Chapter 9.
Her interactions at the bank that morning were forced and awful. When Kathy arrived, the other tellers had gathered near one of the counting machines. They dispersed at once upon seeing her enter the building, like hens scattered by the opening of a gate. Kathy could feel them already pecking her skull as punishment for the unforgivable mothering error. How could they know already? How could they possibly have heard?
A half hour of silence passed with but a handful of customers. Then a woman entered with rollers in her hair, named Estelle, a fixture in the third pew in the Immaculate church, with ancient lines in her face and rosary beads permanently pressed to her lips under the hint of a moustache. Like clockwork, running her Saturday morning errand, she arrived at the bank at nine o'clock. One of the tellers perked up to accommodate the woman, although all tellers routinely schemed to avoid Estelle, timing their bathroom breaks and talking to dial tones, even hiding in the vault, passing the responsibility of serving this particular customer using myriad tricks, to dodge the fifteen minute ordeal of walking through Estelle's checking account transactions.
The assisting teller smiled and fawned at Estelle, who dragged a crooked long fingernail across the lines of her checkbook ledger and customarily accused the bank of "skimming the cream" from her Social Security money. At the end of her account balancing, the old woman wrapped a headscarf over the rollers in her hair, and then expressed her weekly parting shot, an engineered comment that she always shared before leaving, much like some people will share a joke upon saying goodbye. But her intent was to cut someone in half, not put them in stitches. And try as the tellers might to rise above the woman's cruel remarks, they could not help but listen and wait for the insult, to find out which soul in town Estelle had selected for her weekly ridicule. Her nonsensical insults often led to inside jokes that became part of the internal bank lingo. As usual, on that Saturday morning, speaking to no one in particular, the old woman glanced at Kathy, looked away, then aired her weekly grievance:
"Working again, I see. Pray for the little ones who must fend for themselves."
The comment took a moment to sink in. Kathy did not understand what the old woman had meant until she walked out the front door of the bank. The other tellers remained straight-faced, accustomed to the Estelle's cryptic and rude quips, but the target of her comment usually did not occupy the same room. Estelle's custom was to insult people who were not present.
Kathy suddenly understood, and looked up from the numbers on a loan application. She closed her eyes, tipped her head back, and pressed her palms against the table, locking her elbows out. The old woman had laid an egg and left it behind. One of the tellers behind Kathy stifled a laugh. When Kathy turned, she caught the smirk. She took a mental note of which teller had taken pleasure in the remark, and would remember the expression when her recommendations for promotions and raises were requested by Josh and the other upper management at the bank.
A paragraph of stairway wit came to Kathy. Too late, these rejoinders, always too late. But seeing the other women's faces, Kathy could not stand idle and allow the comment to survive open-ended without retort. She capped her pen and strode out the door, slamming the swinging gate that enclosed the teller stand, using her shoulder to turn the glass revolving door.
The old woman sat in her car in the parking lot, thumbing through her purse. Seeing Kathy, the woman's hands shook. She gripped the steering wheel, prepared to drive away, but she had not started the engine.
Kathy put her hand on the roof and leaned in toward the woman. "Did you have something to say to me, Estelle?"
"What?" she said, with a delicate ignorance, the politeness of a grandmother. "No, dear. Why do you ask, Mrs. Werther?"
"When you want to insult someone, do it to their face."
"Insult someone? I would never."
"Listen, Estelle. I know you've been getting away with this for years, but today is going to be the last time. If you want to say something about working mothers, say it to me – not the other women. Your remarks are not welcome any more in the bank, do you hear me?"
"What remarks? I never…"
"In fact, they've never been welcome, not just in the bank, but anywhere. Because when you take a stab at me, I could just as easily comeback at you and say, 'Look at that crazy woman's kids and how screwed up they are. Her daughter Georgia hates her and is smoking herself to the stub. Jimmy, bless his heart, he runs the most-likely-to-be condemned farm in Immaculate. And Larry, there's a reason he's still a bachelor and it has nothing to do with girls.'"
"Blast you," said Estelle. "Who is watching your children? Those poor souls may be better off run through a combine than live under a mannish beast of a mother. I'll be taking my business elsewhere. Who is watching your children? Who?"
"Please do take your business elsewhere. I guess now would also be a good time for me to suggest that you shave your beard."
"Maybe God can forgive you and your pagan-named children. I'll pray for you to come to the light."
"Shove it up your ass!" Kathy shouted, striking her fist against her other forearm, pushing her right arm out and upward. This was the first time she used the gesture, yet it happened naturally and surprised her, almost pleasing her. She had taken a short vacation from being Minnesota-nice.
She marched back into the bank, heels tapping a woody sound on the pavement. Already, she felt unsatisfied with herself for accosting Estelle. Nothing solved, everything confirmed. Loose woman, she had said. What loose? She hadn't had sex in months. Enticing Josh? Impossible. Nothing in her closet drew a second look from him. Even if he was interested when he arrived at home, she always fell asleep by nine o'clock. And pagan? This insult raked worse than the other accusation, sickening Kathy because of its strangeness. The girls' names – Rhea and Dawn – she had chosen the names from a book of baby names. The word pagan did not even make sense to Kathy, but she sensed a cruel implication and this remark hurt more than the others did.
