“Louise,” I said. Then I didn't know what to say. I stood there. A little half smile appeared on her face.
She held her hand up to me, and I took it. She stood and led me down the hall to our bedroom. “I thought I'd get out of these tights,” she said. She drew the curtains and pulled back the covers.
She didn't make one single little crying sound. She didn't even breathe hard once.
“Don't forget your Men's Club meeting tonight,” she said a little later. She was staring at the ceiling. “I want you to go. I've run out of excuses at church. I've got to get the pot roast in the oven.”
Then she was out of bed. I heard the shower. I hadn't showered with her in years, I thought. Not that she had seemed to mind. It wasn't as if she'd asked and I'd refused or anything.
After a couple of minutes I had the strength to sit up. I rose slowly and walked naked into the bath. Seeing her through the glass shower door, Louise looked like a painting. She stood motionless, her arms up, hands holding her hair, her head arched way back under the spray. I'd never seen her like that before, or not for a very, very long time. It was like a new memory, if that makes sense. Out of nowhere I thought I might cry. I reached for a bath cloth. I looked at myself in the mirror. I turned around and walked out.
It took me a long time to get to sleep that night. I had dreams that I was glad I couldn't remember. But in the morning I was left with a single undeniable impression: It had to be somewhere in that house.
I can't tell you how I ended up in the attic. I started in the kitchen with the china cabinet, and moved to the canned foods. At some point my hand was feeling around in the bottom of the flour bin. Then, I was standing in the attic, surrounded by the accumulation of my life. I stopped to catch my breath. The plywood floor formed an island in the center of the large attic. Insulation, like pink snow, circled the stacks of boxes. Everything was covered in dust. There were boxes everywhere, some overflowing with old clothes and dishes. A brown cardboard suitcase spilled over with black and white photographs. A fruit crate held a stack of wrinkled record albums. Bobby Vinton smiled a twisted smile through the gray haze. “Blue Velvet.” “The Limbo Game.” Sam Cooke's wife shot him. Or was it somebody else? One box was filled with naked Barbies and Kens. There were feet in the air, arms and hands everywhere. I stepped on a Christmas tree ball, leaving a halo of blue and red glitter on the plywood.
Some of the boxes were collections of Louise's yard sale finds. One small box was filled with red, blue, green, and yellow aluminum glasses from the 50's. Farther back was a box filled with very old green antique glass figures and vases. There was another one marked “collectibles.” Magazines and old newspapers spewed from others.
Then I saw the metal detector. My heart lept.
I'd bought it about fifteen years earlier, when they'd first hit the market, and taken it to the beach once or twice. But in those days I had been too fond of bikinis to keep my eyes on the sand. A clean sweep line is very important if you're serious about your detecting work. I'd found a wedding band once. I didn't know if it would detect batteries. I knew it would work through plastic though.
The earphones were hard as oak; the rubber seemed to have petrified. But the meter still worked. I ran my left hand, my wedding band, under the circular face of the metal detector. I heard the beep. The needle on the meter pointed to gold. Beginning in the back right corner of the plywood platform, I swept for mines. In one box I found maybe twenty silver candleholders. After searching through its contents, I moved on. In another, I found hundreds of antique earrings, bracelets, and silver plated compacts. Soon, the room was a haze of dust. My eyes watered, I coughed and sputtered. I had to stop for a sneezing fit.
My ears really hurt. Time to give up, I thought. Near the door, I picked up the flashlight I'd put there years ago for Louise. The batteries were as strong as ever. I aimed its beam through the smoky dust all around the room, out to the regions below low rafters.
Then I saw the box. It was near the door, little more than ten feet from where I'd entered, but way back under the eve of the roof. It was a new box. The words “Thigh Master” were printed on the outside in blue letters. But in Magic Marker, written in Louise's hand, were the words “My Toys.” Thigh Master Toys, I thought.
