Household Words

by Joan Silber

  “What happened to his greasy leather jacket?” Rhoda asked Claire, when the girls were in the house.

  Claire looked up, startled to have been seen with him. “He’s trying to improve himself,” she said.

  Claire, who was not good at keeping back information, admitted that Richie had decided there was no future at the racetrack and had set about looking for another job. Probably he was going to be a junior trainee at the Prudential Company.

  As the weather grew warmer in the springtime, Claire sat out in the backyard reading, and on weekends Richie Scazzi came and sat with her. Claire had chosen to interpret Rhoda’s dictum that he wasn’t allowed in the house to mean, legalistically, that he wasn’t barred from the grounds. They read verse aloud to each other in thoughtful voices (Suzanne had been right about that). Perhaps, having left school, he was hungry for the written word now, or freer to find it uplifting. “Very pastoral,” Rhoda said, when Claire came in to get lemonade. “You’re a wood-nymph in a bower reciting poetry en plein air.”

  “Oh, Mother,” Claire said.

  Later, when Rhoda was in the kitchen ironing, she heard Claire squealing, “No. Stop that. Give that back to me. It’s none of your business.” Rhoda went to the screen door to look. Richie was trying to pull back Claire’s fingers to wrest her notebook away, and she was struggling to keep her hand over the cover of it.

  “I just want to see what’s in the heart,” Richie was saying. Like all the girls in her class, Claire had defaced her looseleaf binder with ball-point drawings of hearts filled with love declarations—C.T. L. P.C. referred to Peter Crimshaw, who was everybody’s crush this season. “Just tell me who he is, the little turd,” Richie said.

  “Oh, just a boy.”

  “A little jerk-off, I bet.”

  “He gets straight A’s and he’s six and a half feet tall.”

  They were sitting in the grass with their backs to Rhoda. Suddenly Richie pinned Claire to the ground, pressing down her shoulders like a wrestler; he was leaning over her. “Stop it,” she shouted. “I told you. I don’t want you to kiss me, I don’t want you to.” She was tossing her head, trying to keep her jaw away from him. “What’s the matter with you? I told you. I’m not interested, not interested. Stop breathing on me like that. Get away. I’m telling you nicely!”

  Richie Scazzi got up, kicked slightly with each leg to shake his pants-creases down, and walked out of the yard. He did not leave by the driveway, which was the normal route to the street; instead he walked straight back into the thicket of trees which bordered on the neighbor’s yard behind theirs. He had to squeeze his way through the bushes and stoop to avoid an overhanging branch, so that the last sight of him was of a figure skulking off into the brush like an animal.

  Rhoda felt slightly sorry for him. Well, she had been wrong about Claire’s wildness. No matter what you calculated about the behavior of your own children, they always caught you off the mark. They were always different than you could imagine. It eroded one’s confidence; she hadn’t been fully content with herself since the children were babies. Leonard had once accused her of having a very narrow imagination, so that all surprises were nasty to her.

  Rhoda’s next surprise was a slight relapse; for weeks she lingered in that annoying state in which she was neither well nor sick. The visits of her friends had thinned some, and she often felt lonely and depressed, waking from her naps. She was glad, one afternoon, to hear footsteps coming up the steps, and she smiled when she saw Liz Hofferberg.

  “But I’m disturbing you,” Liz said, as Maisie showed her into the bedroom. “I’ll come back later, Rhode.”

  “I’m up, I’m up,” Rhoda said. “Wide awake and ready for trouble. Sit here by the bed. You’re looking good these days.”

  Liz Hofferberg was still a trim, darkly pretty woman. She wore her straight shiny hair in the same Buster Brown cut she’d had for years, and she radiated a level-headed sweetness. This was particularly remarkable in light of the fact that her husband had just left her for a much younger woman—his receptionist, as it turned out, a woman who held the same job Rhoda had had with Dr. Aaronkrantz years ago. (The suggestion that Dr. Aaronkrantz might have made advances in those days made Rhoda snort in contempt.)

