Emily, Alone

by Stewart O'Nan

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “She’ll call me right after she hangs up with you anyway.”

  “Checking up on me.”

  “She worries about you—for good reason.”

  “That’s a switch.”

  “I think we’re at the time of life when we all worry about everyone.”

  The idea lingered after Arlene was gone, like a phone ringing in a quiet house. Though they all lived alone, and preferred to, they were all worried about one another, equally. Why had it taken them so long to arrive at this point? Shouldn’t it have always been that way?

  She coated her throat with honey and practiced speaking in a normal voice before calling Margaret, who sounded surprised to hear from her. She was glad she was feeling better.

  “Arlene was a huge help,” Emily said. “Thank you for siccing her on me.”

  “It was entirely her idea.”

  “Entirely.”

  “Almost entirely.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now you just have to keep eating healthier.”

  “I am, I am,” Emily said.

  For dinner she made a plate of leftovers, but wasn’t hungry, and ended up scraping most of it down the disposal. She felt bad, after all her promises. Selfish and deceitful, her mother would say—the worst thing a person could be, the complete opposite of Jesus Christ, the impossible model to which Emily spent her childhood being compared and yet for whom, as with her mother, she felt an unending love. She also missed the tree with its merry lights, and the crèche, and the boughs on the mantel, as if all of their work today now counted against her. Hadn’t she gotten what she wanted? Her wounds, if she had any, were self-inflicted, and rather than nourish the misguided feeling that she was the victim of some injustice, she put Rufus out and went up to bed obscenely early, thinking she would read. The Hardy was no better than before, and despite the live broadcast of the Philadelphia Orchestra, she dropped off with the light on, missing the end of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony.

  In the morning, for the first time in a week, she felt rested. She slathered butter and raspberry jam over her toast, and drizzled honey into her teacup. After breakfast she took her last pill, pitching the vial in the kitchen trash as if declaring victory.

  Upstairs, as she brushed her teeth, pacing by the windows overlooking the street, she half expected Arlene to pull up in her Taurus. After a cleansing night’s sleep, Emily was disappointed that Arlene had accepted her dismissal without a fight. The house was spotless, but she needed to run out to the bank and the post office and the grocery store—and the library, if she had time. Instead, to her amazement and frustration, she puttered around the downstairs, waiting for Arlene to call, as if only she could release her.

  INGRATITUDE

  Every year the same maddening pas de deux occurred, with only the most minor variations. The week after Christmas, Emily wrote her thank-you notes and posted them, expecting—if not directly then at least shortly—an equal number in return.

  The habit, ingrained in her by her mother, was more than a genteel nicety, reflecting, as it did, the bonds of love and respect upon which all relationships depended. As a child Emily had spent whole afternoons drafting hers, writing to the Brandy Camp and Elbon and Dagus Mines branches of the Waites and Bentons, bending low over her desk with the tip of her tongue clamped between her teeth, taking pains to reproduce her award-winning penmanship. Those were the war years, and her family didn’t have a lot, so any present was special. Thank you so much for the bracelet. It is beautiful. I will wear it with my blue dress. Just hearing how pleased her Aunt June had been to receive her card was a gift in itself.

  As a mother, Emily had enforced and supervised the process, providing reminders, addresses and stamps. When they opened their presents, it was Kenneth’s job to log what each of them had received, from whom, and before they bagged the wrapping paper and carried their booty upstairs, she let them know what was expected of them.

  Henry, being a partner in the larger entity of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Maxwell, already represented by Emily, was not charged with this task, just as he was not asked to buy Christmas presents for anyone except her. His responsibilities were technical (making fires, putting up and taking down the tree, train and lights) and financial (paying for everything), while hers were domestic and social, including—though this was self-imposed, a leftover from her mother’s day—not adding to his.

