeds protected by the thin white skin that held them in place. She had seen many people in town try to match her fruits; they had even come with shovels to dig up the little offshoots that sprang up in the neighboring yard. Most didn’t know what she had just taught the children, that the bushes had to have a mate. She filled the bag until it was almost too heavy for her to lift, balanced some pears and apples on top, and she made her way across the street to the stoop where the two girls had been sitting. She could hear a television going inside. She could smell something frying, bacon maybe. There wasn’t a bell so she knocked on the screen door and then stepped back and put the bag down on the stoop.
“Yes?” A woman was at the door. She looked too young to be a mother, too young to be smoking but there she was with a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and a baby on her hip wearing just a diaper. “Can I help you?”
“I’m your neighbor.” Rommy pointed over at her house and watched as the two girls came and stood behind their mother. “I brought your girls some fruit from my yard.”
“Well that’s nice of you,” the woman said and pushed open the door. She didn’t invite Rommy in; instead she motioned for the girls to go out on the stoop. There was a man in the next room, stripped down to an undershirt and shorts while he painted the walls a pale yellow. He was barefooted. His young muscled arm rolled fresh paint over the dingy walls. “You’ll have to pardon me not asking you in,” she said. “We’re painting and it’s a mess.”
“Of course.” Rommy waited for the mother to go back inside and then she turned to the girls. “Here’s some fruit,” she said. “You are welcome to come and pick more any time you like.”
They looked up at her in complete surprise. “I’d just appreciate your letting me know when you come for a visit.” She didn’t give them time to say or ask her anything. Instead she turned and made her way back across the yard to her own porch where Mister Simmy was waiting for her. He would be ready to have his dinner and get settled in for the night. He would jump with joy to see her.
Snakes
I WAS GOING to get my tubes tied but I decided to go to the movies instead. The secretary at the OB-GYN office kept calling and leaving messages on my answering machine. “Are you okay? Did you forget us?” She sounded anxious; she had lots of loose ends to tie up. Mine were not going to be some of them. I was okay when they called it tubal ligation—the tying of the tubes. I do a lot of macramé and crocheting and so the notion of tying something didn’t bother me in the slightest. It was when I began thinking the word sterilization that I got cold feet. It sounded so final.
So, I went to see a movie called Mrs. Brown instead, and though I’m not usually one who is into the British royalty (other than the kind of cheap gossip you might get on the front of the tabloids), this movie really appealed to me. I highly recommend it. My favorite part was watching these Victorian women swimming in full garb, bustles and petticoats and thick stockings.
Now that’s the way to keep the cellulite under wraps, literally, not to mention the benefits of sun protection. I ate popcorn and Milk Duds and thought about designing swimsuits for those who don’t want to show anything at all— merwomen: timeless, mystical, camouflaged—but the wearers would look elegant nonetheless with their loose white gowns and pale translucent skin. I am far better at teaching high school biology than I am at sewing even though about once a year I buy bolts of fabric and all kinds of patterns that I spread over the living-room floor. Will is tired of my ideas because he knows that as soon as I have cut out the fragile pattern pieces and pinned them in place I’ll lose interest or it will be time for my students to turn in their leaf collections, and I’ll have to pay hundreds of dollars to a woman I know who does sew, only to wind up with an array of weird clothes that I will never wear. Will has asked that I try not to get any ideas other than those related to my own field. He forgets that I had the idea of the water bra long before there was a water bra. And that new device that allows camping women to pee standing up. We could be millionaires if I had ever had an investor, but by the time I get to this part in the conversation, he is long gone.
Every New Year’s Will asks me to promise that I will not buy any fabric or crafty, project-related things. His request always follows mine—that he stop playing a game he calls the death pool, where you guess who is going to die during the next year. He has been listing the Queen Mother and Bob Hope for the past six years; I don’t even remember who else he said last year because I blocked it out. I don’t believe in joking about the dead. Every time he gets on this track I have to knock on wood. Our other annual tradition takes place in summer while the kids are at camp—one night swept clean of all responsibilities and duties. We begin planning it as soon as we hug and kiss Janie and Ben good-bye and watch them get herded off with all the other ten and nine year olds, respectively. We can’t imagine that they will both make it the whole two weeks. We anticipate poison ivy and bee stings, broken limbs, near-drowning episodes. We worry about practical jokes and cruelty within the cabin; we fear black widow spiders lurking in the latrines, ticks raining from the pine trees, snakes coiled under rowboats. It was potential danger that brought us together in the first place— two acquaintances who chose to share a cab rather than use public transportation after a late-night party
held by mutual friends in D.C.
