Clara at the Edge

by Maryl Jo Fox

  Frank is silent. Finally he says, “So you’ve kept all this inside you all these years.”

  “It’s been torture. I couldn’t forgive myself. Or speak of it. I became like a nun so nothing else bad would happen to us. Imagine. A nun. For all these years.” She swallows. “And now I’m telling you this on your honeymoon, Frank!” She laughs. “I never did have good timing, did I?” He doesn’t laugh or say anything, and she panics. “We could have talked all this out a long time ago if I’d been able to tell you. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Mom. Of course.” And then, “Thank you.” They fall silent. The afternoon sun is starting to fade. A fire engine shrieks by, jackhammers sound in the distance, dogs yip back and forth on the sidewalk.

  Tiredly he looks at her. “So you connect the sex with the accident?”

  Her voice is toneless. “I was with my lover in my office when a big truck swung around the corner and knocked my daughter down and killed her at the four-corner intersection. End of story.”

  “But Mom . . .”

  “Look, I’m not asking for absolution here. I started adult patrols afterward, but it was too late for me and Samantha. I’ve been trying my whole life to make up for it, fix any damaged soul I can find.” Her voice ends in a whisper. “There are a lot of damaged souls. The kids who burned down my house, for instance.”

  He takes her hand, says softly, “Mom, listen. Having sex that day has no connection to Samantha’s death. They were two separate events. It was just an unfortunate coincidence. A roll of the dice.”

  “You don’t understand. I could have been out there. Martin could have been out there. He was the patrol advisor.”

  “Were you or Martin supposed to be out there?”

  “No. But at least once a week he would go out to the intersection and chitchat with the kids. They loved it. He told Myra he would be out there that day. And he wasn’t.” She bows her head, says nothing for a while. “All those years.” She absently strokes a pillow.

  “Mom. You’ve been too hard on yourself. You’re a human being; you did a human thing. Even if Martin had gone out there, he might not have been there at the exact moment the accident was lining up to happen. So it might have happened anyway. You’ve got to forgive yourself.”

  She looks at him. “I don’t think it’s possible.”

  He persists. “It was over thirty years ago. You’ve got to move on. It’s done. You’ve got time left to live—still.”

  She looks at him. Where did this son of hers get all this wisdom?

  Haskell is back from his errands and calmly sorts the mail. After the three of them have a light dinner of deli food, Frank goes straight to bed, exhausted from the red-eye, the exhibit, and their talk. Tomorrow is a special day for Frank: Stella will arrive from Chicago to see the exhibition with him. The plane ticket is an unexpected gift from her aunt and uncle. The newlyweds are delighted. And Frank has lots to tell his bride.

  Clara is wrought up and exhausted. She was awake the whole night. She wanders around the loft, examines every room, object, and surface, stares out into the darkening night. Haskell is barely awake with the newspaper. She obsessively checks on Lenore, who still throbs lightly in her bag on top of the dresser. She tries to feed Lenore a few crumbs of graham cracker, but the creature pushes the crumbs away with her tiny feet and arms. Clara bends over the doomed creature in her bag and whispers, “Thank you, my darling. Stay a little longer.”

  0 days left.

  Haskell wakes to see Clara staring out the window. “What is it?” he asks.

  “Your niece,” she says. “Arianna tried to make me out a saint in that show, a crusader against excess.” Pained, she looks at him. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I can’t save the world. I can’t even save myself.” She runs her hand over her eyes. “I’ve been awake for hours. Frank already left to pick up Stella at the airport.”

  She looks over at Haskell, calmly sitting on the couch, looking at her. A wave of longing comes over her. More than ever, she needs a friend right now, a good friend. Someone she could talk to, someone who would talk to her. She wonders how Haskell would react to her story. She looks up. He’s studying her.

  “How are you?” he asks quietly. “Are you all right?”

  She doesn’t yet know how to answer that question. She says, “Do you want to hear a story?”

  “I always like to hear stories.”

