Far-Flung

by Peter Cameron

  “Just going through this stuff. It’s mostly junk, Miss Paul. I don’t know the last time anyone’s been up here.”

  “Yes, but what are you going to do with it?”

  “Well, throw it out, most likely.”

  “Oh, dear. You don’t suppose I could see it first? I mean, there might be something that was special to me, something you’d overlook.”

  “Well, sure you can see it. I have to bring it all down anyway. You can look through it then.”

  Well, that was a relief. God only knew what was up there, and what that boy might throw away. “Would you like a cold drink or something? Is it hot up there?”

  But there was no answer. He had turned the radio back up. Miss Alice Paul went downstairs to the kitchen. She made a cup of tea and then put on her coat and went outside. It was a sunny day, mild for November, and she had read that sunlight can cure depression, so she was trying to sit outside whenever possible.

  Deirdre Kassbaum was hanging out her wash next door. Or no, she was taking it down, folding it. Miss Alice Paul walked over to the fence.

  “Do you need some help?” she asked.

  Deirdre took a clothespin out of her mouth. “Oh, hi, Miss Paul.”

  Miss Paul repeated her offer.

  “No thanks. I’m just going to finish these off in the dryer. They’re still kind of damp.”

  “It’s a nice day for air drying,” Alice Paul said. Maybe I could go live with the Kassbaums, she thought. They’ve got that whole upstairs they never use. I could rent a room. Mr. Kassbaum drinks, but he’s not a mean drunk.

  “I see Knight’s here,” Mrs. Kassbaum said. “Is that his truck?”

  “No. He rented it.”

  “Is he moving you out?”

  “No,” said Miss Alice Paul. She was trying to think how much people rented rooms for nowadays. The last time she rented a room, it was twelve dollars a week. Double that: twenty-five dollars—would that be enough? “I mean I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Well, are they selling the house?” Mrs. Kassbaum left the laundry basket on the lawn and walked over to the fence.

  “I don’t know,” said Miss Alice Paul. “They won’t tell me anything. It’s driving me crazy.”

  “Well, that’s a shame. But you shouldn’t get all worried. I’m sure it’ll work out just fine. Plus, you’ve got your rights. They can’t just kick you out after twenty-two years. It’s a thing called squatting, squatter’s rights. They had an article about it in the Digest. Not that they’d kick you out. But you got to find out what’s going on. She left the house to Knight?”

  “Well, not really. Her daughter up in Norwell owns it. She was renting it to Rose.”

  “Well, can’t she rent it to you?”

  “I doubt I can afford it. I’ll probably have to rent a room someplace.”

  “Oh, you don’t want to do that. Rent a room? Living with strangers, sharing a bathroom. That’s would be so depressing, don’t you think?” Mrs. Kassbaum patted Miss Paul’s arm. “What you have to do, honey, is talk to him, find out what they’re planning. Knight’s a nice man. You know that. Go in and talk to him, and put your mind at rest.”

  Miss Paul turned around and looked back at the house. She could hear the radio coming out of the open attic window. The sun had gone around to the front, leaving the backyard in shadow. I missed the sun, she thought. It would be shining in the living room window now, creating a familiar pattern on the rug and the couch. If Rose were alive she would put down the blinds, so the sun wouldn’t fade the upholstery.

  Miss Alice Paul was trying to check her pocketbook under the table without Knight seeing her. They were sitting at a booth in the Casa Adobe, a Mexican restaurant, and Miss Alice Paul wasn’t sure who was paying. Knight was the one who had suggested going out to dinner, and before she could think of an excuse not to he had her in the car. She was pretty sure she had a five-dollar bill, so she had ordered a taco plate, which was the cheapest thing on the menu, even though she had no idea what a taco was, but Knight had said that wasn’t enough for dinner and had changed her order to a deluxe burrito platter—something she just knew she couldn’t afford, let alone eat.

  “You lose something?” Knight said. He was drinking a beer. He had peeled its foil collar back and was drinking it straight from the bottle. At a restaurant. Just imagine.

  “I just want to be sure I have enough money,” Miss Alice Paul said. “I don’t want to have to do the dishes.” She tried to laugh, but it didn’t sound too good.

