Household Words

by Joan Silber

  Sybil Jawitz, who had been sitting in the corner saying nothing, got up to leave. She wanted to know if Rhoda could eat spongecake; she would bring some next time, home-made. Some of the others rose to leave with her. “I’m sorry I can’t see you out,” Rhoda said.

  “Don’t be silly,” Sylvia said.

  Why do the mediocre prosper? Rhoda thought, after all the women had left. I should have asked the rabbi at the hospital. Something for the old boy to chew on. What would he have said? It only looks that way. He gets away with murder as it is, the rabbi, nobody ever asks him anything serious. The Sylvia Shepps of this world, what do they get? Swimming pools in their backyards, husbands with suntans, children who think everything they do is great.

  Rhoda was weeping softly to herself. Sylvia had been wearing a suède suit, a little warm for May, but a wonderful deep green color, beautifully cut. She’s a fairly bright woman, really, Rhoda thought. We started off with the same ideas. Why do I have to know things she doesn’t know?

  Suzanne, in her scornful tirades, always used to make scathing references to Rhoda’s friends; “fat and phony” was one of her favorite descriptions, Rhoda remembered. (Sylvia, actually, was very lean and svelte.) “So what is wrong with not looking for trouble and wanting a comfortable life?” Rhoda used to ask her. “Anybody would have it that way if they could.”

  “That sort of life,” Suzanne had said, “is just always a lie.”

  “Only young people want to think that,” Rhoda had said. “They’re very big on experience.” Her kids always complained that she deprived them of their natural right to suffering; Claire with those soulful-woeful poems she copied out and stuck to the bulletin board in her bedroom.

  Rhoda made her way out of the bed and into the hallway. Someone had given her a new bathrobe, a yellow cotton duster with eyelet trim, a little cheap, but pretty in a breezy way. Rhoda sat at the phone table and dialed the number of what had once been Suzanne’s room in her dormitory. The roommate answered and said she had no idea where Suzanne was, but she sometimes called in, did Rhoda want to leave a message? “I know what you’re doing,” Rhoda said. “I’m not dumb, you know. You can stop talking to me in that sweet voice. You can tell Suzanne that she better get in touch with me if she knows what’s good for her.”

  Three days later the phone rang at ten in the evening. “Hello, it’s Suzanne,” she said, in that flat voice of hers.

  “I can still tell your voice,” Rhoda said. “I suppose you’ve been testing to see how long it takes me to forget and that’s why you haven’t called.”

  Suzanne asked politely about Rhoda’s operation. (She sounded firm and distant; Rhoda didn’t remember her speaking so slowly before.) She was methodical in her questions; she was the first person Rhoda had explained the thing to who knew the difference between the jejunum and the duodenum. “That must have been quite an ordeal,” she said. “That’s very complex surgery.”

  “You could have called,” Rhoda said. “I suppose you were too busy ruining your life at the time. Why didn’t you answer Uncle Andy’s letter when he wrote to you?”

  “I was going to,” Suzanne said.

  Rhoda said, “You don’t care at all, do you?”

  “‘At all’ is putting it too strongly,” Suzanne said.

  There was no pushing her; she was always so careful not to hide the ugly truth with lies. (No wonder she was so tight with her words: if you were afraid to lie and you didn’t want to be frank and confidential, you didn’t have much choice but to clam up.)

  “When are you going back to school? You have a whole quarter to make up—you know what that costs?”

  Suzanne sighed. Rhoda said, “When are you coming home? It’s time already.”

  “I have to fill in for the cottage parents on some weekends. It’s hard to know when I can get away.”

  “That’s a completely grisly job you have. I don’t even like to think about it—a state institution filled with retarded kids.”

  Suzanne said she was trying to remember whether it was this weekend or the next that she had to sleep in Cottage D while the resident couple took a break. “Stop being ridiculous,” Rhoda said. “You know you have to come home some time. You can get someone else to take your shift for you.”

  Suzanne finally consented to name the next weekend as feasible. “I’ll put the money in your account for the ticket. I can’t wait,” Rhoda said. “I can’t wait to see your face around here again.” She suddenly felt happy. “Suzanne?” she said.

  “What now?”

