by Lee Smith
Don finished medical school, then interned in Richmond, and then they moved back home for him to set up his own practice even though several people warned him against Booker Creek as a permanent location. “Listen, people have acne everywhere,” Don said then. As usual, he was right. People come from miles and miles around to see him—he’s the only dermatologist in this area.
But Myrtle is thinking about herself, about this feeling she got—or maybe she lost—last year.
For one thing, that’s when gravity set in. Myrtle realizes that gravity has always been around, but she never noticed it until she was thirty-nine. Then right along her chinline, at either side of her mouth, something started to droop. Her breasts changed shape, hung lower. And her buttocks—which is probably what bothered her most, since Don is a self-professed “ass man”—really started to sag. Plus they had to have a new deck built on the house—the old one was just simply falling in. Anyway, gravity showed up, or at least Myrtle became aware of it. Once you become aware of something, you see signs of it everywhere.
The strangest thing about all of this is that Don didn’t notice a thing. Nothing! He didn’t notice her cellulite or the way she kept losing the keys. Their intimacy remained unchanged, remained, in its way, total, or perhaps it simply remained as total as it ever was. It made Myrtle wonder if all of it might—or might not—be simply made up. It made her wonder how anybody ever knows whether anything really happens, and if so, what it is, after all. Anyway, the intimacy remained.
One quality which Don has always had and which Myrtle has always loved is a kind of paying attention—it’s the way he looks at you, how he cocks his head to one side, how he really listens to what you say. She’s known Don since he was eleven years old, and he was already doing it then. Sometimes this quality makes her nervous, if she doesn’t have much to say. But it’s also one of the things she likes best about him, and she’s sure other people do, too. Sometimes Myrtle imagines Don at work, wearing his white lab coat, with his blond head cocked just that way, listening to one of his patients. It makes her jealous, it makes her wonder—anyway, Don continued to pay attention. Only he missed it all.
The deck fell in, and Myrtle got a new one, and during the course of all this, she called the exterminator to have it treated. The exterminator who came was Gary.
That old song “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” was running through Myrtle’s head when she pulled into Gary’s front yard. His yard is not a yard at all, it’s a junk heap. No grass—parts of cars, machines, and God knows what all just strewn around in the weeds. He said it was like this when he moved in, and he hasn’t fixed up a thing. Gary’s house is made out of concrete blocks, painted aqua. Then Myrtle thought of another song, “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” which has lines like “Go out the back, Jack” and “Get a new plan, Stan.” But Myrtle couldn’t remember any more of the words. It made her feel sad to remember that back before she got married and started missing out on things, back in junior high and high school when she and Don were going steady, she was real popular and knew all the words to all the songs. Myrtle has always been popular, but that was the only time in her life that she ever knew all the words. Now she doesn’t even know who the groups are. She parked her Toyota in a cloud of dust in front of Gary’s house, next to his company car which has a large iron bug, orange, on top of it, and opened her car door, and the heat hit her like a sledge-hammer.
This is one of the things Myrtle will always remember about going there, how hot it is in summer, how cold in winter, at Gary’s house. Her own house has central heating and air, so she isn’t used to these drastic changes. She isn’t used to perspiring or shivering, since she never does either one of those things at home. Now Myrtle could feel the perspiration start to bead on her upper lip, she could feel her scalp beginning to prickle. Myrtle opened the torn screen door.
“Hello?” she called, and Gary said, “Come on in.”
An armchair in Gary’s living room has a broken leg which he has fixed by putting an upside-down saucepan under it. This is the best chair he owns. There’s nothing in his refrigerator, ever, except beer and bean dip. He goes out to the 7-Eleven for everything, even coffee. That’s what Gary’s house is like. His brother used to live there too, before he moved in with his girlfriend. Every time they have a fight he comes back, and then they make up and he moves out again. Myrtle has never met him.
“I tried to call you, honey,” Gary said, coming to stand in the bedroom door. “I’ve got a job at two, we’ll have to make it snappy.”
“No problem.” Myrtle stood there holding her purse. “I’ve been thinking, Gary,” she said, “and I think it’s about time for this to be over with, anyway.”
“Come here, Myrtle,” Gary said. She went over to him and put her arms around him and laid her head on his chest—he was barefooted, barechested, wearing blue jeans—and they stood there that way in the door. It must have been ninety degrees. Gary is slight, probably weighs one fifty or so, really just a boy. He’s twenty-six. He has wispy brown hair which comes down below his ears, and a mustache, and a beard. Brown eyes which never look quite at you, a face you’d never notice in a crowd. Often Myrtle has trouble remembering what he looks like. That has always puzzled her. It has also puzzled her what in the world Gary’s up to. He has no ambitions at all, that she can see. He works, goes to movies, drinks a lot of beer, and smokes marijuana. He does not seem to want to get ahead in the world. Sometimes he wears clothes which tear her heart out; when he’s wearing them, Myrtle would not be caught dead with him. Blue jeans so old they’re soft and sort of gray, fishnet T-shirts, running shoes she’d give to Goodwill. Of course Myrtle would not be caught dead with Gary anyway.