  Liz had taken the whole matter of her husband’s desertion as well as one could take these things. Rhoda rather wondered just how much of a surprise it had been—Herb had always been a caddish sort. Liz let the children visit with him on weekends. She let people invite her to dinner and she took courses in night school. She had just met a man, a very interesting person, in her Current Affairs seminar. “I think you might know him, Rhode. Bev Davis said you knew him. Eddie Lederbach.”

  “Him?” Rhoda said. “I think I met him at Bev’s once.”

  “He’s so well-read,” Liz said. “I find him very worthwhile to talk to.”

  Rhoda was about to tell what a pathetic jerk she’d thought he was, but instead she held her tongue. If Liz thought he was fine, she was entitled: it was none of Rhoda’s business. Am I too critical? Rhoda thought. For twenty-odd years Liz had lived with her boor of a husband and never said a word against him; to all appearances, she had been a great fan of his puerile humor, an admirer of his narrow opinions. Now she was going to latch onto a new one and perhaps they would suit each other; he was a sensitive, gentle man probably. I’m too critical, Rhoda thought, I’m not like other people. Indeed, most of her friends’ husbands had always seemed like oafs to her. She looked at Liz, who was not a stupid woman, and for the first time she envied her bitterly.

  Outside Suzanne was hammering stakes into the ground for the tomato plants; they could hear her through the bedroom window. “Sounds like she’s constructing the Eiffel Tower,” Liz said.

  “It’s the one sort of work she does around the house,” Rhoda said, “gardening. Lately some half-cocked guidance counselor’s been sending her home with pamphlets on careers in Forestry and Landscape Design from a community college. Those aren’t careers for her.”

  “What does Suzanne say?”

  “Nothing. Same as always.” Suzanne didn’t care, but Rhoda knew what they were going to have to do. They were going to have to send her to one of those fancy junior colleges for young dumb ladies, a place that would take anyone whose parents paid. Suzanne’s response to all this was a shrug. Rhoda hoped she wasn’t planning any last-minute rebellions.

  All that autumn Suzanne tended the garden, which bore squash until the frost. Rhoda stayed indoors, took naps, and grew better. Claire continued to grow breasts, at a rate much too slow for her own satisfaction, but whose peaked appearance under her clothing startled Rhoda. Her bras always wrinkled under her blouses because she convinced herself she wore a larger size. Still, her figure would not be taken for a child’s even from a distance. “You know what you’re going to need next, don’t you, to hold up your bust?” Rhoda said. “Basketball nets.”

  “Everything is a joke to you,” Claire said. She often lashed out just when Rhoda was feeling she had said something friendly and inoffensive. “You just don’t like it when I outgrow anything and then you have to buy me something new. If it was up to you I’d be wearing stuff I wore in the sixth grade.”

  “Well, that was only two years ago.” Rhoda smiled. “I wear outfits that are from ten years ago. Some styles are classics.”

  “Ten years ago I was three and a half years old,” Claire snorted.

  That afternoon Rhoda was in the supermarket when she ran into Sylvia Shepp, whose daughter Rita was in Claire’s class. Rita had always seemed to Rhoda an unpleasantly self-assured child; but then Sylvia was a smoothly coarse woman—always smartly dressed—who spoke in a powerful, throaty voice. Rita, who already looked a good deal like her, slipped up behind them to put a bottle of shampoo in the shopping cart. “Look at how big these kids are getting nowadays,” Sylvia said, crushing the child to her in a hug. “Yours too, I know. Real young ladies.”

  “In time,” Rhoda said.

&nbs
p; “This one is going steady,” Sylvia said. “Can you imagine? At her age. A junior sophisticate.” Rita fiddled with the chain around her neck, on which some boy’s signet ring hung. “So how’s your own love life these days?” Sylvia said.

  “Very wild and swinging,” Rhoda said, rolling her eyes and rocking her head like Eddie Cantor.

  “I know a fellow, if you ever want a blind date.”

  Rhoda laughed. “Is he blind in both eyes or just one?”