  “I don’t want you backing out at the last minute, do you understand?”

  “You never change, do you?” Suzanne said, and hung up.

  Rhoda woke the next morning at the sound of a woman’s voice in the doorway. “Maisie?” Rhoda said. “I can’t hear you. You always speak so softly.” Even with the door open, Maisie would never cross the threshold of the bedroom unless asked. Rhoda was vexed at having to call across to her.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Taber?” Maisie said. “It’s ten o’clock already.”

  “I don’t care whether I get up or not,” Rhoda said, turning her face to the pillow. “Where’s Claire?”

  “She went to the park to swim.”

  “She went to meet Ronnie Saaterfield, I’ll bet you anything.” Rhoda sat up in bed. “What is going on that she always has to meet him outside the house? Bring me my hairbrush, will you? It’s on the dresser.”

  “Your hair looks very nice since Claire set it for you,” Maisie said. “Almost like the beauty parlor.”

  Rhoda had gotten the idea of asking Claire to do it from watching her roll her own hair on mesh cylinders with little brushes inside; through some act of teenage resolve, she slept every night with the inner bristles jabbing her scalp like a yogi’s bed of nails. For whom? For anyone. “She must think I’m deaf, dumb, and blind that I don’t know what’s going on,” Rhoda said, brushing her own hair hard till the waves got too flat. “You can start breakfast, I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Rhoda was in low spirits this morning, and it struck her as particularly depressing that Claire really did not like Ronnie Saaterfield personally. She would go and meet him because he had asked. Claire was not popular with the kids in her class, but from nearby towns she had found a group with kindred enthusiasms—ban-the-bomb slogans, black turtlenecks, old labor-movement songs: that sort of thing—and anyone who knew the key phrases was all right with Claire.

  The park was not very large, but it had its thickets and heavy shrubbery; even benches under trees afforded privacy now that the foliage was thick with summer growth. Claire would do whatever she did for the adventure of it; it would be an abstract idea to her, gratifying her more or less insatiable notion of herself rather than in response to a particular affection.

  Rhoda was not sure how mature Claire was in her sexual feelings, how “developed” (as they used to say when girls started growing busts) in her desires. She avoided bringing boys to the house, so Rhoda didn’t often get to see her with them, but there had been one she’d really liked—not the one who’d come to the hospital (that was Charlie—a decent sort—and she’d gotten rid of him soon enough), and not this Ronnie, but a tall, narrow-shouldered blond named Lonny or Lanny. He used to come watch TV in the sun room with Claire; he was fond of the Three Stooges and he had a theory about why they represented the best of American humor. Claire would bring him elaborate snacks, laughing too hard at the Stooges’ moronic stunts, fawning over him; Rhoda overheard him telling her not to kiss him on the neck while Curly was talking.

  “I don’t want to see you doing that again,” Rhoda told her after the boy left. “Begging for crumbs of his affection like that. That’s a very unwise way to behave.” Claire responded by shouting that Rhoda didn’t know anything about anything, it was none of her business, and she’d better shut up about it. “You’re gone,” Rhoda said. “There’s no talking to you. You’re like a wild animal.”

  Rhoda often had d
reams about animals invading the house, and it was no wonder. Squirrels had, in fact, gotten into the attic again; remnants of Suzanne’s nature projects sat up in her room—a snake’s skin on the dresser, and a row of grayish cactus plants Rhoda had sworn to tend. Her father kept writing splotched, shaky letters wanting to come home to visit; and Rhoda’s own body had become a thing uncontrollable, the worst sort of irrepressible animal life.

  And now Claire: it never did occur to Claire to try to control either herself or other people. She of course saw her sly, acne-faced beaux as great conquests, triumphs to her charm. Rhoda heard Maisie calling now from the kitchen, and she managed, with considerable effort and pain in motion, to put on her bathrobe and descend the stairs. “You’ve made me an egg,” she said. “Why did you do that?”

  “I thought you’d like some variety,” Maisie said.

  “I can’t eat them,” Rhoda said. “You know that. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat an egg again.” She sat at the dinette table and bit into a piece of dry toast with jam on it.

  “Oh, no,” Maisie said. She was almost whining. “You don’t mean never ever.”