  Kenneth, ever dutiful, finished his thank-yous before Margaret started hers, though his were slapdash, as if he’d rushed through them just to be done. Due to larger curriculum changes, in the early seventies the Pittsburgh schools dropped writing, and his cursive never improved. A fiveyear-old’s scrawls could be charming, but not a fifth-grader’s, and as he grew older, Emily vetted his efforts like a teacher correcting homework, more often than not sending him back to his desk so that it became a struggle, and unpleasant, to the extent that the mere mention of thank-you notes met with a groan—a mistake, since it awakened her sense of outrage, which only escalated the situation. Occasionally he was confined to his room until she deemed his work suitable.

  Margaret simply didn’t care. Thank-you notes belonged to the same category of useless formalities her square parents followed blindly, like sitting down to meals at prescribed times or going to church on Sunday. People should give gifts because it made them happy. There should be no obligation involved, no guilt. Writing a thank-you note for a gift you didn’t like was hypocritical. Her ditzy hippie logic exhausted Emily, and though she and Henry were united on this front, they had bigger battles to fight with Margaret, meaning that around this time of year Emily would get a call from her mother (she couldn’t stay on long—it was too expensive), letting her know that she’d received Kenneth’s nice note.

  Now the wave Emily sent out traveled farther, as if the scope of her life had widened, when, at her lowest, she felt it narrowing down to this house, this room, this moment. Though she would dearly love to, she would never see Ella’s apartment in Cambridge, or meet her friend Suzanne. The same for Sarah and her beau in Chicago, and Justin and Sam off at college. Their lives were beyond her reach, just as hers had been when, at Pitt, every month she received a check for five dollars from Aunt June, along with a letter detailing the antics of Chester, her Siamese, and updating her on the progress of the new superhighway going through DuBois. Emily had faithfully answered those missives from home, but with platitudes—happy chatter of classes and dances rather than what she was really doing. And why? Just laziness, and some overweening idea of privacy, as if Aunt June might show up at the door of her sorority in her moth-eaten mink with Chester in hand and demand to stay the night.

  A thank-you note was so little to ask—the minimum, really. Maybe it was a sign of her age, but lately she awaited them with greater anticipation than she could muster for any gift.

  The first, as she could have predicted, came from Arlene, in her elegant hand, on monogrammed stationery. Arlene herself brought it up with the rest of the mail to Emily’s bed during her convalescence. Politeness required Emily to say she could have saved herself a stamp, when both of them knew such a shortcut would have been improper. Arlene, for all her faults, had impeccable manners, as had Henry. During their initial dinner at the club, way back in ’51, Emily’s mother had been impressed by how gracious the Maxwells were as a family, their sense of etiquette far more important than their money, though her father, cowed and out of his element, said in the car that having both wasn’t a bad package deal.

  The second, which arrived when Emily was feeling better, was from Lisa, also on monogrammed stationery (a gift from Arlene), and neatly done, though devoid of emotion. As if to make up for it, Kenneth’s, which followed a day later, closed, Much love from all of us, and listed not only himself and Lisa and the children, but Muttly and Fenway, their two goldens, complete with cartoon paw prints.

  Margaret’s followed not long after, a full-fledged letter,
no surprise, since her new ideals prized, above all, communication and gratitude. She thanked Emily for having them, for the plane tickets, for her gifts, and finally for their good talk, which she obviously remembered differently—again, not a shock, as everything that happened to her now happened for a reason, and therefore had to be received positively, as a gift from God, including, presumably, Emily’s death.

  She thought that Ella’s would be next, or possibly Sarah’s, her prejudice against the boys having been borne out more times than not, but for days the mail was skimpy and impersonal. Their mailbox was old, a wrought-iron shell bolted to the brick and so heavily coated with black Rust-Oleum that the open rosette which let her glimpse an envelope within had skinned over. Just before lunchtime she heard the lid clank shut, only to go out, defying the cold, and discover it was empty, the mailman a figment of her desire.

  A week passed, then the weekend. Monday was the fourteenth. She was painfully aware of the date because her estimated taxes had to be postmarked by midnight tomorrow. It had been three weeks. She was carefully writing out her checks to the U.S. Treasury when the mailman delivered Justin’s note.

