A Fine and Private Place

by Peter S. Beagle

  She made toast as an afterthought and brought it and the eggs into the dining room. After setting them on the table, she went back into the kitchen for a container of milk. Mrs. Klapper ate with gusto, for she enjoyed food.

  While she ate, she thought about Mr. Rebeck again. His abrupt leave-taking at the cemetery gates bothered her. So maybe he did lose his watch, she reflected. This happens. She stabbed the last of the boiled eggs with her fork. But to walk all the way back to find it, and not knowing if maybe you dropped it along the way or lost it on the subway or left it home—this, believe me, is crazy. She shrugged, spreading the toast with cherry preserve. So maybe he's got a wife, he doesn't want to go home just yet. Don't be nosy, Klapper.

  Did he have a wife? Mrs. Klapper bit off a piece of toast, liking the crunching sound. Since when does a married man go wandering around a graveyard like he's taking inventory? A married man goes to a graveyard, he goes to see his wife's relatives. Maybe he wasn't married, then.

  He did look like Morris, she thought. Morris was a little bigger, maybe, and his eyebrows were bushy, like the tails of angry cats, but the eyes were the same, and the shape of the head. Morris crouched over whatever he was doing, whether it was playing chess, reading a book, or preparing a brief. She had teased him about it, saying, "Morris, you keep on sitting like that, you will go to your grave hunchbacked. A special wing they'll have to stick onto your coffin."

  Morris had given that slight laugh of his that you could miss if you weren't listening closely and said, "I like to think of myself as looking like a question mark." And now, seeing this small man playing chess all by himself, hunched over the board as if he were about to spring on it—

  "Stop it, Klapper," she said sharply. "You are a grown woman. An overgrown woman, if I may say so." She poured a glass of milk, gulped it hastily, and took the dishes back into the kitchen.

  After washing the dishes, which she did with much unnecessary splashing of water and fiddling with the faucets, she opened the broom closet near the refrigerator and took out a broom and a dustpan. She was not a good sweeper. The motion utilized in sweeping is not a particularly natural one, nor is it usually graceful, and the quality of the sweeper can almost always be judged directly from his form. Mrs. Klapper swept the floor as if she were expecting it to wince under the broom. She hated dustpans because whenever she squatted down and choked up on the broomhandle to sweep the dirt into the pan there was always a little dust left over at the rim. She would move the pan back and, subvocalizing curses, attack the dust again. But there would always be a thread of dust left on the floor, and she would finally rise with a snort of disgust and sweep the dust under the refrigerator.

  Her sweeping finished, she looked at the wall clock. "Ten-forty," she said. "Good. See, it goes faster than you think. You got to keep busy." She remembered her sister's saying that to her. Maybe she ought to visit Ida today. Anyway, she ought to go out. She put away the broom and pan and went to look out of the window.

  "Ai," she said softly, "such a morning." The sun was high and hot, dazzling her with its reflection off thousands of windows. She turned and walked slowly into the living room. It was a big room, lined on three sides by Morris's bookcases. Mrs. Klapper had had it refurnished a month ago and was sorry about it now. The new chairs and the new sofa were plump, springy, and ungiving. They could not be pounded or worn into comfort. As soon as the momentary brightness they had brought into the house was gone, she had wanted the old ones back.

  "So what do I do today?" She leaned against a bookcase and ran her hands idly over Morris's books. They were always "Morris's books." Mrs. Klapper did not read much, nor had Morris, after a few teasing attempts in the first years of their marriage, ever made any serious efforts to get her to read. She had liked to be read to, but she always fell asleep, and Morris had smiled, patted her affectionately, and played chess with himself.

  "I got to go shopping." She counted on her fingers. "Let's see—I got to go by Wireman's and get a loaf of bread, and some milk, and baking powder maybe—" She frowned. There must be something else. Wireman's was just two blocks away.

  "If I go to Ida's I go past the butcher near the subway, and I could stop in and get maybe a pound chopped meat and a couple lamb chops." She would go to see Ida, then. "My own sister, you'd think I'd say hello once in a while. We're like strangers." Ida, the older of Mrs. Klapper's two sisters, had never married, and Mrs. Klapper had never felt right about bringing Morris over for supper. During the twenty-two years of her marriage she had snatched an awkward, silent lunch with her sister no more than twice a year.