  She decides then to tell him the whole story, her affair, all of it, the same as she told Frank—the late night dates, lying about a meeting, the fight, the accident.

  “So that’s what’s been bothering you. I’ve known for a long time something was bothering you. Maybe now you’ll begin to forgive yourself.”

  “Forgive? That’s a funny word. I don’t know anything about it.” She shifts her attention to Lenore, who throbs faintly in her bag on the dresser. Before she eats her own breakfast, Clara again tries to feed the creature—this time a crushed Cheerio, but Lenore won’t eat. So she folds a cloth napkin to make a little mattress for Lenore in her bag, but the creature twitches and tries to slide off it, as if the fabric hurts her.

  There is nothing Clara can do for her.

  After they get dressed, Clara and Haskell sit on the couch together.

  Haskell, wanting to distract her, talks about selling the loft. He wants to get out of the city. “This trip has showed me another way to live. I’ll always love Manhattan, but I’d like to go out West. I’ve had enough crowding for a while. I’m going to call my sister. My niece is coming here in winter quarter for school, and Pam has often said she’d like to buy my loft. They’ve got money coming out the wazoo.”

  Clara considers this, muses. “I want to be where Frank is. That’s what I know. I’m not going to blow this. And I like Stella. Very much.”

  He nods. “Frank calls it straight. And Stella is dynamite.”

  “I have to agree. They rushed it, though.”

  He laughs. “They did.”

  They are quiet, sitting on the couch. She is talking again about her failure to keep her kids safe. Haskell has an arm around her. Finally he says, “Listen to me, Clara. Things happen, chance things—things we could not possibly anticipate, would never ever want in a million years. You had no idea there would be an accident. Neither did your daughter. For God’s sake, Clara, don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re a good person. Your son is right.”

  She murmurs, “I’m just so exhausted. I could sleep for days. Really days. I’ve been trying to sleep all these years. I can never get enough sleep. I go to bed and lay there all night, night after night. It’s like I always have a searchlight on in my brain. I thought Frank would run out on me if he knew how I’d neglected both of them, so I’ve slept even less these last weeks, knowing I had to finally talk about it. I get so tired. I can’t even talk straight when I get this way.”

  “Why don’t you go and lie down? I have things to do around here, another errand. I’ll try to be quiet.” He kisses her lightly. “We’ll get through this, Clara.”

  She barely responds.

  With sudden intuition, she dashes over to Lenore’s bag in the bedroom and carefully opens it. “Quick, Haskell, come here. Oh, God.”

  Spellbound, they peer into the bag together. Lenore is gray and naked. She has shrunk from four inches to two inches and is still shrinking. Her tiny face is contorted in agony, as if she’s giving birth. Translucent wing buds are coming out right now from her shoulder blades. Her arms and legs are shrinking to the toothpick limbs of wasps. Her face is re-forming to oblong with big eyes and proboscis snout. Her head is no longer swollen. The painful reverse transformation is happening right before their eyes.

  Clara speaks quietly to her. “Let me help. What can I do?”

  In the smallest of voices, Lenore says, “You can begin to heal. My work is done; I can die as I came. This is how much I loved you.”

  Haskell whispers, “This is nuts, Clara. I can hear her and see her. I used to hear s
tatic and breezes, and that was bad enough. I don’t understand this.”

  “Neither do I. You’re beginning to see around the edges of things.”

  “I’m going nuts.”

  Lenore’s body is finally still, once more shaped like a wasp, but gray. Clara bends over the open bag, her eyes wet. Carefully she lifts the weightless form out of the bag and rests it on a folded Kleenex. She places Lenore’s remains inside a Chlor-Trimeton box after stowing the last sheet of pills separately in her purse. She sets the box on Haskell’s dresser.

  He gives a low whistle in response to all this and asks Clara if she’s all right. “I don’t need to go out. There’s more food.”

  “I’m OK,” she says. “I’m just really tired. Go ahead. I’ll just rest awhile.”