She has been with Gary Vance there in his house, on the bed and on the filthy floor. She has been with him out back of his house in the pine woods, and at the Econo-Lodge in Martinsville, Virginia, and in her own bed in her own house, she’s ashamed of that. Myrtle has been with Gary Vance too many times to count, over too many months.
He ran his hands through her hair and lifted it up off her neck. “Whatever you want to do,” he said.
Gary is always “laid back.”
Myrtle went to bed with him in that heat, not meaning to but knowing it would be the last time, and then she showered and dressed quickly and watched while Gary put on his pest-control suit. She was crying. It was the suit he wears for major industrial jobs. It’s white, made of heavy treated material that looks like linen. It flows out all around him when he walks, so that he looks like a cross between an Arab and an astronaut. When he puts on the hood, he really looks like an astronaut. Gary zipped his suit up and put the hood under his arm. He came over to Myrtle and kissed her on the cheek. “Call me if you want to,” he said.
Myrtle always had the feeling that Gary had had lots of lovers, but he wouldn’t talk about that. He didn’t talk about much, in fact. A skinny boy with no knack for conversation, a boy whose face you couldn’t recall. “If you want me, call me,” Gary said. Myrtle watched him walk out to his car, looking larger than life in his spacesuit, she heard the CB radio crackling, the central office telling him where to go. Myrtle was crying when he pulled out, with that bug attached to the top of his car. It’s a termite. Then she fixed her makeup, the best she could in that heat, and left. The air conditioning in her Toyota felt like heaven all the way home. She even managed to smile when she passed the One Stop, but really she felt like hell.
And Don was waiting for her in the foyer, looking serious.
He knows, Myrtle thought right away. Her knees were shaking.
“Myrtle—” Don took her hand. She wondered if he could smell it on her in spite of the shower. Usually she wears Estée Lauder, but she didn’t have any with her. She was absolutely sure he knew.
“Myrtle, your mother has had a stroke,” Don said. “Candy called here, and couldn’t get you, and called me at work. They’ve taken her to Memorial
Hospital.” He hesitated—Don has the perfect, caring kind of face to break bad news. “It’s serious,” he said. “I’ll drive you over right now.”
“What about Sean—” Myrtle started.
“I left a message for him at school. Since Theresa’s at the lake, I thought he could go over to Louise’s”—that’s Don’s sister, who Sean hates—“for supper. He can stay until we get back.”
“If he will,” Myrtle said. You can’t make Sean do anything he doesn’t want to do. Myrtle wondered if he’d even go to Louise’s. Probably not.
“If he will,” Don repeated, smiling at her. They understood each other so completely. They always know, for instance, exactly what they mean about the children. Of course, taking the Parent Effectiveness Training class helped. “Come on, Myrtle,” Don said. She loved him then so much! They stood in the foyer and Myrtle could see them both in the gold-leaf mirror. Don looks something like George Peppard. In high school, they were “Cutest Couple” twice, both junior and senior year. Don took Myrtle’s arm and led her back out to the double garage and sat her down in the passenger side of the new BMW, which he drives. “Candy says your mother isn’t conscious,” Don said. They made the ten-minute drive in silence and it wasn’t until they had parked the car in the Visitor lot and were walking through the revolving door that Myrtle thought, This is my mother. My mother has had a stroke.
* * *
By the time Myrtle and Don arrived, Miss Elizabeth was already settled in Intensive Care—in a way, Myrtle thought suddenly, Mother has been in Intensive Care for years. She’s always been so concerned about her health. And now there was something really wrong, and she wasn’t even able to make the best of it. It didn’t seem fair. And she would have been embarrassed to see herself like that, and to be seen like that, by strangers—they had two IVs going, a nurse was checking her pulse, another nurse was writing something on a chart. Myrtle went to her side while Don stayed in the hall to talk to the doctors.