  “It’s a very unpleasant subject to me,” Rhoda said.

  “You’re just saying that on a day you feel discouraged. You had that whole operation so you would be better.”

  “Eggs are not very important to me,” Rhoda said.

  Claire must have foregone any trysts she’d arranged with Ronnie Saaterfield, because the next Saturday she stayed home and waited with Rhoda for Suzanne’s visit. Rhoda sent her out to the garden to bring in marigolds and snapdragons from the beds Suzanne had cultivated the year before. Claire came back through the kitchen door bearing an armload, the torn stems green-smelling and darkened with soil. She had put a blossom in her hair. “That looks very festive,” Rhoda said. “Very Hawaiian.”

  “Welcome to our island,” Claire sang, giggling. She was waving her arms around Rhoda’s face and doing a mock hula. She put a bachelor’s button in Rhoda’s hair, just over the ear. Rhoda touched it and left it there, patting her hair-do. She’d gone to the beauty parlor this week (having felt well enough for an outing), and by way of making a great fuss over her return, the girl had set her hair in elaborate rows of small tight waves close to the head. At home afterwards Rhoda had felt a little formal and foolish with her hair done-up while she went around the house in her bathrobe, but today she seemed to herself attractive and well-groomed; she wore a pair of earrings Moe had given her.

  She felt more pleased with everything than she had in months. She was looking forward—really—to seeing Suzanne’s face again, the round contours and the intelligent squinting gaze. All morning she had the lover-like distraction of dwelling on the removed pleasures of earlier times in their relationship. She remembered Suzanne as a small child, how quiet and good she was, sitting in your lap when you took her places, how intently she concentrated in her playing, and how she and Leonard used to play catch together in the driveway in the evenings.

  Rhoda expected her to arrive by lunchtime; of course there was no telling whether she would call from the airport or arrive unannounced. When she was not there by three, Claire ate half of the fried chicken Maisie had made and talked about maybe going to the library. “You might as well go,” Rhoda said. “It’s bad enough I have to sit and wait like an idiot.” Rhoda sat in the sofa before the TV set; she grew drowsy and dozed off; occasionally she thought she heard the door, but when she opened her eyes, the noise was from the program on the screen.

  At twilight, the sound of the front door opening woke her, and she sat up with a start; it was Claire, home from the library or the park. “Why don’t you turn on some lights?” Claire said. “It’s like a tomb in here. A tomb with the seven o’clock news on. Where’s Suzanne?”

  “Do I know?” Rhoda said, stirring under the blanket she had put over herself.

  “Maybe she forgot.”

  “Forgot, my foot.”

  “Did you call?”

  “She doesn’t have a phone in her place, or so she says. There’s no way to reach her. I’m not going to talk to that roommate again.”

  “Maybe she’s on her way.”

  “Her way, my foot.” Rhoda went upstairs to bed. Her back hurt from having lain on the sofa, and she was very angry with herself for having felt cheerful at the beginning of the day. The day had been nothing but awful, and she wanted to get away from it by going to sleep for the night. Before she lay down on the pillow, she remembered to wrap a hairnet around her head, tying it at the forehead and slipping a Kleenex around the ears and the nape to protect the set, the way she would have wrapped and stored in the pantry a remainder of food for which she had no appetite any longer.

  The next Saturday at around eleven in the morning Rhoda saw a taxi stop in front of the house, and Suzanne got out, carrying a suitcase. She walked up the flagstone path, banging the suitcase against the slate. When Rhoda opened the door, Suzanne, looking pale from the journey, was wiping the sweat from her upper lip, which made it dirtier. “Everything was ready for you last week,” Rhoda said.

  “I told you either next week or the week after,” Suzanne said, permitting Rhoda to hug her. “Sometimes you only hear what you want to hear.”

  Rhoda had her sit in the kitchen, and she tried to ask her questions about her “summer” job, while Claire fixed lunch. They all sat down to eat. Rhoda waved a napkin gaily and said “well done” when Suzanne finished all the food on her plate; she thought how familiar and yet strangely thrilling it was to hear Suzanne’s voice at the table again, but the pleasure had gone out of it for her, she no longer cared. Claire, who was normally more polite to her mother, was eager to impress Suzanne since she’d been away, and made fun of the way Rhoda had put out butter knives and two kinds of forks for them; Suzanne smiled at her sarcasms. They were getting on well; Rhoda was glad to see it. Claire was in high spirits, squealing at Suzanne’s new faint, wry remarks about how “not very b-r-i-g-h-t” the children at the school were.

