Often, as she leafed through the sticky, plastic-coated pages, spotting herself with a frizzy perm or wearing a loud, printed blouse, she was struck by how long life was, and how much time had passed, and she wished she could go back and apologize to those closest to her, explain that she understood now. Impossible, and yet the urge to return and be a different person never lessened, grew only more acute. Yes, Henry was a saint—a martyr at his most passive—but how did her mother and father ever put up with her? How did she not throttle Margaret?
It was easier to revisit people she didn’t remember. Her mother had done the hard part, tracking down the names and writing them on the back, along with a date, where available, and a note making clear their relation. To cover as much ground as possible, Emily chose only those pictures that showed a whole family. Last Christmas she’d given them her Great-Great-Grandfather and -Grandmother Benton and their four children squinting in front of a ramshackle farmhouse, along with their hired man, all of them in their Sunday best, the men with hats in hand. Following her scheme, this year’s would be a studio portrait of her Great-Great-Grandfather and -Grandmother Waite and their three girls from 1872. The flash bleached the girls’ dresses, their faces pasty and shadowless, the baby, Lily, turned to the side, unsure. The Waite branch of the family was the more prosperous, which was obvious from the fact that they could afford this portrait, but of them individually Emily knew little. John William Waite was a cooper. Kathleen Gamble Waite would outlive him and two of their children, leaving only the middle girl, Helen, to mourn her. Emily tried to imagine inhabiting their world, and as she peered into their faces, straining to feel some connection, she wondered at how, a hundred years from now, some descendant of hers would search her face, hoping to intuit her life and times, and realized the futility of her mission. Why should Margaret and Kenneth care about these strangers? They were all doomed to be mere emblems to those who didn’t know them. And to those who did?
The question of how she would be remembered was not one she wanted to contemplate. Her life had been happy, for the most part, her disappointments mild, common, yet when she recalled herself, she did so with a mix of self-righteousness and shame, holding up her worst moments against her best intentions. She would never forget the names she’d flung at Henry in her rages, or the times she’d made her mother cry. She came from a place and a generation that didn’t believe, as Margaret and Kenneth’s did, that you could—or should—forgive your own sins.
She’d already found the picture she wanted, and as if to cut off her thoughts, she boxed up the rest and lugged them back down to their place in the basement. Here, in the dingy corner behind the furnace, where seepage darkened the wall of the foundation, rested their history. She’d spent countless hours sorting the pictures and mementos into stackable Rubbermaid bins, each neatly labeled, and still there was so much more to do. She pulled the string of the bare bulb, and it all disappeared.
Rufus was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. “Who wants to go for a car ride?” she asked, making him twirl, but even after dropping the photo off to be copied at the Rite Aid, she couldn’t shake her mood.
She ended up going to bed early, reading Henry’s Bible while the Chicago Symphony mauled Shostakovich. She marked her place and listened in the dark for a while, the Coles’ Christmas lights blinking, tinting the ceiling. It was ridiculous how, with no one’s help, she’d worked herself into a perfect state. There was no reason either. The past was the past. Better to work on the present instead of wallowing, and yet the one comforting thought was also the most infuriating. Time, which had her on the rack, would just as effortlessly rescue her. This funk was temporary. Tomorrow she would be fine.
ALL-WHEEL DRIVE
The first real snow was always a surprise. It began after lunch on a gray day, just a few fat flakes sifting through the trees and telephone wires, but as she was changing Margaret’s sheets, the air was suddenly flocked with white, the wind streaking wild currents sideways down the street. That morning the radio had predicted scattered flurries. She expected this was one of them, and enjoyed the spectacle for a moment before getting back to work.
Doing Kenneth’s bed, she noticed the snow was still falling steadily, beginning to accumulate in patches on the backyard, if not the tarred garage roof or driveway. By the time she took the armful of dirty sheets downstairs and got the washer going, the grass was frosted. In the dining room, Rufus sat at attention by the French doors, following the birds’ crisscrossing sorties to the feeders, or so she thought. When she came closer, she could see, mere feet away on the concrete slab of the porch, hogging the spilled sunflower seeds, a beady-eyed squirrel.
She wasn’t sure if this was the same one she’d battled last winter—a sneaky suet thief—but that didn’t matter. All squirrels were her enemy.
“What is it? What do you see?”
As she reached for the lock, Rufus stood up.
“Git him,” she whispered, slowly turning the door handle. “Git that squirrel.”
“Woosh,” she said, and flung the door wide. He bolted out, swerving as the squirrel shot across the yard. He was too old, his back legs moving in unison, the same way he sometimes hopped down the stairs. Lagging badly, he chased it to the base of the cherry tree and then stood there looking up into the tangle of branches, though by now the squirrel had leapt to the garage roof and tightroped across the stockade fence at the rear of the courtyard, disappearing behind the Coles’ garage. Rufus lifted his leg and marked the trunk, leaving a warning.
“Good boy,” Emily said, welcoming him inside with a treat. “You almost had him.”