The other women at the teller stand did not look at Kathy, although she suspected that they had all watched the altercation in the parking lot from the window, like schoolchildren. The tellers pretended to work. Nothing more Immaculate than feigned naivety. Kathy returned to her loan application and started marking signature lines with tape and markers for the prospective homebuyer, slapping the stickers and ink haphazardly upon the pages. The only sound in the room came from her angry hands and the other women's fingers on the ten-key pads. The door chain rang a bell whenever a customer entered the revolving door, the jingling sound releasing pressure from the silence between the tellers.
One of the tellers tended to the new customer. Kathy shelved the application and pulled another one from the inbox on the counter. As she started checking numbers again, she clenched her fist and set it on the table, pressing against the wood, grounding her frustration through the flex in her forearm. An hour passed with Kathy performing her normal duties with gritted teeth, until her anger bubbled over when a new teller, Maggie Arneson, crept alongside Kathy, bearing a little handwritten note.
"What's this?" asked Kathy.
"I didn't want to disturb you," said Maggie.
"Is this a phone message?"
"No, just a note I wanted to pass to you."
Kathy read aloud, mumbling the words. "Kathy, when you get a moment, I am having trouble closing my drawer out. I seem to be $20 short. I need to leave at 10:00 for my appointment."
"Why are you telling me in a note?"
Maggie put her head down. "I didn't want to interrupt you."
"How does a note interrupt any less than speaking?"
The girl did not respond.
"Well, I'm interrupted now. What exactly are you asking me? Did you want me to figure out where you miscalculated or lost the twenty dollars? Go count it again."
"I've counted it. Twice."
"Twenty do
llars means you probably miscounted or you gave a sticky bill out. And either way, it's your drawer. You need to learn to talk to the customer and count at the same time, snap the bills apart between your thumb and your middle finger. Or better yet, don't talk to the customer while you count."
"I'm sorry that I bothered you."
"Don't be sorry, just speak up. Six months now and you still can't ask a question? You need to get some confidence. This walking on eggshells business has to end if you want to get things done. I find this timid attitude irritating."
"I'm sorry."
Maggie looked like she might cry so Kathy backed off, even though she wanted to rule over the pusillanimous Maggie, as a proxy, since she was representative of a larger culture. Instead, Kathy relented and showed mercy on the meek girl, saying, "Go get your drawer."
"Thank you."
"Please let this day end," whispered Kathy, looking at the clock and chewing her inner cheek. The furtive glances continued from the other women and she could hardly bear much more, as anger slowly eroded into shame. But she counted and stared straight ahead. Indeed, the girl had indeed handed out an extra twenty-dollar bill to a customer that morning. The fear in the girl made it obvious to Kathy that the girl had not stolen it. "Forget about it," Kathy said, "I'll cover it – this time," but the girl cried anyway. Such a delicate thing. She had no skin for responsibility and needed constant emotional reinforcement. How could an adult have such little confidence in herself? Talk about bad mothering, thought Kathy, diverting her own self-criticism.
The next half hour dragged and the fieriness of Kathy waned. Her anger decayed into darker thoughts. By 10:30, the spent nerves in her body allowed guilt to bloom. Thinking of Rhea and feeling the overarching eye of Immaculate upon her, she could not continue working. She passed her authority to an older teller to manage the last few hours of the shift.
The stares seemed to follow her out the bank door into the street. Driving in town she felt yoked with embarrassment, as if towing a billboard along that announced her mistake. The silver car made her conspicuously present wherever she turned. She and Josh had purchased the Cadillacs for the purpose of being recognized. The symbol of success, confidence – but now a marker of her location, a spotlight illuminating the bad mother of Immaculate. The women of the town, especially the lower class ones, sneered at her – she felt them reveling in her fall from grace. Voices came to her, imagined ones. The mother of the children of the corn. The careerist woman who neglected her children. They would be better off raised by wolves. See what money does to people? You know if she was poor, the state would take those children away and put them in a proper home.
She made a stop at the grocery store to pick up milk and bread and apples. Inside, the aisles seemed to close in on her, circling her like a noose. The easy-listening jazz music, the fluorescent lighting – both made the artificial passing smiles of shuffling homemakers doubly strange. The sound of her heels on the tiles echoed down the produce aisle, announcing her status as a working woman, which usually made her proud. Grossly aware of herself, to a degree that philosophers speculate upon, anxiety ballooned within her, while the aisles collapsed around. A stock boy watched her as he stacked heads of iceberg lettuce. Was he laughing? She tossed a few apples into a plastic bag without inspecting them for blemishes and worm-holes, and moved out of the aisle to get the milk and bread, walking rapidly, wanting to run but needing badly to maintain the norms of society throughout this breakdown.
At the checkout aisle, with her items on the moving belt, she noticed the milk as the cashier scanned the label. Skim milk. The checkout girl could not scan the label. She kept running it through. Beep. Beep. Kathy had grabbed the wrong milk. She meant to buy two-percent milk. Not skim milk. It was for the kids, and not her. It was for the kids. The beep of the scanner again, again, reminding her of her wrong selection.