  Always, she remembered, always the look in the back of her eyes. I talk to her, I make jokes so she laughs and says, "Ai, Gertrude, everything changes but you"—and always, in back of the laughter: This one also has a man, and I got nobody. A look like that, you choke on your celery. What can you say?

  Now, she thought, it might be all right to go to Ida.

  The living room had always been Morris's domain, just as the bedroom had been hers. Each had intruded into the other's realm with something of the arrogance and curiosity of king visiting king. Morris was dead, but the room was still loyal to him, and the stranger pictures on the walls stared at her with the hatred of the conquered. She left the room quickly and went to the closet to get a light coat.

  So I'll go see Ida, she thought, rummaging in her purse to make sure she had enough money, and we'll have lunch and talk about things and maybe take a walk in the park, and then I'll say, "Look, Ida, I got all this food; I got a whole pound chopped meat and nobody but me to eat it. Come on home with me and we'll make hamburgers and schmooze like we used to."

  The idea pleased her. She won't go till late, she thought. That well I know Ida.

  At the door she paused and muttered, "Sei gesund, Morris." She had never been able to break herself of the habit of saying "Be well" to her husband before she left the house, nor did she really want to; but she whisked the door shut behind her as she always did to keep herself from waiting for the soft "Geh gesund" from the living room.

  Outside the air was warm and dry, and she breathed it with real pleasure as she walked slowly toward the grocery. Early summer in New York is at its most beautiful in the mornings, but few people ever notice it. The children go away to summer camps, and their parents' two weeks off usually come in late July or early August, when the days are sticky with boredom. Only old people know these early summer mornings, old people and the men who sell ice cream in public parks. They know these mornings well and love them desperately because they cannot last—these people who know that nothing lasts. The vendor buys an ice-cream cup from himself and sits down on the grass to eat it, or at least he thinks about doing it. The policeman sings to himself and stops to talk with the candy-store man, who has come out to get a little air before the wind becomes hot and sour. They talk about going swimming or going to the ball game, but it is enough for them to be there on the street corner talking to each other about it. And the old women move their chairs to follow the sun and do not speak to each other at all. They will in the afternoon, but that will be a different season, a different world. Now, in the morning, they stare across the street and do not blink when the cars go by.

  Mrs. Klapper knew some of these women, but she did not nod to them as she passed the line of folding chairs. In a vague sort of way, she had always felt a certain contempt for them. She thought of them as yentas. Some of them aren't any older than me, she thought, and they sit there like stones and don't knit or read the papers or anything. What kind of way is that to live? You got to keep busy, keep moving, visit people. She walked faster, pleased with her decision to see Ida, and turned into Wireman's Dairy Grocery.

  Wireman was behind the counter, a small pear-shaped man in a gray sweater and brown slacks. His eyes were black and sleepy, and he kept them fixed directly on whomever he was talking to. The skin on both sides of his wide face was slack and sagging, giving the effect not so much of jowls as of a face re
laxing and crumpling like a robe thrown carelessly into a corner. He had been established on the corner before Mrs. Klapper and Morris had moved into the neighborhood, and she could not remember him as looking any different then or as changing notably during the twenty-two years. His wife, his children, his store had all grown, aged, and expanded during the time, but Wireman remained Wireman. She always wondered how she looked to him.

  "So," he said when she came in. "So how are you today?"

  "Just fine," Mrs. Klapper said. "How's your wife?" She nodded to his daughter, Sarah, who was sitting on an empty milk-bottle crate, reading a magazine.

  "Who can complain?" Wireman shrugged. "She's on her feet, she eats. More you shouldn't ask from God."

  "You hear from Sam lately?" Wireman's son had married six months before and moved to the West Coast.

  Wireman looked quickly over his shoulder into the back of the store. When he turned back to her his face had gone dead. "No. What can I do for you?"

  "A loaf rye bread," Mrs. Klapper said; "should be seedless. Also two bottles milk and a can of baking powder."

  As Wireman turned to go to the back of the store, where his refrigerator was, Mrs. Klapper suddenly became freezingly aware of the way he walked. His shoulders were humped under the gray sweater, and he walked with small steps, one foot sliding ahead of the other and the other foot hurrying to catch up. His hands made very small pawing motions at his sides, and he looked as if over the years the air in which he moved had gradually changed to water.