I'd only taken two steps across the beams when my foot slipped on the dust-slick two-by-fours. Why the ceiling didn't give way I'll never know. I stepped back. I sneezed three times and rubbed my eyes. I assessed the risk. I looked again at the toy box.
I moved my old skis to sit down and think. I thought.
I hadn't been snow skiing in years, but I got the skis on easily enough. I wiped the dust from the ski mask and pulled it over my eyes. I lifted the metal detector, adjusted the painful earphones, took a deep breath, and began gliding over the rafters and pink snow. I moved with ease, skis secure, eyes clear behind the thin plastic, metal detector swinging gracefully. I felt under water or on the moon, nearing the wreck, anticipating and yet fearing what I might find. I ran the detector over the box. My ears rang. I used the lip of the detector like a snake probe to open the lid. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. Music boxes. Louise's music boxes.
“Warren? My God, Warren. That you, Warren?” When I turned, she started laughing. She didn't stop. The least she could have done was go on back downstairs. But she didn't. She held her side and wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at me, top to bottom, up and down, mask to skis. I took off the headphones and dropped the metal detector right there. Louise was howling.
“Oh God, Warren, where is the camera. Oh Warren, Warren, this is priceless. Don't move.”
I jerked away the mask, slam-dunked it into the pink insulation. I could feel its red outline over my cheeks and on my forehead.
“I just want to know one thing, Louise,” I shouted. I was really angry now. “One thing.” She was laughing so hard she was making little wheezing sounds. Slowly, I lifted the skis and slammed them down Cro-Magnon on the rafters. Every clumsy step sent her into new regions of lunatic ecstasy.
“I just want to know this,” I said, making my way back toward her, trying to make myself heard.
“Forget about our plans for Switzerland,” she said in a sort of little girl squeal. She was crying laughing tears.
I was closing in on her. She started to back away a little. “I want to know why you bought that vibrator.”
She doubled over. She wasn't even making laughing sounds now. Her whole body was convulsing. She looked up, holding up one hand like a traffic cop as if to say, no more, no more.
“And I want to know NOW!” I slammed down a ski for added emphasis.
“Because,” she began, and then made little seal noises, “arf, arf, arf, arf,” catching her breath. “Because the woman I bought it from—said—it—had never been—used. That's why.” She was howling again, backing down the stairs.
“Never been USED! Name for me somebody who got a toy and didn't play with it.” She was out of sight. I dropped on my side, rolled over on my stomach, and holding up the skis like TV antennas, slid on my chest to the stair opening. I plunged my head down. Blood rushed. She staggered out of sight
“Think of nuclear weapons, for God's sake,” I shouted. “We even had to try those out. How on earth can you expect me to . . . ?” Then she was in the other room, our bedroom, just below me. I could tell from her laughing.
That night in bed I thought she was asleep, but she wasn't. “I realized something in the attic today,” she said in the darkness.
“I don't even want to know,” I said.
She didn't say anything else, but I could feel the bed vibrating from her restrained laughter.
Sometime later just before I went to sleep she whispered, “I love you, Warren.”
Louise was gone when I woke up. I laid my arm over to where she always sleeps. Old habits die hard. The sheets were cold. But her clothes were still hanging in the closet. I looked out the window. The station wagon was still in the garage.
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Downstairs, she'd left a note on the kitchen table. It said, “Warren, this is serious. Meet me in the attic when you get home from work. I'll be there. No joke.”
I showered and dressed in a daze. While waiting for the light at the intersection of Hawthorne and Miller, Louise, in black and silver tights and red nylon shorts, jogged in front of my car. She was looking up at the light, wearing Walkman headphones. And making pretty good time.
I'm not really as square as most people think. I mean, I'm not opposed to trying new things. Louise and I had had our experimental phase the first year we were married. There is nothing unusual about that. And just for the record, I'd been the one to take the lead. We'd even done it in the car once. At home we'd done it in every room at one time or another. I'm not really the athletic type, but I've had my moves. The attic never counted as a room before.