NOW WE ARE in the backyard of a house that is one-tenth paid for—the coals are dying, the dog is gnawing a T-bone. This is our favorite night of the year. We turn off the phone, we drink a little bit too much, and we write out our grievances of the past year, read and then burn them. There were those awful years when everything was very serious and personal—what we refer to as the Dark Ages. Those were the years when our grievances were about each other; they were long and typed and angry and pathetic. The Dark Ages. If you can survive them it will make a marriage much stronger. You just have to get to the other side of the cave and re-enter the world of light and warmth. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a person or two who listened and knew too much, but creatures of advanced intelligence should understand this. If your Dark Ages become the Ice Age, you’re having a long weary journey and the meltdown hits you like a blowtorch the minute your children leave home. Sometimes the break is too severe to ever mend. Then all that’s left are your sad hieroglyphics in an abandoned cave, an explanation of what went wrong.
If you never experience any of this, then probably you are living on the surface and will have to come back in the next life as something like a newt or tadpole to improve your status. Or that’s what Will thinks. That’s what we say to make ourselves feel better, and it works like a charm. We choose the analogy, since Will is a swimming coach, that a marriage that never takes a dive is like skimming the surface of life. You might zip right along but it’s shallow, the journey of a simple water bug. We believe sooner or later you have to suit up and dive to the bottom. It’s only down there that you can appreciate the light on the surface.
We are relieved to have made it through with only a few scars. During the grievance sessions of the Dark Ages, I typed: “Do you need to go to husband school? Do you need to have your hearing checked? Do you have a learning disability?” I was looking for explanations everywhere. The women’s magazines suggested that if I made myself more available sexually everything would be hunky-dory. Seems to me, I’d heard that song before. Like back before the light-bulb. A pop-psychology book said I must first understand his mother and the first months of his life, when he was totally dependent on her. Darwin said that marriage was not the natural state anyway, that the family unit only came about so that the males who needed to be out hunting for food would not fight over sex. And the Bible said—well, forget that one. Clearly there was a common theme emerging. The descent of man.
He was descending all right, and I have never been angrier. I descended, too. My cuspids grew, the fur on my neck stood up. I was afraid to look in a mirror.
That same year, he typed: “You are a bitch.”
I wanted depth and details. Why was I a bitch? What kind of bitch? When did he first begin to think of me as a bitch? A bitch compared to who? Didn’t he think that he contributed to the bitch factor?
He could not offer a better example, he said, than the one I offered every time I opened my mouth.
It makes me feel sick and shaky all over just to recall. Now, three years out of the cave, I am elated when at the last minute I just grab some little Post-it notes and jot down my grievances. I write “Charlton Heston.” I write “nosey friends.” Then I write “cellulite” and I am about to write “yeast infections” when I think I better write the confession that I didn’t get myself spayed or tied or put out of commission. Then Barbara walks in; she is the nosey friend I had in mind.
Now first of all, Barbara knows that this is our quiet night at home and that I have been planning it ever since I packed the kids’ footlockers and hauled them up to Camp Skyuka. She is the very reason we have to turn the phone off. But here she is, more hyper than usual even with no apology for busting in.
“Tried and tried to call,” she says and flips her hair back from her shoulder. If she does this gesture once she does it forty times. Her hair is black with a streak of gray in the front like Lily Munster or a skunk. Someone in a salon in Charlotte told her it looked sophisticated that way and she believed it. I once counted her doing the hair flip thirty-two times over dinner. Will counted thirty-four.
“Thought you must have been on the Internet.” We shake our heads. I glance at the little Post-its on my lap. Will has note cards and I can see he has written “prayer in school” as his first grievance. I am always worried that he will turn our night into a major political rally so I am relieved to also see that he has written “toe fungus” and “swimmer’s ear” and “old men in Speedos.”
“Oh,” Barbara says with perfect fake pity. “Is this your little night all alone? Am I interrupting you?”
Will makes no comment and I—against my better judgment—tell her that it’s okay. We just finished eating. I have not had enough to drink to be blunt. This is a grievance I write down right in front of her: “I have trouble being rude even when circumstances merit it.”