  “Oh, forget that,” Knight said. “This is my treat.”

  “Well, many thanks, but I couldn’t allow that. Though it is sweet of you.”

  “Oh, come on.” Knight reached across the table and grabbed her pocketbook from her hands, putting it on the seat beside him. “Now just relax,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want a glass of wine? They have sangria, I think.”

  “No, thank you.” Miss Alice Paul leaned back and tried to think straight. He’s taken my bag, she thought. Good God. “Could I have my bag back?” she asked.

  “Of course,” said Knight. “On one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “On the condition that you don’t open it until we get home. O.K.?”

  “If you insist,” Miss Alice Paul said.

  “I do,” said Knight. “I insist.”

  Their deluxe platters arrived. “Good Lord,” said Miss Paul. She couldn’t help it. It just looked such a mess. “Dig in,” said Knight.

  “I thought we’d have Thanksgiving at the house,” Knight said. They were driving home from the restaurant, through a part of town Miss Alice Paul didn’t seem to recognize. I don’t get out much anymore, she thought. Everything’s changing.

  “What house?” she said.

  “Your house,” Knight said. “At Aunt Gran’s.” Aunt Gran was what they called Rose. She had never figured out why. Everyone in their family had pointless, misleading, disrespectful names: Rose’s sixty-year-old daughter was called Topsy, and her daughter—Knight’s sister—was sometimes called Ellen and sometimes called Nina, and Ellen’s two children were called Kittery and Dominick. Hardly American names. She made sure they all called her Miss Alice Paul.

  “There’s more room there, and it’s stupid to go back and forth from the lake. Is that O.K.?”

  Miss Alice Paul was confused. What did he mean? He said your house. And who all was coming? “Who’s coming?” she said.

  “Topsy, and Ellen and Kittery and Dominick. They’re coming down for the weekend. I figure the women can stay with you, and Dominick can stay with me. Or sleep on the couch. I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t buy a turkey.” Was she supposed to do all the cooking? She hadn’t cooked a turkey in years. Decades.

  “No. Topsy said she was bringing one. And I’m making pies. You don’t have to worry about anything.” He pulled into a gas station. It was self-serve. “Excuse me,” he said, before getting out.

  Excuse me. He’s a nice man, Miss Alice Paul told herself. He has manners, and he’s quiet and he was listening to classical music on the radio. He was a professor at the university. He taught history or something. For a while he had lived with another professor, a man named John, who had sometimes come to Sunday dinner, but John had been killed about two years ago. His car cracked up, driving out to the lake in the winter. All that ice. Had he been drunk? Most men drink. Hector Kassbaum. Knight drinking that beer from the bottle. Disgusting. She watched him pump the gas. He was trying to get the numbers even, pumping little spurts. He paid the girl, and got back into the car.

  In the driveway she realized she had forgotten to leave any lights on. Rose always left the porch light on, and one in the living room. It was strange to see the house so dark. Like nobody lived in it. She sat there for a moment.

  “Want me to come in with you?” Knight said.

  “Would you?” Miss Alice Paul asked. “Just for a minute.”

  “
Sure,” he said. He opened his door and came around and opened hers.

  He held her elbow going up the front walk. “I should have left a light on,” she said. “Rose always did. I forgot.”

  He grunted. He was looking up at the sky. She looked up, too. It was filled with stars. She felt dizzy looking up, and leaned closer to him.

  “It’s dark,” he said. “Careful.”

  I’ll ask him when we get inside, she thought. I’ll offer him some coffee—do I have any coffee?—and ask him what he meant when he said your house. He let go of her arm on the front step and opened the screen door. He reached in to open the front door, but it was locked. “Do you have keys?” he asked.

  Did she? She forgot the door locked when she closed it. She didn’t think she had keys. It was all his fault, making her go out to dinner, getting her agitated; she had forgotten all about the keys when she left. But maybe they were in her bag. “Let me see,” she said. She opened her bag and tried to look, but it was too dark. She backed up into the moonlight and almost fell off the stoop. He grabbed her. “Woops,” he said, taking her bag. “Let me look.”

  This was awful, she thought. He’s going through my bag now.