After a long, sloppy drink of water, he returned to his post, flopping down and watching the yard. She gathered her calendar and her cookbooks and set up shop at the breakfast table, putting together her menus for Christmas. Margaret and the children would be there for five nights. Saturday they’d be tired from traveling and she could do something easy like her lasagna. Sunday they’d have dinner at the club, after The Nutcracker . She needed to plan lunches, and buy breakfast food, a separate list. In the living room, a brass choir played Gabrieli’s sacred motets. Outside, the snow flew, gathering on the flagstones of the path and the branches of the cherry tree, the scene as peaceful as a Hiroshige print. She wanted to prolong the feeling, and, like a child, hoped the snow wouldn’t stop. Every time she looked up, she thought she’d gotten lucky.
By late afternoon, as the light died and gray invaded the dining room, the caps topping the fence posts had to be four inches tall. The yard was pristine, only the sunken bowls of the flagstones mapping the paths to the garage door and the gate. When she let Rufus out after feeding him, she stood on the back porch with her arms folded against the cold, soaking in the quiet. It was funny how nature restored order to the world and made it easier to believe in grace. She could see how earlier people had worshipped the seasons.
A snowblower racketed around the front, a rude intrusion. It proved to be Jim Cole, doing her walk first. She waved to him from the bay window, making a note to set aside some cookies for them tomorrow. Darkness was coming on, and up and down the street, Christmas lights played over the sculpted lawns and hedges. She couldn’t remember when the neighborhood had looked so pretty, and took it as an invitation. She tugged her boots on and jiggled Rufus’s leash to get him going.
Stepping outside in her knit hat and scarf, she felt intrepid. Jim had cleared the walk, but there were untouched stretches above and below them. She decided to head uphill to Sheridan, where it was level. At the corner, as Rufus was christening the hedges, the streetlight above them flickered to life, silver at first, then a wan, coppery orange. The snow was falling straight down now, gently. Grafton hadn’t been plowed yet, the center packed and slick, and she remembered Henry and Cal Miller sledding with the children on a night like this—could it be?—forty years ago. More, because that was the night six-year-old Daniel Pickering ran his shiny new aluminum flying saucer into the bumper of the Al
fords’ Lincoln and lost his front teeth. They had watched Timothy and Rachel, made hot chocolate and played Monopoly while Louise and Doug took Daniel to the emergency room.
She would end up there if she wasn’t careful. No one on Sheridan had shoveled, though someone had taken the time to build an adult-sized snowman, complete with a Steelers tassel hat and ski gloves. Emily paused before it to admire the construction while Rufus sniffed at its base. Across the street, a gigantic blow-up Santa glowed beside a coach light. She thought it was not so much garish as generic, a store-bought joy. Another trend she didn’t get were the icicle fringes people hung from their gutters. An old fogey, she preferred the classics: all-white or multicolored strings of bulbs, a fresh-cut pine wreath on one’s front—but not garage—door. And yet, as they strolled through the electric carnival, passing staid and then blinking displays—even one that crawled and danced like the border of a movie marquee—she was grateful for the sheer silly exuberance of her neighbors’ decorations. The exterior, like the lawn, had been Henry’s job, and though Jim would have happily hung their old outside lights, she had never liked them much, and learned to make do with a simple wreath from the School for the Deaf, adding her own bow. This year she hadn’t even done that yet, using Margaret as an excuse, when all she had to do was drive over to Wilkinsburg.
She decided she would, tomorrow. Right now the Olds was useless, but by then the roads would be clear. She could drop by Arlene’s and surprise her with one—and maybe some boughs for the mantel, yes, and a few to surround her mother’s crèche. By the time she reached the dead end of Sheridan, she had her plan for the morning.
Coming back down Grafton, she had to take baby steps, one hand out for balance, as if she might slip and grab the hedge. Knowing he’d get a treat, Rufus strained at the leash. She unhooked him, and he bounded free, romping across the yard.
Jim, bless him, had salted the walk. The Olds still sat under a sparkling coat of snow, white as a bar of soap. Henry never would have left his baby at the mercy of the elements, but instead of feeling guilty, once again Emily marveled at the gross impracticality of the old boat. Marcia’s hybrid was front-wheel drive. Emily wondered if that was enough for Pittsburgh. The Subaru wagons she’d been looking at online were all-wheel-drive, maybe a smarter choice, living on a hill.
Was it just the beauty of the snow that buoyed her, the novelty of the world transformed? Inside, still inspired, she put on some of Bach’s chorale preludes and laid a fire. She ate her soup and toast in the rocker by the hearth, Rufus at her side, alert for crumbs. He smelled like wet dog, though she would never hold that against him. His nose was running, and out of reflex his tongue flicked up and licked it.
“Please,” Emily said, “I’m eating,” and dabbed at his snout with a paper napkin she tossed into the flames. “I hope you’re not getting sick.”