At work, I closed the door to my office and took the phone off the hook. I sat. For the first time I visualized Louise with the thing. But the woman wasn't really Louise somehow. It became one of those sex movies.
The line to Pastor Ferkin's office was busy. We'd been friends for years, although church business was our only connection. He conducted marriage seminars. He took college courses. I was sure he'd heard it all. I tried again. The phone rang on the other end. He said hello. I hung up the receiver.
I called home. I kept calling home.
When I walked in the door, I saw the attic stairs had been pulled down.
“Louise? I'm home.” I sounded like a TV Dad from the fifties.
“Warren? Oh, Warren, come quick,” came the voice upstairs. “I want you to see this, Warren. Hurry.”
I took the steps slowly. My head went up like a periscope. Louise sat cross-legged, her back to me. At the head of the steps, I saw that she was hunched over a brown suitcase filled with old photographs.
“Look, look at this.” She was holding a snapshot. In it we sat on a blanket at the beach, the first summer we dated. We were looking into the camera; our arms interlocked champagne fashion, feeding each other ice cream. Ice cream was all over our mouths. She smiled up at me and gave me a little kiss.
“This is the plan,” she said, laying the photo aside. “I've priced most everything in this firetrap with these stickers.” She lifted a small lamp from a box, pointed at its sticker. “Help me get the stuff down stairs. I can get it out on the lawn by myself in the morning. You can sleep until I get really busy. Did you see the signs?”
“What signs?”“
“My yard sale signs, you bat-blind bad boy.”
I stood on the steps and took the boxes from Louise. There were at least twice as many as I would have guessed were up there. Together we stacked them in the living room.
“Could we maybe have that romantic steak dinner tonight?” she purred.
***
I was dead asleep. It was pitch dark.
“Wake up, Warren. I have everything out, but it feels like rain outside. They're here already. She'd left a cup of coffee beside the bed.
I looked out the window as I dressed. The sky was pink in the east, black in the north. Louise, in brown slacks and a blue blouse, scurried from customer to customer haggling over prices, making yard sale magic. I poured a second cup of coffee for myself and one for Louise. I still had sleep in my eyes when I walked outside.
“You're in charge of the strongbox,” she said, pointing to my green tackle box. “They'll bring you the stickers. You make change.”
Louise seemed to float over the lawn, sidestepping old ladies holding up curtains, pirouetting past professional junk shop men, gliding over an old Hoover pulled like a pet by a little girl. At one point she began singing “We're in the money,” holding up maybe fifteen one-dollar bills. She threw her arm around my neck, and I joined in the chorus. She sang alto. I sang tenor. People looked at us and smiled.
About eight-thirty everybody stopped dead still. A long roll of thunder crossed overhead.
“Everything half price,” she announced. “Everything's got to go.” I took in quarters and dimes, and folded warm dollars that appeared from between melon-sized breasts.
Louise said the word would be out in thirty minutes. And sure enough in half an hour there must have been fifty people in our yard. At times, I couldn't see over the circle that surrounded me, people shoving stickers at me. One guy asked if the ladder in my garage was for sale.
I couldn't believe what people would buy. There was absolutely no logic to the sales. I'd try to guess what would sell next and who would buy it. Not once was I right.
Then the swarm was gone. The wave had passed. Two young women who had driven up in a red Volvo were going through baby clothes Louise had kept for fourteen years. Another woman was holding up an old bra.
“Can I get you another cup of coffee,” I called to Louise.
“Oh yes, please,” she said.
I poured our coffee, but I couldn't remember which cup had sugar. Louise likes sugar. I take mine black. I lifted a cup and tasted. From the kitchen window, I watched Louise refolding drapes and old jeans. She looked happy.