Miss Elizabeth’s hair was all puffed out like pale blue cotton candy around her still, waxy face. Actually her face, without the makeup and the glasses, looked young and smooth and almost—strangely—carefree. It gave Myrtle a start. But her color was peculiar, a yellowish shade something like candles or magnolia blossoms. Myrtle had never seen her before without rouge. She was also surprised to see that her mother looked so small. One arm lay outside the oxygen tent, palm up on the tight white hospital sheet. She took her mother’s hand, uncurling the wrinkled, papery fingers. This gave Myrtle the creeps! They had taken off all her rings. Myrtle couldn’t get over her wrist being so small, so frail, her fingers so bony. She had always thought of her mother as a large woman, not so large as Fay perhaps, but a large woman—she couldn’t get over seeing her without her earrings, her stockings, her gloves. Myrtle thought of how ashamed Mother would be, exposed like this. How embarrassed. Myrtle sat still and looked down at her mother’s still face and couldn’t help it that some part of her was, and she hated to admit it, gloating—because she gave me a time, Myrtle thought, she really did, she gave all of us a time except for Sybill. No matter how good we were, it was never good enough. Don, even though he was the quarterback, was not good enough for me to marry because he was an orphan . . . A part of Myrtle was gloating, to see her mother so helpless. Another part of her was about to burst into tears. She felt like she was strangling on that one word “Mother!” in her throat. She knew if she said it, her mother couldn’t hear. Myrtle had “mixed emotions,” as she said later to Don. It was so horrible, yet so fitting, that Miss Elizabeth was there under that oxygen tent, where Myrtle could see but not touch her. As if she would have wanted to be touched.
* * *
Candy came in then looking like a nurse herself in her white uniform. But she’s not a nurse, she’s a beautician. Actually she doesn’t look like that, either—everything Candy wears looks exactly the same, like something she just threw on temporarily to run to the post office, not like anything you’d plan to wear all day. Myrtle has always found this strange, since beauty is Candy’s business. And she’s good at it. Everybody in town goes to Candy. But you’d never guess it, to look at her! Candy is two years older than Myrtle and looks ten. Isn’t it funny for a beautician to let herself go that way, to neglect her own looks? But Candy just doesn’t care. She’s always been like that, too—she wouldn’t do her homework, either. Mother would get so mad. Mother was always mad at Candy. She didn’t even speak to her for several years, from the time Candy eloped with Lonnie Snipes until the time he was killed in Vietnam. Mother felt sorry for her then, or had to act like she did, since the whole town was upset about it, with Candy pregnant and everything, but after Candy had the second baby and didn’t mention whose it was, Mother pretty much gave up on her. Myrtle was embarrassed too, or she would have been, if Don hadn’t pointed out that nobody expects you to be responsible for what your family does. “You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives,” Don said. And this is true. It’s a mystery how well those kids of Candy’s have turned out, anyway. They’ve both gone to school on scholarships—Tammy Lee’s an art teacher somewhere, and Tony’s in law school in Florida. It makes you wonder. Because in Myrtle’s opinion, Candy was just a terrible mother—all those kids ever did was play downtown on the sidewalk while she was doing hair. They never had any advantages to speak of. They raised themselves.
Anyway Candy came running in, short of breath—she looks like she’s always running. She went right over to the oxygen tent and sat down in the chair and took Miss Elizabeth’s limp hand, pressing it.
“Lord, she looks just awful,” Candy said.
Myrtle knew that Mother wouldn’t want Candy to hold her hand, any more (less, in fact) than she would want Myrtle to. Myrtle couldn’t believe Candy would want to, either, after all that had passed between them. Candy’s like that, however. Myrtle and Don don’t see her socially, but she has good intentions and a big heart. She has never seemed a bit jealous of their success, for instance.
Don came in then with the doctors, Dr. Grissom and Dr. Grey, who is a member of the Racquet Club, too. Don put one hand on Candy’s shoulder, his other arm around Myrtle’s waist. Thank God she happened to look halfway decent. She was wearing her pale pink sleeveless blouse from Talbotts, her matching rose skirt, the belt with the gold turtle buckle, and espadrilles. When Theresa accuses her mother of looking “preppy,” Myrtle says she considers that a compliment. There’s nothing wrong with being well dressed.
Candy looked at Dr. Grissom. “What do you think?” she asked.
Dr. Grissom is northern, cut and dry.
“I’m afraid the prognosis is the same one we gave you earlier,” he said. “The CT scan shows that your mother has suffered a cerebral hemorrhage severe enough to cause unconsciousness. Sometimes people regain consciousness and sometimes they do not.”
“Can’t you do anything?” Candy asked.
Dr. Grissom looked down at his clipboard, then back up at them. “In the case of a stroke,” he said, “surgery is not indicated, so there’s not much that we can do in terms of intervention. I’m sorry. It’s hard to predict how things will go. Usually, as I said, there will have been premonitory symptoms—dizziness, numbness of the side involved, clumsiness, sometimes a blurring of vision.”
Candy’s whole face crumpled up. “When she was in the shop last Tuesday, she spilled a whole cup of coffee, and said that her wrist was weak, she thought she might have sprained it.”
“There you go,” said Dr. Grey.
Myrtle remembered other things—Mother’s attention wandering, recently, while they were talking, the way she hesitated so long at the top of the stairs. “But she never complained,” Myrtle said. “She never said a word.”
“Well, Myrtle,” Don said, “she wouldn’t, you know.” As usual, he was right.
“For now,” Dr. Grissom said, “it’s just a matter of watching and waiting.”