All evening she found herself drawn to the windows. As she readied herself for bed, she peeked out a last time and was pleased to see it was still floating down, the Coles’ lights coloring the yard a tropical, cough-drop aqua. In bed she read a little with the radio, then turned in. The day had been an adventure, and she expected to sleep well.
Sometime in the night, she woke to a thunderous concussion and glass shattering, as if a bomb had gone off downstairs. Rufus was up and barking a warning. In her groggy state she thought someone was breaking in, and after hooking on her glasses, rolled over and reached for the heavy flashlight Henry kept by his side of the bed, only to find the batteries had died. It was still the best weapon she had, and once she got her robe and slippers on, she brandished it head-high like a club.
She stomped across the floor as if the sound of a larger person might frighten the intruder. Rufus clamored at the bedroom door, ready to fly down the stairs and protect the house, when, outside, a car revved, then revved again, louder, like one of Margaret’s delinquent boyfriends calling her to her window.
She was just in time to see a massive old station wagon slalom down the hill, the bright fan of its headlights swinging wildly until it straightened out on the flat and then, barely braking, fishtailed wide onto Highland. Below, the Olds sat cockeyed across the driveway, its front wheels on the Coles’ lawn. Dark shards littered its parking spot.
“For Christ’s sake,” Emily said. “Of all the goddamned things.”
The clock on her nightstand said half-past three. She set aside the flashlight, turned on her reading lamp and sat down on her bed to call the police. They seemed disappointed that she hadn’t been able to catch the license plate, as if the accident were her fault.
When she’d hung up, she thought they were partly right. She shouldn’t have left the car on the street in this weather. She could have tucked it into the driveway, or had Jim stick it in the garage. She’d wanted Kenneth to come and get it, but, as always, he’d put her off, too busy, and now it was too late. It was useless to think this way, and with a sigh she stood and went to the hamper and exchanged her robe for her dirty clothes so she could go out and assess the damage.
HIGHWAY ROBBERY
The mess would take some time to clean up. The whole process of filing a claim seemed hopelessly old-fashioned, submitting forms and photos, arranging for the police to send in their report and then waiting for an adjuster to venture out from the local home office. When, after the first week, Emily called and was put on hold for twenty minutes, the representative she finally spoke to told her the storm had created a huge backlog. They were doing everything they could.
Meanwhile, the garage that had towed the Olds was charging her twenty dollars a day for storage.
“They should have left it there,” she told Arlene, a bitter jest she repeated to Betty when she came, and over the phone to both Margaret and Kenneth.
While she was outraged at the jackass who’d hit her, and always would be, that at least had been an accident. Practically, it didn’t matter that he’d left the scene. Even if he’d stopped and apologized, with the state’s no-fault policy she’d be in the same pickle.
She reserved her worst fury for the people who, by lawful contract, were supposed to help her. For years they’d taken her money in exchange for a promise, and woe to her if she was late with a payment. Now, when she needed them the most, they were nowhere to be found. It reminded her of getting Henry’s ridiculous hospital bill a month after the funeral and the hoops they made her jump through to take care of it. What was truly galling was that this evasion of responsibility was their business model, and the politicians did nothing to stop it.
“How is this different from the last time?” Kenneth asked, as if he were trying to get her goat.
“Last time I was able to drive my car until the check came through.”
“They can’t give you a loaner?”
“How would I know? I call and all I get is some customer service person God-knows-where who won’t tell me anything.”
His view was that she should hope it was totaled. That way she’d get a check and the company would take the car off her hands, rather than her having to deal with getting it fixed and then negotiating a trade-in, always a losing proposition.
“But I thought you wanted it,” she asked.
“I did, because you were getting rid of it. Now it might work out that you don’t have to, and that’s fine. We don’t have room for it here anyway.”
Privately she’d cultivated the idea that the car represented an unspoken bond between him and Henry. She didn’t understand how he could give up on it so easily, unless he was just trying to appease her—always possible. He was his father’s son.
Margaret thought it was a sign. Since her last rehab she was a great believer in things happening for a reason, seeing fate in the random, as if a cosmic predestination were the only benign explanation for how her life had turned out. While it was true that the accident had cleared a spot in the garage for a new car, Emily held a more rigorous view of free will.
Regardless of these grandiose speculations, the immediat
e result was that Arlene had to drive her everywhere, a nightmare, with all of their errands. Christmas was nine days away, and Emily felt time running out. She would need a car while Margaret and the children were in town, if only to pick them up at the airport. Renting was akin to throwing money away, and so, motivated by what she hoped were practical reasons, she had Arlene chauffeur her one last time to Baierl Subaru off McKnight Road and paid the year-end clearance price for a cobalt-blue ’07 Outback wagon. She’d done her homework, but still, she was aware the odds were good that the car would outlast her. She wasn’t sure Henry would understand. Certainly her parents wouldn’t. The sales tax alone was more than his trusty Plymouth had cost her father. It was the largest check she’d ever written, and as she tore it off and handed it to the salesman and then logged the obscene figure in her ledger, she feared she was making a grave mistake.
Emily, Alone Page 8