  A week later Rhoda received a phone call from a man who said he had been given her phone number by Sylvia Shepp. He did not sound charming—he sounded too old and a bit simple—but Rhoda found herself saying yes to him for lack of a way to say no. He wanted to see her in the daytime on a weekend, which seemed odd to Rhoda (perhaps he retired at eight with a cup of hot milk). Would she like to go ice skating? (How old does he think I am? Rhoda thought. Eleven?) Skating sounded a bit strenuous—she was about to suggest they meet for lunch like civilized adults, when he proposed they take a drive into the countryside—had she ever been up to Lookout Mountain? Maybe her children would like to come too. Ah, Rhoda thought, he’s a gentleman, he thinks I might feel the need for a chaperone.

  Claire begged off going, but Suzanne—surprisingly—agreed; there was a rock formation on the north side of the peak whose topsoil created some sort of interesting response in pine trees. Suzanne asked nothing either about the man or the idea of taking such an outing in the dead of winter. My kids, Rhoda thought, don’t ask questions. Nor did Suzanne register any expression other than her usual flat, squinting look when, on Sunday afternoon, the man arrived and he was exactly as Rhoda had feared.

  A short, squat man, he stood in their front doorway stamping his feet: to no purpose—all the walks had been cleared and there was very little snow on the ground any more. He wore glasses with clip-on sun-shields, he had on a hound’s-tooth overcoat, and he was sweating slightly. He was close to sixty. “Hello, hello,” he said. “Ready to go for a Sunday drive?”

  “I’ll just get my coat,” Rhoda said. Better to be on the road with this one and get it over with. “This is my daughter Suzanne.” He was surprised when Suzanne shook his hand.

  “Hope my beat-up old jalopy makes it up the mountain,” he said, as they walked toward the street. “Sometimes it gives up when the going gets rough.”

  “Maybe we should take my car,” Rhoda said.

  He looked at the car in the driveway. “Could we? I’ll do the driving, if you don’t mind. You can just relax. Sit back like a lady.”

  “Fine,” Rhoda said. Suzanne got in the back seat behind them.

  “They said it was going to be a nice day,” Rhoda said. It was in fact a nice day, bright, clear, not too cold.

  “I notice there are clouds,” he said. “You see the clouds? When the Weather Bureau tells you it’s going to be a nice day, that’s when you have to worry. I think they tell us wrong on purpose. You think so?”

  “I don’t see why they would,” Rhoda said.

  “They’re very clever people, very. But why should I make you worry? Nobody wants to be with someone who makes them worry, right?” Suzanne coughed. “You want a Kleenex back there?”

  “I have one, thank you,” Suzanne said.

  “What are your interests?” he asked Rhoda. “You have any hobbies? You must have hobbies.”

  “I have a family,” Rhoda said. “I don’t really have time for that sort of thing.”

  “I like to watch sports. And I like nature. I have a lot of respect for nature. Respect and love. Some animals, of course, I’m afraid of. Certain unique animals. If I thought there were snakes on that mountain I wouldn’t get out of this car.”

  “You wouldn’t see them in the cold anyway,” Suzanne said.

  “We might see a deer or a raccoon,” Rhoda said. “We had a raccoon that used to come eat our garbage. He was enormous, wasn’t he, Suzanne?”

  “You saw him. I didn’t.”

  The man said, “I got people in my office that are like snakes. They’ll attack you without reason.”

  “Snakes don’t do that,” Suzanne said.

  “Without reason. Behind your back. When they think no one sees. Sudden attack. You know what I do? I don’t turn my back. You don’t believe me.” The two-lane blacktop changed into unpaved dirt road; it was the same route Rhoda used to take on her drives with Moe. “Look at that sign,” the man said. “We have to slow down here in open country when there are no other cars around? Does it make sense? I bet this car could really take the turns. A new car like this. It’s a wonderful car, by the way. I bet it could really do it.”

  “It’s a Chevy,” Rhoda said. “It’s not a hotrod.” They were heading near the turn-off road that led up the side of the mountain, and Rhoda was regretting that she had let this stranger take the wheel.

  “Better take it slow on these hair-pin turns,” she said. “They’re murder.”

  “Don’t be so nervous,” he said, patting her knee. “You should relax and don’t be a back-seat driver. You’re in the front seat, huh? I hate a back-seat driver. But I’ll listen. A gentleman always listens to a lady. Is this slow enough for you?”

  “It is,” Rhoda said, “thank you.”