  "So old," Mrs. Klapper said aloud, and then realized that Sarah must have heard her. She looked guiltily at her; the girl nodded and kept reading her magazine.

  "So, Sarah," she said because she could not bear the silence. "How are you doing?"

  "Fine," said Sarah. How old was she—eighteen, nineteen? She was fat for her age, pimpled, and, Mrs. Klapper had always suspected, the brightest in the family.

  "When you getting married already?" she asked loudly and was completely disgusted with herself when she saw the anger in Sarah's eyes. What do you care? she demanded of herself. Why is everybody around here so interested when everybody's getting married?

  Sarah Wireman smiled determinedly. "Not right away, Mrs. Klapper." Her voice was completely without inflection, and Mrs. Klapper knew that she had given the same answer to a great many other old women while her father was getting their orders. She didn't want Sarah to lump her with those women, but she knew she had a long time ago, and she kept talking, thinking that there must surely be a sentence to remedy the situation.

  "Well, you'll pretty soon be an aunt," she announced, thinking, Klapper, shut up! Just keep the mouth shut, please.

  The girl's smile was as straight and thin as a dagger. "I sure hope so, Mrs. Klapper."

  Shut up, shut up, Klapper! What are you becoming? She turned away from Sarah and stared hard at the Wheaties, Kix, and corn-flakes packages that lined one wall of the store. She could hear the girl's soft sigh of relief, and she herself sighed as if she had just gotten off an elevator in which she and a stranger had carefully not looked at each other. Then Wireman was shuffling in with her bread and milk and baking powder, putting them on the counter, and adding up her bill, mumbling the sums to himself as he wrote out the total. "You want I should charge you?"

  "Yes," Mrs. Klapper answered. Wireman put the order in a brown paper bag and stuffed the bill in after it. She took the bag and started for the door.

  "Tell your wife I said hello." She closed the door behind her, cutting off Wireman's short reply.

  Having decided to visit Ida, she hoisted her bag into the crook of her left arm and set off down the block. The sun restored her good humor, and in two blocks' walking she had almost forgotten the weary politeness in Sarah Wireman's voice.

  A figure was coming up the street toward her, but it took her a while to identify it because she was looking into the sun. When she finally recognized Lena Wireman she winced. Vey, she thought, now comes the heavy artillery. Maybe if she hoisted her shopping bag up in front of her face, Mrs. Wireman might not recognize her. But she had no real hope for this; she was one of the few women in the neighborhood who bothered to speak to Mrs. Wireman, and Mrs. Wireman knew her own.

  She was a thin woman who had once been fat. Skin hung loosely on her forearms, between her knuckles, and around her elbows. The flesh was orange-white and seemed almost transparent. She always wore flat-heeled white shoes, having admired them on nurses, and tied her hair on top of her head in a knot about the size and shape of a prune. Once she had worked in the store with her husband, but for the last ten or twelve years she had sat in a metal-and-cloth chair in front of the store when it was warm, or on a milk-bottle crate inside the store when it rained. She never went across the street to sit with the old women in their folding chairs, and she always arranged her own chair so that she sat with her back to them.

  "Hello," she called to Mrs. Klapper when they were twenty yards apart.

  Mrs. Klapper lowered her shopping bag. My God, what eyes. She sighed, preparing herself for at least a ten-minute harangue. Be polite, Klapper. Somebody's polite to you and you're polite to somebody else and so the world goes around. She arranged her face in a wide smile of welcome.

  "Lena!" she exclaimed. "How are you? You look wonderful!"

  Mrs. Wireman shrugged and said, "Ahh," which meant that she was resigned in the face of chaos. "All right. How are you doing?"

  "Ah, so-so. I just came by your husband's."

  Mrs. Wireman's eyes were the very pale gray of an old egg; they were large eyes with wide rings of white, and she narrowed them now to look up at Mrs. Klapper. "How come you don't come around so much no more?"

  "What are you talking about? I do come around." With her free hand Mrs. Klapper pointed at the package. "I got to eat too, like everybody."