  It was exactly what she expected: three lines in slanting block print cataloging the clothes he hadn’t asked for and wishing her a happy new year, finished at the bottom with a squiggly signature. The stamp was stuck on crookedly, the envelope postmarked Silver Hills, meaning he’d dispatched with the onerous chore the last thing before heading off to school. That was fine—that was all she wanted, a simple acknowledgment. She might even give him brownie points for beating out his sister.

  The next day nothing came, and waiting in line in the post office, she glanced at the display racks of overpriced Valentine’s merchandise and imagined how the children would feel if, as an experiment, she didn’t send them a card. Rude as the idea was, it might teach them a lesson, though more likely they wouldn’t care, and she would only be depriving herself. As Margaret’s two poles illustrated, you couldn’t force someone to be grateful.

  Martin Luther King Day she knew there was no mail, then forgot and only remembered again later, when it was overdue, throwing her into a bad mood. She understood Sam, but Ella? Sarah? Could theirs have possibly arrived when she was sick and gotten lost?

  In four days it would be a month—more than enough time, by any measure. Arlene thought so too, since she was facing the same quandary. Betty agreed, nodding in sympathy.

  Could Emily hold her tongue that long? Because prompting her children was not Arlene’s job. Like them, the task belonged to Emily. She remembered her mother, and her own problems with Margaret, the intractable past, and wished that, just once, she didn’t have to call. But, like every year, she did.

  FORGETFULNESS

  In the middle of the afternoon, as she detoured through the dining room on her way to the kitchen for something pressing, she discovered Rufus sitting at attention on the back stoop in the cold, peering forlornly through the French doors.

  “Did someone forget you? Is that what happened? I’m sorry, Boo-Boo. I don’t know where my mind is today. Next time say something.”

  Then, later, when the toilet paper in the downstairs bath ran out, she threw the gold, spring-loaded spindle in the trash and held on to the empty cardboard tube.

  “Seriously,” she said, regarding the irrefutable proof in her hand, as if someone had played a trick on her that wasn’t funny.

  MYSTERY!

  Unlike Arlene and the children, Emily wasn’t big on TV. She’d witnessed its awkward first steps and sixty years later remained unimpressed. Each technical advance did little to conceal the fact that it was an unserious medium, a lazy way to fill the hours—as some wag put it, chewing gum for the mind. From time to time, of a Saturday afternoon, Henry planted himself in front of the Pirates game for a couple of innings, but more often he had Bob Prince on the radio down in the basement, providing background for whatever project he was lost in. They might watch Huntley and Brinkley together before dinner, the disjointed opening of the scherzo from Beethoven’s Ninth introducing the equally chaotic news of the day, but they didn’t have favorite shows the way the children did, and by the time cable colonized Highland Park, the children were gone, and Emily saw no reason why they should pay for something they received for free.

  The one exception to this summary judgment was PBS, whose Masterpiece Theatre miniseries were consistently worthwhile. Week after week, year after year, she and Louise would get together with a glass of Chablis or two to watch the BBC’s eight-part adaptation of Middlemarch or The Mayor of Casterbridge or Northanger Abbey and fall heart and soul into the familiar world of Victorian England, where the rambling manor houses were ivy-covered and candlelit, and corseted desire beat beneath layer upon layer of lush costumes.

  As a girl she’d been a devotee, as her mother was, of Hardy and the Brontë sisters, yearning, in tumbledown Kersey, for a noble, soul-shattering passion. Now as she watched, gray and middle-aged, she recalled those still hours, lying belly-down, propped on her elbows behind the sofa, hidden in the warm gap by the radiator, lazily kicking her feet in the air, crossing and uncrossing her ankles, the book flat on the carpet. Even then the movies had infected her. At thirteen she imagined entering the same swagged ballrooms and salons, and watching Laurence Olivier’s brougham depart from behind the same mullioned windows as Vivien Leigh or Merle Oberon.