  He took out her change purse and her plastic rain hat and her tissues. He felt around with his big hand. “Nope,” he said. He reassembled her purse and handed it to her. “You wait here,” he said. “I’ll go around back. I can get in through the cellar, I think.”

  He disappeared behind the house. She looked back up at the sky. Birds were flying around the edges of the trees. Were they bats? They sure flew funny—jerky and silent. Don’t look at them, she thought. Just stand here. Don’t think of anything.

  She waited what seemed like a long time. Then a light came on in the living room, and the front door opened. “Come in,” he said. But something had changed. It was him inside first. It made it different.

  “Come in,” he repeated. He opened the screen door wider. He snapped on the porch light. “Oh, no,” he said, when he saw her face. “What’s the matter? Miss Paul?”

  Am I crying? she wondered. I must be. That must be it.

  Rose’s daughter Topsy was washing the dishes, and Miss Alice Paul was drying and putting away, supposedly because she knew where things went. But she didn’t. Half this stuff she had never seen before, so she just put things where she could find space. She’d sort it out later. After they all left tomorrow.

  “It’s nice to have a little peace and quiet for a change,” said Topsy. “I hope this weekend wasn’t too hectic for you.”

  “Oh, no,” Miss Paul said, thinking, It will be peace and quiet when you’re gone. Actually it hadn’t been that bad. They were nice people even if there were too many of them. And they all shouted a lot. Tonight everyone had gone to the movies. They tried to make her go, but she just hated the movies. All that filthy language.

  “Well, I’m glad we have this chance to talk, Miss Paul. There’s something we have to discuss.” Topsy had finished washing the dishes. She chased the suds down the drain and turned the faucet off.

  Miss Alice Paul was drying the pronged bulbous foot of the electric mixer. She drew the towel back and forth between its curves. For some reason she couldn’t stop. Finally the towel got all tangled up and Topsy took it away from her.

  “Let’s sit down,” she said. “The rest of this can dry overnight.” They sat at the table. “I was wondering if you had thought about where you might like to live, now that Rose is gone. As you probably know, we’re planning to rent this house starting the first of the year.”

  “I didn’t know,” said Miss Alice Paul.

  “Well, this old house is too big for you, anyway. It’s too big for any one person.”

  “How much are you renting it for?”

  “We’re going to ask six hundred dollars a month.”

  That was highway robbery, thought Miss Paul. She’s lying to me. “I doubt you’ll find anyone willing to pay that,” she said.

  “In fact, we already have. That’s why we have to talk. Do you have any relatives, Miss Paul, or friends, who could …”

  “Everybody’s dead. You might as well take me out into the street and drive the car right over me. That’s what you should do.”

  “Don’t talk crazy, now, Miss Paul. There are plenty of solutions. Knight tells me there’s a real nice … place out by the lake. Have you ever heard of St. Luke’s?”

  St. Luke’s was the rest home out by the lake. The very idea. “Course I have. But that’s for—I’m not going to St. Luke’s. I used to be a volunteer at St. Luke’s. It’s not a place for decent people. It’s trash out there.”

  “Knight tells me it’s real nice. I was thinking maybe we could drive out there tomorrow and have a look. I think they’ve fixed it up real nice since you—”

  “You don’t understand,” said Miss Alice Paul. “I don’t care if they got the Taj Mahal out there.”

  “Well, I don’t think I can promise you the Taj Mahal, but what say we go take a look? It can’t hurt to look, can it?”

  People are just awful, Miss Alice Paul thought.

  “So what do you say, Miss Paul? Let’s go take a look.”

  “No,” said Miss Alice Paul.

  “Oh, come on, Miss Paul. It won’t hurt you to look. Can’t you do that much? We’re just trying to help you, remember.”

  “No. I’m sorry, but no. Just no.”

  “Well,” said Topsy. “I think that’s a shame. I think you could be real happy out there.”

  “No,” said Miss Alice Paul.

  Kittery, the girl, Rose’s great-granddaughter, was giving Miss Alice Paul a facial. Miss Alice Paul was sitting on a chair pushed away from the kitchen table, a plastic produce bag stuck on her head to hold her hair back. She was smiling—things had worked out as well as they could. At Christmas they had moved her up north to Norwell. They had a big old house—the biggest house she had ever seen. There was one whole floor they didn’t even use.