  The grocer's wife shook her head firmly. "I remember every two days, regular, I say to Avrom, 'Get the milk and eggs ready now so, comes Gertrude Klapper, you shouldn't keep her waiting.' Now all of a sudden, two days, three days, four days, no Gertrude Klapper. What are you, a stranger? You saving your money?" She looked accusingly at the younger woman. "You buying someplace else?"

  No friend like an old friend, Mrs. Klapper thought wryly. Aloud she said, "Lena, twenty years I been buying at your place, I should change now? What is it with you? I got food in the house, I don't come in for a couple of days, suddenly it's by you a run on the bank." She spread her feet a bit and settled her weight; she'd be here a while yet. "Remember, I'm just buying for me now, I don't eat for two people, Lena."

  Mrs. Wireman lowered her eyes. "All right, forgive me, I forgot about Morris. Excuse me."

  "That's all right," Mrs. Klapper said. "It's over a year already."

  To herself she said, Morris, forgive me that I should even think of forgetting you, but I am not going to talk about you to this one.

  "So when you going away, Gertrude?" Mrs. Wireman was looking at her again.

  "Going away?" Mrs. Klapper blinked in real bewilderment. "Lena, what is this? Who's going away?"

  "Every day I say to Avrom, 'Gertrude is all by herself now, so why is she putting her money in the bank? Why doesn't she take a trip somewhere, go maybe to Florida? She's got a little money, she should use it now, go somewhere.' "

  "Lena—" Mrs. Klapper began.

  "I got a cousin"—Mrs. Wireman did not so much cut her off as run her down—"I got a cousin went to Florida, Miami Beach." She leaned closer to Mrs. Klapper. "She was there two weeks, bang!" She snapped her lean fingers. "Married like that. A rich man, too."

  Well, you asked for it, Gertrude, Mrs. Klapper told herself. Next time, maybe you'll lay off Sarah. She took a deep breath. "Lena, I am not going anywhere, Florida or anywhere."

  Mrs. Wireman squinted her eyes even more. "What are you saving up for, a big house with nobody in it? Better you should take a trip, have a good time."

  "Lena, I don't want to go anywhere. I live here, I cook, I keep the hou
se neat, I go for walks, I got you to talk to." God forgive you, Klapper! "Why should I go somewhere where I don't know anybody? Don't be in such a hurry to go rushing me off to Florida. I like it here."

  "Look, look, how angry she gets!" Mrs. Wireman smiled, exposing long, wide teeth. "So who's rushing you? Just say a hello to your old friends once in a while."

  Mrs. Klapper sighed. "I tell you, I'll drop in, a day or two, and we can sit and talk." She thought of a way to change the subject. "You can tell me about Sam, how he's doing."

  The thin, orange and white face hardened into an expression of disgust. "About Sam and the bitch he married, I'll tell you nothing. Anything else we talk about. Not Sam."

  "She looked like a nice girl, Eleanor." Mrs. Klapper remembered Sam's wife as a tall, pleasant-faced woman who had tried to help out in the store before she and Sam were married.

  "A bitch," Mrs. Wireman said flatly. "Strictly no good, believe me." She looked at Mrs. Klapper as if daring her to say something in Eleanor's defense.

  "I got to go, Lena," Mrs. Klapper said finally. "I got some more shopping to do." She began to edge around Mrs. Wireman, who made no move to let her pass. "Look, I'll come over soon, and we'll sit outside and schmooze a little, okay?"

  "All right," Mrs. Wireman answered. "But you think about what I said, about Miami Beach."

  Mrs. Klapper was safely past her. "I will, Lena. Take care of yourself."

  "Sei gesund," Mrs. Wireman said, turning to go. "To your pretty daughter," Mrs. Klapper called after her, "say a hello for me."

  Mrs. Wireman did smile then.

  "Ya," Mrs. Wireman said, and went up the street. She walked faster than her husband, but her shoulders were hunched and crooked.

  Mrs. Klapper stood in the middle of the sidewalk and watched her until she was gone. Then she half turned to go on down the block, stopped, and began to walk back the way she had come. She walked very slowly, taking small steps.

  She could hear little Schwartz, who drove a fruit truck, crying his wares in the distance. His voice was high and musical, but he was too far away for her to make out the words. A woman she knew smiled as she passed and said, "Hello, Gertrude." Mrs. Klapper nodded and hurried past, not wanting to stop and talk.