  How powerful the romance of the past was, and how sad, all the lost possibilities, despite how well things had turned out. A country mouse and an outsider herself, she had been these tentative heroines, had stepped innocent and unschooled into high society and made her way despite a paralyzing self-doubt. To see that part of her life reflected in them now, after the fact, was bittersweet—the dream, having been achieved, was over. If there was a role for her and Louise in these period pieces, it was no longer the yearning ingénue but the faithful retainer, Miss Haversham or Mrs. Fotheringill, played by a craggy character actress or fading grandame, whose sudden illness would force the rival sisters to stop quarreling and band together, and yet Emily could not bring herself to accept anything less than top billing, still susceptible (there’s no fool like an old fool, her mother loved to say), after all these years, to the formula of longing.

  Another, less high-minded British import they lapped up was Mystery!, with its Edward Gorey credits and clever, near-spoofs of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, both of whom held places of honor on Emily’s bedroom shelves. While violence of any kind repulsed her, she relished a good murder. She and Louise were puzzle lovers, and made a game of staying a step ahead of Miss Marple and Lord Peter Wimsey, sorting through red herrings and teasing out intrigues among the suspects. The world of the twenties was as elegant as that of its Edwardian predecessor, with shooting parties and touring cars and gleaming rail coaches nothing like the cigar-and mildew-smelling one she and Henry endured from York to London. It was a fantasy, a place where wit and a simple moral logic prevailed, and every Monday, while the rest of Pittsburgh was glued to their football, she and Louise gave themselves to it eagerly.

  Later, Mystery!’s offerings would grow more modern, encompassing not only the war years, an epoch for which Emily still had untapped feelings, but also contemporary England, for which she had none. In an unnecessary concession to realism, instead of rolling meadows and misty heaths, these new series featured the gritty streets of working-class cities like Manchester or Liverpool, stark tower blocks and rundown council flats and scummy takeaways. The stories were less mysteries than police procedurals, office-bound and charmless, nearly American. Their heroines were middle-aged inspectors with complicated relationships, and the crimes themselves revolved around larger issues like drugs or terrorism or immigration. As much as Emily admired Helen Mirren, she missed the sly comedy and blithe repartee, and when, several years ago, PBS announced a new season of Poirot, she and Louise awaited the initial episode with high hopes. The actor who played the detective was the same, the set design equally
sumptuous, yet as they watched, Emily felt a helpless nostalgia for the earlier version, as if, across the intervening decade, something had been irretrievably lost.

  Now, with Louise gone and Masterpiece Theatre stretching well beyond her bedtime, the only shows Emily watched regularly were the morning and evening news, mostly for the weather, though lately the presidential race had piqued her interest. She understood that she was different, that she was voluntarily missing a large part of the culture. Arlene had her soaps, and every night after supper played Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, and Emily had seen how the TV sucked the children in, but for her it posed no temptation. She attached no personal virtue to this abstinence. As with smoking, she counted herself lucky not to have fallen into the habit.

  Several Christmases ago, Kenneth had given her a DVD player to go with her VCR. He’d had all their old home movies on Super 8 and VHS transferred to six slim discs, a wonderful present, and yet, besides that visit, she’d never removed them from their handsome folder. This year, because it was the kind of thing Kenneth remembered, he’d given her—along with all the other useless treasure—the complete Lord Peter collection, a boxed set with every episode of her favorite seasons from the seventies.

  Just the idea of sitting down with a glass of wine and savoring them again was enough to warm her. Impossible as it was, she wished she could go back and see them with Louise for the first time. She imagined starting from the beginning, rationing herself an episode a week to make it last. Occasionally, of a Monday evening, she thought of opening them and popping one in. It had been thirty years. Surely there would be much to discover. She intended to—she honestly meant to—because it was incredibly thoughtful of him to remember, and she did love the old programs, but there was always something else to take care of, and by that time, most nights, she was too tired to do anything but read a few lines before drifting off, and for whatever reason, as January turned to February, she left them sitting in the TV cabinet with the home movies, where they remained, a pleasant memory, pristine in their shrink-wrap.