She said to the girl, "I usually get two-percent."
The girl nodded, not knowing what to make of the comment. "That's what I drink."
"It's better for the kids," she said, bending her fingers inward and then crossing her arms. "I grabbed the wrong one."
"I can't get the label in the right spot."
"Give it to me," Kathy said, ripping the bottle from the girl's hands. A burly man in line behind Kathy, holding six TV dinners, said, "I'll wait if you need to get a different gallon."
"Please, sir," said Kathy. "Go ahead. I'll be right back."
"I can wait."
"No, go ahead. I insist."
"No, it's fine, I'll..."
"Here," she said, and pulled his TV dinners from his rough hands and plopped them onto the belt ahead of her items.
At the milk refrigerators, she shoved the gallon of skim milk back into a slot and grabbed the two-percent milk. She muttered, "Rhea is too skinny as it is. What kind of mother gives their children skim milk? A careless mother, one like Tammy Brigham."
Perhaps two percent lacked the fat her skinny children needed. They should be plumper – but not too plump. They could stand some whole milk now and then.
The two percent gallon of milk was exchanged for a gallon of whole milk. That would be better. The kids could use a few pounds. "And you could lose ten," she said aloud to herself, much louder than expected, and covered her mouth, surprised at her own outburst. The milk fiasco worsened. She began inspecting expiration dates, seeking the gallon of whole milk with the latest date, so that it would not go bad in the refrigerator. Nothing but the freshest for her family. They all had the same dates. They were all the same. All of the dates, to the last milk in the rear of the sliding tray, ending on the tenth of November. Kathy's eyes started to water as the date appeared again: 11/10/92. It became upsetting. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed two old women with their shopping carts, watching her, gathering notes to report for their afternoon calls to their friends. "Hags," she whispered. The focus of the day's gossip magnified Kathy sense of being to great proportions, so that she became a giant. It was her turn, her turn to under the microscope. What vermin these gossips are, she judged, forgetting the thousand times she unknowingly and knowingly transferred bits of information about other men and women to passersby in her day. Now the stares of the other women made her loathe this human tradition.
The milk bottles gathered at her feet. When her hands reached for another milk, they found open air. The tray was empty. Turning, she jumped at seeing so many gallons of milk on the floor around her feet. She was losing control now. Straightening her shirt, she started placing the gallons back into the slots in the refrigerator. Tears teemed. An eager drop burst forward, rushing down her cheek, hurrying to her blouse. Suddenly the stock boy saved her. He abandoned his lettuce stack and said, "I'll put 'em back for you, Mrs. Werther."
"Thank you. Bless you." Her voice cracked. "Thank you." She could not continue on through the minute. Running to the exit, she crashed out the door to the light, hand over her mouth, leaving her items at the register. In the parking lot, she entered the car, to hide in plain sight, without any milk of any percent for her children.
She started home, and then turned the car around. She could not yet go home, not to Josh or the children, but needing something desperately, to see a certain man, for she knew no one else who could comfort her in the same manner. She steered toward the east side of Immaculate, yearning to see the man. She walked inside a building and asked to see him. The assistant told her that he was playing checkers, but Kathy insisted that she must see him. In the foyer of the building, she stared at a pastel picture of flowers in a cheap frame, long enough that her eyes saw past the flowers into the softer focus of her own reflection and wrinkles, aging, hardening, beholding all of the undesirable things a woman can see in her face, real and imagined, upon her brow and her eyes, the corners of her mouth. And just as this many-headed hydra of self-abuse began again, much like it had in the
grocery store, Kathy heard a familiar voice, and saw in the reflection an older, wrinkled face coming toward her in a wheelchair.
She spun around and said, exhaling, "Father Dimer."
"Little Kathy McKay," he said, smiling. "I was up two dollars, and I just landed a triple-word-score." He stopped and noticed her wet cheeks and puffy eyes. "What's wrong sweetheart?"
She kneeled and put her forehead against his wrinkled and spotted arm. "I'm a bad mother."
"If you're a bad mother," he said, laying his hand on her head and patting her hair, "I'm Charles Manson. Come on now, let's go into the grand ballroom here and talk about it." He pointed to the fluorescent room inside where an elderly man and two women sat in wheelchairs staring up at a TV tuned to a rerun episode of Bonanza.
Kathy's sobs came harder. She gripped Father Dimer's flowered Hawaiian shirt, one of his retirement shirts that, along with himself, that never reached Florida or the South Pacific.
"Get up," said Father Dimer. "Push me along now. I promise you, everything is going to be all right once we have a pop together." He pushed open the door and said to a nurse, "Alice, when you return, would it be too much trouble for you to bring us two Pepsis, please?"
The nurse spoke over her burning cigarette. "When my break is over."
"Of course, when your break is over. Until then, enjoy the fresh air," he said. To Kathy, Dimer whispered, "I tell you, the service at this hotel is not great, but they do respond if you complain at regular intervals and sugarcoat everything a bit. Now, stand up and push me along, we'll have a pop and a talk. You'll see, Kathy. The sun will rise again tomorrow, just like it did today."
The Plenty Page 9