  Halfway up the mountain they parked the car and got out. There was a clearing with picnic tables and an open-sided shelter, like a rough-hewn bus stop, from whose log pillars they could lean out in one direction and see the view. “There’s our house,” Rhoda said. “No, it’s somewhere over there.” Behind them they could look up at the further reaches of the mountain, snowy and dotted with stripped birches and dark firs.

  “This is where we get to go exploring,” the man said. “I’m glad to see you both wore boots, very nice boots.”

  “Ah, no, it’s too cold for my old bones,” Rhoda said, drawing her coat around her. “I’m just going to stay here under the shelter where it’s out of the wind.”

  Suzanne had enough sense to stick by them and did not go off to examine her pine trees. She was quite talkative, offering information, in her dry way, about glacial movements and the Appalachian chain. “Quite a reader you are, I can see,” the man said. “I can see your whole family is highly intelligent. Look at the hawks circling up there. They might be eagles, bald-headed eagles.”

  “They’re not eagles,” Suzanne said. “Not around here.”

  “Well, this is it, this is our excursion. Take a good look,” the man said. Rhoda turned in place obediently. The only sound was the wind in the branches. There’s not a soul up here on this damned mountain, Rhoda thought; who would be fool enough to come out here in the cold? At least Claire knew they were out here.

  “You sure you don’t want to take a walk?” the man said.

  “Not me.”

  “I don’t blame you. Spoil your boots.”

  “We should leave before it starts to get dark,” Rhoda said.

  “So, we came, we saw, we conquered, it’s time to go. After you, ladies.”

  On the way down the mountain the sky began to change and they watched the sunset, losing it and catching it again as the road bent and swerved back. “To a person like myself,” the man said, “nature is the only thing that doesn’t cost money.”

  “Look at the colors,” Rhoda said. She watched the pinks and reds streaking the sky, and then they all grew silent as the dusk fell.

  “I’m not such an interesting person for you to take a ride with,” the man said. “It improves me to spend time with people like you. I can see you think I’m not so interesting.”

  “Don’t talk against yourself,” Rhoda said. “I always tell my girls not to.”

  “I’m not so interesting but I’m unique. I can see you’re unique too. That’s why I like you.” Rhoda felt that she had been riding in the car for days. When she cast her eyes back at Suzanne, Suzanne’s face had a blank, strained look; when she caught Rhoda’s glance it changed to something milder, a supportive embarrassment.

  The car finally made t
he turn onto Rhoda’s street and stopped by the chestnut tree in front of the house. By the street light Rhoda could see the man’s face again; he was spitting slightly as he spoke. “Well, it wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t take you to a fancy restaurant. Fancy restaurants and me, we should go together, but we don’t. You have to understand that I’m controlled by forces against my will. There are people—powerful people, much more powerful than myself—who don’t give me an inch. Not an inch.” He grimaced, almost baring his teeth.

  Rhoda, turning in her seat to face Suzanne, raised her eyebrows and whispered, “Il est fou.” She had to say something, to mark herself off from participation in his craziness. Suzanne nodded. The man couldn’t hear anyway; he was outside the car, opening the door for them.

  Rhoda wondered whether Sylvia Shepp had ever actually met the man. Probably not. This is the last one, Rhoda thought, the last time. As they walked toward the house together, she said to Suzanne, “I thought you behaved very well today.”

  “That guy was gone,” Suzanne said. “He could have been dangerous. It was just typically oblivious of someone like Mrs. Shepp to sic him on you.” Rhoda was surprised at how bitter her voice was.

  Once inside the house, Suzanne, who kept her coat on because she said she’d been chilled, stood at the gas range and put up hot water. She made tea for Rhoda and black coffee for herself, and the two of them sat at the dinette table, warming up.

  “Why do you hang out with women like Mrs. Shepp?” Suzanne said. “I’m asking seriously.”

  Rhoda had already finished one cup of tea; Suzanne had just unearthed some week-old pound cake from the refrigerator and Rhoda was indulging in the slightly boorish luxury of dipping a slice in her second cup. “I’ve known her for so long,” Rhoda said. “You can’t cut yourself off from people.”