  She flings herself across the bed and stares at the ceiling, trying to sleep. But she’s wide awake. Finally she dozes off for maybe half an hour. When she wakes, the loft is silent. Haskell must have gone out for something after all. He has put a light blanket over her. Her brain is addled from lack of sleep, from everything that has happened. She doesn’t know what day it is, what month. She needs some air. She finds a note. He had to go to the post office. Quietly she lets herself out the weathered blue door. She will just walk awhile to clear her mind. Maybe then she can sleep.

  chapter 28

  She’s been walking for some time, not noticing street signs or people, only the smell of diesel and ripe garbage. After a while, she starts noticing people. They are all talking on their cell phones, eyes glazed, not registering what’s in front of them. They are floating, just like she is, but she has no cell phone. She left it at Haskell’s.

  It is late afternoon and she is hungry again, tired again, always these things follow her around. She pulls out three one-dollar bills and some change from her Levi’s pocket and stops to buy a sausage from a street vender. It squirts when she bites it, staining her blouse, but it tastes good. She has a dollar and some change left.

  A heavy homeless woman sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk panhandles her. She gives the woman a quarter. Frowning, the woman pockets it. Lying next to the woman is a panting brown dog with open bloody sores on its side. Clara sits down beside the woman. Night will come, and she doesn’t want to be alone just now. The dog sniffs her hand. Its nose is dry. She pets it on the head.

  The woman exclaims in fright. “What do you want? I don’t have anything.” A strong unwashed smell comes from her.

  “I don’t want anything. I just want to pet your dog.” Clara holds her breath to avoid retching at the smell.

  “I can’t help you, lady. You should move on. The streets don’t stay friendly after dark.”

  “How long have you been out here?”

  The woman looks at Clara as if she’s crazy. “Few months. Me and my dog.”

  “What’s your dog’s name?”

  “Oscar. His name’s Oscar.” She looks at Clara. “You some reporter?”

  “No. No. Just resting a minute.” Clara looks around. She’s loose now. Everything is ruled in. She might just float away. Fancy that. She told everything and nothing happened. After all those years of nailing herself down. She feels a sharp stab of grief for Lenore, her faithful and overpowering companion these last weeks. It seems longer, as if Lenore has been her companion her whole life. She feels dizzy and light-headed. She laughs. The woman looks at Clara in alarm, but calms down when Clara continues to sit peacefully on the sidewalk.

  The woman’s complexion is florid, her hair an oily dark clump at the back of her neck, her dark clothes stretched out and filthy. Clara edges a little farther away from her. The woman brings out a forty-ounce can of Old English 800 malt liquor from a welter of plastic bags. She offers it to Clara, who hesitates, then takes it. It might help her sleep a little. She wants to be sure to sleep now. A nap will clear her mind. She drinks maybe a cup of the liquor. It’s a very tall can. She can’t drink any more, but she’s still hungry after the sausage. She passes the can back to the woman. “Thanks,” Clara says.

  There is a lot left for the woman. The woman sets the can on the sidewalk. Clara leans against the building as she sits on the sidewalk. She will get up and leave in just a minute. The sun is fading.

  Sleep comes on her like a sudden plunge off a cliff. At some point she feels someone roughly searching her pockets, but she’s too tired to rouse herself. When she wakes, the homeless woman and her dog are gone. She wonders what time it is. It’s late. She’s hungry. She checks her watch, but the watch is gone, a white circle on her wrist where her watch usually is. People passing by stare at her. Her blouse is dirty. Her money is gone.

  She begins walking and goes into a coffee shop to relieve herself. I better start paying attention to street signs, she thinks, but it seems impossible that she would get lost in this city where buildings are warm to the touch and packed with thousands—millions—of people. But she doesn’t know where she is.

  She is walking south on First Avenue, the same direction she’d been walking last night. Sirens, smoke, haze—there’s a fire somewhere to the north. Her eyes are stinging, she has a thumping headache, her stomach is upset. People walk past her in either direction, always hurrying.