She would be rude. She is one of those women who really has little interest in other women unless they can be of assistance to her. She would never, for example, join with the sisterhood. She is a man’s woman, the kind who would have no problem sleeping with whoever gave her the green light. Her subjects are herself and her family and she reiterates details of those topics a minimum of two times and usually three. Will and I take bets on this, five bucks a hit. He says she does triples most often and I say doubles. When Will is correct, he does his hand like he’s opening a cash register and goes “ka-ching, ka-ching.”
Barbara keeps looking at her watch as if she’s about to go somewhere but then she doesn’t. She talks about her kids, her Ellen, who is mature beyond her years, and Matthew and Paul, who recognize the brutality of contact sports like football and have chosen to play the clarinet and French horn. As if one means you can’t do the other. I want to laugh every time she says Matthew and Paul, because I want to ask where Mark and Luke and John and all the other New Testament dudes are, but I pour myself a glass of wine instead.
“Paul says, ‘Mom, the clarinet is my weapon of choice.’” She flips her hair, nails flashing sparkly red in the glow of the citronella candle. “He says, ‘Mom, the clarinet. Weapon of choice.’” She grins great big at Will and motions that she would love some wine. “‘Clarinet. Weapon of choice.’”
“Ka Ching, Ka Ching,” Will says. He scribbles a grievance but I can’t read it.
“Three on a match,” I say.
“What?” Barbara is jumpy tonight which means she is probably about to ask a big favor of me. Will I go have a root canal for her? Will I sit by her side and listen to her for the rest of my life? Will I give her my husband, who she is constantly asking to talk to about his work and how can she improve the muscles of her upper arms—could he ever help her put together a workout program?
“Three on a match. Bad luck.” I hold my hand out to the side for Will to refill my glass. I make a face to let him know how pissed off I am getting. “First guy in the trenches strikes a match and lights his smoke, passes it to the next guy, who passes it to the next guy, which has given the enemy time to become alert, aim, fire.”
“Where did that come from?” She laughs. “You remind me of Ellen’s opera teacher, who is always changing the subject.”
“Opera?” Will asks and if I could I’d kick him.
“A fabulous program,” she says. “I don’t know if your kids are the least bit inclined toward the arts but it’s a . . .”
“Fabulous program,” I say. “Ka-ching, ka-ching.”
“What?” She puts her legs out on the chaise like she plans to stay awhile.
“Where is Ed?” Will asks.
“Who knows,” she waves her hand. “First he said he had to work late; then he tells me that he’s planning a hunting trip at five o’clock in the morning with some of his partners.” She looks at me with her look that says you know what I mean. She tells me often that she is convinced that Ed is having an affair. She has been convinced of this for many years. It is what has given her “permission” to have the affair
s that she has had, details of which I have pleaded bloody murder not to hear. And there have been many affairs and not very discriminating ones if you ask me. But then, of course, she sees herself as the victim.
“You should have told him to stop by, you know, since you’re here.” Will looks at me and smiles slightly. Now we’re in cahoots. We are a couple. We are beyond the Dark Ages; we are evolved. I have told him everything, even how Barbara once said that she hated Ed so much that she wished he’d die. Even telling such a thing made me want to knock wood and cross myself even though I’m not Catholic.
“Yeah, why are you here anyway?” I ask. “I mean, you and Ed could have a romantic night all to yourselves.”
“Well yes, that’s true.” Then she is silent.
Here she is. Miss Water Bug, who for whatever reason decided way back to attach herself to me and never let go, to wrap and choke like kudzu or wisteria gone awry. She’s a cobra, an octopus. She has suckers beneath those nails. She is a parasite ready to hop on any host that passes by. She is a snake slithering into the strike zone.
As I said, Barbara talks only about herself and her family and how everything affects them; this alone would be enough to drive the sanest and nicest person to lock the door and buy a Doberman. Barbara would have driven Jesus to distraction.
“You all go ahead with whatever you were doing,” she says. “I just want to relax a minute before I go home and face all the work that I have. I need a wife!” She laughs. “That’s what I’m forever telling Ed, ‘I need a wife.’”
“You’ve got a live-in,” I say.
“Yes, but what I really need is a wife,” she says again. “Not a housekeeper, a wife. But you all go right ahead with what you’re doing. I’m not even listening.”
“Five bucks to you, baby,” I say and Will comes out of a deep thought to do his ka-chings.
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