  Rhoda felt warmed watching them—they were so harsh and active—but she wasn’t interested, her interest had been broken. What did I bother for? she thought. She went into the living room, leaving them still talking at the table. They were awfully lively—Claire was showing Suzanne how she could touch her forehead to her ankles (she had been taking a modern dance class). There was some sort of scuffling on the floor and comic groaning as Suzanne tried it. Rhoda was sick of them; she didn’t want to be in the same room with them. But the house sounded full and cheerful with them in it. Sometimes it did. An old longing came over her, a longing with a bitterness to it.

  The girls came into the living room. “You look tired,” Suzanne said.

  “She looks better than she usually looks,” Claire said.

  Rhoda smiled faintly, as though she had a secret. “Ah, flattery,” she said, “I’m used to it.”

  Two weeks later school was out, and Claire went off to work as a junior counselor at camp; Rhoda was left alone in the house. Friends still came to visit, but their ranks had thinned, as she observed to Maisie. Hinda was the most loyal in her visits, stopping by two or three times a week. Mostly Rhoda talked with Maisie. Sometimes she forgot what she had said to Maisie and what she had said to Hinda. She would stop in the midst of recounting a long incident to Hinda and realize she had told her all that before. Or she made references to people Hinda insisted she’d never met or heard of. At first Hinda called this to her attention (“Give me a break, Rhoda. Who’s Arnold?”), but in time she simply nodded and smiled; Rhoda accused her of not listening.

  “There’s something almost bovine about Hinda,” she told Maisie. “That means cow-like.”

  “She’s always such a nice woman,” Maisie said. Maisie’s drawl was like a whine at times. She was also getting clumsy—she had knocked a chip off a vase the other day while dusting under it. But she had a good, brusque touch when she plumped the pillows under Rhoda’s head—the fawn-colored palms and t
he dark leathery knuckles always smelled of soap—and she was discreet, almost strict in her propriety. She giggled like a schoolgirl when Rhoda made jokes the least bit colorful.

  “I look like someone with a load in his pants, only I’m carrying it up front,” Rhoda said, referring to the puffed appearance her pendulous middle gave to even loose-waisted dresses.

  Maisie said nothing when Rhoda began returning to her bed in the afternoons, falling asleep on top of the covers with her dress unbuttoned at the belt. But she wouldn’t leave in the evenings until Rhoda stirred again. Rhoda would wake to the sound of Maisie’s voice calling softly from the doorway, “Are you awake, Mrs. Taber?”

  Rhoda was once again burning a low fever in the evenings. She kept this disheartening fact to herself; she had grown more self-contained since Claire was gone. When the infection raged more fiercely, reducing her to shivering sweats so that she writhed in the bedclothes in the night, she took cold baths to lower her temperature, and in the mornings she had Maisie bring washcloths with ice-cubes folded in them to place on her forehead. But when she had trouble keeping her food down, she became alarmed, because she was also losing the mealtime doses of pills which were supposed to be making her get better. She had Maisie call the doctor.

  “You’ve had another attack,” he said, running his hands flatly up and down her torso as though frisking her interior for weapons. “Look at you, you’re yellow. What are we going to do with you?”

  “Bottle me as mustard,” Rhoda said.

  “You ought to think about going back to the hospital if there’s no improvement.”

  “You think about it,” Rhoda said. “I’m already nauseous.”

  As an interim solution, a practical nurse was hired to stay in the house on weekends and on Maisie’s days off. She was a round, gray-haired lady, breathless and somewhat simple. To Rhoda’s surprise, Claire arranged to get a ride home from camp to visit with her on her “day off.” She arrived late in the evening, shiny with tan and long-legged in her Bermuda shorts. “Sleep now, we’ll talk in the morning,” Rhoda said. Later she could hear her rummaging in the kitchen.