For the first time, I realized that yard sale crazies, as Louise referred to herself, were really lovers of mystery and surprise. They were optimists. They were discoverers. They sometimes didn't know what would please them until they saw it. They didn't over-value things. They were willing to compromise. They believed there was something waiting for them out there. I topped off my cup.
I heard a peal of laughter outside. Louise and the two women who'd driven up in the Volvo were looking into a small red and black rectangular box, laughing. By the time I got outside, the women were driving away.
“What was so funny,” I said. Louise was waving to them as they pulled away. She was still laughing.
“Oh, nothing,” she said, “yard sale talk.” Smiling to herself, she looked over at a middle-aged woman and her husband. The wife rummaged through knickknacks. The husband waited for her, checking his watch every minute or two. “May I help you,” Louise said. The woman looked up and smiled.
“Maybe,” she said.
“I'll wait for you in the car, babydoll,” the husband said. He gave her a little peck on the cheek and turned toward the street.
“I'll only be a minute,” she said. “I promise.”
“Take your time,” he said. “I'll listen to the radio.”
“I've just the thing for you,” Louise said, taking the woman by the arm, watching the husband walk away. She stopped and looked at me. “Warren, would you be a sweetheart and go inside and get me a cup of coffee?” Louise led the woman toward a half-empty cardboard box under a table.
Her cup was full, the coffee still warm. I carried it inside to the kitchen and emptied the coffee down the drain. I walked slowly from room to room, looked at the photographs of our small family on the walls and tables, ran my fingers over the soft linens on our bed before circling back to the kitchen. Then without looking out the window I poured the last of the coffee into Louise's cup, measured a level teaspoon of sugar, and then stirred it slowly, until I thought it was just right.
Gatsby's Last Dive
Giles Carter
The impossible is what he had trouble with. You can see him now in his Calvin Klein swimsuit, toes at the very edge of the curved tile, looking down at his own distorted image in the blue-green water, lamenting every blade of grass that mars its perfect, tiny waves, listening as the water softly collides with the tiles—sounding vaguely like kisses he had known. He should never have put it to her that way. There must have been a hundred ways he could have gotten around to it, ways that she could have told him what he needed to hear, ways that could have been easy for her.
But he misunderstood so many things. Mostly he misunderstood the nature of love, its paradoxes, or at least its ironies. And that's why things turned out okay for him in the end. Because thanks to a grease monkey with a .45, he didn't have to face up to those complexities. He had a grease monkey do it for him. The gre
ase monkey was highly conflicted. Or maybe not. Maybe he was a grease monkey without his own swimming pool. If not for the grease monkey, the one who did him a favor by greasing him, he would have had to face up to so many things. Like the fact that she did love him, but that she realized—where he didn't—that fate is prescriptive. She could see it coming; he couldn't. He would've had to face up to the fact that she knew love was not a thing to run to, finally.
In the end, the need for safety always exceeds the need for love. It would have ruined him had he actually learned that, come to know it in a way he couldn't shake it. Much better to swim, lie there thinking about how to make it go, to contemplate the next move.
His fatal mistake was not believing her when she didn't say it. She could say it to him, all right. She could say it to him and mean it. Say it truthfully. With all her heart. Because she did love him. But his mistake was in what he mistook for love. Fact is, she was right and he was wrong. She gets safety, the only substitute for love; he gets a fish-eye view of the pool drain through hazy green water.
His last swim, though, was not his worst day. His worst day was when he forced the issue, when he said that she must say to her husband that she'd never loved him—as he, Gatsby, witnessed the telling. Had he been able to envision her saying it to the hubby, perhaps he could have settled for that. But his was a failure of the imagination. And he had envisioned so much.
You can picture him floating there, knowing that somehow, some way, he can fix it. He knows there are ways to convert old currency into new currency. Cunning and dedication are what is needed. With love he can't lose. You can picture him, following his dream into sleep, the water all around him, his body conforming to subtle currents, the low sun turning his blue-green pallet into a dazzling bed of yellow glitter.
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