  A clock in a store window says eight thirty. So it’s not that late. Not completely dark yet. Being overtired means she wakes up at the slightest bother. How can she sleep at all when she’s on the street and not in a bed? How can she even be on the street? Never in her life. People passing by her look worried about something. Maybe they’re worried about the sirens. Maybe they’re going to see the fire for themselves. People are always fascinated by fires. She might go to the fire too, but she doesn’t have the strength. Not today. Let other people go to the fire. The haze and smoke remind her of her own house burning. Bubbles and muck, the smell of gas, Dawson tying her up and putting his arms around her after he threw gas on her. She had slapped him. He got tears in his eyes. What a mess.

  Well, no one is putting their arms around her now. She’s lost and scared. She’s got to get back! She turns north onto St. Marks Place and comes to Second Avenue. She keeps going north. It’s the opposite direction she came from last night, so it has to be the right way. The fire is to the west now, not even that close to her. More police, more yowling sirens, people walking like they don’t even notice it or care. She pulls up her blouse collar to cover her mouth and nose from the smoke, but the smoke isn’t really that bad. She lets the collar go.

  Nothing looks familiar. She is lost. She gets to Fifth and keeps going north. Out of breath and coughing, she leans against a building in the teens to rest a minute before she starts walking again.

  She walks past a doorway in the haze. She is lost or maybe just confused and tired, unable to think. She slides to the sidewalk along the side of the building with the doorway and hugs her knees. She’s so hungry. She lowers her head onto her knees and dozes off.

  She wakens to a woman wrapping Clara’s hand around a ten-dollar bill. The woman seems to be about the same age as Clara. She is wearing a white silk shirt and black linen pants, so different from Clara’s old blouse and Levi’s. “Find shelter, my dear,” says the woman. “You don’t want to be out on the streets like this. Do you have a place to go?” She seems to be in a hurry, backs away from Clara sitting on the sidewalk and quickly walks away.

  Clara shoves the ten-dollar bill into her Levi’s pocket. After a while, she manages to stand, readying herself to move on to find some safe place.

  Suddenly an enormous moving cloud darkens the sky above her. Terrified, she looks up as the low hum grows deafening around her ears. Blurry minions escape from the cloud and land on her head and shoulders one by one. She’s about to scream in her exhaustion until she realizes the cloud is a swarm of wasps. A part of her brain lights up. Frank had told her about Scotty’s Internet research after the wasps escaped. Now she wonders if her own lost wasps have come east, after attracting hundreds, maybe thousands of wasps, all along the way, to say goodbye a
nd to absorb her smells one last time before plunging into the Atlantic to die.

  Descending from the dark cloud, a small number of wasps are poking around her hair and arms and neck, dragging their wings on her skin to absorb the lifelong smells of Prell shampoo, Jergens lotion, Ivory soap, and Secret deodorant embedded in her skin. Briefly these few wasps linger, then rise for the last time and head for the Atlantic, joining the alto swarm they had recruited from all across the country.

  She watches them in wonder, their chaotic low dazzling hum filling the sky in contrast to the brassy sirens on the streets of New York City. In total exhaustion, she leans her head and hands against the blue door, accidentally pushing the buzzer. Almost immediately, he buzzes her in.

  Postscript

  Clara is needed in Jackpot: Scotty is dying of lung cancer. Refusing all treatment, he is in hospice at his home. He has sold Desert Dan’s to a buyer from Seattle. Frank is with Scotty most of the day, Stella joins him off-shifts, Clara pinch hits to give them both a break, a nurse comes daily. Clara flew home the same day Frank told her about it, followed by Frank and Stella. Nine days later, Scotty died. They scatter his ashes in the desert, on a gentle rise with a wide view of the everlasting desert, the same spot Frank and Scotty drove to on the day Scotty got his diagnosis. Frank had brought a bottle of Jack Daniels and two shot glasses. The two old friends enjoyed themselves as much as they could that day. Clara has rented a small apartment suitable for hosting Frank and Stella for dinner and “good rum drinks,” as she always says. She has allowed her destroyed house to be cleared away.