  Kittery was rubbing a peach-colored cream into her cheeks. It felt good. “This is apricot,” she said. “It’s really for younger skin, I think, like teenagers, but we’ll just keep it on for a minute. It’s got ground-up apricot. Wait till you see your glow!” Kittery had a job selling this stuff door-to-door. She also had a boyfriend who was a black man.

  Dominick came in from the front hall.

  “Hi,” said Kittery.

  Dominick said hi and opened the refrigerator. He was her favorite. They played gin rummy sometimes.

  “How are you, Dominick?” she asked.

  “I’m cold.”

  “Then shut the refrigerator,” said Kittery.

  Dominick shut it but continued to regard it.

  “I’m thirsty,” he announced. “What are we having for dinner?”

  “You’re on your own,” Kittery said. “Topsy’s spending the night at Knox Farm, and Ellen’s at dance class.” Ellen was their mother. She was plain nuts.

  “Why’s Topsy staying over there?”

  “She said she had a lot to do and didn’t want to drive home in the snow. I’m fasting. I heard on the radio that today is a national fast day. I’m starting now. Actually about an hour ago.”

  “What about Miss Alice Paul?” Dominick reopened the refrigerator. He took out a carton of orange juice.

  “Well, you might fix her something when you make your own dinner. Are you hungry, Miss Alice Paul?”

  “Vaguely,” said Miss Alice Paul.

  “I could make an omelet,” said Dominick. “We learned how today in home ec. Do we have an omelet pan?”

  “It’s stinging,” said Miss Alice Paul. “Is it supposed to sting?”

  “Yes,” said Kittery. “That means it’s penetrating the epidermis.”

  “Do you want an omelet?”

  “What kind?” asked Kittery.

  “I was asking Miss Paul. I thought you were fasting.”

  “I think you’re supposed to start in the morning. I’ll do it tomo
rrow. Do you want an omelet, Miss Alice Paul? When we’re done with your facial?”

  “This is stinging like the dickens.”

  “We’ll rinse it off. You got to put your head down between your legs, though, so the blood will rush to your face. That’s a Lottie Dale secret. That’s how you get the glow.”

  Everyone at the senior citizen nutrition lunch was pretending that noon was really midnight, and they were going to count down and then blow their horns and celebrate the New Year. They had to have their lunch—beef stew—an hour earlier today, at eleven o’clock. Miss Alice Paul hated coming to nutrition lunches. Topsy made her. She said it was good for her to get out of the house.

  Miss Alice Paul had taken off her party hat twice, and both times Pauline Carlson had come round and told her to put it back on.

  “Miss Alice Paul, don’t be a party pooper,” she said. “Let’s cooperate. If one person takes their hat off, everyone will want to.”

  “So let them,” Miss Alice Paul said.

  “What kind of party would that be?” Pauline said. She put the hat—which looked like toilet paper rolls covered in tin foil—back on Miss Alice Paul’s head and adjusted the elastic under her chin. Miss Alice Paul felt self-conscious because she knew she hadn’t plucked all her whiskers that morning. She couldn’t find her tweezers. The girl had stolen them, she was pretty sure.

  A woman dressed up as the Statue of Liberty was coming around with Dixie cups filled with ginger ale. “Save this for the toast,” she said, every time she put a cup on someone’s tray. “Don’t drink it yet.”

  The woman on Miss Alice Paul’s left had fallen asleep, and the woman on her right didn’t speak English. God only knew what she spoke—gobbledygook, it sounded like.

  Miss Alice Paul got up to go to the bathroom.

  “Where are you going?” Mrs. Carlson asked.

  “To the ladies’ room.”

  “Do you want someone to go with you?”

  “No,” said Miss Alice Paul.

  “Well, hurry back. We don’t want you to miss the countdown.”

  In the bathroom Miss Alice Paul unhitched her garter belt; she thought that pantyhose were somehow morally inferior to stockings. It was nice and quiet. She could hear them counting down outside. The fools. She covered the seat with toilet paper and sat on it, hearing the roar of noon in the cafeteria. Then she urinated as hard as she could, trying to block out their noise with her own.